Page 80 of Fool Me Twice

A few miles away, eating pizza on your couch and laughing about nothing.“Here,” Roma lies. “Just nervous. One hundred percent mortality rate for hunters, remember?”

Ez winces. “Don’t remind me,” she says, and she straightens. “But that’s why we do these dry runs, right? To work out the kinks. Again?”

“Again,” Roma says quietly. “One, two, three‍—from the depths to the sky…”

“From the depths to the sky…”

Roma’s nerves start to fade as the first lines of their incantations match up, smoother and cleaner than before. The knot of anxiety in her stomach loosens until it vanishes entirely, giving way to the peace she always feels when she’s spellcasting with Ez.

This is what they do best. This is what they weremadefor.

This is two masters of their craft at work, making magic out of thin air. By the time they finish in perfect unison, Ez is smirking at Roma. “Better. One more time?”

“One more time. One, two, three‍—from the depths…”

“… to the sky…”

The spell flows easily this time. Roma watches Ez’s lips and her body language, staying in tune with the pitch of her voice and the rise and fall of her cadence. They breeze their way through the incantation, in sync from beginning to end, and Roma’s heart swells as they finish. “Perfect. Or as close to perfect as spellcasting can ever be.”

“Well, we’ll need perfect for this,” Ez says, peering at the sun through the trees. Nearly at the horizon‍—the ideal time for spellcasting. Delicately, she places her fingertips on the ground. “For real this time?”

A thread of apprehension shivers through Roma. She takes a deep breath to force it down. “For real this time,” she agrees, and she mimics Ez’s pose, the grass sifting between her fingers. “Count us off?”

“One, two, three‍—from the depths…”

“… to the sky…”

Power swells in Roma’s bones as she works through the spell, closing her eyes and trusting Ez to be on the same page. Warm magic vibrates down her arms, flowing into the earth beneath her, whispering to the Deep‍‍?—

Without warning, pain splits through her skull. She finishes the incantation on a stifled shriek, her hands flying up to herhead as white-hot claws sink into her brain andshake.Teeth chattering, ears ringing, vision blurring‍?—

“Roma‍—Roma!”Tight hands grab either side of Roma’s face, and suddenly, power surges through her‍—Ez’s magic, trying to stabilize Roma’s. “Roma,stay with me!Stay‍?—‍”

Darkness rattles behind Roma’s eyes. She barely smothers another scream, thrashing forward, and in a flash, strong arms are wrapping around her, pulling her close as her muscles seize and excruciating pressure builds up behind her eyes.

“Roma‍—damn it,in the name of Nostringvadha‍—‍!”Another spell, faster and more desperate this time, the words bleeding into each other so quickly that Roma can hardly understand them, and then‍?—

The world crashes back down around her like a bucket of water over her head. Gasping for air, she flops sideways and retches on the ground, Ez scrambling to steady her. “Hey,hey‍—you’re okay now, you’re okay, Roma, just breathe, just‍?—‍”

“Trying,” Roma manages, and she dry heaves again, cold sweat beading on her skin as her empty stomach clenches and spasms.

“Probably a good thing we waited on the pizza,” Ez says.

The words are so unexpected that Roma chokes on a laugh, letting herself collapse on her side to catch her breath. Ez huddles in close, looking down at her with worried eyes. “Come on, lackey. Talk to me.”

Roma swallows down the last of her nausea. The fading light of sunset still seems too bright, the warm air inexplicably cool against her sweaty skin, but Ez’s presence is as grounding as it’s always been. “Did it‍—did it work?”

Ez hesitates. “I don’t think so. I can still feel the echoes of mega-rifts opening around Redwater.” Frustration winds through her voice. “What did we do wrong, though? It doesn’t make any sense.”

It feels like Roma took a thousand volts of electricity straight to her brain, but a few bleary thoughts rise to the surface. “What didIdo wrong, you mean,” she croaks, and she cracks open her eyes to look at Ez’s frown. “You were fine, right? Nothing happened to you?”

Ez shakes her head. “Everything felt normal on my end. But the second we finished the incantation, you just‍—‍” She cuts herself off. “I thought you were dying.”

Roma attempts a smile. “Not getting rid of me that easily,” she says, and carefully, she pushes herself up to sitting. “But‍—butwhyam I not dead? If we cast the spell incorrectly, then the Deep should’ve killed me, not just sent me into a seizure or whatever that was. It’s killed at least a dozen Sanctum spellcasters before me; why did it make an exception this time?”

Ez purses her lips. “Maybe we only got a small detail wrong? So the Deep decided to be merciful?”

“Maybe,” Roma says, unconvinced. “But it didn’t happen until after we finished the spell, right? If we got a detail wrong, then it should’ve affected us at that point in the incantation, not afterward.”

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