Page 36 of The Evil Twin

“And the crack in the world, is that all better?”

Althea and Hannah exchanged a look.

“Don’t worry about that just now,” said Hannah, helping me to my feet. “You need to rest a bit, get used to your new…” She waved a hand around to show she meant my new situation, whatever that may be.

“We’ll get the healers to see to Tennyson,” Althea said. “Do you need help getting back to your rooms?”

I shook my head. I probably needed help, but I didn’t want to go back to my rooms. “I don’t want to be around my brothers until I know more about how the ritual has affected me,” I said. “I’ll go wherever you take Tennyson.”

Once I started walking, I felt fine. Strong, actually. In control. Nikolai and Harper kept shooting me suspicious looks, but everyone else just pretended as if I wasn’t walking around covered in blood like I was Carrie on prom night.

Once we reached Tennyson’s rooms, I took a shower while the healers looked Tennyson over. It was good to have a moment alone.

Though I wasn’t alone, not really. I could feel her in there, in the back of my mind. Not like a separate person, like when Tennyson communicated through our bond. She was an integrated part of me, an aspect of myself. I felt bigger, more complex.

It was as if I were a lasagna. I’d always been a lasagna, full of delicious layers of pasta and ragu and bechamel, but she was a layer of mozzarella baked on top to give me the perfect finish. Fresh buffalo mozzarella too, not that cheap stuff. And maybe a bit of cheddar sprinkled in too. I was still the same lasagna underneath, but now I was next-level awesome.

After I’d showered and put on clean clothes, I stared at myself in the mirror. Did I look any different? Maybe my posture was a little better, and I’d missed a bit of blood behind my ear. And if I squinted, I thought I could see the shadow of a mark in the middle of my forehead, where the lodestone had been. Aside from that, I couldn’t see any difference at all.

When I finally left the bathroom, the scene in Tennyson’s room looked grim. Nikolai and Sam stood stone-faced, their arms folded across their chests. Althea looked as if she’d been crying.

“Where are the healers?” I asked.

Althea just shook her head.

“They said there’s nothing they can do for him,” said Harper. “That crack in reality opened right where Tennyson had been standing. The force of it was too much for him. They said –”

She broke off and turned her head away.

“They said he only has a few hours,” Althea said.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t lose Tennyson, not after everything we’d been through. I didn’t accept that. I wouldn’t.

“No,” I said, moving toward the bed where he lay, already as still and pale as a corpse.

Harper moved so I could sit beside him, but I didn’t intend to sit there and watch him die. I had my powers back. What was the point of them, if not to save the people I loved?

I sat on the bed beside him, placing one hand on either side of his face. My hands began to glow with the same bright light from the lodestone. I could hear the others gasping and murmuring behind me, but I paid them no attention. All my focus was on Tennyson.

In the past, my powers had always been so hard to control. It was more like they were using me, instead of me using them. I could point them in the right direction, but then they carried me away like a tidal wave.

This was nothing like that.

Everything Althea said about the lodestone, all our research, it all suddenly made sense. It was like a wi-fi router. The signal came in – my magic – and the lodestone allowed me to connect it to all the places it needed to go. Except, instead of my phone or laptop, it was Tennyson, for the moment. Because of the lodestone, I knew exactly what part of my power I needed to use, how much of it, and could just let the magic flow through me.

Within moments, the color started to come back to his face. He was always pale, of course, but that deathly pallor was gone. His eyelids began to flutter, then he reached up to touch my hand.

“Lucy?” he whispered, opening his eyes. “What happened?”

“Sssh,” I said. “You swooned like a princess, but you’ll be fine. Everything’s fine. Just rest a bit.”

“You should probably take that advice yourself,” said Hannah. “Seriously, Lucy, don’t overdo it. You have no idea what your limits are now.”

It wasn’t hard to convince me. Now that Tennyson seemed okay, the fatigue hit me. I hadn’t slept the night before, and it had been a looooong day.

“Should we send the healers in?” Harper asked. “I mean, to check him over again. It’s fine for her to be all glowy, but we can’t be sure that she actually healed him.”

Althea scoffed. “What good have the healers ever done us? They always say the same thing, and in the end, we have to figure things out ourselves.”

---