Page 76 of Rose and Shadows
My own parents hadn’t exactly set an example for me to follow. I hadn’t witnessed a healthyoreven safe dynamic when it came to that between a parent and a child.
So what if I couldn’t bring that?
What if I fell short?
What if I ended up hurting my own flesh and blood in deep-seated ways like had happened to me? What if I tainted this? All of it?
And with my men already so on board, what if my failure tainted what the four of us shared as well?
I jolted as my own magic zapped me.
At least it forced me from my thoughts and snapped me right back to class—where my head should have been the entire time.
The Art of Spellbreakingtaught by Professor Isla Delina, an esteemed sorceress. She’d spent centuries as a member of the Guardian Movement, then moved into teaching a couple of years ago, wanting to both share her knowledge and also head off any young magic-wielders who were approaching their magic dangerously. I guess she’d seen a lot of that during her tenurewith the Guardian Movement. Better correcting it at the root, than having to do so in some brutal battle that ended with once promising magic-wielders being beyond saving and imprisoned inThe Void.
It was a nice sentiment, but catching the rot early wasn’t always enough to prevent its spread. We’d come up against so much of that lately with Victor, Morien,Puritas,my parents. They’d gotten a taste of it and they’d run with it. It had stayed with them and it would never leave. It justwas.
Another zap from my magic had me glaring at the swirling tangled mass of purple threads, frost threads, and my shadow magic gliding through it all as it levitated over my desk.
The professor had instructed us to release our power—or each facet of it, for the hybrids in the class—and then she’d used a device that had looked a lot like a laser pointer that had erupted with a shot of her peach magic at ours and caused it to tangle.
It was a way of representing a complicated spell that needed unraveling. The key to unraveling it was different for each student, something she’d fused into the magical device she’d used. To solve the problem, we had to do the spellwork with formulas, symbology, and magical laws, and then set about physically unraveling it using our power.
Since coming to the Academy, I’d done several of these in her class, and I’d rarely had a problem. Definitely not my magic zapping at me.Jeez.
“Velra.”
I looked up to see Isla now at my desk—she was one of those chill professors who had their students call them by their first name only.
Her black curly hair cascaded down the back of her strapless turquoise top. It gave way to a white lace skirt, the whole thing punctuated with a bold jeweled-toned beaded statementnecklace and a pair of turquoise stilettos that glittered as she walked.
“This isn’t as straightforward as the previous problems.”
Crap.Something I would have registered properly if I hadn’t been slipping in and out of concentration since I’d sat down.
“Yeah, I’m getting that,” I answered with a frustrated breath, yet managing to grin through it—guess that was kind of my thing lately. I looked down at the spellwork I’d done. “This is sound. It should be working. Unraveling the Dark Fae aspect first—the purple threads—because it’s the foundational aspect of my power.”
“Is it?”
“It always has been.”
“As we’ve begun to learn throughout this course, power set can shift. For hybrid beings like yourself, but also those wielding a single power like me. But my strengths and the way my power manifests, especially in different circumstances, alters over time. It evolves. As has yours.”
I frowned, looking between her and the wild magic tangled sphere levitating above my desk. “You’re saying my frost and shadows—my Wraith aspect—has become stronger.”
“Not quite.”
I sucked in a breath as the realization hit. “They’ve become even.”
“Melded comfortably, yes. Fully compatible. Given equal weight and trust by you.” She smiled. “You’ve balanced your hybridized magic. This magical tangle is linked to each student’s instinctual responses. So, in order to untangle it, you must look beyond the spellwork itself and also draw on that. The spellwork is the door forming, but the instinctual aspect is the key.”
She gestured at Draz, a vampire-sorcerer hybrid near the back of the class who had always been really volatile with his magic and his temperament, angering easily and hissing at otherstudents aggressively several times. Most had seen only rage, but to me I recognized the frustration and vulnerability of having to achieve balance, of having to navigate different sets of abilities, often ones that seemed to contradict each other.
I watched as he levitated a trail of blood through his tangled sphere and then entwined it with his aquamarine magic. His fangs were dropped and he was hissing, but peacefully, and I saw the tangles coming out.
Isla guided me to look at another student, this one a sorcerer, not a hybrid. I jolted in surprise as I watched his yellow power implode the tangles, executing a supremely controlled blast not to unravel the problem, but to blast his way through it. It was Sven, a usually very reserved student, hesitant in his ability. And here he was solving the problem that way, trusting in himself and essentially transcending the problem entirely.
Doing it his way.
