Rishi yowled, and I realized what I’d done. I pulled back on my magic immediately, thinking I’d let Rishi down gently, but he continued to cry out from somewhere above us. He had to be stuck in the rafters— the same ones we’d hidden in when we eavesdropped on Hemlock’s secret meeting.
“Hold on, Rishi!” Marcus cried.
“I’ve got this,” Kallie said. She must’ve used her wolven telekinesis to help him down, because I heard his paws lightly land on the table. He scurried away to hide.
I was too nauseous to say anything, so I continued my experiment with the inferichite. This time, I cast Earth magic. The ground began to shake beneath us. My whole body convulsed in tremors, and I didn’t know what was me and what was the earth. I heard a chair smash to the ground.
“Charlie!” Kallie screamed.
I had to keep going. I had to break this damn bracelet— forAva.
“Charlie, cut it out!” Marcus cried. He smacked my arm, but it didn’t feel like much.
Charlie, you need to stop! Oberi snapped in my mind.
Oberi poked me with her horn, yet I didn’t pull back. She grabbed my ear in her teeth and chomped down.
“Ow! Fuck!” I screamed. My hand slapped to my ear, and I felt blood trickling down the side of my face. The ground stopped shaking, but the inferichite’s power didn’t stop pulsing through me. I doubled over and began heaving beneath the table. Everything I’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours spewed over the floor, and I kept gagging until there wasn’t even bile left.
Everyone remained silent, and I could sense their concern from me.
“What the hell?” I finally asked Oberi.
You were going to bring this whole place down and expose us, Oberi said.I did what I had to do.
“Are you all right, Charlie?” Marcus asked.
I wiped my mouth. “I’ll be fine. Someone has to do something to figure this out, though. How are we going to overpower the bracelets? Using enough power to break them could bring down the whole school.”
“Maybe we just need a different kind of magic,” Kallie suggested. “One that isn’t so destructive.”
“Like illusion magic,” Marcus suggested.
I scoffed. “Kallie’s taking the reins on that one.”
“But Elves can cast illusions, too,” Marcus pointed out.
“Except we can’t make them solid like fae can,” I reminded him. “Elven illusions are completely visual, and I don’t understand that. It’d take a miracle for me to cast an illusion I can’t feel.”
I opened my palm as if to demonstrate. And I tried… I really tried. But judging by the silence in the room, nothing happened.
Takahashi cleared his throat. “I think we have a good start. We’ll continue working with the inferichite. I’m confident that with practice you will learn to overpower it.”
I damn well hoped so, because if we didn’t break through the inferichite and learn our demigod powers soon, we would never escape the Warden.
Takahashi excused us. Through our bond, I felt Ava wake shortly after dinner. I hurried to the infirmary before my late factory shift. Oberi followed, and Ava seemed happy to see us.
“How are you feeling today?” I asked as I sat beside her bed.
“I’m fine.”
She was lying. I could feel it through our bond. She was frustrated and in a lot of pain.
I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Pidge, please, let me help you.”
“I don’t need any help right now,” Ava said. “Honest.”
Ava couldn’t walk and had six-inch rods placed in the base of her spine, and she still didn’t think that was enough to ask for help. It broke my heart.
