“Every day is Christmas if you believe hard enough” had been Nina’s reply. She’d kissed Sylvia on the cheek before she bounded off. The touch of her lips had smarted for weeks, like a brand.
That ease between them was gone now. Sylvia couldn’t remember the last time one of them had cracked a genuine smile in the other’s presence.
She attempted the spell for a second time, the rune glowing on her hand. Her first cast had been wobbly, the flower she was aiming at shooting up half an inch, but then losing all its petals. This cast was even worse, the stalk withering to half of its size. Sylvia clenched her jaw.
“Ugh,” Nina said. “These Class 3 spells can be so particular.”
Nina had been raised to be a politician, and she knew how to make it sound like she meant it. But Sylvia had been raised to be judged by people like Nina, and she knew when she was being spoken down to. She hated how quickly her anger rose to the bait, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She couldn’t figure out this magic. When she was unsettled, magicwas about giving up control. Her power was a skyscraper, and she just had to jump off it, trusting that it would catch her before she plummeted to the ground. Now, accessing her magic was like trying to climb all of the thousands of steps to the top floor—difficult, exhausting, and the view at the top was rarely worth the effort.
But she was determined to prove that she could succeed at this too. If her unsettled strength hadn’t meant anything to these people, she’d make sure her settled strength did. And so she stayed up all night every night working on control and precision and all the other things she’d eschewed in her unsettled life, and then in the morning she slapped a pound of concealer over her dark circles before breezing in and throwing off new spells as though they’d taken no effort at all.
Until last night, when Sylvia had been so exhausted that she fell asleep in the shower. She’d woken up half an hour later, freezing under the now-icy water, and had managed to drag herself to bed, where her traitorous body slept for a whopping ten hours. Nina’s judgment was the price of that failure.
She dug her caster into her palm yet again. Another slash of pain on her body, another sacrifice to this paltry power. The magic came to her in a trickle rather than the familiar rush, and she forced herself not to reach for more—an instant recipe for a blazing headache and an uncontrollable tremble in her hands, she’d quickly learned. Instead, she took what little was offered and formed it to her will, pouring it into the rune on her hand until it glowed blue against her palm. The flower in front of her burst up, its petals spreading wide.
She whooped, instinctually turning toward Nina in celebration—and then remembered that that was no longer possible. Nina had forgotten to put on her happy mask, her face instead twisted into an expression of jealousy so pure that Sylvia took an involuntary step backward. Nina gathered herself, forcing her mouth into a sickly sweet smile.
“Good job,” she said.
“Thank you,” Sylvia echoed, the words empty.
Present Day
Sylvia stared down at her hands and realized that, for the first time in thirty years, her palms were almost healed. The twin slashes that she had been forced to score into her skin day after day after day were knitting back together, and for once, she hadn’t had a cause to reopen them.
No cuts, and yet she’d had to throw away power because the magic was pouring out of her so quickly.
She didn’t understand why so many people rejected unsettled magic when it found them. That had eaten at Sylvia every time. She had dedicated her life to helping unsettled witches—had fought tooth and nail to make a home for them, to give them a safe place where they would never be treated like she had been treated. A place where they could learn to embrace their strength.
And every single one of them had told her how much they wanted to go back to being weak.
They didn’t say it in so many words. They said that they hated the way the power burned under their skin. Or that they missed their old life. That they wanted to go home.
It was hard, sometimes, not to hate the people she worked so hard to help. Hard not to hate them for resenting a power she would kill to have again.
Getting that caster had been the start of her downward spiral. Her first step on the journey to becoming a sorry imitation of the witch she once was. She’d thought it was inevitable. She’d forced herself to adapt, forced herself to start seeing her power as something to be leashed with a tight fist.
Settled magic was based in fear. You had to be careful how often you used your spells or risk finding yourself out of a rune without a spellbook to replenish you. You had to be careful how much magic you used or risk your body throwing a tantrum. You had to be careful to follow the laundry list of rules handed down by your Noctis overlords or risk losing your magic entirely.
All of it encouraged complacency. It was a system built on rules and regulations, carrots and sticks.
And Sylvia was done with it. She was done letting people control her. Done lettingfearcontrol her. She had a power she thought she’d never have again. She needed to stop worrying and fucking enjoy it already.
And that could start with dealing with Nina’s asshole son.
She stood, letting her eyes drift closed as she rested her hands in the grooves on her desk. She stared down into that well of power again, and this time, instead of trying to bring it to her, she jumped.
The journey down was terrifying. Sylvia’s heart pounded against her chest as she plummeted, magic suffusing every pore of her body, burning along every inch of her skin. The faith that used to buoy her—the surety that her magic would catch her—was gone, burned away by years of holding everything tightly under control. It seemed like she was going to fall forever—until, suddenly, she stopped.
The spell formed around her, the air turning hot with her magic. This cast was what unsettled magic was made for. No precision, no quiet. Just brute strength, aimed at a want that burned so bright in her she might cease to exist without it.
Revenge.
Sylvia let her eyes drift back open as the spell floated off, on a mission to do her violent bidding. Soon, Silas Khatri would be dead, before he got the balls to tell a damn soul about what he’d found.
What a good day it was turning out to be.
