“You are an insufferable —“
“Stop,” Mikhail’s tone was firm as he cut her off, “Your magic.” Anastasia let out a long breath and glanced down at her sparking hands; the conversation pivoted before they ended up at each other’s throats once more.
“Go on.”
“It’s hereditary. My mother was an oracle, but that’s clearly not what you possess,” he said, analyzing the magic swirling around her hands.” It’s much more powerful than that. You’re an amplifier.”
“I’m awhat?”
“Essentially, you can manipulate energy down to an atomic level. You can speed them up, slow them down, make energy and matter respond to you. It’s why you could explode gas lights that night — you made them react to your magic and amplified the flame until it burst.”
“What about with Alexei… the… whatever he was.”
“A khlyst priest,” he nodded, “I heard about that. You did the same thing with air instead of fire. You turned it into a weapon.”
Anastasia’s mind began to spin at the implications.Thiswas true power and it scared her. Her heart rate began to pick up at the thought of what would happen if her family discovered the full extent of what she could do.
“They’ll turn me into a weapon,” she said, her voice going quiet.
“You need to learn to control your magic so that doesn’t happen.” There was a tone to Mikhail’s voice that made Anastasia’s blood boil, as though she had willfully neglected her magic all these years - as if it had been a choice.
“Don’t blame me for this,” she snapped. “I’ve used my magic twice in my life, and both times were enough to make me want to cut my hands off.”
“You need to lean into who you are, Anastasia,” Mikhail felt his temper going hot at how willing she was to pass off her gift. “You’re right. If you don’t get a hold of this, they will make you a weapon. You have to figure it out so you can fight them off.”
“Why are you acting like I haven’t tried?”
“Have you?” Mikhail pushed, wanting to see what happened.
“Well… how could I?! I’ve had nothing but priests sleeping a door away from me my entire life. They’ve all just been waiting for the opportunity to tell my parents that my magic has reappeared again.”
“It’s not reappearing. It never left you.”
“It’s unreliable!”
“You use it when you go out on Sundays,” he stared at her, his eyes challenging her. Anastasia felt her blood begin to boil in a way that only seemed to happen when she was around this man.
“I use the smallest amounts, and it is barely useful, at best. I’ve never been able to recreate the results of… what happened,” she muttered. It was true. She could make small things happen, and she was hardly ever without her faithful sparks, but she had never been able to make the great pulses of power come flooding out of her body.
“It’s because you don’t want it,” Mikhail shrugged, putting the papers down and clasping his hands in front of him. Anastasia turned to face him, gritting her teeth.
“How could I want to kill someone!” She screamed, her resolve cracking.
“You’reafraid.”
“How dare you —“
“You’re afraid of who you could be. You’re afraid of who you already know you are.”
“CAN YOU BLAME ME?” Anastasia shrieked, throwing her hands in the air and releasing the truth about her fears surrounding magic for the first time. Mikhail stopped, the both of them staring at one another — Anastasia flushed and Mikhail frustratingly stoic.
The silence stretched between them, moving them farther and farther apart until he physically reached across the gap, grabbing Anastasia’s face with his hands and pulling her into a vicious kiss.
There was nothing tender or exploring about it, both of them meeting in a crushing embrace that was more fight than finesse.
Mikhail paused for a moment, shocked by his lack of control. Anastasia fisted his shirt and brought him back to her. In one smooth move, Mikhail rolled Anastasia over until she was under him.
She squirmed in response, and he bit at her lip, hard and punishing as if he was trying to pull the fear from her.
