Page 19 of Serpent and Shadow

They knew exactly who I was; it hadn’t been any kind of mistake.

Even though I understood all of that quickly, it took a few seconds longer before I could hear their words past my beating heart, gasping breaths, and the intense pain running up my spine. For those same few seconds, I wondered if I’d broken my back.

They’d been yelling at me to stand down.

They’d been threatening to kill me if I didn’t.

Once that much sank in, I’d lowered my arms, and willed my magic to subside. I don’t know if they would have actually killed me, but in that moment, I’d believed it.

Since then, I hadn’t been able to shake the chill, even when I sweated.

Pushing the memories and images from my mind, I exhaled, and tried to breathe evenly so I could focus on my breath.

I adjusted my bum in the center of the circle and exhaled again.

I tried not to think about Bones specifically. I tried not to think about where he was, who he might be with, what might be happening to him. But every time I struggled to shove those thoughts away, it acted as a magnet to bring them back even more vividly.

I closed my eyes, and my anxiety worsened.

After a few more tries to clear my mind, to even fake feeling calm, I gave up.

I wasn’t going to be calm right now.

And I could no longer wait.

I began to murmur the incantations I’d memorized in a low voice, using a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil. My hands moved fluidly through the mudras I’d practiced dozens of times while testing to make sure my enchantment worked. It all came back seamlessly, without hesitation, and I might’ve felt relieved if I hadn’t been shaking, the sick feeling in my stomach growing as I got closer to the end of the second set of spells.

If I freaked out for real, the spell would likely break.

The knowledge of that was enough to keep my voice steady, and my posture straight. I could fake the physical side of being calm, even if my mind was all over the place. I had to find him. That one thought was enough to keep me focused. Every second I wasted re-doing a spell because I couldn’t fucking control my mind was a second he was alone, and a second I could have been looking for a way to bring him back.

I owed him that much. I owed him a clean spell.

I had to be prepared for finding anything.

I had to be prepared to find nothing, too.

My voice deepened and darkened around those thoughts, turning nearly guttural as it echoed up the high-ceiling.

By the time the final words of the spell rang out, I found myself thinking I’d broken after all, that it wouldn’t work. I’d infused too much emotion into those passages, and likely twisted their meaning, or pushed them too far in the wrong direction.

I’d have to start all over again––

––and then everything around me and inside my mind went utterly dark.

The light didn’t return.

Unlike the times I’d cast this spell before, there wasn’t merely a dark blip between one place and the next. It never grew suddenly brighter, like it had the times I’d practiced with the ring and the spell before I’d given it to Bones.

Even in the times I’d broken before, the light returned. Those times, the room blurred then sharpened back into view.

Not this time. This time, the tower didn’t reappear around me, either.

I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t fucking see.

The reality of that frustrated and bewildered me.