AllFreeNovel
Share Us
20
Raven
There wassomething different about these men. Granted, I didn’t know any mages aside from myself and to be fair, I had always been different. But it wasn’t the magic that made them seem different. It was something else. As if they’d never been told no in their lives. What kind of world had they grown up in where they thought it was okay to fight over women? Ugh. Whatever it was, I sure felt bad for whatever woman ended up with either of them. Or both of them. Maybe they were the sharing type.
“So what exactly was it that made you drag me to your mini mansion of a room and risk getting confinement?” I asked.
“We have to figure out what is going on with your magic. Find out if you’re for sure a fire mage or if it’s another element you connect with and then pinpoint your source,” Zach said.
“Okay, pretty much none of that made sense,” I said. “For real, I know zero about magic.”
“We’re going to connect our magic, all three of us, so we can find yours and help you reach it,” Zach said.
“Okay, sounds harmless enough,” I said. “How exactly?”
“It’s not harmless,” Matt said. “It can backfire or worse.”
“What do you meanbackfire?” I asked, not even wanting to get into theworsepart of it.
“Connecting magic is something that’s not done often. If we aren’t careful, we could accidentally siphon the magic from one person and give to another. That’s why we always do it in groups of three. Three is a sacred number for mages. It helps our magic to be stronger and keeps one mage from overpowering another,” Zach said.
“Is that something that happens often? Someone overpowering someone else?” The magic world sounded more brutal with each new tidbit I learned.
“Not even phased by losing your magic?” Matt asked. “That’s the part you should be focused on.”
I shrugged. “Until recently, I didn’t even know I had magic. As far as I can tell, it’s more of an inconvenience than anything else. Sure, it helped me get away with my life but it landed me here. Away from my home and my job and my life.”
“None of that makes sense,” Matt said. “They don’t just throw people who use magic in the human world into our school. It’s not magic prison.”
I blew out a breath. I was doing a terrible job of keeping the secret of how I’d arrived. At least I managed to skip the part about being a scholarship kid as Luka had suggested. My cheeks heated and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine at the thought of Luka. Was I ever going to be able to shake our dream from my memory?
“Look, I’m here now and I’m trying to make the best of it. Do you think you can help me?” I asked.
“You’re sure you want to try this?” Zach asked.
“Do I have another choice?” I asked. “I can’t afford to fail, I don’t want to burn my clothes off again, and I definitely don’t want either of you to fail despite your less than charming attitudes toward women.”
Matt grumbled something under his breath and I ignored him.
“Are we going to do this or are we waiting for a full moon or some shit?” I asked.
Zach smirked. “You watch too much television.”
“Yeah, cause I’m a normal twenty-one-year-old.”
“No, you’re not,” Matt said. “You’re a mage and it’s time to tap into those powers.”
“Let’s do this,” I said.
“Over here,” Matt said, gesturing to the space in front of the black leather couch.
I followed him and then sat down next to him on top of the thick, ornate rug that probably cost more than I made in a year. What was with this place? Luka wasn’t kidding when he said it was an expensive school. With each passing moment, I was feeling even more out of place. Maybe I should ask if they could take my powers. Then, I could go back to my normal life.
I thought of my shitty apartment with the bars on the windows and the heater that never worked. The threadbare sheets were nothing compared to the comfortable bedding I had here and my breakfasts of pop tarts and dinners of canned tuna were already dwarfed by the food I almost got to eat this morning. Aside from the asshole I’d met in the cafeteria and the veiled death-threats, this place was a huge step up from what I had back home. Add in the fact that I knew, deep down, nobody missed me. That made giving all this up, this shot at something better, sound really, really stupid.
Zach was on one side of me, Matt on the other. We were sitting in a weird cross-legged circle. Three grown ass adults, well, if you consider us adults, which I barely did, sitting in a circle as if we were going to play duck-duck-goose. It was a bit ridiculous. But hey, we were talking about doing shit with magic so I guess I it all sort of felt like make believe, anyway. “Now what?”
They reached their hands out and I set my hands in theirs without explanation. A jolt of electricity sizzled through my palms at the point of contact. “Ouch.” It didn’t actually hurt, but it was surprising. Like static electricity.
