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“Most magic is purely of the demonblood kind, but I am of the air. I found out when I was little just how strong my element is. I don’t need big surges to be affected. Once I was left locked up in a tower, still too short to even look out of the window, left without bread and water as punishment for existing, who the fuck knows…” I frown, not sure why I’m telling him this. “And my magic ripped out of me, sent a gale over the palace, uprooting trees, knocking down walls… They told me I hurt people. They punished me for it, I…” I shiver at the memory, old breaks in my bones aching. “It doesn’t matter. But today, when she came into my room—”
“Shecame? Who?”
“Mia, who else?” I snarl. “She came to draw me—”
“Todrawyou?”
“Will you stop repeating everything I say? It was an art project we had to do. And when she was there, I took someTeskand felt woozy, more than normal, and then she left and it was worse—”
“Did you touch her?” Ashton asks.
“No.”
“Could be why…” he mutters, grabbing one of the books from the pile, flipping through it. “I found a reference to magic passing through the skin. It says that witches absorb elemental magic. Be patient, man, we’ll find the solution to the riddle. If you’ll just—”
“Listen, Ash. Stop talking for a sec. I can’t… do this.” I wipe my hands on my thighs. I’m shivering. “There are things I have to get done,abesh, so I don’t have time to panic over how I might lose myself to the magic and turn into a winged beast—”
“We all have things to do, Sin.”
Arawn, he doesn’t get it. “You don’t understand…”
He turns around to frown at me. “Damn right. Explain it to me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fine, then—”
“I’ll tell you,” I mutter. “So listen. I need to tell someone in case I… In case I’m not myself anymore. There’s something I need to do, someone I need to find, I—Oh,fuck.”
Flashes of pain, of fear, terror, despair—and I see Ashton wince as he starts toward me. He barely manages to catch me when I stumble. “Dammit, what was that? Sin, you okay?”
“No,” I say, becausekraish, I’m not. “It’s Mia.”
The door crashes open and Emrys walks in, Jason by his side, his face a thundercloud. “Have you felt her? Where is she?”
“You thought she was here?” Ashton’s face is very pale.
Jason looks him over. “If you’re not the one hurting her—”
“Fucker, why would you think I was hurting her?” Ashton growls.
“If it’s not you,” he says again, “or you,” he turns his gaze to me, “then it’s time to declare war on Zoey and her gang. They got her.”
13
MIA
One minute I’m walking toward the girls’ dormitories, my not-so-amazing drawing of Sindri tucked under one arm—I mean he was right, I can’t do his beauty justice no matter what, and I have no skills to speak of, no matter how much it galls me—and the next I’m slammed to the ground, the breath knocked out of me, a leering girl bent over me.
“Look what we got here,” she says with a wide, fake smile. “If it isn’t Miss Witchy Trashpants.”
“How eloquent,” I grunt. “And inventive.”
“It talks!” She slams my head back on the paved trail and I see stars. Like, literally, the sky stretches above me and it’s full of stars—but now they seem to swirl and blur. “Better stop talking, witch.”
“Or what?” I whisper, because the swirling stars are strangely beautiful. They remind me of Sindri’s eyes.
A foot connects with my ribs and ow, that hurts. Lightning pain, stealing my breath again, and when a hand grabs my hair and drags me toward the shadow of a tree, I cry out.
