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9
SINDRI
I stumble into my room like a sleepwalker and fall face-first on my bed. Every fucking inch of my body aches. Every healing wound feels like it’s been ripped open—in my side, on my back, in my chest, in my legs… and inside my mind.
What in the abesh hell happened?
Groaning, I turn on my side after a while, trying to find a position that hurts less. I remember wind, strong wind buffeting me, coiling around me, crushing me. I’m an air elemental. Wind shouldn’t threaten me, shouldn’t hurt me. It was as if my element was ripped from me, turned against me.
The fuck.
I remember the others standing beside me—but that was once the grip on my mind slipped, giving me back some control.
Not fully though, because somehow I found myself outside my room, not quite sure how I got there, my bare feet covered in mud and leaves, my torso stiff from the cold.
I’m slowly thawing now, while outside my window thunder rumbles and lightning flashes. A storm. As I warm up, my magic seems to ache worse than the healing wounds, worse than the pounding in my head.
Ophelia, I think. What did she do to us this time? What changed? I need to find out while I can still think. Carefully, grabbing the headboard, I climb to my feet, the room spinning slowly. I make my way to my desk, walking like an arthritic old man. Why am I in so much goddamn pain?
I can’t remember…
I shuffle my notebooks on the desk and my eye falls on the quick drawing of Mia that I penned in class before I asked for the joint assignment with her. Feels like ages ago. I turn it over, stare at the words I’ve written on the back:
‘Remember: Ophelia has you under a spell that makes you want her and forget about Mia.’
‘Update 1: the spell makes you forget events that happened.’
‘Update 2: the spell becomes weaker when she is focused on another of the guys.’
‘Update 3: if you fight back, she hurts you worse.’
Fuck.
I reach for my pen.
‘Update 4: she sent a wind around us.’
I stare at the words. What does it mean? Why does it feel significant? How can I break the spell?
I stick the drawing back where it was, wedged between the desk and the wall, and lift my backpack to take out my drawing pad.
A paper flutters out: the drawing Mia made of me that day here in my room. It’s kind of… cute in how clumsily done it is. It makes me smile, then I frown when I notice something scribbled in one corner. How didn’t I notice in class?
The enchantment. Of course.
Next to her signature, she has written, ‘For my sexy hedgehog.’
I blink. What the fuck?
And a memory hits me like a punch to the stomach.
I’m sitting with her under a tree, smiling, and she’s laughing. She says, “I imagined you as this cute hedgehog.”
And I say, “That’s the sort of images that pop into your mind when you think of me?”
And we’re laughing some more. And kissing.
Dammit.
