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I try to laugh but spew more smoke instead.
My mind is spiraling. I’m losing it. I’ll wake up from this fucking dream any goddamn minute now. I’m a person, an heir to the House of Arij, not a fucking winged lizard. This can’t be happening.
She will help. Ophelia will help. Not sure how I know that. There’s a pull on my mind, telling me to get closer to her.
“Stop,” she shouts, and I’m not sure if the shout is in my mind. “I have your token. Stop!”
She’s holding a blue gem hanging from a thin silver chain. My earring, a voice in my head says. That’s mine.
“Stay back,” she says.
I snuffle, more smoke coming out of my nostrils, and I lower my wings, lower myself to the ground, crouching there. Waiting.
She’s murmuring words, mangled mixtures of dead languages, her hands weaving patterns in the air, leaving behind after-images. “Duco semper athanatous, ouden telos…” Her hair is lifting as if with static. “…natura nenovatur, venite eis to fos…”
The griffin lets out a long call, lowering his head to the ground. His gold and white flanks are bloodied. The wolf isn’t faring much better, blood running out of the corner of his mouth, down his side, down one leg. The panther, well, hard to tell when you’re all black, but he looks tired, head down.
And as for myself… It’s such a different body, I don’t know how to tease apart the sensations—the heaviness of it, the scaled armor, the parts that weren’t there before, like phantom limbs—only they were phantom before and now they’re real, and goddammit, yeah, everything hurts but I can’t tell where or why.
Makes me wonder if it’s only the terrible wrenching inside my head that makes me think I’m maybe dying, as if my brain is leaking out of my nose and ears, or if it’s something else.
I’d give my right ball to stop that pain. It flows and ebbs, not letting up. If it doesn’t end soon, I may just try to drown myself in the lake. All that scaled skin has to weigh a pretty ton. Sinking into the cold, dark water might put out the fires that have been burning in me all these years.
She’s still chanting and weaving symbols with her hands, her fingers. “…aion tiktei ponous, per aspera carpe fortunam ad ameliora, renebra vincit…”
The pain is getting worse. I groan, my talons digging into the soil, the pull inside my head maddening, nails scraping the insides of my skull, wrenching my thoughts, my memories, my power.
It’s tearing off chunks of my magic and it’s like it’s tearing away chunks of my flesh, the pain similar but not comparable. I writhe in the dirt, claws and wings and scales, all for nothing, unable to stop what is happening. I can hear the griffin screeching, the panther screaming, the wolf growling. We’re rolling in the soft soil, and the pain is rising higher and higher, skewering us on its spit.
This is it, I think faintly, and I’m pretty sure this time that blood is pouring out of my nostrils, my mouth, because it’s choking me. This is the end.
At long fucking last.
But right before my thoughts wink out, before total blackness rushes in, as the burning fire of pain grips me harder… it stops.
Lessens, rather. The grip on me relaxes.
My dragon body has been shaking uncontrollably, and I only realize it now as the tremors start to ease and space out, letting some form of reason return.
And there she is, that girl, that other girl, the reflection of the first one, and who’s to say who is the real one? Who is the girl and who the mirroring, the shadow?
Mia, I think. And then, for some reason, She won’t let us go.
“What did you do?” she shouts as she approaches, her hair loose and lashing behind her like a nest of snakes. “What did you do to them, Ophelia? Why have they lost control?”
“You interrupted me,” Ophelia hisses. “Go away. If they break through the spell…”
“What, they will attack you? You should have thought of that before you pushed them into a shift they don’t know how to frigging control!”
“Leave. Are you stupid? They could attack you, too, or do you think yourself invulnerable?” Ophelia waves her hands around. “Don’t you see? The boys you’re so fond of aren’t in there anymore.”
“Says who? Shifting doesn’t work like that, at least not at first.”
“What would you know about shifting?”
“I’ve read about it. I read so many books over the past weeks, because I care, Ophelia. Unlike you.”
“Pft.” Ophelia studies her nails. “Look, the issue is the combination of the enchantment and the new ritual. Combinations of spells sometimes pull on magic in unpredictable ways. Think of it as mixing medicines. There can be… side effects.”
