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I tried to rasp outno, but the brain/vocal chord connection wasn’t wired. I croaked.
He shifted, folding back into his human shape easily. My ribbons just wrapped themselves around him andthroughhim, sending pulses through his skin to reveal the lattice pattern of his magic. First a magenta/white, followed by a soft flush of green, quickly washed away by more magenta-white.
That looked painful.
“Try again,” he said. “You won’t fall. I have you.”
Or I had him. There was being clingy, and then there wasthis. In a dictionary next to the wordglom, there was a sketch of this scene.
“Deep breath.” Mahon ordered with a belly-shove.
I couldn’t stay on the ground doing my best wet noodle impression. I closed my eyes and focused hard on flipping the cosmic box inside out.
This time, my brain remembered how to shift and neatly turned me back into my original shape. Complete with functioning lungs.
I breathed out, then breathed in. No ribbons. All gone. But my skin was burned and charred with that scale pattern, and Keon, I realized now, was scorched too, as was Mahon, who looked like he’d driven through a swarm of angry fireflies that had plastered themselves all over with a coating of glowy goo.
“Mahon!” I scrambled upright off the floor.
“I’m fine,” Mahon said, looking at his scorched forearm, which was glowy green with a darker lattice pattern.
Keon grabbed me in a trembling grip and squished me against his thick chest. He was shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
What the hell was he sorry for? I’d scorched the shit out of him and Mahon, and looking over his shoulder, there was all kind of debris in the fallow field. Big chunks of rock and the ruins of the large fans, and the field itself was scorched to shit, and I’d split a tree into four pieces. In fact, I was sitting in the middle of a fucking charred ass crater with a goddamn rim and it was at least a meter deep.
I held onto Keon as tight as I could and buried my face in his neck.
“I’m so sorry.” He kissed my cheek, stroked my hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” I rasped, not wanting to look at what I’d done.#PangeaPandora. #Howmanytimesnow.
“Not catching you. I promised I would, and I didn’t.”
I pulled back. “But you did. I felt you.”
Mahon surveyed the damage. “I’ll tell Mayriel there’s been some damage to this field and the cavern. Come along, pups. That’s enough for today.”
How thefuckcould he sound so damned casual about me cratering a field and blasting chunks off the cavern ceiling? Keon pulled me to my feet and a wave of exhausted wooziness hit me as I stood, and the magical sandpaper feeling under my skin hit in full effect. I pressed the heels of my palms to my peepers.
“Helena?” Keon asked.
“I’m okay.” The maggot feeling eased as the haze of wooziness passed. “Just stood up too fast. Holy shit...”
The ground was blasted and charred, and branded with raised imprints of my lattice pattern, but chaotic and fragmented and speckled all on top of each other.
My feet were stained purple and charred with my lattice pattern all the way up to my knees. My fingers were purple-black.
Mahon, done dusting off his hands, came over. “You’re fine, little one.”
“This is notfine. None of this is fine!” I waved my hands at the crater, the chunks of ceiling, the broken fans. “What if I’d blasted a hole in that cavern and the ocean came pouring in?!”
“We’re ten miles under the ocean floor,” Keon said.
“That’s not the point!” How was I supposed to doanythingif I couldn’t even shift forms without blowing things up!? Why was I still so much of a mess? I had molted, hadn’t I?
Mahon finished dusting off his hands. “You think you’re the first pup to cause a little damage?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mahon. Just name the evil!” Dekka was right to keep me away from the archives.
