Page 46 of Renegade Kingdom
She didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. Instead, she tilted her head, studying me with those eyes that always saw too much.Eyes that could look right through the joke and find what I was hiding underneath.
“Can you feel it?” she asked.
I opened my mouth for another deflection. Another joke. Another way to dodge whatever she was about to say, because that was what I did, that was who I was, the one who turned everything into a punchline before it could turn into something real. But the look on her face stopped me. She wasn’t asking casually. She was asking because the answer mattered.
“Feel what?”
“The magic. It feels different now. All the time. Not just when I’m using it. It’s like it’s awake in a way it wasn’t before.” She stepped closer, and I became acutely aware of the distance between us. Or rather, the lack of it. I could smell the warmth of her skin, feel the faint hum of her power reaching toward mine like a hand extending in the dark. “But when we’re together, when I’m near any of you, a part of it feels almost... happy. Like it recognises something. Like it’s found something it’s been looking for.”
I stopped trying to think of something clever to say. Because she was right.
The unsettled feeling that had been plaguing me since we’d arrived, the restless energy that wouldn’t let me sit still or focus, the magic crawling beneath my skin like it wanted out, it was gone. Completely. As if it had never existed.
In its place was something warm. Solid. Almost electric. Like standing in the charged air before a thunderstorm, except instead of fear there was anticipation. Instead of danger there was possibility. The magic inside me had stopped reaching and started... settling. As if it had found what it was looking for.
As ifshewas what it was looking for.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I feel it. It’s the same with all of you?”
“Every time one of you is close, the magic responds. It’s like it’s been waiting for us to be together, and now that we are, it wants...” She trailed off, searching for the word.
“More,” I finished.
Her eyes met mine, and the air between us changed. Charged. Like the moment before lightning strikes, when every hair on your body stands on end and the world goes electric and still. I could feel her magic pressing against mine, warm and golden, and everywhere it touched felt like fingertips trailing across my skin. My breath caught. Hers did too.
“Show me what you can do,” she said softly.
I reached for the magic. Not carefully, not cautiously the way I usually did, as if it might bite me if I moved too fast. I just reached, the way you’d reach for a hand in the dark, trusting it would be there. And it came. A rush of wind that swept through the training ring, lifting dust and petals from the ground in spiralling columns that caught the fading sunlight.
Alyssa’s magic answered immediately. I felt it before I saw it. A pull in my chest, a warmth that spread outward, and then her power was there alongside mine. Not competing. Not clashing. Playing.
Her fire danced through my wind, carried higher, burning brighter. My lightning arced between her streams of water, illuminating the droplets from within until they looked like liquid stars scattered across the air. Her earth rumbled beneath my feet in a heartbeat rhythm while my wind carried the scent of her magic to me, something like honeysuckle and thunderstorms mixed into a single intoxicating perfume.
We started out playful. Testing. My wind chasing her fire across the ring. Her earth trembling beneath my feet while I sent sparks skittering across her skin. She laughed, and the sound was caught by the breeze and sent swirling around the ring like music. I grinned, sending a gust that whipped her hair across herface, and she retaliated by making the ground shift beneath my feet so I had to windmill my arms to stay upright.
But then it started to build.
Every brush of Alyssa’s magic against mine was a brush against my skin. I could feel it.Actuallyfeel it. Her fire was warmth trailing down my arms, across my chest, pooling in the base of my spine. Her water was cool fingertips tracing my neck, my jaw, the sensitive line below my ear. Her earth was the solid press of a palm against my chest, my stomach, lower.
My breath stuttered. The playfulness in the air shifted into something heavier. Something charged with the same electricity that was sparking between our palms.
I met her eyes and saw that she felt it too. Her lips were parted. Her chest was rising and falling faster than it should have been. And her magic wasn’t playing anymore. It was reaching for me. Wrapping around mine. Pulling me closer without either of us moving a single step.
It was euphoric. Electric. Like nothing I had ever experienced. Every nerve ending was alive, singing, overwhelmed by the sensation of her power tangled with mine. I wanted to close the distance between us. Wanted to put my hands on her the way the magic was putting itself on me. Wanted to feel her skin instead of just the phantom touch of her power.
So, I let go.
Not partially, not carefully, not with one hand on the reins the way I always kept myself controlled. I let go completely, and the magic surged through me like a river breaking through a dam. The wind howled, whipping around the training ring in a vortex that should have been terrifying but felt like freedom. Lightning crackled in the air, dancing between us in arcs of white-blue light that left afterimages burning on my retinas.
It was effortless. I wasn’t forcing it. I wasn’t shaping it or wrestling it into submission the way I had to with everything elsein my life. I was just a conduit, nudging it in the right direction, and it responded like it had been waiting for me to stop fighting it. Like it had been begging me to let go for months and I’d been too afraid to listen.
The wind embraced us, wrapping securely around us both before it lifted us off the ground.
When my feet left the ground and for one heart-stopping moment, panic seized my chest. But Alyssa’s hand found mine, her fingers threading through my own, and the fear dissolved. We hung in the air, suspended by my storm, her magic woven through it like golden thread through silver silk. The sensation of her hand in mine was amplified a hundred times by the magic, until I could feel her heartbeat through our joined palms, feel the rhythm of her breathing echoing in the wind that held us aloft.
Lightning danced between us, but it didn’t burn. It tingled where it touched my skin, leaving trails of sensation that made my breath catch and my toes curl. The electricity spread outward, reaching the stone columns, crawling across the ground, covering the entire training ring in a protective lattice of crackling light that hummed with power.
At first, I thought it was coming from Alyssa. Her power was stronger than mine, always would be, and it made sense for something this spectacular to be her doing. I was just the conduit. Just the sidekick, along for the ride while the real magic happened around me.
