Page 83 of Spirit Storm

Birdie, help me. Asher? Why isn’t anyone here to help me? I can’t do this all alone…

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Agasp tears out of me before I'm even fully conscious. Cold air is moving over me. My cheek is pressed against something warm and solid.

Where am I? What’s happening?

The grounds of Arcana Academy blur past. Wylder is running, carrying me in his arms. He has one arm under my knees and one across my back, his jaw set and his gaze fixed.

We’re moving fast enough that the wind drags at my hair. "I've got you. Just keep breathing. I’m getting you help."

I try to tell him I'm fine, but my magic surges instead. It cracks out from my sternum like a whip, completely unprompted, and I gasp and clamp down on it with everything I have.

It’s wrong. It feels completely, catastrophically wrong. It’s feral in the same way it was when Laurel had me tortured in that warehouse basement and I lost control.

It’s tearing me apart to get out, ripping through me in search of any exit.

"Something's wrong with my…" Another surge burns through me, and I grit my teeth. "Wylder…”

His arms tighten. "I know. We all felt it when you collapsed. We’re going to figure it out.”

The forge building swells in front of us.

The moment we arrive, Mica opens the door and Wylder doesn’t slow until we're through the front room and he’s setting me down on the stone floor in front of the Concordance Mirror.

My knees don't work. I'm grateful for the floor.

The mirror is right there, the carved wooden frame dark and ancient, and I look up at it.

My reflection looks back.

A half-second later than it should. Then another half-second. Then another.

Except it's worse than that now. So much worse. The reflection isn't just lagging. It's stuttering, lurching, like a film reel losing its track.

Every time my chest heaves, my reflection heaves three beats after. When I blink, my reflection's eyes stay open, staring, and then slam shut twice in rapid succession to catch up.

My magic is visible in it, crackling at the edges of my outline in the reflection like chaos arcing out of my skin.

“What’s happening to me?”

Wylder steps behind me. "It’s like before, when your affinity was breaking through the blocks.”

"But it’s already free." My hands press flat to the stone floor. Something crackles along my palms. "I don't—I can't get a hold of it. Tharuzel was messing with my affinity and now it's totally unstable."

My magic surges again—hard—and the mirror ripples.

"Poppy." Wylder crouches beside me, a hand on my back. "Breathe. Find the center of it. You’ve got to rein it in. Use the sigils."

I try. I trace the calming sigil he taught me in the beginning, focusing on the meaning and intention of each stroke of circle and line.

But when I draw a deep breath and reach inside myself, all that meets me is chaos. Untethered magic is crashing around inside me.

It has no direction, no shape, nothing of me behind it. Tharuzel took control, and now my world is spinning out, and there's nothing solid to grab.

"I can't. It's not working."

Something sparks out of my left hand. A crack of pale light hits the stone wall and leaves a scorch mark.