Chapter Fourteen: Post-Normal Territory
Voices reach me first, muffled and distant like I'm underwater.
"Fey!" Kaela says, cutting through the fog.
How long was I out? Seconds? Minutes? The question floats through my head but finds no answer. At this rate I should start a frequent fainter card. Ten blackouts and the eleventh one's free. I'm well on my way to earning a loyalty punch.
I force my eyes open.
The world explodes into chaos.
Not metaphorical chaos, literal. My sight fills with it, like the air has turned visible.
A blizzard of tiny, drifting specks and threads and sparks swirl and collide and cling to everything, so dense the street looks like it's drowning behind a curtain of stained glass snow. Blue threads drift past my nose, the kind of blue I've been told water is on Earth. Gold flecks spin in lazy spirals, like they have all the time in the world. Green so dark it feels bruised, and a smear of almost-orange my brain keeps trying to name and keeps failing.
I blink hard, once, twice, like I can scrape it away. Like it's just dirt on my eyes.
It doesn't change.
I suck in a breath on instinct and immediately regret it because particles rush into my mouth with the air, tiny and weightless, sticking to my tongue like sugar dust that tastes like static. I cough, choking.
My eyes ache immediately, a deep pressure behind them like someone's pressing thumbs into my skull from the inside. I squeeze my eyelids shut and the pain spikes anyway, because the pain isn't in the seeing part. It's under it. Behind it. Like my eyeballs are trying to remember what they were before and failing.
But what dominates my vision, what absolutely devours everything else, is red.
An absolute mess of red particles that swarm and cling to every surface, every person, every leaf, every brick, floating like the world has an underlying tone of red. It's like standing in a battle royale of colors and red showed up with a flamethrower.
I try to sit up and the world tilts. The street is a layered mess of glittering fog. The buildings are there, technically, but they're buried under color like someone put reality in a multicolored snow globe and then shook it until it hated me.
"What…" I start, but my voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible. "What's happening?"
"Don't move, you fainted," Lyra says.
"Love that for me," I say, because sarcasm is my emotional support animal and I'm clinging to it like a life raft.
A few feet away, Kaela kneels beside Mira, who's sprawled on her back at a crooked angle like she fell and decided getting up was optional. One hand clamps her side. The fabric there is dark and wet, and even through the glitter-haze I can see blood soaking through. Kaela's hands shake as she digs through her bag, pulling out bandages.
"Mira," I say, and my voice wavers with fear.
“Your concern is noted and denied,” Mira says, like she isn’t bleeding through her shirt.
Kaela yanks out a roll of clean bandages and presses them to Mira's side with both hands, leaning her weight into it. "You shouldn't move," she says. "You shouldn't even breathe aggressively."
"Breathing gently," Mira mutters. "Got it."
I swallow and it tastes like panic and glitter-static.
"Is it just me," I manage, "or does it look like someone threw buckets of confetti into the air?"
"Confetti?" Lyra says, her tail thumping once against the ground.
I gesture helplessly at the air, at everything, at nothing. "It's like someone replaced the world with a snowstorm. Particles everywhere, tiny specks and threads and sparks, all different colors, just floating and swirling through everything. I can see your outline because you're close, but everything else is buried under color. Like I'm looking through stained glass that won't stop moving."
"That sounds like mana vision," Lyra says.
"Mana vision?" I repeat, because of course there's a term for this nightmare.
"There are relics that reveal types of mana," Lyra explains. "But they're tools, and most only reveal a few types. What you're describing sounds like… all of it. At once."
"Is that bad?" I ask.
"It's unusual. You typically need to wear the relic over your eyes for it to work." She pauses, eyes narrowing at my face like she's trying to solve me. "Did you get anything in your eyes?"
"My eyes hurt, but I don't think so?" I say, reaching up to check. I look to my left and see the sack of crushed runemarks, particles spewing from the broken marks like a colorful geyser erupted in the middle of the square. I must have rolled off it after passing out.
Lyra turns her head to follow mine, her eyes widening as she sees the crushed sack of runemarks lying on the stone to my left. "You fell on that?" she says, her voice rising. "That much raw mana should have done… something."
She turns to look back at me. "Stop squinting. Show me your eyes.” She steps in. “Now.” Her expression shifts into something focused and analytical. "Tell me exactly what happened. Where did the monster go?"
But before she can reach for my face, her tail goes rigid. Her head snaps toward the street.
Through the glitter apocalypse, I can make out movement. Shapes in doorways. The impression of Kaela, Lyra, and Mira, absolutely covered in mana, coloring them in vivid shades of reds, blues, and browns, along with colors I have no name for. I watch them inhale mana with each breath and exhale the same. Each movement they make sends the colorful mana spiraling and drifting in all directions, adding to the chaotic movement I have the privilege of witnessing firsthand. So when a torrent of mana drifts my way from the direction we ran from, I can tell someone is walking toward us without seeing them yet.
Then sound catches up to what I saw.
The sound of armor clinking.
It’s coming from the main street, the wide one we ran down, where the buildings open into the square.
Heavy footfalls. Metal on stone. The measured rhythm of people who aren't rushing because they believe they own the ground under their boots. The sound echoes off the buildings, multiplying, making it impossible to tell how many there are. Three? Five? A dozen?
Figures in polished armor advance through the haze, their ignis-lit blades pulling in red particles like magnets. I can see dozens of different colors of mana streaming into their armor, browns, greens, reds, all pouring into the active runes like water following gravity.
Three knights. Maybe more behind them. It's hard to tell through the glitter apocalypse happening in my eyeballs.
The one in front, taller than the others, stops. His head turns.
He sees me.
My cloak isn't on.
The knight's sword jerks upward, pointed straight at my chest like an accusation.
"Yellowman," he snarls, and the word drips with venom. I can't see his face, but I remember his voice. Being blind for twenty-one years teaches you specific skills. One of these happens to be voice recognition. This was the knight from the inn, the same one who hurt Kaela and took our room.
Lyra steps in front of me, her tail lashing once, sharp and aggressive. "She is with us," she says.
The knight laughs, a short, ugly sound that makes my skin crawl. "With you?" he says. "Or using you. Yellowmen are crafty, evil creatures, and without honor."
"She helped save this town," Lyra snaps. "She fought the monster while you were nowhere to be found."
"We were securing the perimeter," the knight says, but his voice is defensive now, and I can hear the lie in it.
"You were hiding!" someone shouts from a doorway.
Then suddenly voices spill everywhere, pouring out of shops and doorways and whatever hiding places fear drove people into.
"They saved us!"
"The knights did nothing!"
"Look at her, she's bleeding!"
"Cowards!"
The knights' formation tightens. Their swords lift, blades sucking in more of that red mana as if they were stress eating. I can feel the heat from where I am, the crackle of flames covering their blades audible over the crowd's noise.
A man in an apron steps out of a shop doorway like he's been shoved by anger. His hair sticks up like it lost a fight with a comb. A horn stump visible above his brow, bandaged old and ugly in a way that makes it clear it wasn't a polite injury. He takes one look at the knights, then one look at us, and his mouth twists.
"Absolutely not," he says, like he's refusing a bad deal.
Finch.
Of course it's Finch. Of course the universe can't let me have strangers. It has to drag in the one shopkeeper I've met who looks like he could bite through a coin out of spite. I can tell it's him from his voice, that annoyed tone that made you think even the air got on his nerves.
He plants himself in the street like he owns it.
And he's holding a golf club.
"You want to swing those somewhere else?" Finch calls, voice rough. "You're scaring away customers." He holds out the golf club, pointing it at the lead knight's sword, using it to emphasize his words.
The lead knight's helmet tilts upward. He takes a step back, his spine straightening and his fists clenching in what I can only describe as a fit of rage. "I am Sir Francis, Knight Captain of the 12th Conroi of his Imperial Majesty's Eastward Forces. Step aside, or I'll make you step aside!" He bellows, swinging his sword and sending scatterings of mana particles in all directions.
Finch snorts. "I'm too old for intimidation nonsense. Try it on someone who still believes you're useful."
A ripple goes through the crowd, sharp laughter mixed with fear.
Lyra's breath catches like she's about to say Finch's name, like she can't decide if she's grateful or horrified he's involved. My best guess is both.
A woman storms forward, standing next to Finch, shaking with rage. "Where were you?" she demands at the knights, voice cracking. "We screamed for help!"
Finch jerks his chin at Mira's blood-soaked side. "They fought. They bled. You want to question someone?" He points at the lead knight like he's selecting a fish at market. "Start with your own boots. Where were those?"
The lead knight ignores the accusations and shouts. I guess you can do that when you have a flaming sword. He lifts his sword, and the blade burns hotter as he points it past the crowd.
Directly at me.
"You will come with us," he says. "All of you."
Mira's grip tightens on her sword hilt even though she's still on the ground. "We need to leave," she says through gritted teeth. "Now."
The knights advance. Their boots hit the cobblestones in unison, a rhythm designed to intimidate. They stay in formation, the lead knight pointing his sword at me as if directing the other knights.
More civilians move, standing with Finch, blocking the knights, forming a ragged wall of bodies and fury.
"That's cute. You think we're scared of you after watching three students fight a monster while you played perimeter?" Finch says, waving the golf club in the air like a sword, completely oblivious to what he's actually holding. "Go on. Try it. Make my day worse. I'm sure that will look great."
"Stand aside! NOW!" the knight says.
No one moves.
I hear a heavy clink hit metal. One of the knights grunts. I watch as one stumbles backward as a brick bounces off his helmet and impacts the ground with a thud.
Someone shouts. I see another person holding a brick over their head.
Lyra's hand clamps on my elbow. "Fey," she hisses, low. "Now."
Kaela is already moving, struggling with Mira's weight, her face red with effort. Mira's trying to walk, but every step makes her wince and her breathing is getting shallower. The bandage on her side is already soaked through.
Lyra yanks me backward, away from the confrontation, toward the narrow gap between buildings.
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"Halt! I'm warning you!" the knight captain bellows behind us, his voice cutting through the chaos.
Finch's response follows us into the alley, gravel and fury, loud enough to be heard over metal and panic. "Everything always finds its way back to Finch!"
Then we're running, and the alley swallows us whole. Our footsteps echo off stone walls that press close on either side. Behind us the noise swells, metal hitting wood, the clatter of armor, voices rising in anger and fear. The sound of knights pushing through the crowd that tried to protect us.
My lungs burn. My eyes ache. The mana storm makes every corner a gamble, every shadow a potential dead end. Every breath tastes like glitter-static and adrenaline.
Lyra's hand stays locked on my elbow, steering me around corners I can't see clearly. Kaela half-drags Mira after us, and I hear Mira's sharp intake of breath as her side hits the alley wall.
"Sorry," Kaela chokes.
"Don't," Mira grits out, like apologizing is the real injury.
The sounds behind us begin to fade. The shouts grow muffled. The clank of armor becomes distant, echoing off buildings we've left behind.
We push deeper into the maze of alleys until the town's edge appears ahead, a gap of green between buildings.
Then we're out.
The alley opens into the forest, and we stumble into the trees. Branches catch at our clothes. Roots try to trip us. The pursuit sounds fade to nothing. No more shouting. No more armor. Just our own ragged breathing and the frantic rush of blood in my ears.
We collapse like puppets whose strings got cut.
Lyra bends over with her hands on her knees, breathing hard, her tail drooping. Kaela drops to the ground beside Mira and immediately fumbles her bag open again. Mira lowers herself with a hiss and then lies back, one arm thrown across her eyes like she can block pain by refusing to look at it.
I stumble to the edge of a small pond and drop to my knees, because my legs decide they've done their part in the narrative and would like to retire. Possibly forever.
My lungs burn. My throat tastes like copper and panic. The mana storm still swirls through my vision, but at least I'm not running anymore. Just me and the particles, both of us trying to remember how to exist without running.
Behind me, Kaela's breath comes in short gasps. Lyra's tail twitches once, twice, then goes still. Even Mira's breathing sounds labored, each exhale a little too careful, like she's testing how much it hurts.
Lyra straightens first, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She scans the tree line behind us, listening for pursuit that doesn't come.
"Fey," Lyra says, and her voice cuts through the sound of our breathing. "What happened to the monster?"
"It's gone," I say, which is technically true and also the most useless answer I could give.
Lyra's tail flicks once, sharp. "Gone where?"
I swallow. My throat feels like sandpaper. "I, uh… I might have opened a portal."
"You what?" Kaela says, pressing harder against the bandages wrapped around Mira and turning her head to look at me.
"I opened a portal somehow," I repeat, because apparently my brain has decided doubling down is the correct strategy. "And I sent it through. The monster. I sent the monster through the portal."
"To where?" Lyra demands, and there's an edge in her voice I haven't heard before. Not anger. Something sharper. Fear, maybe. Or the kind of alarm you get when someone tells you they've just done something catastrophically stupid.
"I don't know," I say, and my voice cracks.
"I guess you were telling the truth after all," Mira says, leaning against a tree. Her voice is strained, but there's something almost impressive in it. "You actually opened a portal. Can you do it again? Can you go home?” Mira sounds excited, which is either sweet or deeply suspicious. Probably suspicious.
"I'm not sure," I say, looking at my hands. "It felt different than the first portal somehow. I'm not sure how…" I trail off, and the silence that follows feels like it's waiting for me to finish a sentence I don't have words for. I clear my throat, desperate to fill the silence with literally anything else. "At least we lost the knights," I say, changing the subject as I fail to come up with an answer. My voice comes out too bright, too forced, like I'm trying to convince myself as much as them. "That's… that's good, right? Silver lining?"
Lyra starts to protest, but Kaela shakes her head.
"Fine. . . yes we lost them," Lyra says. "But they saw our crests."
I blink at her through the mana storm, my brain still catching up. "Our crests?"
"Academy crests," Kaela says quietly. "They know where we're going."
My stomach drops. "So we can't go to the academy."
"We have to," Mira says through gritted teeth. "We don't have papers to get through the city walls. Our families are too far. The academy is the only place that will shelter us. We can't stay in the woods forever."
"That was my retirement plan," I mumble. "Become a mysterious forest hermit. Eat berries. Avoid taxes. Befriend a raccoon. Or a goose. Train it to attack people on command. I always wanted a seeing-eye goose."
"You'd be terrible at foraging," Lyra says.
"Excuse me, I'd be great at foraging," I say. "I'd forage so hard. I'd forage things you've never even heard of."
"Poisonous things," Lyra adds, deadpan.
"Exotic poisonous things," I correct.
Kaela kneels beside Mira, checking the bandages she'd wrapped during our frantic escape. She peels back the outer layer carefully, and her face tightens. "It's starting to slow," she murmurs, pulling fresh cloth from her bag. She presses it over the existing bandage, adding another layer, and Mira hisses through her teeth.
"Sorry, sorry," Kaela whispers, but she doesn't let up the pressure.
When she finishes, she glances up at me. "Do your eyes still hurt?" she asks, already moving toward me. "You keep squinting. Did something hit you?"
"Just a headache from hell because of this mana vision nonsense," I mutter, but my voice wavers. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine," Kaela says, and she's close now, close enough that I can see her outline clearly through the glitter-haze. "Let me see."
Before I can protest, her hands are on my face, tilting my chin up, and she leans in to examine my eyes.
Her breath catches, sharp and sudden, and her fingers go rigid against my jaw.
"Kaela?" I say, worried as her expression shifts from concerned to horrified in a heartbeat.
"Your eyes," she whispers, and her voice cracks on the word. "Fey, your eyes, there's something in them."
My stomach drops. "What?"
"Lyra," Kaela calls, "Lyra, you need to see this."
Lyra crosses the clearing, her tail rigid, and leans in beside Kaela. Her eyes narrow, scanning my face, and then she goes still.
"Runes," Lyra says flatly.
"What?" I choke out. "What do you mean, runes?"
Kaela's hands are shaking against my face. "There are runes," she says, voice trembling. "Where your eyes should be."
"Look in the pond," Lyra says. "You'll see your reflection."
I pull away from Kaela's hands and stumble toward the pond.
I kneel at the water's edge. I let the mana storm rage, let the particles swirl and drift and cling to everything. The world is a blizzard of color, but the pond's surface holds my reflection steady.
My face stares back at me through the haze.
Dirt-streaked. Exhausted. Afraid.
And my eyes. . .
The runes are there, golden and precise, carved into the center of my eyes where my pupils should be.
I look away from my reflection, back at them. At their worried faces and Mira's blood-soaked bandage and the weight of everything we're carrying. The mana storm makes their outlines shimmer, each of them surrounded by their own dense, steady presence, their own normal. And then there's me, and the air around me doesn't behave the same way.
"What does this mean?" I say, looking at Lyra who, for the first time, looks stumped.
"I... I don't know," Lyra says, looking at Mira, who stares wide-eyed at me. "When you told us about the mana vision I assumed something weird happened when you crushed all those runemarks, but this… your eyes… how are there runes in your eyes?"
"Don't look at me," I say, sighing. "A few days ago I was a normal blind person on Earth. Now I'm running from magic knights and apparently seeing mana."
Mana curls in my direction, leaning toward me like I have gravity. Specks drift into my skin and vanish like water soaking into sand. It leaves a faint chill behind, like my veins are taking a sip of winter. It's subtle, but once I see it, I can't unsee it. It's constant. It's hungry.
Like I'm a drain and the world is circling before it goes down.
"And I think it's going into me," I say.
Kaela's brows knit. "What?"
"The mana," I say, and my voice cracks on the word. I gesture at the air, at the threads curling toward my hands. "It's like it's being pulled into me. Like I'm absorbing it."
Lyra's expression changes, sharp and concerned. Something like alarm flickers beneath her control. "That is not normal. People don't just absorb mana, that's not how it works."
"Nothing is normal," I say flatly. "Normal died back at the stadium. We're in post-normal territory now. We're in 'what fresh hell is this' territory."
Lyra's gaze stays fixed on my eyes, analytical even through her concern. "The runes," she says slowly. "They are still active. They have not finished."
"It doesn't finish," I echo, and the humor in my voice cracks at the edges. "It's been what, minutes? And it's still active whenever my eyes are open."
Lyra nods once. "Which suggests it is sustained by something," she says slowly. "Runes require fuel. Mana. Intent. Something."
I stare at the drifting mana again, noticing how it pulls toward me, how it sinks into my skin like I'm a sponge, and the idea makes my stomach twist.
"Maybe it's sustained by that," I whisper, pointing at the threads curling into my hand.
Kaela wipes sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a smear of dirt. "Lyra," she says carefully, "you said runes finish or break."
Lyra's gaze flicks to her. "Yes."
"And breaking sounds," Kaela glances at my eyes, then looks away like staring too long might make it contagious, "like… a bad hobby."
Lyra exhales through her nose. "Agreed."
I let out a shaky breath. "So what's the option where we don't do medieval surgery on my face?"
Lyra's eyes narrow, and she goes still in that way she does when she's thinking hard enough to make the world uncomfortable. "There is a third option," she says finally.
Kaela's shoulders sag with relief. "Thank you."
Lyra holds up a finger, counting like she's sorting facts onto a shelf in her head. "Runes finish. Or they break." Another finger. "Or they are starved."
I frown. "Starved?"
"A rune that cannot access the proper mana becomes dormant," Lyra says, careful and precise. "Not finished. Not broken. Sleeping. If your eyes are drawing mana, then we can attempt to reduce what is available to them."
Kaela swallows, then says very softly, "What if you just… stop looking?"
I blink at her. "What?"
Kaela points at her own eyes. "Shut them," she says. "Just for a few seconds. Maybe that's the same as breaking a rune. Maybe you interrupt it. Like blowing out a candle."
Lyra's gaze flicks to Kaela, skeptical but not dismissive. "It is worth attempting."
Mira grunts. "Can't make it worse."
"It could definitely make it worse," I say, because my life is now a documented series of things that can always get worse. But the pain behind my eyes is building, and the idea of relief is intoxicating. "Fine. If I die, I'm haunting all of you. Specifically Lyra. I'm going to rearrange her books."
Kaela nods solemnly. "Fair."
I close my eyes.
"One," I whisper. "Two… three…"
I count to ten, slowly, feeling my heartbeat in my temples.
Then I open my eyes.
The mana storm is gone.
The clearing snaps into normal sight, trees, pond, shadows, my friends' faces visible again like my brain remembers how to interpret reality. My eyes still hurt a little, a dull ache, but the sharp pressure is gone. The world looks normal. Blessedly, beautifully normal.
Kaela gasps. "It worked."
Lyra leans in, staring at my face. "Your pupils…" she starts, then stops like she's swallowing a dozen questions.
I blink, stunned with relief. "Oh my god," I whisper. "I can see. Like… normal. Like a person."
Mira exhales, tension easing out of her shoulders. "Good."
Then, because the universe hates me personally, I blink again.
A pulse of color rolls across my vision like a wave.
The mana storm snaps back into place.
The glitter blizzard returns, denser than before, and my eyes flare with pain, sharper this time.
I groan. "Nope. Never mind. It's back."
Kaela's voice goes small. "Wait, what?"
Lyra's hand tightens on my shoulder. "Close them again."
I close my eyes, count to ten, open them.
Normal.
Close, count, open.
Storm.
Close, count, open.
Normal.
It's like a switch, and I'm the world's worst light fixture, flickering between two states.
I laugh, high and strained and a little unhinged. "Okay. Great. So I can toggle between 'see like a person' and 'see like a cosmic horror.' That's fantastic. That's a great superpower. Very useful."
Kaela lets out a nervous laugh that sounds like it escaped by accident. "That's… something?"
Lyra's expression is unreadable. "It behaves like a rune," she murmurs, mostly to herself. "It can be interrupted. But it doesn't finish."
Mira shifts, jaw clenched. "We should go to the headmaster," she says finally, breaking the silence like it's glass she's tired of staring through. Her voice is strained, but there's steel underneath it. "We need to tell him about the portal. About where that monster went. We need to know if it's actually gone or if it'll come back through another portal somewhere else." She looks at me. "And we need to figure out what's happening to your eyes before something worse happens. Before you open another portal by accident."
Lyra nods, sharp and decisive. "Yes. He will know what to do."
Mira groans as Kaela adjusts the bandage. "My job just got harder," Mira mutters, and there's a tired humor in it that makes something in my chest ache.
Lyra glances at her. "Your job was already hard."
Mira huffs. "Not 'being chased by knights for escorting a rune-eyed portal-maker' hard."
"Portal-maker," I repeat, because of course that's what I am now. Not Fey. Not the girl who used to be blind and loved cheesecake and wanted a normal life. Portal-maker. Rune-eyed problem. Walking disaster.
Kaela gives me a look that is half sympathy, half awe. "You did save the town," she says quietly.
"And then immediately made everything worse," I say, because I can't stop my brain from being mean to itself. "I saved the town and then got us chased by knights, and now I have nightmare eyes and I'm absorbing mana like a… a… I don't even know. A cursed vacuum cleaner."
Lyra's hand squeezes my shoulder. "You made a choice," she says. "And Mira is alive because of it."
Mira's voice is rough. "Don't get sentimental," she warns, but it doesn't carry much heat. She's too tired, too pale, too busy bleeding.
Kaela finishes wrapping the bandage and ties it off with shaking hands. "That's all I can do for now," she says softly. "But we need to move. The longer we stay, the more likely they find us."
Lyra stands, brushing dirt from her skirt, and extends a hand to Mira. "Can you walk?"
Mira stares at the hand like it's personally offensive, then takes it anyway. "I can walk," she says through gritted teeth, and lets Lyra haul her upright. She sways immediately, and Kaela ducks under her other arm, taking as much weight as she can.
Lyra adjusts her grip, steadying Mira. "We move slowly," she says. "The academy is half a day's walk if we take the forest path. Longer if we have to stop."
"We won't have to stop," Mira says, stubborn as ever.
Kaela makes a small noise of protest but doesn't argue. She just holds on tighter.
I watch them prepare to leave, and something in me twists, fear and gratitude and the crushing weight of responsibility. They're doing this because of me. Because I opened a portal. Because I exist wrong.
No.
I push myself to my feet, legs shaking but holding. "Wait," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. I step in beside Kaela and slide Mira’s arm over my shoulders before anyone can stop me. She’s heavier than she looks. Or maybe I’m just shaking.
“We’re not doing this,” I say, breathless. “Not the guilt spiral. Not the ‘Fey ruined everything’ show.”
Lyra glances back, confused. "Doing what?"
"The guilt spiral," I say. "The 'woe is me, I ruined everything' routine. I'm tired of it." I wipe my hands on my skirt, dirt and sweat and determination coating my palms. "You're right. I made a choice. Yeah, it was terrifying and I have nightmare eyes now and we're being hunted by knights, but Mira's alive. The town's alive. That counts for something."
Lyra's mouth twitches, almost a smile. "Character growth. I'm touched."
"Don't get used to it," I mutter, but I'm already moving toward them. I close my eyes, count to ten, and open them to normal sight. The world snaps into focus, blessedly clear. "Let's go find the headmaster. Let's figure out what the hell I am. And if the knights want to follow us?" I meet Lyra's gaze, then Kaela's, then Mira's. "Then they can try."
We turn toward the forest, and the trees swallow us whole. Behind us, the town fades into memory. Ahead, the academy waits, half a day's walk through shadows and danger and whatever else the universe wants to throw at us. My eyes ache. My heart hammers. My friends are bleeding and exhausted and still moving forward.
So I move forward too.
Do Golf Clubs Beat Magical Fire Swords?
