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Tomorrow would still come. But tonight, Travis would enjoy himself. He’d wanted to get laid one last time, and he truly felt glad that it was with a girl he really…

Really…

Really…

Reallyliked.

“Okay,”Maya began. “Okay, Max, you can do this.”

Max sat across from his sister at the table in the kitchen, a room he and the others had turned into a workstation. Aplace to charge the warhead that would get them the hell out of Yveswich.

It was his turn now. The others had taken turns these last two days, pouring their magic into the warhead with short intervals of rest. All different colors of magic swirled inside the cloudy, bullet-shaped warhead—all except red.

Fire magic.

Max drew a deep breath and lay his hand upon the warhead, feeling the powerful magic humming within. It made his teeth sing.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said with a sigh.

Maya placed her hand on top of his and bent her head so they were at eye level with each other. “You can,” she said softly. She was still wrapped up in that blanket, her power levels too low for her to do this herself.

It would have to be Max.

Maya added, “I believe in you, Max.”

He inhaled again, feeling his lungs stretch. As he exhaled, he shut his eyes.

“You have to call upon your magic,” Maya said. “And you can’t be afraid of it. It doesn’t control you, Max—youcontrolit.”

As he focused, he felt it stirring within him. A flame kindling in his chest.

He began to sweat. His breaths thinned out?—

“Breathe,” Maya said. She kept her hand on his. Her touch was grounding. Calming. “Don’t be afraid of it.”

He focused harder, concentrating on bringing that magic up from the depths of his soul…all the way to the surface.

One breath in… One breath out…

One breath in… One breath out…

His palm began to heat up. Sweat prickled down his spine and across his brow, but he kept his focus on his magic, on the fire he refused to be afraid of.

No more.No more.

His sister was alive and here—sitting right across from him.

She was alive. She had never burned.

His mother had told him a lie—a terrible lie that had scarred him deeply. It would be a while yet before he could say he was fully healed from the emotional and mental damage. But the journey toward healing started now.

His palm grew hotter. But it didn’t burn, didn’t hurt. It felt…

Like the sun. The sun on a summer’s day. Warm, but gentle.

“That’s it, Max,” Maya whispered. “You’re doing it—it’s working.”

A startled laugh slipped out of him as he felt his magic trickle out of his body and into the warhead. It glowed in response, but he kept his eyes shut, refusing to open them until this was done. If he let himself look at the fire…