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“Maybe it was.”

His chuckles danced on the air like blossoms in the breeze. And for some reason, I felt the sudden urge to eat something sweet and unhealthy.

Magic was weird.

“I figured if you could control light, you could also control lightning,” I told him.

“Oh? And why is that?”

I frowned. Was this a trick question?

“Because light and lightning are the same kind of magic?” I said cautiously.

“Yes.”

I released a sigh of relief. It would have been so embarrassing to be wrong about that.

“You’re way more confident in the heat of battle than you are the rest of the time.” I could hear the smirk in his voice. “And way bossier.”

I found myself suddenly desperate for the power to turn myself invisible. A Knight had called me bossy. How humiliating.

“You must really enjoy torturing me,” I mumbled.

“I have to admit, meeting you has been the highlight of my day. Butnotto torture you. To see how your mind works. You’re so much more interesting than other people.”

“Uh, thanks…I think.”

“It was definitely a compliment,” he told me in a tone that made me very curious to see the expression on his face.

“Any chance you can stop being invisible for a little bit?” I asked him.

“What would be the fun in that?” he laughed.

I didn’t press him. I knew a lost cause when I met one.

Instead, I looked down at the pair of Cursed Ones lying on the ground. Right before my eyes, their bodies dissolved into the puddle.

“Whoa! Where did they go?” I leaned in for a closer look at the puddle, but I didn’t see anything but water in there.

“I sent their souls back to the planet,” the invisible stranger replied. “They are finally free of the Curse. They are finally at peace.”

“Their souls?” I asked. “So that means thereissomething left of a person who has been cursed?”

I’d always wondered about that. Everyone said a person died the day they were cursed and what lived on was something else entirely.

“Yes, there’s something left of the person,” he replied. “But that tiny piece of humanity is trapped, buried beneath the magic of the Curse. The Curse has no cure, you know.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he agreed.

“If I were a Knight, I would find a way to cure all of those people. I’d find a way to return their humanity to them.”

“And if that’s impossible?”

“Impossible is just a word for something we haven’t figured out how to do yet,” I declared.

He chuckled. “I like the way you think.”