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Hands steadied me before I stumbled. The invisible stranger’s hands. They felt smoother than I’d expected from a Knight.

Wow, what a weird and random thing to think about after almost dying.

“You didn’t almost die,” he told me.

Great, so now my internal monologue was broken? It was really inconvenient not knowing if I was only talking to myself.

“As soon as you hit the Spirit Tree, it lit up like the sun,” he said.

I could see again. I looked down at my hands. Slim streams of light coursed under my skin—from the tips of my fingers, up my arms, all the way down my legs. Warmth lingered in my veins, a calmer and cooler warmth than the firestorm of agony that had raged inside of me just a few moments ago.

“You were stuck to the tree.”

The tree!

Still shivering, I circled the Spirit Tree, searching for Dante and Nevada. I found them lying on the ground, eyes still closed. Their chains were broken. Glowing tendrils of magic crisscrossed their bodies like cocoons.

I heard the invisible stranger walk up behind me. “Don’t worry. They’re fine,” he assured me. “They’re still asleep. It takes most people a few minutes to wake up.”

“That was…the Blending!” I realized.

“Yes,” he replied.

I moved slowly. I was still a tad dizzy. “It hurt.” I reached up to clutch my head. “Was it supposed to hurt like that?”

“No. It’s supposed to feel wonderful.”

I cringed. “I can’t do anything right.”

“It’s not your fault. It hurt so much because you already have magic,” he told me. “Your body had to sort that out.”

“I didn’t mean to…” I shook out my hands. They were still tingling, like fireflies were nipping at them.

“You didn’t mean to actually go through the Blending,” he finished for me. “You only wanted the General to think you had.”

I blinked. “How…”

“How did I know about your plan to become a Knight?” he said. “Like you, I have a talent for spotting the obvious. You don’t need the spirits to give you magic if you already have magic. That means you already have a magical mark, somewhere on your body.”

I set my right hand on my hip. My mark was there, right above my hipbone. It had started out small, so small that I’d thought it was just a birthmark. But over the years it had grown. By the time I’d realized I possessed magic, my mark was an undeniable sign of my otherness.

Of course I’d hidden it away under long t-shirts and pants with thick waistbands. There was no place in this world for someone who had been born with magic.

“After tonight, I won’t have to hide it anymore. I can wear it proudly.” I tried to laugh at the irony of it all, but I only managed a wheezy cough. “When the General returns to pick up the Chosen, I’ll show him my magic mark. He won’t know that I’ve had it all along. He’ll think the spirits have blessed me. And then he’ll have to bring me to the Castle with the others.”

“Your plan is to pretend you cheated the system to gain magic. But you’ve had magic all along,” he said quietly.

“Thatwasthe plan.” I rubbed my hands up and down my sore arms. “I wasn’t supposed to get an electric shock of the spirits’ magic juice in the process.” I dropped my arms to my sides. “By the way, what do you think that did to me?”

“Hard to say. Maybe it did nothing.”

“You don’t sound very convinced of that.”

“Big, burning jolts of magic tend not to come with zero consequences whatsoever,” he said, the shrug evident in his voice.

I brushed my long braid off my shoulder. “Well, as long as my hair doesn’t fall out and I don’t turn into an evil supervillain.”

He didn’t say a thing.