Page 2

“Then your magic was calling me!”

A crease formed between her brows as she used her fingers to dislodge a strand of blonde hair out of her mouth. “My magic always calls to you.”

“Not like this! You gave me a heart attack! I thought you were dying! Don’t ever do that again!”

Her strawberry lips parted, staring at me like she could feel my panic. “I don’t like it when you’re upset.”

“Then don’t make me think you’re in trouble.”

With a quick crinkle of her nose, she spat, “If I was in trouble, I wouldn’t need you.” Her brows pulled down as she stomped back to me and slammed both hands on my chest. “And stop yelling at me.”

“Tell your magic to knock it off!”

“I can’t help it!”

I knew she couldn’t. It was unpredictable.

I loved that she sometimes sent me her thoughts.

I loved that her magic called to mine. But, this had gone too far.

Making me think she was in trouble, that she wanted three other boys to save her.

Making me think she was going to die! How could she be so mean?

“Then why can’t I use my magic? Huh? What’d you do to me?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Liar!”

“Stop,” she screamed.

“Leave me and my magic alone!”

I could see something shift in her eyes like her heart was breaking.

She was suddenly looking at me differently.

I hated it. I hated it when she took two steps away from me, as if she finally realized I was no good.

Her spine became ramrod straight, her chin held high, looking like a lethal princess ready to lacerate me to pieces.

“Fine!” Out came her right palm. But her aqua magic turned into an odd shade of deep sapphire. A color I hadn’t yet seen from her before.

All at once, excruciating pain spread from my chest out to the ends of my body, like she was sucking my soul out of my body.

My magic rained down my arms and out of my fingers.

My stomach dropped to the floor, nausea overcoming me.

My vision filled with her sapphire, my lilac, and the sallow yellow from the lights in the room.

It hurt too much. “Rip—” I croaked, unable to replenish my lungs as I collapsed to my knees before her.

My magic. It was leaving. I felt like I was stripped. Drained dry. And when the last of it fled my system, I was hollow, an empty shell which once held my power and my only ticket to survival in the ?lden Lands. I spotted it thrashing around in Ripley’s hand as if it were trying to escape.

She looked at it with wide eyes and yelped. “No! No! No! I don’t—I didn’t mean—I don’t want your magic!” A sniffle resonated from her now reddened nose.

I got to my feet, stomped to her through my fog of nausea, and gripped her wrist. “Give me my magic back!”

“Take it!” She opened her palm to me.

I clenched my teeth. “You’re going to pay for this!”

“No! I’m sorry!”

My magic. My magic . It was gone! How was I supposed to survive outside Elizy without it?

The door burst open and the king and queen of Elizy strode in. Her father rushed to her side, lifting her into his arms .

“Fletcher Darkly?” the queen asked through a tight, squared jaw and narrowed her gray eyes. “Why are you in my daughter’s room at midnight?”

I thought about her cries, her screams for help, how desperate I was to find her not more than a few minutes ago. “I thought she was in grave danger.”

While the king and queen looked at each other, I took the moment to glance at Ripley. Tears ran down her rosy cheeks as she clawed at her hand where my magic now lived.

“This has never happened before,” the king said in an urgent whisper. “What does this mean?”

“It means luckily he messed up,” she whispered back. “It means nothing.”

“But, love, he’s here . Not on the mountain. Is that not infinitely better?”

“No.” Her mother’s look turned hard as she fastened it on me. “Get out of our castle—our kingdom, you thief. You will never be suitable for our daughter. You hear me?”

Ripley kicked the air around her father. “No! Don’t send him away. He’s my friend.”

“She took my magic!” I announced. “I want it back! ”

A look of horror flashed across their faces as Ripley continued to cry. “Then, I guess she gets to keep it forever.”

“Are you serious?” I screamed, fisting my hands. “That’s not fair!”

“Mel—” her father soothed.

“Shut it, Archer. I will never allow this. We won’t have her wasting her life with low-life scum like him with nothing to offer her.”

“I don’t want her!” Everything about that sentence burned my tongue, but I knew it was something the queen wanted to hear. “I just want my magic!”

Ripley was crying harder than I had ever heard her before. For the first time in my life, I felt her magic wholly encompass me. Normally, I’d have my magic to combat it, but in its absence, I was her puppet just like any magicless human would be to an Elizian princess.

Her skin pulsed blue. And with it, my body relaxed, and my mind floated, tethered by a single string of consciousness. I let myself be fully taken by her. She wanted me to take a step forward, and my body complied. I took a step closer. And then another .

The queen stood between us, halting me and Ripley’s magic with one glowing hand. Her fingers wrapped around my ear and yanked.

“Ow!”

I was dragged out of the room and into the hallway. “If your parents didn’t want you, what makes you think us royals would? Huh? I don’t know what you’ve done to my daughter, but you stay the hell away from her.”

“Let go of me!” I gritted out, clawing at her hand.

“Leave Elizy. Find some other kingdom or town to torture. You are not welcome here. And stay away from Ripley.”

“No!” I yelled and shoved her away with both hands.

She gasped and let go.

My hand flew to my ear just as the back of hers whipped across my face, rings cutting open my cheek. With the momentum, I fell to my side, head hitting a white column.

“You disrespectful animal.” Her hand came down on my forearm and we teleported outside the castle. “Never return.”

The walk back to my hammock was miserable. Tears clouded my sight and caught in my throat. The cool air burned the gash on my cheek as my ear throbbed.

I was heartbroken, and changed. Since the moment my skin had pulsated purple in my hammock, something had changed in me.

There was this new, foreign feeling. It ached and moved and shifted in my gut.

It was sad. So very sad. But it wasn’t my sadness, or not completely.

It was coated in something familiar. It was airy and bright.

It was valuable and mine. It locked into place where something had been missing.

And I was insanely protective of it. How I had ever lived without its presence?

This new thing living in my chest was attached to something tangible.

Even though I had no family, with this brilliant star in my chest…

I somehow did. I was connected to whoever or whatever was on the other end in a way that felt like home, a thought that caused more tears to spring to my eyes.

Whoever was on the other side of this bond felt immense sadness, a sadness much like my own but separate .

I mulled over its essence the whole walk to my hill, not being able to place exactly what was on the other end of this instinct that clung to me.

And when I reached my hammock, spotting Ripley’s little frame sitting under it, I knew what that something was. It was Ripley. I could sense her emotions in a significantly more intense way. Man, I wanted out of it. I should not know what she was feeling to this heightened degree.

I came to a stop in front of her. “Go home, Ripley.”

A bolt of despair struck the place in my chest where I sensed her.

My comment had hurt her deeply. I shook my head in hopes the pain would go away, but instead, the pain deepened and clawed at me until I thought I would shrivel.

I couldn’t bare it any longer. Whatever she needed mending, I would do it.

Slowly, she bent forward at the hips over her folded knees and reached her arms out to bow to me.

“I’m sorry! Don’t leave.” Up from the grass at the ends of her fingertips grew a few flowers.

Her eyes peered up at the bouquet and grunted in frustration.

“No, more. You need more. I-I’m sorry. I wanted to make you a garden. ”

The sight hitched my breathing. She was bowing to me ?

I got on my knees before her and pulled her shoulder up so she was sitting on her heels, blonde hair spreading in tangles around her like a crescent sun. “Never bow to anyone. Do you even know what that means?”

Ripley shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands.

“It means you’re pledging your life to that person. If anyone sees the princess pledging her life to someone like me… I don’t even want to think about what they’d do to you.”

“I didn’t mean to take your magic. I promise.”

I sighed, nurturing that part of me that now belonged to her. What could I say that could ease her anguish? “I know. It’s okay.”

Her large, ice-gray eyes held me captive long enough to distract me from her glowing hand racing to my cheek and causing it to tingle as recognition of what she was doing slammed into me.

I watched in horror as the porcelain skin of her cheek ripped open in a clean, deep swipe.

Crimson blood spilled, and I felt my chest cave in.

I could sense her distress like it was an extension of me.

Even though she didn’t flinch, the pain swirled in her like a sea storm writhing against the shore .

“No,” I whispered out in a breath, desperate to undo what she had done. I swiped my fingers across the drips, then pressed my palm to it, but my magic wasn’t responding. Because it was gone. I removed my hand and she replaced it with her own. “Ripley—”

Twigs snapped in the distance. The patter of feet running across grass thrummed. I looked over my shoulder as three figures became visible, stalking up the hill. I recognized them as the three boys who had climbed the mountain.

They looked past me and straight at Ripley. “Are you okay?” they asked in unison.

I stood, squaring my shoulders to them as a rough heave of anxiety pierced Ripley.

I tugged her behind me. “She’s fine.”

Their gazes lingered on her injured cheek before their sights turned on me. “Did you hurt her?”

“What? No.”

“You hurt her,” the skinny one with snow-white hair confirmed. “She’s crying.” He stepped forward, asserting that he was the leader of the three. “Come on, Princess Ripley, we will take you away from this scum.”

“Fletcher,” Ripley whispered while she hid behind me. I don’t want to go with them .

I cleared my throat and flared out my arms to protect her. “I will take her back myself.”

The boy with the thick, dark tresses and even darker skin announced, “Like hell you are.”

Down their arms came their magic in mauve waves. Their fingers splayed out toward my chest. As I watched the starry recoil of magic crawl up the leader’s arm, a force struck me across the temple. I grunted as I fell to the side, a sharpness splitting through my head.

Two of the boys laughed and inched closer.

The smallest and youngest of the three stayed in place, hands balled near his chest and watching intently under short, bronze locks.

The white-haired boy sent magic into my chest that nailed me to the ground as his foot slammed into my ribs.

He leaned down, fist connecting with my eye, then again with my jaw.

Ripley’s cry rang out with vengeance, stealing the two boys’ attention, as if they could sense her in the same way I could now. The possibility that I was not the only one with this new bond sunk my heart into a deeper state of anger.

I took advantage of their distraction and grabbed hold of the white-haired boy’s hand.

Within a heartbeat, I sent his fingers backward with all my might.

A cracking pop let me know I’d limited his use of magic.

And as he screamed, I twisted myself to his left side and did the same with his other hand.

The boy fell into a fetal position, crying and cuddling his hands to his chest.

The short, dark-haired boy who had the biggest build of the three stepped forward.

And faster than I could grab him, his magic blazed through his arms as he let out a forceful grunt.

My feet went out from under me, and I was sent flying backward into the trunk of the large tree my hammock was tied to.

The back of my head slammed against the bough as I sunk down.

He stomped closer to me, foot coming down on my throat. “Where’s your magic now, scum?”

My hands came down on his boot as I struggled to push him off me. I lifted my foot and kicked him between the legs, causing him to drop his hands and lose his balance. He went tumbling onto his back as I sat up, wheezing and coughing.

I climbed to my feet and bent both sets of his fingers back. I looked to the smallest boy, licking my bloody lip over my bared teeth. “You want to see what it’s like to take her away from me too? ”

He timidly shook his head, turned, and raced down the hill. The shortest boy followed as I kicked the skinny one lying in a ball on the ground until he was rolling down the hill behind them. “From now on, ignore your bond to her!” I roared.

As I took a deep breath, Ripley’s intense emotions overwhelmed me and pulled me under her ocean of panic.

I looked around only to see an empty hill, no sign of her long, golden hair in sight. “Ripley? Ripley!” I climbed up the tree into my hammock to get to higher ground. “Where are you?”

Get off me!

I called my magic forth, desperate to communicate back with her, and came up empty again.

She was moving. Struggling.

“Ripley! Talk to me,” I called out.

But I didn’t need her to answer. I reached in to where I was now bonded to her to see if I could find her. If I listened to that connection hard enough, maybe it would lead me to her. I cleared my mind and pushed away my own panic. I could feel her. Was she suffocating?

Fletch—Someone has me!

Then, deafening silence.