Page 77 of Magic Claimed

As if sensing my worry, Faris stood up, knocking his chair over in his haste to get closer.

I had no idea what he intended to do, so I couldn’t have stopped him. Couldn’t have guessed what was about to happen. He reached out, hand extended towards Ethan, and in the blink of an eye, Ethan turned. Lashed out and grabbed Faris’s wrist. His eyes flashed brighter, and then Faris let out a hiss of anger or pain. Yanked his hand back…

The entire room froze, in a bizarre tableau that seemed to stop time itself—at least until the glow in Ethan’s eyes suddenly died and everyone took in a breath that finally shattered the tension.

Faris and Ethan stood only an arm’s length apart, staring atone another. Faris’s chest heaved, and his eyes went wide as he stared at his hand.

“What did you do?” he breathed. “How did you…”

Ethan took a step back, and his chin dropped, allowing his hair to fall in front of his eyes once more.

“I didn’t mean to,” he muttered. “You moved too fast. It was all the same magic, and I couldn’t stop.”

Couldn’t stop?

What had he done?

I grabbed Faris’s hand. Looking for wounds. Checking for burns. But all I could see was bloodstains on unblemished skin. “There’s nothing here.”

“He healed it,” Faris said softly.

He’d healed it. Ethan’s magic had mended Faris’s torn and bloody knuckles.

My boss stared at his hand, flexing his fingers as if still not quite able to comprehend what had happened. “How in the hecking heck did you…”

He at least kept his expletives suitable for six-year-old ears, though I could immediately hear my Ari-bug giggling and murmuring “hecking heck” to herself.

“What you just did… It’s impossible.”

“So am I,” Ethan retorted, an unmistakeable challenge in his tone. “So areyou,if you ask a human. Fifty years ago, all of this would have been fiction.”

The two of them locked eyes.

“Then call it a miracle,” Faris said in a low voice. “And never doubt that I’m grateful. But you need to think very carefully about what you want next, and whether you want anyoneto know you can do this. Whether you evenwantto do it again. Because the moment anyone outside of this room finds out…”

Trust Faris to be thinking of Ethan’s future instead of how he could use this unexpected gift. And he was right. What Ethan had done—both to the bar and to Faris’s injured hand—was unprecedented. And if the general public understood what was possible?

It would be almost worse than what Ethan had already endured. He would be hounded to the ends of the earth. Locked up and used. Subject to enormous pressure and scrutiny.

But whether this became a gift or a curse depended most of all on Ethan himself. On whathewanted and how he chose to move forward.

And I hoped he understood that what Faris truly offered him now was achoice.

We’d had no choice in what had been done to us. What we’d experienced had been brutal, cruel, and unimaginably painful. But just like I’d discovered that night at the Symposium, Ethan, too, had a choice in who he was going to become.

This power that we’d paid for with so much suffering—even this could have a purpose. Even this could be more than a liability or a curse, or a tragedy waiting to happen.

But it was up to him to see that path and choose to take it.

“Youalready know,” Ethan said, his stance shifting so that he faced Faris fully. “So what are you going to do? Do you want to lock me up? Use me for your own benefit? Sell me to the highest bidder?”

Faris just snorted. “Thanks, but no thanks. As much fun asruling a criminal empire might be, I’m too busy babysitting and running a business to add kidnapping or extortion to my plate.”

I saw Seamus and Kira crack smiles, but Ethan remained still and watchful. He didn’t yet know Faris the way I did.

“I’m asking whatyouwant,” Faris clarified. “Because that matters. And you’re a part of this court now, so I’m willing to fight to make sure you get it.”

Logan shuffled forward to stand at Ethan’s elbow. “He means it,” he said earnestly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. And he’ll protect you if anyone else tries to make you.”