Page 89 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“Fine.” When nothing about this was fine.

Angela drew in a slow breath and peered at the ceiling where torrents of rain had no business being.

“I wish the rain would stop,” she said flippantly, half daring the universe to mock her.

Only the rain did.

Not gradually.

It just…

Stopped.

One moment, there was a thunderless downpour of fat raindrops and pools of water; the next, there was a silence so abrupt it seemed to suck the air from the corridor. Water clung to beams, pooling over stone floors, and dripped off desks, but there was no more rain.

“Oh, shit.” Her stomach dropped so fast that her knees weakened, as if her body was standing on wobbly ground, as the full weight crashed into her all at once, not just for what she’d done, but what it meant…

She had done magick. Her?

If she did this without trying, what else could she do? What if next time it wasn’t just rain? What if she hurt someone?

The edges of the corridor tilted, and her perspective melted in a way that made her wobble; she felt faint.

Instantly, Zarek caught her before the floor rushed up to meet her.

“I’ve got you.” He held her with steady arms, the contact sent a shiver through her that had nothing to do with fear. The warm leather of his chest was solid beneath her cheek, allowing her to focus on the steady thrum of his heartbeat—hating how much she wanted to stay exactly where she was.

“What is wrong with me?”

“Magick, when new, can make the body weak. It’s like a muscle; you have to build up to use it.”

“I don’t—I can’t. Magick. Me?” She wasn’t even making sense. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as shame and awe tangled in her throat. “What am I?”

She buried her face against his chest, but it hid nothing. She heard the whispers, caught the shocked expressions from the others in the corridor, which revealed the bigger picture of what they were all trying so hard not to say.

What she’d done—they couldn’t control it. A place where their rules of magic did not apply to her.

To think, all those years of trying to be normal, of burying the sense that she just didn’t fit in. Constantly telling herself she was fine, that she was just like everyone else, she just needed to try harder.

And now this.

Proof that she had never been normal. That she’d been lying to herself all along.

“Zarek, I didn’t mean to do this. I just—I thought it, and it happened. What if next time—”

“We’ll figure it out.”

But that didn’t change the fact that she might just be that new power that no one knew how to unload, which is why the Commander allowed her to be here, and why he was looking at her now like a tool in their war against Katarra.

“I’ll take you back to your room.” Zarek carried her, because she doubted she was steady enough to walk.

Behind them, the Sworn Exarchs did not speak.

They watched.

Not because it had rained.

But because the wards had held. And she had somehow overridden them all.