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But this time, I wasn’t about to let him destroy all of my hard work, all of the sacrifices that I had made.

I landed against the wall, shifting my gravity as Monkey could. Monkey’s magic flowed into me, and I kept hold of it, stealing it back from the animalia, leaving her powerless. Monkey screeched, and I saw her stumble backward, racing to her position in the spiral, but it was too late. I had her magic.

Bracing myself against the wall, I dove forward, flying through the air and meeting Crane mid-flight. I grabbed hold of the animalia, weighing down her light bird bones. We fell to the ground, shattering the marble floor as I increased our weight, giving us the heaviness of a dragon. She cried out, but her wings were broken. When she turned into me, her long beak tore at my skin, but my flesh was made of lava, my muscles twisting with the strength of the forests of Tavornai.

We fell to the earth again, and I grabbed hold of her neck, lifting her off the ground, feeling her magic flow into me.

I had been too fast with Monkey. With Crane I could see the difference. She was still an animalia, still held her form beneath the illusion that made her look human, but she lost the magic of the hunter, the sharpness of her eye that let her see her prey even among the glimmering water. She lost the swiftness, the strength of her wings that let her carry a fish twice her weight.

She stumbled back, careening into several other animalia, all too cowardly to face me directly.

They had courage when they were together, a mass of claws and teeth. Now, they saw what I had done to some of the others, and they grew afraid.

Fox moved around the outside. Her magic was more subtle. I could feel the wound she had left in my back. Even with my power, it still had not healed. Hers was the magic of trickery.

If she could land a hit on me through a clever trick, it would not be something I could easily shake off.

She screamed, her voice going high and desperate. I turned toward her, but she was already gone, leaving a small child that looked like Eonaî in her place.

It froze me for a moment. The child had my sister’s eyes, the small frown my sister would get when she was lost in the wilderness.

“Airón, will you not save me?” my sister asked. “I’m so scared.”

I stumbled, reaching for Eonaî even though I knew it wasn’t her. Everything else seemed to fade, and Eonaî held out wide-open hands for me. I could not hurt my sister, not even when I knew it was not her.

As soon as I touched her, Eonaî smiled, showing sharp teeth and eyes that glimmered like the forest, instead of being blue like the sky. With her sharp teeth, she bit into my throat, and I held her close, giving everything to her, because I could not deny my sister anything.

“Tear open my throat,” I said, “and see what you find.”

Because I recognized the ocean of power that settled in my stomach, the world of it as it flowed through my blood, powering my body, letting me do what I had to.

Fox tore her mouth free, her muzzle bloody, her eyes shifting with laughter.

Then she froze, eyes going wide, mouth falling open. She reared back. But she had hurt me fairly. She had used her magic and won.

“No—” Fox fell on the floor, scrambling backward, bowing her head, unable to look at me.

Owl was already on my back, her sharp claws tearing into the hole that Fox had made with her knife. She had not noticed yet. She would.

“You think I do not know this will not kill you?” Owl tutted in my ear. “I do not want to kill you. I want you to know your place.”

“And I would like you to understand yours. I am no one’s to claim. I am no one’s to kill. I am only myself.” I turned, letting Owl’s talons tear my flesh from my body and reveal what was underneath, revealed a pulse of the ocean of power that I could feel growing under my skin, forming a layer of scales beneath the burn of fire on my skin and the living pulse of the forest in my muscles.

I felt my body shifting, scales covering my too-smooth skin, my mouth extending and my tail lengthening. I had made myself a new body, and now the magic was making it all over again.

No, it was only because I had made myself a new body that I could make it again like this. It was only because I had used great magic that I could do this again now.

“You are ours and we will use you because that is all humans are, that is all they should be—” Owl broke off. She had torn off my shirt and jacket and half my flesh and revealed what was underneath.

She was too smart to not understand what it revealed, what I was. She did not fall back like Fox, who even now desperately tried to claw back to her place in the circle, her nails leaving gouges in the floor as her magic seeped away from her, stolen by the red infection of blood spreading across the ground. Her disappearing power left her a small woodland creature, finally finding her place in the spiral.

Monkey had shrunk to her natural form, her tail clutched in both of her small hands, her face panicked. She curled into a tight ball, but wasn’t able to leave the spiral, desperately hoping that she would not be noticed, that she could escape, even as the crushing knowledge of what I was, who I was, came down on her as heavily as a mace.

Owl scrambled back, but she was covered in my blood, the red coating her feathers, dyeing them, stealing her human form from her, stealing her magic. She had offered me her magic and then tried to take it back, a promise broken to the one creature that she could not lie to.

She became a bird again, her wisdom locked behind intelligent eyes. The hunter in her was too clever not to recognize that the prey she had caught was too much for her to handle.

With her human voice still working, she begged, “Please, forgive my insult, I did not know who you were. You did not tell me.”