Wyn jerked up to me when I yelled, the fear in her eyes almost as painful as the heat that surged through my hand. I expected her to apologize, but she only stared at me, her eyes wide as if she was trying to figure out why I had reacted the way I had.
I shook my hand as my magic extinguished the branding iron that had ignited inside of me, glad when the fire lessened to nothing more than an exaggerated heat and I could focus on keeping my mind intact. I gasped as the ice chilled me, keeping my eyes away from the blood-drenched wall across from me.
“That hurt,” I gasped as I closed my eyes, bringing back Ilyan’s dream in an attempt to keep the madness away.
“My magic hurt you?” Wyn said, the confusion I had seen on her face even more defined in her voice.
“Burned me more like,” I grumbled as I brought my hand up to eye level, almost expecting the skin to be charred away, yet it was smooth, like nothing had happened. Wyn ducked down in an attempt to see better, but didn’t say anything, her heart-shaped face screwed up in confusion.
“What happened? Your magic was so cold before.”
“It’s never done that, moved like that…” She spoke to my hand, her focus a million miles away.
“What has never done that before?” I was trying not to panic, but Wyn’s obvious lack of knowledge was not good for my nerves. That was, if I had any left. She may have just burned them all off.
I waited for a response, but none came, so I pulled my hand into my chest in an attempt to get her to stop looking at it.
I don’t know what it was about the way she was staring, but she looked lost in thought, her dark eyes haunted by horrors I had never seen before. Something was definitely up, and it worried me.
“Wyn?” I asked when she didn’t look away, the blank stare starting to bother me again.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly as her eyes finally shifted back to me. “It’s probably just the Drak magic, my Trpaslík blood and all that. Maybe my magic hates you.”
Her voice was light, as though she was trying to make a joke, but the sound did not reach her eyes, and I flinched a bit, waiting for whatever was going to come next to jump out and slap me in the face.
“Are you saying we are enemies now?” I asked, unable to help the way my voice cracked in the echoing hallway. I stepped away from her out of habit; that one word seeming to awaken a wild animal, the raw emotion expecting an attack. I knew she hadn’t meant it that way, but I couldn’t help the way my magic flared. Whether it was in preparation of attack or to run for my life, I wasn’t sure. My anxiety was almost too raw for me to control after my last panic attack.
“Well, aren’t we? Technically, I mean,” Wyn said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes before she turned and continued down the stone hallways. “Not like I would ever actually attack you.”
Her voice echoed back to me as she waved her hand through the air. Her actions made it clear that she hadn’t meant it at all the way I had perceived it.
“No!” I yelled as I ran to catch up with her, the loud slaps of my red shoes sounding twice as loud as they really were in the seemingly endless, stone hallway that stretched before us. The large, wooden slabs of the doors were set so perfectly that, if it weren’t for the color, I wouldn’t have been able to tell they were there at all.
“What?” she asked as she laughed at me. For some reason she obviously didn’t believe that I didn’t view us as enemies. It seemed like such a weird thought to me, though. She was my best friend. Why would I want to attack her? And yet, somehow she seemed to feel like it was expected that I would try.
“Trpaslík, Drak, Sk?ítek. Human. Chosen Child. It doesn’t mean anything to me,” I said as I fell into step next to her.
“Spoken like a true human,” she said in a ridiculous baby voice as she patted my head. I batted her hand away, fully prepared to scowl at her, but she only laughed.
“Half-human,” I corrected her, unable to stop the smile that spread over my face with the memory of Vienna sausages.
“Whatever. You are kind of everything,” she said with a smile, yet the words only wiped out my temporarily good mood.
“So I have been told.”
She was right after all. I was kind of everything. Ilyan may be half-Chosen, but he was also half Sk?ítek. He knew what he was. However, my father was a Drak, my mother a human, and my neck held that mark that had given me every other kind of magic. I was a little bit of everything.
“What’s it like?” she asked softly, her voice loud in my ear as she leaned in close and wove her arm through mine again. I only groaned at her question, fully expecting her to guilt me into a step-by-step kissing documentary. Instead she pulled me to a stop before one of the many doors that lined these hallways, this one bearing the same handprints I had seen on her door at the motel except now it looked like someone had tried to scrub off the larger handprint with a scouring brush.
My heart clenched together at the faded paint—at her heartbreak—knowing I should look away, but unable to make myself do so.
“What’s what like?” I asked, my voice dead.