Matching red stains seep through our clothes. Teeth clenched, Doug jerks the shard free. I gasp, pressing my hand to my wound as his murderous eye lifts to mine. He rubs his chest. A dark smear stains the front of his shirt. Frowning, he stares at the slash across his palm. My mouth thins as I register the matching cut on mine.

I’m stuck. Shackled to him by our magic. “This was all part of your stupid plan, wasn’t it?”

“This was definitely not the plan! How am I supposed to kill you if I can’t hurt you without hurting myself?” His face reddens in the warm glow of his fire. He bends to pick up the overturned lamp, setting it on the desk and resting his flame in the cradle of the broken bulb. Hands on his hips, he paces the demolished room, his staff abandoned on the floor.

“We can fix this,” I say with a forced calm. “We just have to figure out how we became connected in the first place and back our way out of it. It must have happened while we were fighting. Our magic has touched before, when we fought in Cuernavaca.” In a fit of rage, Doug had attacked me during the battle. I summoned a root to hold him back, and he pushed it away. Not with his hands, but with his mind. Overwhelmed by grief, he probably hadn’t even realized he’d been using his earth magic. I’m sure we weren’t connected then, but this time, I felt it when his will wrestled with mine for control of the plant. “We must have crossed some kind of barrier this time. Opened some kind of pathway between each other’s magic.”

He paces like a caged tiger. “I’ve never heard of that happening before.”

I think back to all my years of training. “It’s possible for the minds of two Springs to occupy a physical space at the same time, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting stuck like this.”

I massage my sternum, wondering which one of us the dull ache belongs to. Doug stops pacing, surprise coloring his cheeks.

“The pain, it’s not as bad as it was,” he says, leaning back against the wall, watching me with a curious expression.

“How is that even possible? If anything, you should feel worse. I saw Lyon after he took Michael’s magic.”

“I’m stronger than Lyon,” he says, practically spitting Lyon’s name. “I wasn’t just a Season. I was a Guard. I had far more magic.”

“You took far more than anyone should be able to handle. You should be writhing in agony. The magic should be clawing and fighting its way out of you. How is it even possible that you’re holding Gaia’s magic, too?”