I had used this word before. I had a feeling it was to register the curse, a feeling that strengthened when a wave of disconnection slipped over me and I felt the eerie sensation of being in a large room with hundreds of people, all talking at once and ignoring everyone. My heart was pounding. I could feel the curse strengthening in me, winding its way through my DNA, becoming me, pulsing with the force of an unheard heart. Dizzy, I opened my eyes.

Trent was standing above me. There was a faint glow of yellow surrounding him. I looked at my hands, seeing my aura for the first time without the aid of the scrying mirror. It was beautiful, gold and pure. No smut. I could have cried, seeing it. If only it would last, but I knew it was only because things were in flux.

“Are you okay?” he said, and I nodded. I had to finish this before I chickened out.

Mouth dry, I turned the stick a hundred and eighty degrees to move his sample to my loop and vice versa. “Omnia mutantur,” I whispered, invoking the curse.

All things change, I thought, then jumped when a feeling of being peeled out of my skin rippled over me. My hands shook, and when I looked, my aura was gone. It just…wasn’t there.

“I had no choice,” I said to Trent in explanation—maybe apology—then clenched my gut when the imbalance hit me.

Pain struck deep, doubling me over, and I pushed violently away in a panic. My foot scattered the curse as I curled into a ball, and I smelled extinguished candle.

“Jenks!” Trent shouted. “Something’s wrong!”

I couldn’t breathe. Bent into myself, I tried to open my eyes. My face scraped against the decaying carpet, and I grunted as I tried to find control. My head felt like it was splitting in two, and I cracked my lids, desperate to see. That made it worse. Oh, God, the imbalance was stronger than anything I’d ever felt before.

“Rache, you okay?” Jenks said, inches from me as he hovered over the carpet.

I got one clean breath in before the pain hit me again. I didn’t want it, but the imbalance would kill me if I didn’t take it as my own.

“Hold her!” Jenks shouted. “I can’t help her, damn it! Trent, hold her before she hurts herself!” he demanded, and I sobbed when I felt Trent’s arms go around me to keep me from rolling down the stairs.

“I take it,” I gasped, my head exploding and my chest cramping. “I take the damn curse.”