Raze struggles to hold me back. “Will you just...calm...down!”

My elbow snaps up between us, catching him hard in the nose, and I manage to pull myself free without getting stabbed. So he was bluffing.

“Listen, changeling—”

And with that one word, I know what he thinks of me. He doesn’t see me as something with the capacity to actually care whether Isolde lives or dies. I’m just a changeling, a shell that only looks human—and I have the compass. He keeps talking, but the words might as well be the sound of the wind passing through the rain, because they don’t mean a thing to me in the moment. I don’t care what he’s saying. I don’t care how destructive magic is. I don’t care that I hate it, that it’s just as likely to tear me apart from the inside out as to do what I want. Maybe both.

The feeling is cold and foreign, and it slithers dangerously into the back of my mind.

Destroy him.

I don’t just want to protect Isolde, to get away, to survive on the run, I want him to see what I can do. I want to hurt him.

I reach for the clouds, embracing the rain that drips down my sleeves and into my open mouth. The lightning is like an excited dog, all too eager to come when I call again. I fling my hands apart, and it answers.

Lightning snaps through the sky, brilliant and white and as refreshing as screaming at the top of your lungs as you run into a cold winter sea.

“Raze!” Olani dives forward, tackling Raze—but the lightning just consumes both of them.

The first strike was a test, weaker than what a real storm would produce. Enough to knock them backward but not to do permanent damage. I was holding back then. This time, what I call down is the storm, all of its energy in one concentrated blast.

But when the air clears, they’re still planted in the same spot. Olani’s hands are up, trembling, as if she’s holding an invisible shield, and sparks of lightning linger there long after they should have dispersed.

My breath catches in my chest, and I freeze in place.

She’s an enchanter.

Her face is twisted with the effort of deflecting my attack, but we both know it has to go somewhere. Magic always has a price. “Sorry,” she mouths, right before everything explodes in brilliant white light.

All of the raw power I’d directed at them rips my world in half, striking the middle of my chest. It’s not how I expected it to happen, but there it is—the price of magic.

My muscles all betray me at once, trembling and stiff. My skin burns. My insides burn. I’m completely lost in time and space, and all I know is the blinding, white-hot pain.

And then it stops.

I’ve fallen to my knees, but they can’t hold me any longer. I drop to the ground beside my sister, a horrible ache radiating out from my chest. I need to get up. I need to fight.