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But another, more rational part of her understood the danger. If she kept this up the building would catch fire. The bedroll she had been sitting on was already nothing but ash. She could inadvertently kill everyone in the factory above them, everyone here… including herself.
Including Alice.
Reluctantly, Fey pulled the Fire back, closer to her skin, and it hummed happily in response to her demand. She reigned the power in until the flames were nothing but a single blaze, a dancing ball of white-hot power that fit in the palm of her hand.
“I was right,” Alice said in amazement, her eyes wide as saucers. “It works.”
With effort, Fey pulled her eyes from the flame in her hand to look at her.
The flames may not have hurt Fey, but Alice hadn’t been so lucky. She held her hands palms up, in her lap, the hands that had held Fey and brought her back into her own body. They were blistered and burned, the skin inflamed and already starting to swell.
The fire in Fey’s palm died immediately.
“Alice,” she whispered, horrified. “Your hands.”
Alice shook her head, with a reassuring smile. “I’m fine, really. Perks of being a Fire Witch, myself—it never hurts me as much as it should. We have healers here, upstairs, anyway—Demons that can draw the burn out, and I’ll be as good as new. Honest.”
Fey stared down at her own hands. They looked the same, even when she turned them over to look at the backs. Exactly the same. Shouldn’t she look different? It seemed impossible that she could be the same Witch on the outside, not with this power roiling inside her.
“Try to call Earth,” Alice suggested.
Fey looked over at her like she was crazy, but Alice just smiled. “Just try it, Fey. Trust me. I felt you shift the ground earlier.”
So had she. Taking a deep breath, Fey reached inside herself and tried to call Earth.
It was harder. Harder than calling Air, and infinitely harder than calling Water. And it felt… different. Where Fire had been a pulse, and Water a torrential flow, Earth was drum.
But she felt it, felt it in her body just as clearly as she had felt the others. And when she called it, the floor around her shifted, turning liquid and flowing like water for a moment before stilling and returning to its solid state.
“I thought you might have all four,” Alice admitted, but she still sounded shocked. “But seeing it? That’s something else. That’s… wow.”
“But…I don’t understand,” Fey said, staring down at her hands in amazement. “How can I control all four elements? Am I… am I a royal?”
“No,” Alice answered instantly, shaking her head. “No, you’re not from the royal family. At least, I don’t think you are. You’ve been lied to, Fey. We’ve all been lied to. The royal family aren’t the only ones who can command all four elements,” she explained. And she pulled another vial from her pocket—this one silver grey. Fey recognized it instantly, her stomach twisting in horror as she looked at it. She’d been dreaming about that elixir for years, after all. Dreaming about when she drank it during her Awakening.
“They’ve been poisoning us, Fey.” Alice continued. “The Queen’s White Priestesses have been poisoning young Witches for generations, making sure no one was ever powerful enough to challenge the throne. What I just gave you? It wasn’t Allium.
“It was the antidote.”
Chapter 47
With her new powers, Fey felt her hunger return with a vengeance. Alice left to get more food and have her hands tended to, and while she was gone Fey couldn’t help but call her powers again.
Water came even easier than before. Stronger, too. It filled her not like a rushing river, but like an ocean. An endless sea roiling inside her, so deep she thought she might never touch the bottom.
Air felt just the same as before, though. A soft, gentle power that she called and dismissed.
Earth was difficult, and though the element responded to her, it felt distant, harder. Like a language she had to concentrate to understand.
And Fire?
Calling Fire was as easy as breathing.
How have I lived without this, Fey wondered, watching flames dance from fingertip to fingertip at her command.
No wonder she couldn’t heal, couldn’t use her primary power the way it was intended, she realized. Was this her real power? Her whole life she’d felt out of place, just as Alice had said. She had been forced to reshape Water to be a weapon… was it all because of this? Because of something that had been taken from her? A power that was made just for her, that had been stolen away before she ever knew that she had it?
Fey heard Alice’s footsteps on the stairs and advance across the basement, and she dismissed her power, letting the flames disappear into nothing.
