This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,33
permission, she mutters under her breath and points her wand at the back of my hand, where I rest my palm on my stomach.
A second later, a golden flame flares across my fingertips, burning hot as it bursts along my skin.
Chapter Eight
I let out a scream before the flame vanishes.
I blink at my perfectly unharmed hand.
“Did you feel any pain?” Helen asks, her question urgent.
I shake my head. “None at all.” My scream was instinctive. A reaction to the pain I thought I would feel.
Helen’s eyes are wide as she closely examines my hand, turning it over. “You don’t have any burn marks.” She steps back, exchanging a look with Iyana before she turns to me. “That test proved my theory that you’re highly resistant to magic.”
“Okay, like I asked, what does this mean?” I ask.
Helen taps her finger urgently on her wand, the skin around her eyes tight with tension. “Tell me something, Tessa, can you sense what’s going on in this House? Where the women are, what their powers are, that sort of thing?”
When I first arrived, Helen told me that my senses would be dampened here. “No,” I say. “It’s just like you said. I can’t use my wolf’s senses, just my normal human ones.”
The tension around Helen’s eyes eases. “Good.” She exhales slowly. “And also interesting because it begins to explain to me what kind of magic you’re resistant to.” She waves her wand gently in the air, gesturing around at the room. As she does so, colors stream from her wand.
“There are many different kinds of magic, but they generally fall into four types,” she says.
“The first is light magic. It is the magic of love and strength. A warrior’s magic.” The colors around her wand begin to take shape, forming into dragons of all colors: crimson, black, and golden. The magnificent creatures dip and soar through the air around us, their powerful wings disturbing the air across my face.
“Then there is dark magic. It comes from draining life. Some know it as sorcery.” The dragons crash into a blackened and burned landscape filled with crumbling bones, their bodies smashing into dust that fills the air like snow.
“The third type of magic is elemental magic. It is the power of nature,” Helen says, continuing to wave her wand. Green grass sprouts across the barren landscape, a river forms, water rushing over stones, mountains rise up in the background peaked with ice, and bright sunlight streams across the air, brightening the room around us.
“And then there’s the magic that sits at the foundation of the world—old magic, which some supernaturals call ‘deep magic.’” The perspective of the image shifts again, rising rapidly higher as the sunlight fades and the stars and moon dominate the sky, bright and luminescent.
“This house was formed on a foundation of old magic,” Helen says. “It would be a very rare thing if you were immune to old magic. Even creatures of old magic themselves—as rare as they are—are not immune to each other. But you are immune to my healing magic, which is light magic. You also resisted the destructive flame I just attempted to burn your hand with. That was dark magic. As for elemental magic, which is commonly controlled by fae creatures, I guess we will have to wait and see.”
My voice sticks in my throat. My understanding of magic just expanded, but I still don’t understand what this means for me. “Is my resistance a good thing?”
“It is a good thing, but… also a bad thing.” Helen grimaces. “It’s detrimental because it means whatever pain relief I give you will wear off quickly. It also means your wounds could take longer to heal because my healing spell won’t have the intended impact. On the positive side, it means that an enemy who tries to use magic on you will have a very hard time slowing you down.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that brute force can kill you, but magic won’t do a damn thing.”
My jaw drops. “But…”
Iyana peels herself off the wall. She has been quiet through the conversation, but now she exchanges another look with Helen.
“I was going to leave Hidden House and join Tristan next week,” Iyana says, speaking with Helen, the two of them suddenly ignoring me. “But now I think I should stay.”
“It’s up to you, Iyana.”
“Tristan needs me, but… I’ll stay for another week. If things look promising, I’ll stay longer.”
I glare between them. “Enough with the cryptic conversation.”