classmate who has the ability to use lightning.
She’s also sitting right in front of me today.
“Put your cuff on, Daria,” he orders, keeping his cool a lot better than I would if I’d almost just been struck by lightning.
“But—” My classmate sounds totally shocked. Her black curls frame her head like a halo, and she sits up straighter, glancing around.
“Now, please.” He raises his bushy brows, tilting his chin down. “I like to think I’m not quite so bad a professor that you all want to assassinate me, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
There’s some laughter around the room. Daria looks around, like she’s trying to figure out who just pranked her, but then puts her cuff back on slowly, still confused.
Shit, that was totally my fault, not hers. I did that. But how?
I’m not exactly about to raise my hand and say so in front of everyone when I have no explanation for what just happened.
Instead, I wait until after class. The school admins are very strict about when, where, and how we can take off our cuffs, and I don’t want Daria to get in trouble for something she didn’t do. Remedial students or those having a hard time maintaining even basic control sometimes have to keep them on even during cuff-less classes, which is always super embarrassing. It’s the magical academy equivalent of having to sit in the corner with a pointy dunce cap on.
“Hey, um, professor?”
Professor Perkins turns to me, adjusting his bowtie as the other students file out. “Yes, Miss Sinclair?”
“Daria didn’t create that lightning strike. I think… I think it was me.” I can still feel the tingle in my fingers from it, like there’s a little bit of electric energy left over.
Perkins chuckles, his ruddy cheeks rounding as he smiles. “I appreciate you trying to cover for Miss Hayes. But don’t worry, she’s not in trouble. Sometimes volatile energy magic like hers can be hard to control, and I know she didn’t mean to do it. There’s no reason for you to worry. That’s why we have the magic dampening braces.”
“I’m—”
I am worried, he’s not wrong about that. I don’t want another student to get in trouble because of me. But I’m not just making this up to cover for her, damn it, it’s the actual truth.
Or rather… I think it is. Could it have been Daria? The idea of me summoning lightning like that… It’s crazy, right? Maybe I just imagined it? I’m tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I do sometimes zone out in this class.
“It’s kind of you to worry about Miss Hayes. You always keep an eye out for others, and that’s an admirable quality,” Professor Perkins goes on, probably thinking of when I found Jessica in the locker room after Raul attacked her. “But I’m afraid it’s also quite difficult to cover for someone when they have a very specific magical skillset. If we were all fire elementalists, that would be one thing— but with Unpredictables, where everyone has their own very unique power, it’s near-impossible to take the blame for someone else’s slip-up.”
“Right.”
My fingers have stopped tingling. Were they ever really tingling?
Yeah, they must have been.
I’m so confused and honestly a bit freaked out, because I have no idea how I made that lightning happen… or if I even did it.
“Have a good rest of your day, Miss Sinclair,” Professor Perkins says, gathering up the books on his desk. He’s clearly got other things to do.
“Right. Yeah, you too, professor.”
Slipping my cuff back on, I hurry out of the room. I curl my fingers into fists as I walk, as if I’m worried some stray bolts of electric magic could fly out of them at any moment despite the dampening brace I’m wearing.
I’m glad Daria won’t get in trouble, even if she was a little embarrassed to be called out in front of everyone like that. But that still doesn’t explain what happened.
My head feels a little fuzzy. I was daydreaming in class, and I’m tired, and rune magic fries my brain like nothing else. But I can’t have entirely imagined what happened, what I did.
I need to figure out what’s going on with me.
Chapter 11
The weirdness only gets worse over the next few weeks.
It’s not lightning. No, that would actually freak me out less. It’s all kinds of magic.
I don’t know what’s going on. It feels like a new sort of magic is bubbling up inside me—only my body can’t seem to