Blaise
I did not remember walking back to the guest cottage.
One moment I was standing among the birches with my fingers dug into the bark hard enough to split my nails, and the next I was sitting on the edge of a narrow bed in the dark, staring at my own hands as though they belonged to someone else.
They were shaking.
I closed them into fists, and the candle on the windowsill flared and died. Not from any draft. The wick simply went out, snuffed by the pressure of something I hadn't meant to release. Down the hill, I heard the old oak by the porch creak, long and low, like a ship under strain.
Control it, I told myself, in Odalys's voice. You are a warlock of the Silverthorn Coven, not a boy with a scraped knee.
It did nothing. The picture would not leave.
Silver light drifting up
