PAOLO POV
The past 72 hours had been a nightmare—one that didn’t seem to end, no matter how many times I woke up. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. Not school, not video games, not even the worst nightmares I’d ever had. None of those could compare to the terror I’d faced when Jacob took me, when the world I thought I knew was ripped away and replaced by something dark and twisted, something that didn’t make any sense.
It was only a few days ago that I was a normal seventeen-year-old, living in a world where magic was just a fantasy, something I read about in books or played in video games. But now... now I knew that magic was real, and it wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. It was terrifying, uncontrollable, and it had nearly cost me my life.
I remember it all too clearly. Th
