Tangled in Moonlight: Unshifted (Ava and Lucas)

Chapter 229 Ava: Fire

Bureaucracy in the Fae Ward moves with the pace of a paralyzed sloth, leaving me with an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, as if staying here is the worst decision I've ever made.

Selene spends most of her time slinking around the Fae Ward, finding pockets of space with less wards to sneeze over. Vanessa and Marcus stick with me, with Vanessa sharing my bedroom.

Our first lesson doesn't happen for three days. Why?

Application for Unlicensed Magus to Practice Dangerous Magic Within Residential Areas.

It's an actual title of a piece of paperwork Magister Orion had to file. Apparently, new wizards (though the official Fae-paperwork term is magus, unknown origin) are deemed a deadly force. Whoever runs this place has a serious stick up their butt about me learning magic.

"I don't like it," Vanessa says, staring out the window. "They'll have your name on official paperwork. We have no idea how deep Renard's influence lies."

"It's only within the Fae Ward," I point out, like I have the other thirty times she's mentioned it. "If they're going to find me here, the paperwork won't be the only reason."

Marcus, of course, is quiet. We already know how he feels. He hates it and doesn't trust the paperwork, either.

Not that I disagree with either of them—it's just that, like them, I feel stuck.

that I've been unable to reach Lucas for three days. Knowing

has all

surrounded by five papers with different runes written on them. Unlike the magic book

happens when I

these five papers and told me to find the elements within me that correspond to them. With such vague instructions, it's no

how I try to commune with a single element within me, nothing

before me. "It helps with fighting. Learning to center, to focus only on what matters. Maybe you're too in tune with

grab the one that

away, leaving only the sensation of my own

me from within, I imagine myself reaching out to touch it. Nothing happens. I try to visualize tugging at

up inside me. How am I supposed to access this power if nothing works? Taking another deep breath, I force myself to relax.

my meditation, my thoughts drift to the rune for fire sitting on the paper in front of me. Fire. Destructive, passionate, life-giving. I think

Burning.

another. A dream? A vision? Whatever it was,

pain that raged through every fiber of my being. I couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't see. There was

the phantom sensations wash over me. I want to pull away from the memory, to escape the torment,

pain. No name, no self, just pure sensation. And in that moment of complete dissolution,

that feeling, on the memory of being unmade by fire. The bright core of magic within me pulses in