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.

for three days. Knowing that they're fighting over there, not knowing the full

has all of us

subject to sit on the bed beside me, where I'm surrounded by five papers with different runes written on them. Unlike the magic book I'm still kicking myself over for leaving in my room at the lodge, these runes don't disappear, and Vanessa and

Nothing." Frustrated, I grab the different papers, looking them over again and again. There's nothing that happens when I touch them; no tingle or buzz within my fingertips. I can't feel

me these five papers and told me to find the elements within me that correspond to them. With

to commune with a single element within me, nothing

papers before me. "It helps with fighting. Learning to center, to focus only

before—I grab the one that means fire, close my eyes,

of my own body, its thudding heartbeat vibrating through my chest, and the pulsing core of magic within me. It's there, bright

happens. I try to visualize tugging at it, like pulling on a string, but it remains stubbornly distant. Knocking on it in my mind yields no response

How am I supposed to access this power if nothing works? Taking another deep breath, I force myself to relax. Maybe I'm trying

of 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 about its properties—how

Burning.

life, but of another. A dream? A

raged through every fiber of my being. I couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't see. There was nothing but the all-consuming agony of flesh melting

wash over me. I want to pull away from the memory, to escape the torment, but something holds me there. This

nothing. Only pain. No name, no self, just pure sensation. And in that moment of complete dissolution,

within me pulses in response, as if recognizing a kindred