Chapter 13

Rosabel La Rouge

Colors.

So many, so bright, so vivid—but the forest wasn’t to blame for it. The colors hadn’t exploded from it —they were coming out of Taylor’s hand.

Colors were coming out of Taylor’s right hand.

I had never before been more shocked in my life, not even when Madeline told me I’d be entering the Iris Roe. Time stood still and the whole forest, the whole world held their breath with me. Taylor did, too, and her eyes never blinked as she looked at the miniature rainbow coming out of her skin, which was fading and fading and leaving way for the smallest ball of light hovering right over her palm.

Right there—on her palm was magic.

Magic radiating energy just like it normally does when Iridians use it.

Magic.

Taylor slowly turned her eyes to me, and she looked in awe and terrified and begging for help at the same time.

It was a second’s decision. I slammed my hand over hers with too much strength, and the sound of it echoed in the forest while I willed that light to get back in her skin, right where it came from.

Darkness in the forest again. The moon was once more the brightest light, and Taylor and I remained seated there, breathing heavily, gripping each other’s hands with all our strength.

“What…what…”

I didn’t fucking know what to say.

Because I saw that. I saw that with my own eyes. I felt the energy—it was a light ball made of magic. Made of flames of all colors— like the fucking rainbow. On her hand. On Taylor’s hand.

“I-I-I’m sorry,” Taylor said, shaking her head as she looked at me and then…

Then she looked at her other hand. The hand in which she held the bracelet.

Every inch of my body froze.

“I’m sorry, Rora. I didn’t…I didn’t mean to.” She took her hand back and put the bracelet in mine, then dragged herself away, closer to the trunk. “I d-d-didn’t mean to, I swear.”

If you’d have cut off my head right now, not a drop of blood would have come out of me. “ How ?” I choked. “How did you do that, Taylor?”

The girl kept shaking her head. “I didn’t—I-I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” I said, and when I leaned closer, she tried to get farther away, like she was afraid of me. “Taylor, look at me—it’s fine! Don’t be afraid. It’s okay. We’re both fine.” And I was the adult in this situation, so I had no choice but to keep my shit together. Funny how that actually worked in keeping me grounded. “We’re okay. Breathe with me, will you? Let’s just breathe.”

Taland was in front of my mind’s eye, telling me the same thing, like always. So, I breathed and Taylor breathed and eventually she closed her eyes and she stopped trying to shrink away from me.

“It’s okay, I swear. I just need you to tell me how you did it. Just tell me how, okay? Can you do that?”

Because what the actual fuck!

“I-I don’t know,” she said, looking down at my hand, at the bracelet. “It was that thing. It…it pulled me. It pulled my hand like it wanted me to raise it, and then…then it got hot. Really hot.”

I wrapped my hands around the bracelet—it felt the same as always now, just cold metal against my skin.

“I don’t know how. It just…it just pulled my hand and then something came over me and my other hand heated up, too, and then…the-the-the colors…” She’d brought her right hand to her chest and rubbed circles over her robe, like she was trying to comfort herself. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t shaking anymore, but she was in shock, her face white as a ghost.

“It’s okay,” I kept saying, probably more for my benefit than hers. “It’s okay, it’s fine. Has that ever happened to you before?”

“No—never,” Taylor said. “I can’t do magic—I’m Mud.”

Mud.

She was Mud.

My ears rang and I realized I’d forgotten that part completely. Here I was, thinking about how she was fourteen years old and she couldn’t have possibly gotten a spell to work for her the very first time she tried—completely overlooking the fact that she was Mud!

Now I panicked. Being the adult no longer mattered—I was panicking.

“I need you to listen to me very carefully, Taylor,” I said as I looked around the forest, finally thinking to make sure that we were alone. Finally thinking to make sure that nobody had seen that. “You will tell nobody about this, okay? Nobody at all. And if somebody saw—your family or your neighbors or anyone at all, and they ask you, you say that I was doing firework spells for you, okay? You say I made those colors with a spell. Do you understand me?” She nodded her head a million times. “No matter what happens, no matter who asks you— I did that magic, not you. I did.”

“You did,” she repeated, still just as breathless. Just as terrified.

And somehow, I felt even worse.

“I’m sorry, Taylor. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have…” My voice trailed off as I shook my head.

Done what? I asked myself. I shouldn’t have given her an old bracelet made of mud to play with? I shouldn’t have told her a first-degree light-calling spell that she shouldn’t have been able to pull off even if she was Iridian?

I shouldn’t have wished I could have given her all my magic, just to see her happy a little longer?

Goddess, what the hell is happening?

“It’s not your fault,” said Taylor. “It’s not—it’s not your fault.”

But it was.

If I hadn’t been here tonight, she’d have been in her trailer, sleeping. That bracelet wouldn’t have been in her hands, and I wouldn’t have stupidly wished to give her all my magic—that stuff was dangerous! Magic was dangerous—something I knew well.

I put the bracelet in my pocket. “It’s late. We’re both tired. Let’s get you to bed, okay? Let’s get you to bed.”

For once, Taylor didn’t protest, didn’t ask me to stay longer. For once, she followed me in silence all the way back to the edge of the forest and her trailer. Nobody in the street—it was late, and the lights in most houses of the neighborhood were off. Nobody around us that I could see.

“What’s going to happen now?” said Taylor, and again, she sounded so afraid.

I lowered on one knee in front of her and grabbed her hands—shaking, so cold. “Nothing,” I told her. “Nothing at all is going to happen because nobody saw. I’ll be staying here for a little while longer to make sure of that, okay? Nothing’s going to happen, Taylor.”

“But why did that happen? What…” She shook her head, squeezed my hands tightly. “What’s wrong with me?”

Goddess, that hurt.

“ Nothing! Are you kidding me—nothing’s wrong with you. You’re actually perfect,” I said because she really was. “And I’ll figure out what happened for sure, but it was probably just my magic that got mixed with you and the bracelet somehow. Remember my friend that I told you about who helped me in the Iris Roe?” She nodded again, some of the fear fading from her face. “I’m pretty sure this was like that, only it happened accidentally.” Which was the only explanation I could think of so far. “You’re safe—that’s all that matters. You’re safe.”

“Okay,” she finally said. “Okay, yes, okay.”

And she hugged me.

Not as surprised as I was to see a rainbow coming out of her hand, but close. She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me to her chest tightly for a second, then let go and ran all around the trailer, disappearing from my view.

Meanwhile I was still on one knee on the ground, blinking slowly while I stared at nothing, trying to come to terms with the way this night had gone so far.

Eventually, I stood up. Eventually, I went to the other side of the street, hid under the shadow of the last house across from Taylor’s trailer, and I stayed there for over an hour, just to make sure that nobody had seen. Just to make sure that nobody was coming for Taylor, that the IDD hadn’t somehow witnessed that rainbow of light.

They hadn’t, though. It would have taken them less than an hour to get here—and that’s without hurrying—so I was pretty sure nobody was coming. And for as long as I waited, I didn’t allow myself to think at all.

Finally, when two whole hours passed and nobody moved around the neighborhood, and nobody came for Taylor, I convinced myself to get on my bike and go home.

Madeline had been very… forgiving about me going out and coming back at odd hours since the Iris Roe, for which I was thankful. I wasn’t trying to sneak in or out anymore to keep off the guards’ radar, and she hadn’t once mentioned me being late or threatened to not let me in if it happened again—which I expected. Not that I’d have stopped but it was easier not to have to think about avoiding guards and tricking wards, especially tonight. Especially when I felt like a ghost rather than a real person as I ran up the stairs and into my room, locked the door and forced myself to breathe.

The first thing I did was chant a spell to keep prying ears and eyes away from my room right now. The pain sliced me wide open, but it didn’t last.

Then I pulled the drapes in front of the windows, too, just in case, and with a shaking hand, I threw the bracelet on the bed fast like I was suddenly afraid it would bite me.

“What. The. Fuck,” I asked it, and the events of the night had been so absurd that a part of me thought it might even answer.

It didn’t.

I toed my boots off and hung my jacket behind the closet door, then kneeled in front of the edge of the bed, hands together as I looked at it. Just looked at that thing like I had the first night I stole it. Still expected it to start leaking magic or reveal whatever curse it was infused with, but it didn’t. It didn’t do anything at all, and I remembered that night I stole it from the Vault, how the guards had run their devices that searched for magical signatures over that box. I’d hidden the bracelet under the bones Cassie had been checking out, but those wands and that little round gadget would have picked up the magical energy of this thing if it had any—and it didn’t. The devices remained green, and the guards cleared us because that bracelet had no magic in it— none that the fanciest gadgets money can buy and magic can make could pick up.

And even if those bones somehow disrupted the signal, or the devices were faulty…

“She’s Mud ,” I told the bracelet. Even if the guards failed to detect the magic in this thing, it shouldn’t have fucking worked! “Taylor is Mud—how did you connect to her? How did you pull at her hand?”

Because that’s what anchors felt like—like they were pulling at something inside you, which they were. They were anchors of magic—they pulled at an Iridian’s magic.

“Why?” I whispered, and if anybody could hear me or see me talking to a bracelet right now, they’d think I’d lost my mind.

Maybe I had.

My hand was still shaking when I reached for the bracelet, and I really did expect it to grow teeth and bite me. My mind buzzed and I was already planning everything I was going to do tomorrow morning, from researching Taylor’s family to make sure they really were Mud to trying to find any kind of spell or even conditions that would make one’s magic colorful. Not blue or green or red—but colorful.

The bracelet didn’t grow teeth. It was as cold and as lifeless as ever, just an ugly brown thing. Goddess, I had slept with it near me. I’d just put it in my drawer and thought it was safe because those devices at the Vault hadn’t picked up any magical energy from it.

“How did you do that?” I asked the bracelet again, no longer afraid of it, but this strange mix of excitement and curiosity and nervousness was making a mess of my stomach as I analyzed it from closer up. No words, no engravings, no nothing. It still looked like a piece of metal dipped in mud.

Then I began to whisper.

I couldn’t even tell you what the hell I was thinking, just that I wanted to see. I needed to see if I had lost my mind for real, if it had all been in my imagination, or maybe even if Taylor had tricked me somehow, which was highly unlikely. So, I chanted like I really expected my magic to connect with that bracelet, and a rainbow to come out of my hand with the spell I chose.

Funny thing, though— it did.

I felt the way my magic rushed to the bracelet, not my father’s ring. My anchor, as it should have. Colors burst out of my palm, and I was kneeling by the bed, my elbows firmly against it, so I didn’t fall on my face. Colors, just like the ones that had come out of Taylor’s hand, were coming out of mine now, too. Flames in red and green and pink and purple and yellow extended from me and all the way to the small pillows that decorated my bed, picked one up and raised in it in the air, then faded away into nothing.

A levitating spell this time, not one to call up light. Not the same spell as the one Taylor had repeated after me. A new spell. And my magic had eagerly chosen the bracelet over my ring as its anchor the moment I thought about it. The moment I allowed it.

The even funnier thing, though?

I’d felt no pain whatsoever, just like back when I was a normal Redfire. No pain when my magic came out of me just now.

I closed my eyes and let the pillow down on the bed again. The bracelet was still in my hand, and I held onto it so tightly it hurt. I both wanted to throw it away, out the window and into the night to never find again, and also put it around my wrist to make sure I never lost it.

So confusing.

My heart galloped. My thoughts were a mess. The image of that magic, all those vivid colors, the way they picked up that pillow and raised it in the air…

It hadn’t been Taylor’s doing at all—it was the bracelet. This bracelet was somehow pulling colorful magic out of people, and maybe that was the reason why it had been in the Vault. Maybe that was the reason why the IDD wanted it off the streets.

Why, though, why?! my mind insisted, and I was trying to think of who could give me an answer for this even though I knew better than to expect anybody to be honest at this point.

The Council lied. The IDD cheated—I’d seen it with my own eyes, had been the subject of their betrayal myself. There was no way I would ever get a straight answer—but more than that, I’d stolen this. I had taken it out of the Vault without permission.

There had been no documents, no file, no name in the bracelet’s drawer, but this thing behaved like an anchor — so maybe it was gold? Maybe underneath whatever this brown thing was on the surface, this bracelet was made out of gold, and gold was a Redfire’s anchor, so of course it would work with me.

Except…Taylor was not Redfire.

And Redfire magic was called Redfire for a reason—-it was red. Not purple or yellow or green—red.

My first instinct was to run all the way to Headquarters right now and put it back before I got into even more trouble.

My second instinct was to try every single spell I’d ever memorized just to see if this thing really did give magic colors.

Since it was late and I couldn’t go back to Headquarters right now—and also didn’t want to—I went for the second option, this time properly. I took off my father’s ring and left it on the bedside table. I grabbed the bracelet in both hands and kept my eyes wide open. I whispered the words of a simple spell, one that gave me a burst of magic I could use for anything—like to flip the switch on either side to turn the lights on and off.

And just like the first time, colors burst out of me even before I finished chanting. My magic was there, and it wasn’t painful when it traveled down my arm to meet the bracelet. When it was guided by the bracelet, like it was its beacon in the dark, and released itself from my body, shaped itself like the words of my spell directed.

Not a single ounce of pain was anywhere on me, and the switch by the door flipped and the overhead light in my room turned on.

I left it like that, then called for another spell, this one simple, too, just a gust of wind blowing in whichever direction I wanted. Right now, I was just aiming it at the wall, and I watched, mesmerized, as all those colors traveled from my hand, then faded away while the wind blew, shaking the stand to the side a little bit until it died down.

Then I called up a locking spell to lock my closet door and then another to open it. Then I grabbed a notebook and called a spell to change its color, its texture, its size.

I couldn’t get enough.

Goddess, I’d missed it. I’d missed magic when it didn’t hurt, when it felt so natural, like it was a part of me, one with me, not something that I had to pull out of me violently. Right now, my magic merged with my intentions and with the bracelet in my hand and with the words of my spells as it should. The colors of it were so vivid, the flames bright and beautiful, and they did exactly what my spells commanded. It was no different than my normal magic, the one I’d always had before I turned Mud, except this one had more colors than the Rainbow of the Iris Roe.

“Impossible,” I said to the room every new time I saw that it was, in fact, possible for this to exist with my own eyes. And to make sure I hadn’t lost it, I used my ring again as well, but nothing had changed. The pain returned, like my magic hesitated to be guided by this anchor, like it was separating itself as it came out of me—that’s what it felt like. Like it was being cut in half or something, and that’s where the pain came from, which was odd as fuck. But the magic still came out of me in bright red flames, and it still did exactly what my spell told it to do.

“That’s enough,” I whispered to myself when I felt my energy draining so much my entire body was shaking. I’d done possibly over twenty spells in the past half hour, and that would take a toll on anyone.

When I slept that night, I kept the bracelet under my pillow, and the vivid colors that came out of me through it remained in the center of my mind’s eye.