My entire world sank to the bottom of the ocean as I realized what she meant. This wasn’t good. It so wasn’t good. Magically enhanced elementals weren’t allowed at the academy. They were all sent to Carcerem. Then again, technically, I was a magically enhanced elemental and would be escorted away once the Council tested me for dark magic.
Magic.
My mom had sensed magic in Leo from the very beginning. Same with Bryan. She practically dismissed both Rob and Clay for not having magic in them. Did that make them insusceptible to dark magic? Could that be why some elementals were magically enhanced while others weren’t?
Was being magically enhanced really a bad thing? Or were we looking at this all wrong?
Only one way to find out.
15
Could magic be the answer?
I held up my hand and concentrated on the magic pulsing through me as I regarded both Stace and Syd. The golden glow was faint at first, but steadily grew until my entire palm became illuminated. “We all know what I have inside me, know what it did to me when I kept it to myself instead of come to you first. Spencer forced darkness into me, magically enhanced me. It wasn’t until you used my primary to heal me that we figured out how to control my new element. This could be the same thing. I could have forced fire into Leo when I touched him.”
“You do realize what you’re admitting to, don’t you? You’re saying you gave him the ability to call fire. You magically enhanced him.”
When she said it out loud, it sounded so much worse. “How else do you explain a water elemental surviving a direct hit of fire like that? And all the times Alec attacked us, he always used fire on Leo.” And when the darkness consumed me, I tried to boil his blood. It all had to be related.
Syd removed his glasses and cleaned them with his shirt. “Let me make sure I have this straight. Alec attacked Leo with fire more than once?”
“Several times. Just like he used ice on Rob, but since he already had the power to call water, it didn’t develop into another element. With Leo, it did, and when I concentrated my fire power, it basically gave the element enough juice to join the party. It’s possible, right?”
He replaced his glasses. “I suppose it makes sense.”
“No,” Stace protested. “It doesn’t make sense. Katy didn’t magically enhance Leo, so get that out of your head. Both of you.”
“But—”
“No!” She shut the subject down with her outburst, slicing her hand through the air. “Don’t you two understand? Something like this gets out and it could destroy everything. The academy. The Council. Our world.”
That was a bit overdramatic. “How so?”
“How would that look if the very person the Council decreed the protector of our world was, in fact, the very person foretold to destroy it? This, Katy. This right here could be the prophecy. Good and evil will be matched. Supremacy is certain. The entire prophecy could, in fact, be a single person battling herself.”
Holy sheep balls. I did not see that coming. Numbness didn’t even begin to describe the feeling now washing over me. The shock hit me so hard, so unexpectedly, I swayed and had to grab the wall to stop myself from collapsing to the floor. All this time, all my battles to defeat the dark elementals, might have been for nothing. The real battle had been inside me all along. “Are you saying I could be the one to destroy our world?”
“Or the one who stands in the way.”
I was going to be sick. My salivary glands activated, and I swallowed several times to keep the contents of my stomach from making an unwelcome encore.
Stace went on. “After the way you attacked Trina, the Council is questioning whether they made a mistake ever decreeing you the prophecy, that it may have driven you to the dark side, considering how much you question their authority.”
“Questioning them makes me dark?”
“In some eyes, yes.”
Now, wouldn’t that just figure? Everything I’d done to protect our world, that I’d continue to do despite a bunch of old men in black giving my title to my mom, apparently meant nothing. As long as I challenged them, they’d threaten to label me dark.
No wonder they wanted to test me. It wasn’t to expose me as an enhanced elemental. It was a demonstration of what happened when someone spoke out against them. They planned to use me to set an example.
How stellarly awesome.
“Are they questioning my mom? Or am I the only one they’ve decreed the prophecy that’s suddenly dark for defending my boyfriend against a beyatch with a unibrow?” I didn’t know why I dragged my mom into this conversation. Maybe as a distraction. A divergence. Hell if I knew where my brain took me half the time. Well, most of the time, actually. I just went along for the ride. “Well?” I asked when Stace simply blinked at me.
“Why would they question her?” She would no longer look at me and found a sudden interest in picking at the nonexistent dirt underneath her nails.
“Why?” Did she really just ask me that, of all people? She still wouldn’t look at me. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because she’s the prophecy now? Maybe because when I was the prophecy, all the Council did was question me.”
“That’s the Council’s prerogative.”
“That’s a bullshit answer,” I fired back. “Stace? What’s really going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Telling us,” Syd jumped in, siding with me.
“If the Council has an agenda, please share it with the rest of the class.”
She bounced a nervous gaze back and forth between us. “I’m not really sure if my theory has any merit.”
“That’s never stopped me.” I rested my hand on my hip. “Spill. Tell us what you know.”
“It’s against the law for us to speak out against our governing body. I could be called in
