A Court of Fire and Shadows -ON BREAK!!!-

Elain

After we finished reading, Az and I decided to go study the wyrdkey.

Last night -thank the Cauldron- Rowan had remembered to bring the key and I had put it on one on my desk in the library.

I stood in front of it, Az right by my side.

He cautiously reached out a hand towards it.

I grabbed his wrist, "Don't touch it, I don't know what'll happen-"

Az gently removed my hand from his arm, "Someone has to figure it out."

He slowly reached for it again, I wrapped my arms around him, ready to pull him away if necessary.

We both braced ourselves.

The second his fingers made contact with the key, the shadows writhed and cast the room into darkness, the only light was the extraordinarily bright blue glow from his siphons- though even that was almost smothered by the shadows.

"What the hell?!" Someone -Cassian- yelled from somewhere else in the library.

Az ripped his hand away from the wyrdkey and light flooded back.

"What happened? Are you ok? Are you hurt?" I pulled back and looked him over.

"I'm fine, El. The wyrdkey seemed to... amplify my magic. That's why the shadows did that."

I nodded slowly, furrowing my brows in thought. "I want to see if that happens to everyone or not, so we need someone to test it on. I could-"

Az was already shaking his head no, "No way, El."

"Are you worried about me," I said teasingly.

"Of course I'm worried, El, but that's not why you can't test it. Your magic is too unpredictable and you aren't exactly good at using it yet -don't give me that look, you know I'm right-" He was. "-and your magic is too powerful, you saw what happened with me, imagine what'll happen with you."

He was right again.

"Ok, then who can we test it on?" I put my hands on my hips.

"Cass!" He called out, "We need your help!"

Not even a minute later, Cassian was standing beside Az.

"What do you need?" He asked, warily eyeing the small, black, sliver of stone.

"We need you to touch the wyrdkey." I replied.

Cassian emphatically shook his head and took a small step back. "I'm not touching that thing-"

"Come on, Az just touched it and he's fine-" I started.

"Az!" Cassian said exasperatedly, "We've talked about this, you can't just touch dangerous things that we don't know about."

"It's part of my job, Cass-" It sounded like they've had this conversation before.

"That doesn't mean-"

"If you two ladies are done," I glared at them and they both backed down, "Cassian, just touch the damn key."

Cassian grumbled something that I chose to ignore, but he reached for the key.

He touched it and bright red light flashed through the room, blinding all of us.

The light stabbed into my head, even closing my eyes didn't stop it from breaking through.

"Let go of it!" I yelled, stumbling back in an effort to get away from it.

Instantly Az's wings flared out to protect me.