Rich Kids Don't Die | Featured

Chapter Thirty Four

Not waiting for his permission, she lifted his hand and pried it open, expecting a deep wound he'd try to hide from her. Instead, a burning heat swept over her fingers, and she cursed softly. Along his palm, his veins coloured in the searing bright blue of a hot flame. He was using his powers to remove all the water from the room. 

Maddie shook his wrist. "Alex, stop."

His gaze rose to meet her eyes, and he drew a breath. His hand cooled a moment later, the last remnants of water in the room now gone.

Katya clicked her tongue. "A complete waste of energy."

He looked to Maddie for what felt like too long before responding. "You should not have been able to do that. I'd rather they not know of that particular skill." 

Skill. Summoning water for the first time had felt more like sheer luck, or some strange form of manifestation, than a skill, though she understood why no one could know. 

The question of who Alex was referring to in the first place entered Maddie's mind, but she didn't ask, because at that very moment a set of footsteps sounded nearby. She spotted a glimpse of black fabric, reaching into her boot for a spare knife, but Alex's hand closed lightly around her arm.

It was an effort to not drop down on her knees when the man showed his face and smiled at her.

"Dad."

The Magical Inconveniences Centre felt different to what Maddie remembered. 

The lights felt dimmer, the thrum of magic more subtle than the last time she had trained here. Then again, her last visit had been the day when a boy had died in a flash of darkness, and the incident was still upsetting so Maddie willed the image out of her mind, convincing herself that the difference in atmosphere was a product of her own exhaustion. 

Sonia, on the other hand, appeared happier than usual. She was conferring privately with Maddie's father, who spoke to her animatedly and with a gleam in his eyes, while Alex treaded a few paces behind them and tried hard to hear every word. 

After recovering from the initial shock of seeing her father at the tower, Maddie felt a kind of muted peace settle over her. While she had never pictured him being involved in this side of her life, he felt strangely suited to the world of magic -- she now understood the source of his sincerity and wisdom, his self-assuredness and well-spirited nature. Maddie had always known her father to be a man who understood the capacity for wonder in the world, the potential for miracles. A man who placed his faith in the goodness that he believed to exist everywhere and in everyone. 

She had never known that his joyful disposition was simply his love for magic. 

On the contrary, she could not believe he loved magic. He was, after all, a victim to a curse that had affected numerous generations of his ancestors. Her own shortlived experience with immortality had left her resenting magic, and yet here he was, appearing elevated and invigorated amongst witches and wizards, as if it was where he belonged. Maddie had thought her powers to be a strange coincidence, a one-off mutation in her genes. Now, looking at her father and how well-adjusted he seemed here, she wondered if he had powers too.