Twinned Shadow (The Shadow Series Book 1) by Candice Bundy (win 10 ebook reader .txt) 📗

swatches had dried, but mostly she’d just been left with a sticky and stinky mess to wash off. Goodness knows she’d watched every moment of the process so carefully that time, mindful of the dire consequences should the testers find nothing.

Which was the reality Becka had spent everyday living since. Except now there was something.

“What kind of curse is it?” Becka asked. “Am I gonna die?”

Saana shook her head, a wry smile flirting with her lips. She kept touching patches of color, calling out levels of fading at each location. “It’s no curse, child. If you had a curse, the related built-in reactions would fire off. This one”, she prodded her shoulder, “would smoke a foul odor. This one”, she prodded her left foot, “would sparkle a lovely and brilliant hue of yellow. Others would ooze and boil. This one right here,” she poked the back of Becka’s left hand, “would alternately flash red and black, assuming someone had cursed your reputation. A fun one, that curse. Quite impossible to reverse as well.”

“But that patch is turning gray.”

“Exactly! But you are not activating the tests,” she poked Becka’s right calf, “so you do not have any known curses. And yet, the tests do not remain inert, either.”

Becka couldn’t deny the relief washing off her, although it was paired to her ever-fading headache. “Which means...what exactly?”

“It means no curses. No hexes,” Berak replied. “All of the magic in these tests has been sapped out.”

“Which could be argued is a form of activation,” Saana replied.

“Deactivation?” Berak spoke the word, his expression incredulous.

“Deactivation?” Becka echoed, repeating his statement. “What the heck does that mean?”

“This is beyond my experience. And I am by far the eldest present.” Saana belly laughed. “But it is a lovely, mysterious discovery!”

“All of the patches are fading to gray. They are changing at different rates, but they indicate the same outcome,” Berak said. “Drying out. Flaking off. I have never seen anything like it myself either.”

“I, for one, am quite entertained.” Saana winked at her. “There is not much new I run across at my age. Please tell us, how long have you noticed the effect you have on magic?”

My effect? A sinking sensation hit her in the solar plexus. “I don’t have an effect. I mean, I haven’t noticed anything.”

Saana and Berak shared a look. Becka had the sense they’d crossed over into some new unnamed territory.

“When was the last time you handled something magical?” Saana asked.

Becka remembered the crystalline shards of the Unbreakable scattering out across the floor, but she knew Saana wasn’t asking about that artifact. Or how Astrid’s flower petal illusion had failed on contact with her. Or the funerary shroud being damaged by her passing. And they wouldn’t even know about the flower petal she’d found in Tesse’s hair.

“Oh, it’s been years. Since my expulsion I’ve avoided magic. I figured since it wasn’t in my life that I might as well let it go completely.”

Saana’s face lit up with recognition, and she turned to Berak. “Of course. So many humans in the city have something, even if it is just an anti-aging talisman. We’ve come to expect everyone incorporates magic into their lives like the fae do.” She looked to Becka. “But not you. And without exposure, you would never have connected the effect.” She turned to Berak. “She has been living in a magic-free bubble.”

“The change would have been undetectable until the past couple of days. Remarkable.” Berak turned to face those in the viewing chamber. “Becka is...repellent.”

The clenching in her stomach wouldn’t stop. “You’re not much of a catch yourself,” Becka snapped back.

Berak chucked and wagged a finger at her. “I meant to say, magically repellent.”

Becka frowned. “Wait, what?” She moved from her pose and a fine dusting of testing detritus wafted into the air.

“I do not, precisely, concur with my esteemed colleague.” Saana continued to study Becka’s skin. “Or rather, I would amend his findings just a smidge.”

“I am the resident tester for House Rowan,” he replied. “The authority of my findings is accepted here.”

“I mentored you, Berak. Get off your high horse.” Saana ran her prodding stick along Becka’s shoulder, causing even more dust to puff off into the air. The smoke danced sinuously in the streaming sunlight. “The magic has not been repelled. It has been consumed. No, that’s not quite the right word either… It has been nullified.”

Chapter 21

“Nullified?” he replied, as if testing the word on his tongue. “Nullified,” he said more slowly. He then looked to Saana, then Becka and her skin, and then back to Saana. “I concur with your findings, but we will need to determine the proper terminology.”

“Then it is decided,” Saana replied, her voice filling the room.

The testers nodded to each other, and then as one, hurried about recapping their magical paints, cleaning their brushes, and packing up their trunks of supplies. They both appeared so pleased with the testing results. Saana was even bouncing about as she moved, humming a song Becka didn’t recognize.

“I don’t get it.” Bewildered, Becka turned to the viewing alcove, where Maura and Vott were chatting privately, their heads close together. Calder’s face was so crimson, she wondered if he was having an allergic reaction. They couldn’t have heard all of the details from the alcove, but the viewing must have been informative enough to draw some general conclusions. “You’re saying I’m so ungifted that I break magic when I touch it?”

Dust floated in a nimbus around her, as more and more of the testing patches broke into ash. At least the shower would go quicker than the last time. Her headache had lessened, almost as if it was turning to ash as well.

Berak laughed. “Oh my, no, that’s preposterous. It would be impossible for an ungifted to have any effect on magic.”

Becka’s heart skipped a beat and she felt the color drain out of her face. Her fingers went numb. This was not her life.

Saana shook her head, laughing along with him. “You should