The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

I didn’t picture the spool shooting across the floor. This time, I willed it. The pulse in the center of my chest was faint, something I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been paying attention.

It happened so fast, a split second after the thought entered my mind. It was like an invisible string had been attached to the spool and it had been yanked hard. The thing spun across the floor, sending dust into the air as Grayson went down, hitting the floor with a satisfying thump. He sat there, the Blow Pop hanging limply from the side of his mouth, his eyes such a startling unnatural shade of blue.

“Are you bored now?” I asked sweetly.

Grayson popped to his feet and whirled toward me. Where the Blow Pop went, I had no idea. The pupils of his eyes went diamond bright, and the center of my chest pulsed. Tiny hairs all over my body rose as every part of me, including what was in me, hyperfocused on the Luxen.

His gaze darted over my shoulder, and I saw his jaw harden. He took a step back as the light receded from his eyes. “If you were anyone else…”

The warning hung in the air between us, and I knew it wasn’t me who stopped him. It was who stood behind me.

That ticked me off.

The Source flared intently, pressing at my skin a lot like it had the night I’d had the nightmare. I didn’t need to look down to know that I had an aura.

“It’s not Luc you should be worried about,” I said, and that was my voice, those were my words. I meant to say them.

“Should he be?” Luc asked quietly from behind me. “Should he be worried right now, Evie?”

I had to think really hard about how I wanted to answer that. A deep, hidden part of me wanted Grayson to come at me, and I wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with the Source or not.

But as much as I wanted to knock Grayson off his pedestal, I didn’t want to seriously hurt him, and I would. I would totally destroy him if I let loose.

“No,” I said, exhaling roughly. The tension in my chest eased off, and the shadowy light faded like smoke in the wind. “He shouldn’t.”

Surprise flickered across Grayson’s face, and then he looked behind me again. His brows rose.

“What? Do you want me to peel the skin off your bones?” I demanded, and I spun to Luc. He was smiling. I blinked. “Why are you smiling?”

“I’m smiling because you really wanted to take Grayson down,” he said, eyes glittering.

“Why would you smile about that?” I was dumbfounded.

“Because you chose not to,” Grayson answered. “Let that sink in.”

Shooting him a look over my shoulder, I was about to tell him I was considering changing my mind, when it did hit me.

“I stopped it.” My head cranked back to Luc. “Holy crap, I felt the Source. It was ready to go, but I stopped it!”

Luc’s smile grew. “Yeah, you did. You have control, Peaches. Now move the damn carton.”* * *Grayson hadn’t been lying earlier. Moving objects wasn’t exactly easy. While I’d been able to move the spool out from under him, the carton proved to be a different story.

I wasn’t angry with the carton.

Which showed the correlation between emotion and accuracy. If I was angry, everyone had better run for the hills. If I was ambivalent, everyone could take a nap.

I was able to move the carton after several misfires. It wasn’t until Luc had said, “Picture having multiple, invisible arms—arms that can stretch hundreds of feet. And yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but take those dozens of arms and encase them in the Source. Not what it looks like with Grayson or me, but with your Source.”

That did sound ridiculous, and it had led me to picturing all kinds of random invisible things that had nothing to do with the task at the hand, but when I finally focused and did what Luc had instructed, the carton winged right at my head.

And that was right about the time I learned that if I was going to move an object, I needed to also plan where I wanted to move it.

Some days, I felt dumber than others. This was one of those days.

When Luc finally called it a day and Grayson disappeared in, like, a nanosecond, I was only slightly relieved to be heading back to the house. I was tired and hungry, but I also wanted to practice more.

Emboldened by the success that we had and a wee bit confident, I actually felt truly hopeful, like for the first time I thought maybe I could take back some control in my life. I was juiced to do more. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t use the word juiced since that just sounded weird, but I wanted to see exactly what I could do.