thought being chased and nearly killed by a handful of magic hunters was a lot to deal with. As it turns out, it was nothing in comparison to the freaked-out reactions I got from my friends.

We were in the barn and I had just told them what had happened in the forest. All but the lantern closest to the door had been extinguished, casting us in shadow.

I thought SJ’s gray eyes were going to pop out of their sockets when I explained how Parker and his men had been camped out in the forest for a week, waiting for me to stray out there like a lost fawn.

“You could have been killed!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, I got that,” I said, exasperated. “But since it’s hardly the first time, can we focus on something else please?”

“Okay, how about the fact that those hunters are still in the forest,” Blue said. “While your magic may have slowed them down, I hardly think it’ll stop them from coming after you. If anything, you probably encouraged them to keep up their mission by giving them an up-close-and-personal demonstration of what your powers can do. Not smart, Crisa.”

“It wasn’t like I was flaunting my abilities, Blue,” I argued. “It was self-defense.”

“Careless self-defense,” SJ added.

“Well, what would you have had me do, SJ? I didn’t exactly have my wand with me.”

SJ fell silent. A bit of dismay set in and I realized what I’d said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that it was your fault.”

She nodded, but didn’t respond.

“What do you want us to do now, Crisa?” Jason cut in. “It’s your call.”

“If they’re still out there then I think we should give them a reason to leave,” Daniel answered on my behalf. “Come on, Jason. What do you say we go knock a few magic hunter heads on our way back to campus?”

He made to move past us, but I put my hand on his arm. “Hold up there, hero. I appreciate the offer and the sentiment behind it, but that forest is huge. And if they’ve really been hiding out there for a week, then I think you’re overestimating how easy it’ll be to find them. Magic hunters are master trackers. Even if you get close, they’ll sense you coming.”

“Jason’s a master tracker too, Knight. I’m sure we’ll manage,” Daniel said. “Besides, don’t you want them taken care of?”

“Of course I do,” I replied. “But I also want to make sure they don’t get the jump on you or any of us. Parker said he and his friends weren’t the only magic hunters following me. So it would be stupid for us to go charging through the forest when we don’t have a clear understanding of how big a threat is out there.”

“So, you want to just wait?” Blue asked, puzzled.

“For now, yes.”

“But your safety, Crisa,” SJ insisted.

“I’m safe here. The In and Out Spell will protect me, so you guys don’t have to worry. Until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with, I think not engaging is the smartest plan. It’s better to make a thought-out, strategic move than an immediate one rooted in vengeance and aggression. Right?”

SJ pouted. Usually she was the logical, reasonable one. I don’t think she was very fond of me taking that stance away from her and then using it against her.

“All right,” she said eventually. “Point taken. But you are not going back into the forest until these matters are sorted.”

“That goes for you guys too,” Blue interjected, pivoting toward the boys. “For today you can sneak out the main gate when the guards are changing shifts.” She looked at her watch. “That’s going to happen in seventeen minutes. You can get past them and then phase through that part of the In and Out Spell. After that . . .” She sighed sadly. “No more of these secret meet-and-greets. You guys can’t go through the forest to get to and from Lord Channing’s anymore. Until we figure out what to do about those hunters, we’re all grounded.”

“Blue, come on,” Jason complained.

“No buts, Jason. SJ and I have enough to worry about with this one’s safety constantly hanging in the balance,” Blue said, gesturing at me. “I don’t want to spend my time freaking out about your safety too. Both of you, that is,” she added quickly.

Daniel and Jason were not happy, but they agreed. With our detention deadline rapidly approaching, we extinguished the last lantern in the barn and the five of us slipped out and parted ways. Blue, SJ, and I headed back to the tower while the boys proceeded to the front of the school, careful to remain unseen.

“You realize that you can’t spend time on the far side of the practice fields anymore, right?” Blue said to me as we approached the tower.

“How do you mean?”

Blue and SJ exchanged a look.

“The In and Out Spell prevents human beings from passing through, not objects,” SJ said. “If you get close enough to the river that separates the school from the forest and the hunters are there at the right moment, they could easily hit you with an arrow.”

“But they wouldn’t,” I countered. “I read something about that last week in the library.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember one of the many texts I’d scanned recently. I snapped my fingers and opened my eyes. “It was in The Magic Hunter Code. It said that when a magical creature is killed, its magic goes into the closest living thing. If the magic hunters want to take my magic, it would be stupid of them to shoot me while I’m on campus and they’re in the forest. They wouldn’t be able to collect my body so the magic would go into someone else, like one of the other students.”

“They could use a grappling hook,” Blue suggested a bit too casually. “You know, reel you in like a fish.”

At first the notion seemed funny, but when it sunk in and I visualized it, my expression soured. “Fine. I’ll keep to the barn and the stables for training.”

Both SJ and Blue looked relieved with my decision. I summoned the vines to magically transport us up to the tower with only minutes to spare.

As the vines lifted us to our prison anew, I felt exhausted. That was a lot for one afternoon. Normally I handled the whole “people trying to kill me” thing in stride. You had to when it was such a regular occurrence. Unfortunately, my friends’ worries made it harder. They made me remember that I wasn’t invincible; I was just one girl with a lot of enemies and my odds against them were only getting smaller.

If I’d thought I’d gotten an earful from my friends, it barely compared to the lecture I received from Liza.

My magical mentor and I spoke three times a day. Liza had originally wanted us to train five times a day, but with my school schedule we’d been forced to compromise. I had to work my extracurricular magical lessons around my regular princess ones.

I supposed Liza didn’t grasp the concept of time constraints.

It wasn’t her fault. She was the Author. Which meant that outside of her time with me, her only other commitment was transcribing her vivid dreams into protagonist books, which the Fairy Godmothers and our realm’s ambassadors used to maintain order over the land.

Furthermore, Liza was trapped in the Indexlands. She had been infinitely secluded from the rest of the world so that no one would find out the truth about how little control her predictions actually had over our fates.

My friends and I had been shocked to learn that the Author didn’t decide our choices for us like we’d always been taught. Rather, they reflected what our futures would be based on our own decisions. That’s why her prologue prophecies tended to be so vague; they could have several interpretations. The exact ways in which they’d eventually be realized were fully dependent on our actions. In other words, whatever happened to us was on us, not her. Not that our realm’s leaders—much less Liza’s Godmother Supreme sister, Lena Lenore—would ever let anyone know that.

Adding to her skewed conception of time, Liza was under an anti-aging spell that prolonged her life. Between that and being isolated with her eternal job, it was no wonder she had tons of room in her calendar for teaching me how to control my powers.

I communicated with Liza using my Mark Two magic compact mirror. Mark Twos were a new piece of magic tech. They were adaptations of the original magic mirrors, like the one used in Beauty & the Beast. These small, portable mirrors allowed for two-way interaction so long as both parties had a compact. The Mark Twos were being introduced realm-wide this spring, but Liza had sent me one in advance last month so that we could keep in touch. Right now, though, I wished I could block her calls. Her nagging was going on forever.

“For the hundredth time, Liza, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I’m not supposed to use the telepathy trick with my powers until I get better at controlling them, but I had no choice. It was either project the magic or get killed by hunters.”

Liza sighed. Even in the tiny image of her that reflected in my magic compact mirror I could see the exasperation in her expression.

“I realize you didn’t have a choice, Crisa. But you do understand why I am upset, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes. Pure Magic: dangerous. Control over powers: good. I got it.”

I knew I should have spoken to her with less sass. Pure Magic was not something to be taken lightly. And it definitely shouldn’t be something I took lightly given that, just like Liza, I had Pure Magic Disease.

Magic was supposed to be easily removed and transferred from one person or object to the next, but in some unique cases it fused permanently to its host. When that happened the magic became classified as “pure” and the carrier took on the burdens of Pure Magic Disease. The benefits included developing a very powerful ability—in Liza’s case it was teleportation; in my case it was giving life—and seeing the future in your dreams. The downside was that the power would eventually turn your heart dark and you would become an evil witch or warlock.

So there was that.

Just as Emma had had no idea the spark of magic she gave me would develop into such a powerful ability, she never could have predicted that this gift meant to protect me could lead to my destruction.

That’s why I seriously appreciated Liza training me to control my magic. She was the only person out there who might save me from a dark fate.

Many years ago Liza had been a Godmother with our realm’s Fairy Godmother Agency, but her magic had mutated into Pure Magic. Remarkably though, unlike every other carrier of Pure Magic Disease that’d come before her, Liza’s heart had never turned dark. She’d taught herself to control her powers and keep them from consuming her. This gave me hope that maybe I could do the same thing.

I knew the odds were against me, but I had to believe I could do it. Because if I didn’t, then what? I would end up like the other wicked witches and warlocks who suffered from the disease—will overtaken by power, heart turned black, and soul shriveled up like a dead flower. I definitely didn’t want that to happen.

Aside from my own self-preservation, I couldn’t fail because I had the weight of an entire realm riding on my success. If I was prophesized to be the key to either the antagonists’ downfall or their triumph over Book, it wasn’t hard to imagine that this fate was tied to whether or not my magic corrupted me.

I shuddered at the thought.

“Look, I really am sorry, Liza,” I said, trying to sound more respectful. “I understand the gravity of the situation. Pushing my magic before I’m ready is dangerous, and the only means we really have for keeping it in check is the control I maintain.”

“Exactly, Crisa,” Liza responded. “Using large amounts of your magic is risky, especially in short periods of time. Until you are stronger and have had more practice, it is ten times more dangerous to project your powers telepathically than in the controlled manner of touch we’ve been practicing because—”

“It could cause me to exhaust my powers faster or even burn me out and kill me on the spot. I know, Liza.”

That was another pair of gems that came with Pure Magic—Magic Exhaustion and Magic Burn Out. Powerful as my ability was, I could only use so much of it at a time before I temporarily ran out. That was Magic Exhaustion. I’d only experienced it once before, but it made me feel like a sponge that had all the water wrung out of it or a hamster that had overexerted itself on a running wheel.

The more I trained and mastered my abilities, the higher my magic limit. But there would always be a limit. I was only able to utilize so much magic before I exhausted it and my powers shut off. After that I was on my own. The magic required about a day to fully reboot.

Magic Burn Out, on the other hand, was a consequence that was not quite as forgiving. The gist was that if I ever pushed myself past the amount of magic I could handle, there was a risk that I could exhaust myself beyond repair. And by that I mean I would burn up and die. Lovely, right?

“That’s one reason,” Liza agreed. “And the other?”

I grimaced. “Telepathic magic runs too freely, which makes it harder for me to control.”

Liza nodded. “Quite. Need I remind you what happened in Alderon last month?”

It had been about a month and a half since Arian (the leader of the antagonist hunting party that’d been pursuing me) had captured my friends and I and delivered us to the capital of Alderon to meet their wicked queen, Nadia. We’d escaped of course, but a lot of that had to do with me discovering my powers at just the right time. I’d used them during our escape and when I came face-to-face with Arian, I had inadvertently used my magic telepathically to get him to reveal information I needed. In doing so, I’d given in to the impulsive, easily corruptible nature of my Pure Magic.

My desire to hurt Arian had clouded my mind and I’d temporarily lost control. It’d felt like I was another person—a shadow of myself driven by hatred and bloodlust. I’d been able to regain control over my powers, but another few seconds and I probably would have torn Arian to shreds.

Never again did I want to feel like my power was in control of me and not the other way around. If not using my magic telepathically until I was stronger and more skilled was the best way to prevent that, then I fully intended on keeping myself from going down that road until I was ready. Today had just been an exception.

“I remember, Liza,” I said, swallowing down the unpleasant memories. “Now can we move on, please?”

“Not entirely, I’m afraid. Today’s lesson is actually related to this subject.” Liza cleared her throat. Her nagging tone was replaced with her teaching one. “As we’ve discussed, using your powers telepathically and overusing your powers are both triggers for losing control of your Pure Magic. But there is also one other very important trigger you must understand. Emotion.”

“Emotion?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Liza said. “Crisa, there is a reason I’ve spent the last few weeks teaching you about centering your breathing, clearing your mind, and focusing solely on the task at hand when employing the use of your magic. It is at this level of clarity that you can keep a hold of your powers. However, if you allow emotion to seep in when using your ability, it can easily become that extra oomph the magic needs to corrupt you. Emotion is the most dangerous trigger for losing control of Pure Magic.

“That incident in Alderon is the perfect example. When you used your powers telepathically on Arian, what pushed you over the edge was allowing your emotions toward him to cloud your judgment. You probably felt hatred, anger, and desperation. Those emotions are strong, which makes your magic strong too. But they are also overwhelming and can drown your conscience under instinct. Thus, it was a combination of the dark emotions inside you and your inherent powers that made you vulnerable to the manipulation of Pure Magic that day.”

I couldn’t help but fidget uncomfortably. Up til now I’d blamed losing control of my magic in Alderon on the strength of the magic itself. The fact that this was only part of the problem and that it was mostly my own fault made me unsettled.

It had been my naturally dark emotions that caused me to succumb to the powers. Which meant that those feelings and wicked intentions had been inside me all along. They weren’t the result of my magic taking over. The situation was actually the opposite.

“Crisa.”

I turned my focus back to Liza’s reflection.

“I can see the gears working in your head,” she began slowly. “And I want you to know that it is okay. There is no need to feel shame over what happened. Everyone has those types of feelings now and then; they’re inevitable even in the kindest of people. Having them doesn’t make you wicked.”

I twiddled with the golden fringe on the edge of one of my pillows. “How can you be so sure?” I asked, not meeting her gaze.

“Because wickedness is not something you fall into, Crisanta. It is a choice you make. If you do not let it in, even momentary slips will not force you to change. We all have things we regret—wicked thoughts or actions we’re ashamed of. But isolated events do not define the heart. What does is how you handle the dark emotions that attempt to influence your decisions. With proper understanding of this, and the right training, I have faith that you will be able to handle them beautifully.”

My body sunk into the deep purple comforter as I thought about this. I wasn’t totally convinced, but I believed in Liza. Moreover, I believed in myself. I knew I could master my magic, keep darkness in check, and keep myself in check. No matter what kind of malevolence this disease tried to ignite inside me, I would fight it with all my soul. I would choose light and not wickedness.

After all, there were bigger things than my own fate depending on it.