I resisted. At least, I tried. I screamed a lot, anyway. It all blurred together.
The bond stood out, though. Amplification, he'd called it.
Through my haze of pain, searing agony lighting up each of my nerves individually until I felt like it must be visible through my skin, jagged lightning patterns—through all of that, I heard him telling me. How magic functioned like any other kind of energy, how it had a wave pattern. How that pattern could be amplified, the frequency the same but the power of the energy output increased.
That energy crackled through my bones and electrified my teeth, my back arching and my lungs raw from the shrieks it tore out of me.
My pain, my terror, my despair rode that energy,
flying out through the ether and arrowing its way to Calder, far away but not far enough.
I knew it wasn't far enough. He could've been on the moon and he'd have felt me.
