Page 332 - Fourth Wing

Maybe it’s… No. It can’t be. It felt completely different when Andarna

stopped time through me. That was a full-body flood that expanded through
my fingers and toes, then…left afterward.

Another wave ripples through me, stronger this time, and I drop the

brush, clutching the edge of the dresser so I don’t fall as my knees threaten
to buckle. The energy doesn’t dissipate this time; it sticks around, humming

under my skin, ringing in my ears, overwhelming every sense.

Something within me expands, somehow too big for my own body, too
vast to be contained, and pain sears every nerve as I crack open, the sound

reverberating through my skull like bones shattering. It’s as though I’ve

been split at the very seams of the fabric of my being.
My knees hit the floor, and I throw my hands over my temples, trying to

shove everything I am back into my skull, forcing myself to shrink.
Energy pours in—a deluge of raw, endless power—eroding everything I

was and forging something completely new as it fills every pore, every

organ, every bone. My head screams, and it feels like Tairn has flown too
high too fast and I can’t pop my ears. All I can do is lie there on the floor

and pray the pressure equalizes.
I stare at my brush, the hardwood floor biting into my cheek, and breathe.

In and then out.

In…and then out…surrendering to the onslaught.
Finally, the pain ebbs, but the energy—the power—doesn’t. It’s simply…

there, prowling through my veins, saturating every cell in my body. It is

everything I am and everything I can be all at once.
I sit up slowly and flip my hands to examine my tingling palms. It feels

like they should look different, changed, but they’re not. They’re still my

fingers, my slender wrists, and yet they’re so much more now. They’re
strong enough to shape the torrent inside me, to mold it into whatever I

desire.
“This is your power, isn’t it?” I ask Tairn, but he doesn’t answer.