Unbound (Unbound, Book 1) ~Formerly Casting Power~

Chapter 27

The next time that I opened my eyes, rays of sun were shining onto the bed through the unopened window and my skin felt warm. I must've fallen back to sleep when I rested on the mattress. I sat up, looking for the clock to see how long I'd been out. Damn. Two hours? Mom was going to be pissed. When I looked up, I saw that a post-it had been pasted to the door, full of Aiden's cursive.

Had my mom called him again to find out why I wasn't home?

I stood to get a closer look at the note. After just a couple of steps, and with no warning at all, my legs crumbled from beneath me. I fell to my knees, overtaken with the same pain I'd experienced earlier, multiplied by a thousand degrees.

Surges of white-hot flame burst from deep within me, working its way through as an agonizing trail, waiting for me to release its energy. I knew, without knowing from anything I'd ever experienced, that this was a part of my powers. It felt as though an outside force beyond my control was digging around my insides and tearing them away.

Becoming unbound had never hurt before—this was unnatural.

Something was wrong.

My body curled into itself at the center of the floor, and I couldn't move without knifes being stabbed into my flesh. Balling my hands into fists, I pressed them into my stomach, just below my ribcage, hoping that it would relieve the building pressure. Somehow, it was the right thing to do. The release was slow but powerful. The filmy white curtains blew with the breeze in the room, impossible with the window closed. Drawers rattled as though they were stuck, and sparks flew from the lamp on the nightstand beside the bed, though it hadn't been turned on.

None of that compared to the soft glow forming like a layer of compressed light hovering over my skin, rippling as though it was truly white fire.

"Hey, Nora, my dad said to tell you that your mother called forty-five minutes ago to say that she was expecting you a couple of hours—"

Nancy's voice stopped when she took in the scene within the room and her eyebrows arched high to disappear behind her hairline. She flew to my side with a mixture of concern and terror. Her hands hovered above me, obviously wanting to comfort but afraid to touch me. Whether it was to keep from causing me more pain or enduring her own, I couldn't tell.

"What's going on?"

"My powers..." I moaned and the overhead lights from the chandelier began to spark, the radiance I was emitting growing larger until it burst.

I felt a moment of calm as the luminosity of my skin dulled, then began to wretch.

Nancy grabbed a crystal bowl from off the fireplace mantle before placing it underneath me with seconds to spare as my stomach emptied itself. Glad not to have ruined her parents' high-end carpeting, it didn't dawn on me that I'd just tossed my cookies into an even more expensive dish. The seizure-like convulsions crippled me until long after my throat burned raw, and such rationalizations were beyond what my body could endure.

Giving in to her baser instincts now that I no longer appeared to be a fire hazard, Nancy rubbed my back in slow, soothing circles while I continued to heave.

My whole body hurt. My abilities had a mind of their own, too powerful for me to control. The pillows tore and feathers fluttered to the floor in a vision of white. Light bulbs shattered from the ceiling and inside of the shaded lamps. Even when I couldn't see through the bright light stemming from within my vision, I could smell the leftovers of the destruction I had caused. Acrid smoke and pulsating waves of unnatural heat made it hard to breathe, settling like ash on my tongue before burning through to my lungs.