Free Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) by Kristen Pham Page B

and
Ming. She would also get weak and her blood pressure would drop for no reason.
It wasn’t as severe as yours, but it was compounded by her cancer.”
    “Wait. Are you
saying that Ming is one of the children you identified who might be
suffering from having too much magic?”
    Valerie wondered if
her smile was as big as the one on Ming’s face right now.
    “That’s what we’re
here to confirm,” Dr. Freeman said.
    “Azra? Is it true?”
Valerie said, turning to her friend.
    Dr. Freeman and Ming
wore identical expressions of reverence as Azra and her foal approached,
reminding Valerie of the first time she’d met the unicorn. It was a sacred
experience.
    I no longer have any
magical gifts. They have been passed to my foal.
    Clarabelle
approached Ming, who gently touched the little unicorn’s iridescent mane as if
she were in a trance.
    Clarabelle’s tiny
sounds of pleasure were pure bliss in Valerie’s mind. Without using words,
Clarabelle communicated her own feeling—certainty. Ming was bursting with
magical potential.
    “You were right,”
Valerie said to Dr. Freeman, and he nodded.
    “I have magic inside
me, like you, Valerie?” Ming asked.
    “You do,” Valerie
said, laughing as Ming twirled in a circle, her arms open wide.
    “If only travel between
our worlds could stay open forever, Ming could live on the Globe part time and
still go home to her family,” Dr. Freeman said.
    “But as long as
there are those with magic and those without it, there is the potential for
power to be abused,” Gideon said, speaking up for the first time. “We must
remove the Fractus from Earth and close travel between the worlds again.”
    Ming looked up at
Valerie with her huge eyes. “It’s okay. It’s enough to know I’m magical.”
    “And a princess,
don’t forget,” Valerie said, to make Ming smile, though her own heart squeezed.
    As long
as this divide between worlds existed, there would always be those who had to
live where they didn’t quite belong. And from experience, Valerie knew that
wasn’t a solution at all.
    After Ming had left
and Azra and Clarabelle retreated into the forest, Valerie made the walk to the
spot in the forest where she could access the gardens of Babylon, which were
still locked away from the rest of the world by the spell her father had cast.
    It was where she went
when she wanted to grieve for him in private. Over the past months since he’d
been gone, she’d mostly gone to sob where no one would hear her, but today, she
went for another reason.
    She stepped through
the screen of vines into the garden and was overpowered by the sense that in
this place, she wasn’t an orphan. She wasn’t surprised to see a familiar figure
at the top of the tiers of flowers.
    She hiked up to join
Henry, who was staring at the lake on the other side. He came here a lot
because it was the one place no one could find him except her.
    “I couldn’t help
thinking about this place—and dad—today,” Valerie said. “He locked Babylon away
from the rest of the world to make it his special place with Mom. Even though
that’s romantic, it also robbed all the other Conjurors on the Globe of the
opportunity to enjoy its beauty.”
    “Yeah, he was a
piece of work,” Henry said, but without the bitterness that had laced his words
when Oberon was alive.
    “Isn’t that also
what we’re doing with the Globe? Keeping it from humans who belong here, who
have every right to be here? How do we stop the Fractus from abusing regular
humans without keeping all of the best parts of magic to ourselves?”
    “I don’t think I’m
the right person to talk to about avoiding selfish decisions,” Henry said. “But
don’t stop asking these questions, Val. It’s gonna be you who finally finds a
better answer. I really believe that.”
    “Every time I come
here, it’s like a piece of him is alive, you know?”
    Henry regarded her.
“I never loved him like you did, but I’m less alone when I come