Priya dropped to one knee. Her red hair fell forward.
Her hands found the floor and she stayed there, on all fours, breathing hard, her body reacting to something none of the others could see—a slow blue light gathering at the tips of her fingers, running up her arms in thin trails, like capillaries filling with something luminescent.
She stared at her own hands.
"What the—"
Sophia made a sharp sound. Her back hit the headboard. Her eyes went wide and she looked down at her own body—at the shimmer building across her skin, faint silver-blue, moving in waves—and the sound that came from her wasn't fear.
It was something older than fear. Recognition, maybe.
The specific shock of something that had always been there suddenly arriving at the surface.
Veronica stood.
She was the only one who stood.
She stood in the center of the room and her body burned—visibly, actually burned—a fine, deep-orange heat moving across her skin like the surface of an ember.
