I think back to how infusing the cookies with magic drained me so much I passed out. I can only imagine what something like moving and shaping lava glass would do to me.
“And the fire?” I ask.
“It will take a toll, but I think we’ll get several good shots in before you need a rest. Of note,” he says as he begins to pace in front of me. “There will be something that charges your own magic. Mine flows through you freely and it’s powered by pain.When you bit yourself over the brand, it was a very intense jolt of power. Any pain you endure can strengthen my magical reserves inside you.
“However, you have a fuel that is unique to you. Discovering it will not be essential for your plan, but if you want to grow into abadassmage, you will need to figure that out.”
“I think I already know what it is,” I say. “Martial arts. The flow of sets and my body in motion. It settles me. Grounds me.”
He nods a few times. “Show me.”
Suddenly, I feel very self-conscious. I haven’t done sets for anyone in years, and the last person who saw was…my mom. It was the routine I was going to perform at the annual kung fu celebration at the wuguan. Dozens of studio owners from all over the state and beyond were going to come and participate.
Regret crystalizes over my body like a winter frost.
Rhazan grabs my arm and cups my cheek, grounding me back in this moment with him.
“If you have this much agony surrounding it, there’s no wonder your powers have not grown. What is happening in your mind right now, Jiahui?”
His palm is warm against my face. It melts the icy armor I’ve built to protect myself.
“I was supposed to be at the studio that night, practicing,” I murmur, the words flowing out of me. “But I was with my boyfriend. He asked me to stay the night, but I told him no—I just wasn’t ready for…that.
“When I got home, the wuguan had been raided. It was in shambles, and there was a magical essence in the air of someone strong, stronger than me. My parents were gone. A few days later, Zhao Shang came to our house and told me about my parents’ debt. He took them away to China to pay it off, and he told me that I could help pay it faster.”
I realize now he meant not in money, but in my magical services. He must’ve known I was different. He must’ve seen the way I glared at Lei, some part of me aware of his innate magic and its connection to what I felt in the wuguan that night.
“I didn’t know how much Baba owed Shang, but I knew that if I didn’t work as hard as I possibly could, he would take Zixin, and me, too. So, I dropped out of school and started working, but there weren’t a lot of jobs for a seventeen-year-old girl. Not any that paid enough to keep a mob boss happy.”
I take a steadying breath. Rhazan remains silent, gazing down at me without judgement or pity. It’s the strength I need to keep going.
“The wuguan was in a trust, and Shang was a partial owner, so there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t run it on my own, anyway. I wasn’t a master. And we needed the money.
“It was easier than I thought to turn to crime. Little stuff first. On my eighteenth birthday I bought all the scratch cards with only the highest payout. It didn’t feel like stealing, not really. But stealing wasn’t going to let me keep my family together.
“Zixin helped me make fake pay stubs for a fake job I didn’t have so when the courts challenged my ability to take careof him, I had some evidence to show I could. The deposits matched on two months of stubs, and they didn’t question deeper than that.
“We moved into Nai Nai’s apartment because I couldn’t afford the house payment. We couldn’t sell it because the loan was in my parents’ names, and they were gone without having declared me power of attorney. I would’ve been a minor when they were taken, anyway.”
I let out another deep sigh as the last of the hurt from the past half decade pours out of me.
“You are so much stronger than you believe yourself to be.”
His words hit my chest like a hammer, and my ribcage rings with,“Lies, lies, lies. You could’ve done more. You could’ve been better.”
“Jiahui,” Rhazan says with a powerful force that draws my gaze up to his.
The embers in his eyes burn so brightly they look golden. His skin is alight with how much magic flows in his veins.
“You have survived, and kept your brother safe, where many others would’ve surrendered.”
But you cheated to survive. You swindled and stole. Thief.
Rhazan’s grip tightens on my neck and he turns my head up, making our eyes stay locked together.
“The moral judgement you lay upon yourself is far more severe than is necessary. Did you hurt people?”
I think back to times I’d stolen from individuals. Like Stink-eye at the gambling table in Shang’s bar. There were otherinstances of it, too. I wasn’t a saint, but I did try my best not to hurt anyone.
