Opportunity.The word lands in my stomach like stones.
"And if she can't hold it? If the load is too much?"
"Then we'll have important data." She says it the way she'd saythen we'll reschedule."Either outcome advances our understanding."
I look at the diagrams. The star. The figure with its arms spread. The words at each point that my shadows flinch from. I want to ask what the diagrams are for—what ceremony requires a five-pointed star and a human figure drawn inside it like a target.I want to ask what the Bolingbrokes have been waiting for and whatviablemeans and what happens to subjects that aren't viable.
I ask none of these things. I already know the answer to the last one. It's written in eleven documents in the restricted section, in a phrase that Mother's family has been using for five generations.
"Where did these come from?" I nod at the parchment.
"Family archives." Light. Done. Moving on. "Coordinate with the others. Friday. And Callum—" She looks up from her pad and her eyes catch mine and hold them, ice-blue to ice-blue, the mirror I've been looking into my entire life. "This is what Bolingbrokes do. Don't overthink it."
Don't overthink it.Which means: don't think about it at all. Don't examine. Don't question. Deliver the report, execute the order, trust the process, go to bed. The same instructions she's been giving me in different words since I could talk.
"Yes, Mother."
I leave. The orchids droop in their vase. Nobody waters them.
* * *
Atlas is in the Tempest weight room because Atlas is always in the weight room when his body is the only thing that still does what he tells it to. The room smells like ozone and sweat and the metallic tang of scorched metal from lightning he couldn't keep out of the barbell. Scorch marks on the ceiling. A cracked mirror on the far wall that nobody's bothered to replace because it'll just crack again.
He looks like shit. Grey skin, hollow eyes, the stubble that happens when a person stops caring about the difference between sleeping and not sleeping. His conductor sits on the bench beside him and his hand twitches toward it when I enter—not a threat, a reflex. Atlas Knox lives one bad moment from a lightning strike at all times. It's exhausting to watch. It must be unbearable to be.
"The Administration wants a demonstration," I tell him. "All four of us. Channeling simultaneously. Into Grey. Friday."
The barbell freezes midair. His arms are shaking—not from the weight.
"All four." He racks it. Sits up. Looks at me with something I've been seeing more of lately—not the blind hostility of the first weeks but something worse. Clarity. "Your mother's idea."
"The Headmaster has authorized—"
"Cut the shit, Bolingbroke. Your mother wants to see what happens when we pour everything we've got into a girl who's already carrying three disciplines. And you're going along with it because that's what you do."
The words land. I let them.
"What if she can't take it?" He's quiet now. The anger burned off fast—it always does with Atlas, the rage is just the crust over the grief, and underneath he's a twenty-year-old kid who watched his mother die and never stopped being afraid it would happen again. "What if it's too much and she—"
He doesn't finish. He never finishes that sentence. The ending lives in his body—in the storms he can't control and the nightmares he won't talk about and the flinch he still has when lightning gets too close.
"Then we'll have our answer," I say, and I hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth and it makes me sick.
Atlas stares at me. The lights flicker. He picks up his conductor, turns it over, and nods once.
"Friday," he says.
I leave with the taste of ash in my throat.
* * *
Long Shot Mansion's common room is doing its usual trick—furniture rearranging, pool table playing itself, the probability clouds on the ceiling swirling in colors that I don't have the Tumult training to read. The air smells like old cards and the particular sharp sweetness of chaos magic, which always reminds me of burnt sugar and bad decisions.
Felix is in his chair. Cards moving. Always moving.
"Simultaneous channel," he says before I open my mouth. "All four. Grey. Friday."
"Probability?"
