I would bet he already knew. But it was a secret I had never been able to share, and it spilled from my lips. “I sewed for a line going to the Silvered Strand. Middle stitches and end embroidery. It doesn’t take much spellwork, mostly finger craft and time. Nothing like what Vivienne can do. I did some knitting and assembly for others that don’t ask for names, only stitch work. Picked up and dropped off anonymously.”
“Industrious of you.”
I gave him a look that said how much I appreciated being called a battle-axe once again. I picked up the drying towel and his cup from the rack—the last item inside. “I liked being part of a line—adding something in a garment’s journey from cloth to end.”
“Being valued.”
Want ached deep inside. “Yes. I haven’t had much success in that. I’m quite a terrible mage.”
He took the drying towel from me and set it down, regarding me with a look that saw far too much. He pulled a walnut from his pocket and placed it beside his wine glass.
“Lift it into the air.”
I reached out and gripped the knobbly shell between my first finger and thumb. My fingers closed on air as the walnut shot away, rolling across the wood, snatched from my grasp.
The whole time his arms stayed folded across his chest. An easy display of control. “Marietta.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “I haven’t the cultivation for parlor tricks, Gabriel.” Not that I couldn’t recite the technique perfectly, demonstrate the hand positions, explain the theory. I just couldn’t make itwork.
“Try it anyway. Move it—withoutusing your fingers. Show me how you were taught.”
The Coolridge Middling Academy had said to visualize an object’s movement—to picture it clearly, then to push the thought toward the object with focused intent.
I stared at the nut. It was knobbled and ordinary, casting a small shadow against the wood. I pictured it rolling—saw the exact arc it would take across the table, the way it would catch the light as it spun. I pushed the thought toward it, firmly, the way I’d been taught.
The walnut remained, round and indifferent, catching the lamplight exactly as it had before.
I exhaled. “See?”
Even Coolridge, a third-rate school, had been a reach for me. Once a mage was identified as gifted or weak, the designation was hard to shake. The academies weeded out the weak early, and few had the patience to teach struggling mages who lacked the backing of a strong estate.
“Focus and intent?”
“Of course.” As strictly taught. “I just haven’t the—”
“Hide it.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Make the walnut disappear from view.” He rested against the counter. “Don’t move it. Don’t lift it. Just make it disappear.”
“I just showed you I lack the skill—”
“You lack the appropriatetraining,” he said. “There is a difference. They taught you to visualize. To picture and push. I know they did. And that works for some people. But not for you.”
The ache grew. “Then what does?” Any other method had been lost to me—our family grimoires sold by the time I reached the age to turn their pages. My parents had been too busy keeping their heads above water—then succumbing to the current within—to help.
“Feeling the intent,” he said simply. “Not pushing at it. Not forcing it. Connecting to it emotionally.” He tilted his head, watching me the way he watched everything—as if the answer were already in the room and he was simply waiting for me to find it. “You already know how to do it, Marietta. You do it every time you walk into a space where you don’t want to be noticed. Where you are scared or risk scorn.” A pause. “You’ve been practicing that your entire life, I’ll bet.”
I looked at the walnut. Safer than looking at him. The kitchen was very quiet, save for the settling of embers in the grate.
Make it disappear? Why would a nut want to disappear? How would it feel to lie unnoticed, uncracked on the table—slipping away from the one who would crack and destroy it?
The part of me that did not enjoy being watched while I failed went very quiet.
The quiet that settled over me in hallways when a servant was about to turn a corner. The kind that draped me in a crowd when I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes. The sort I had never once in my life thought of as practice—just survival.
Ituggedat the feeling. The way I felt a shift in a crowded room. The weight of attention. The pull of eyes. How to slip between them, unnoticed.
