"And what happens if your temper flares, hmm?"
Thea squirmed.
Miss Martin held out for long seconds, making her disapproval clear. "Now make it melt."
Thea's lips pressed together mulishly. "Can I not have breakfast first?"
"Melt your tea and then you may dine."
Thea set her teacup on the table in front of her and stared at it. Nothing happened for a good two minutes, though Lucien could feel the girl's energy reserves turning molten within her. Thea would be a powerful practitioner one day, perhaps even more so than him. Even being in the same room as her was starting to set off an ache behind his left eye.
"Thea's natural affinity is Telepathy," Ianthe explained a little proudly. "She struggles with Telekinesis, however, and her control is limited. She's so determined to do something, that she can often do it once out of frustration, but rarely at will and never whilst calm."
Thea's lips pursed, her fingers clenching into fists as she glared at the cup. It took almost a minute, but the iced lump of tea gradually pooled into water, until a miniature iceberg floated in the cup and then bubbles started floating to the surface, slowly, then faster, until the tea was boiling.
It was an impressive display, relying on sheer force of will, rather than ritual and Words of Power. Or it would have been, if the room wasn't so cold. Lucien had to stand and move away, the girl's power bleeding all over him.
"Now freeze it again, but this time, I want you to focus on your meditative techniques. Remember what we discussed about building your sense of ritual? You were angry again, which means you were able to melt the tea, but you cannot allow that to form a block in your mind, which ties your power to emotion, or else you'll never be able to advance."
"I will advance." Thea took a steady breath and closed her eyes, but emotion painted rainbows of color across her face—anger, defiance, frustration, hope, perhaps even fear, if he was reading that dark, indigo blue correctly.
The tea stopped bubbling, but even when Thea began murmuring her ritual words, it remained stubbornly steaming. Her lashes flickered, those hands beginning to curl into themselves.
"Stop," Ianthe instructed. "You're getting angry again. Let it all go, Thea. Release all of your emotions and your power and have some breakfast. You can begin again afterward."
When Thea opened her eyes, mutiny burned there. "I can do it."
"How do you form ice?" Lucien found himself asking, his voice calm and cool.
"Absorb the energy in the water," Thea explained. "Energy and friction compel the water to heat, yet by removing all of the energy and absorbing it yourself, you force it to cool."
"Yet emotion drives us to expend energy, which is why boiling water is easier than cooling it."
"Yes, but I froze the water, even when I was using emotion as my driving force of will!"
He smiled faintly, sharing a glance with Ianthe. "I'm starting to feel some sense of kinship with my own mentor."
Ianthe sipped her tea. "And I believe I'm starting to understand why Drake passed her apprenticeship onto me. I'm learning rather a lot myself, most particularly the fact that His Grace has an odd sense of humor. He's probably been waiting for this moment ever since I first began my apprenticeship."
"I thought it was rude to discuss someone when they are sitting right there at the table with you." Thea stabbed a kipper with ruthless intent. "I don't understand why we cannot simply use the tools we already own. Expression works! Why does it matter if I'm angry, or scared, or—"
"Has your mentor never explained why we tie our sorcery to ritual and power words instead?"
Ianthe glanced his way. "Lucien—"
"The girl should know the truth."
Ianthe's lips thinned. "I didn't wish to frighten her."
Thea's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Most of our first forays into sorcery are caused by emotion," he said. Like his yesterday, which was an uncomfortable truth. He pushed it aside. "A girl is beaten by her father so often, that one day some mental block in her mind snaps. She wants him to stop hitting her. Her desire and her emotional energy force the laws of nature to her will, just for a moment and often uncontrollably. Perhaps she throws her father across the room? Perhaps she breaks every bone in his body or chokes him to death? Sometimes the girl can even force her father to never lift a hand against her again by placing a compulsion in his own head, though such a thing is extremely rare. It's most often telekinesis or pyrokinesis, something destructive, something that is relatively easy for the will to perform. Sometimes these girls or boys are so afraid of what they can do that they form a mental block in their minds, which means they can never do it again. They... suppress their sorcery. It becomes a mysterious miracle, or I'm sure you've heard of mysterious healings, or deaths, or catastrophes?"
Thea's eyes grew distant, her lower lip trembling, just a fraction. "I-I–"
"That's enough, Lucien," Ianthe murmured, taking the girl's hand. "She understands what can happen." Thea turned into her, and Ianthe squeezed her hand and drew her closer.
Of course she did. Most of them did, and now he'd unwittingly blundered into some dark scar of memory that the girl owned. "My apologies. I did not mean to touch a nerve." He cleared his throat. So many times these days he missed social cues and blundered through human interactions. He'd never been so careless before his incarceration.
