Alina’s gaze drifted to her hands. The skin was unmarked, but she imagined a blackness curling inside, coiling through the bones and tendons, waiting to erupt. She pressed her palms together, as if to keep anything else from leaking out. “That was not control,” she said.
Tamsin shifted her weight, then went to settle onto a fallen log that oozed cold sap. “Come here,” she said, voice returning to its usual command.
Reluctantly, Alina obeyed, standing on legs that trembled from exhaustion. She perched at the edge of the log, leaving as much distance as possible between them.
Tamsin drew a breath, sharp and clean. “It’s not about force. It’s not even about feeling. It’s intent, and control.” She plucked a twig from the ground, stripped the bark in a single motion. “Focus on a single thought. Nothing else. Not memory, not fear. Nothing.”
She held the stick out, level with Alina’s knees. “Try again. Small this time.”
Alina hesitated. “What if—”
Tamsin cut her off with a look. “Don’t worry about what if. Worry about what is.”
So, Alina fixed her gaze on the stick. She tried to empty her mind of palaces and parents, of rebels and victims, of the ruined flower at her feet. She conjured instead a single, childish command: bend.
For what felt like minutes, nothing happened. The stick lay inert, oblivious to her will. She felt the effort building, pressure in her temples, a sweat beading along her upper lip.
She inhaled, let the breath out slowly.
The stick quivered, just barely. It did not break, or blacken, or perform any impressive feat. But it moved.
A relief so profound it bordered on nausea swept through her. She let her hands fall, gasping at the release.
Tamsin’s lips twitched, a movement so minute it might have been imagined. “Better.”
Alina slumped, sudden fatigue spreading through every limb. The cold was no longer bracing, but a punishment, every shiver a new demand. She hugged herself, eyes fixed on the trembling stick.
They worked that way for hours. Tamsin set simple tasks—twist the twig, uncurl a dried leaf, coax a drop of water from the moss. Each time, Alina struggled, failed, sometimes made things worse. She burned a patch of lichen to crusted yellow, cracked a stone in two with an unintentional surge, made a cloud of spores explode in her face, leaving her sneezing and blinking away tears.
But as the light shifted and the mist gave way to weak sunlight, the successes accumulated. A droplet formed on a leaf. A petal opened when she asked it to. She could, if she tried hard enough, make a line in the dirt run just a finger-width further.
Tamsin never praised her, but she stopped correcting as frequently. She folded her arms and watched, gaze distant, as if reviewing an old memory. Alina’s own breathing had steadied, the way the ache in her chest had been replaced with a new, not-unpleasant sense of hunger.
As the sun began to sink, casting the clearing in gold, Tamsin stood. She gestured at a birch sapling, its new leaves trembling in the evening breeze. “Once more,” she said.
Alina squared herself. She thought of all the things she wanted to prove, then let those go, focusing only on the leaf. She extended a hand, willed it to move—not with fear or anger, but with intent.
The leaf shuddered, then stilled. Then, as if in slow motion, it bent downward, holding the pose for a breath before releasing.
Alina blinked, stunned. She felt an impulse to cry, or laugh, or run.
Tamsin’s mouth curved. Just the faintest edge, but it was enough.
“That’s enough for today,” she said. She turned, marching back through the clearing without looking to see if Alina followed.
Alina lingered, staring at the birch. The leaf, having survived her attention, seemed to glitter in the last light.
She touched her hands together, marveling at the absence of tremor. She flexed her fingers, and for the first time that day, they felt warm.
The ruined flower still lay on the ground, a warning and a monument. Alina briefly knelt beside it, brushing the blackened petals with a fingertip. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. As she rose, she reached for the amulet, a deeply ingrained reassuring habit. The last hours it had lain forgotten on her chest. Now she was looking for its comforting touch, as she had done a thousand times before. It was scalding hot.
The sun was a red coin spent and forgotten behind the trees by the time she stood up and stretched her aching limbs. The forest had changed in the hours of their training. What had been cold blue and silver was now a thicket of deep shadow and gold, the trunks painted in the last desperate brilliance of the day.
Kael was waiting.
He stood on the far side of the stones, arms folded, hair a tumbling mess, eyes fixed on the empty sky above. His posture was one of careful neutrality, but even at a distance, Alina sensed the low thrum of anticipation that radiated off him. He turned as theyapproached, the movement so smooth it could have been a trick of the wind.
Tamsin reached him first, just at the edge of the clearing, a sentinel with no intention of entering the circle. Alina drifted behind her, slow, drained and worried about the amulet’s reaction. Kael’s gaze flicked from one to the other, then settled on Tamsin.
