“Not so much,” said Tamsin, as if scolding a child for using too much ink. “It’s not a question of strength. It’s a question of touch.”
Alina tried to gentle herself. She felt the tiniest give, like a stick snapping in the distance, but nothing else.
“Again,” Tamsin said.
They repeated this for a quarter hour. Standing almost motionless, the cold seeped in through Alina’s boots, up her legs, and into her bones, but she did not dare complain. Sweat beaded at her temples, freezing instantly on her skin. Her hands shook from effort and the cold, and by the fifth attempt her teeth were chattering so badly she could barely say the word “again” to herself.
Tamsin circled her, never breaking rhythm. “You’re overthinking. The Gift is not a calculation. It’s a current. Let it pass through you, not pool inside.”
Alina wanted to scream, or cry, or both, but instead she said, “How did you learn?”
Tamsin stopped, considered, then answered in a voice just above the whisper of fog. “I watched. I copied. When I failed, I tried again.”
There was no warmth in the answer, but something about it made Alina stand up straighter. She pictured the birch leaf from yesterday’s lesson, its trembling edge, the almost-smile on Tamsin’s face. She pictured Kael’s hand over hers, the sensation of energy passing not through her, but between them.
She tried again.
A droplet formed on the tip of a pine needle. It trembled, then fell, striking the moss at her feet with a sound so small only Alina could hear it. She opened her eyes, and saw that Tamsin was watching, too.
“Better,” said Tamsin. If she tried, Alina could almost pretend she sounded approving. She gestured to a patch of lichen on a rock. “Next.”
Alina’s focus narrowed. The lichen was a pattern of green and white, stubbornly alive against the stone. She pictured herself not as the source, but as the channel. She tried to let the Gift pass through, not accumulate. She willed the lichen to change—no, to move, to reach, to become.
Nothing. For a full minute, nothing.
She tried again, and again, until her vision began to blur at the edges. Her hands shook so hard she had to clench them to her sides.
Tamsin’s voice cut in, a razor under the skin. “Stop.”
Alina stopped.
Tamsin approached, stopping so close that Alina could see the tiny scars along her knuckles, the faint green shimmer in her irises that marked her as deep-blooded Gifted. She reached out, not to strike or scold, but to touch the amulet that hung around Alina’s neck.
Tamsin’s hand hovered over it. “It’s hot,” she said, more observation than question.
Alina nodded. “I’ve felt it a few times now. It wasn’t like this before.”
Tamsin narrowed her eyes, then took the amulet in her fingers and lifted it from Alina’s chest. The chain pulled, and Alina’s breath caught. For a second, she thought Tamsin might tear it off, but instead the older woman only studied it, turning the pendant over and over.
“This is not an ordinary bauble,” Tamsin said. “Where did you get it?”
“My mother,” said Alina. “She said it was for protection.” She thought of the queen’s face as she’d fastened it around her neck, the way her hands had lingered, the way her eyes had shied from Alina’s.
Tamsin weighed the amulet in her hand, then released it. “It’s a limiter,” she said, almost to herself. “It damps your connection. Suppresses what’s already there.”
Alina felt like she’d been slapped in the face. “What? But why would she…?”
Tamsin shrugged. “Protection. Fear. The reasons don’t matter. The effect is the same.”
A silence stretched between them. In it, Alina heard the entire world: the drip of water, the distant call of a jay, the shuddering beat of her own heart.
Tamsin’s voice came low, but not unkind. “Take it off.”
Alina hesitated, then obeyed. She lifted the chain over her head. The air felt instantly sharper, every nerve alive and aching.
“Now,” said Tamsin. “Try again.”
Alina focused on the patch of lichen. She felt the usual tangle of nerves, the dread of failure. But beneath it, something new: a surge, a pressure, as if the world had suddenly remembered her and was impatient to say hello.
