“I don’t mean figuratively. Do youseethe color red?”
A frown puckers my forehead. “No.”
“What about any other colors?” she pushes.
Kallister glances at her. “We can save all this for training. Let’s move on.”
“Wait,” I interject, “am I supposed to see colors when I incite?”
I suddenly flash back to those odd gold flecks that were floating in my mind the morning of Uncle Jim’s execution. I remember seeing them as a child, too, when we practiced incitement. I called them the gold sparkles. Jim always brushed my questions off. I suspect he thought I was just imagining the gold dust.
“Manipulation abilities harness a different energy source—” Adrienne starts to explain, but Fiona cuts her off.
“We’re getting into the weeds,” the older woman says irritably. “We’re not here to train her. This is disclosure.”
“Have you ever consciously incited?” Teriq asks me. “Not spontaneously, I mean.”
“I did it at the Silver Jubilee last week.”
Everyone’s expression sharpens.
“Jayde Valence caught me trying to plant the explosives. She was a precog and had a vision of me, and she confronted me right in the middle of the mission. Getting caught would’ve ruined everything and blown my cover, so I knew I had to stop her.” I swallow. “It took so much energy. I don’t even know how I did it. Again, it was driven by sheer emotion, but…um…I incited her to shoot herself in the head.”
Silence crashes over the war room.
“I don’t want this ability,” I mutter when nobody speaks. “I really don’t. And I have no intention of using this power, let alone abusing it. So if you’re going to send me away, just know—”
“We’re not sending you away,” Adrienne interrupts.
I feel a flicker of hope. “I can stay?”
She tips her chin toward Kallister, then the others. “Unless someone has an objection, I don’t think we even need to call a vote.”
“No objection here,” Kallister says, and the other men murmur their agreement.
Only Fiona resists, misgiving clouding her expression.
“Fi?” he prompts.
Finally, she offers a tense nod, her jaw clenched.
I can stay.
A thick lump of relief forms in my throat, but it fades when Adrienne speaks again.
“The Dagger will be your new home, Darlington. We can’t have an inciter walking around in the wards.”
And that doesn’t sound like an invitation.
It sounds like a threat.
Chapter 5
“You did well,” Gray says on our way to the mess hall for breakfast. I suspect he’s been ordered to stick to me like glue.
“Really? Because it feels like they just threatened me.”
He grins. “Okay, I’ll bite. How were you threatened?”
