Page 9 of The Witch They Fear

My eyes find Aamon.

He's standing exactly where he was. The remote is in his hand, held loosely, casually, like a set of keys. His face gives me nothing. Absolutely nothing. No satisfaction, no guilt, no flicker of anything resembling the acknowledgment that he just did to me what the facility did for twelve years, compressed into a half-second of pure, concentrated erasure.

His eyes are hazel. Warm hazel, in this light—the kind that should mean something gentle. They're watching me with the same steady, patient attention they've been giving me since I walked in, and I hate them. I hate that they're calm. I hate that I can't read them. I hate that my hands are shaking and his aren't.

"You didn't wait." My voice comes out wrecked. Hoarse and thin and nothing like the voice I walked in here with. I clear my throat. Force it steady. "He said on three."

Aamon holds my gaze. Something in his jaw shifts—a centimeter, maybe less. The only movement on his entire face.

"Your enemies won't count you in either," he says.

His voice is low. Level. It doesn't rise or sharpen or do anything to apologize for what just happened. Six words, delivered with the same economy he's brought to everything else—no more than necessary, no less than sufficient.

I stare at him. He stares back.

I want to say something sharp. Something that bites. Something that makes him flinch the way I just flinched, that puts a crack in that ancient, stupid immovable composure. But my tongue is thick with copper and my hands are still trembling against the armrests and the fail-safe is humming in my neck, docile again, resting, and all I can think is: this is the man who can do that to me whenever he wants.

"Shall we continue?" Balcour says, turning a page.

I pull myself upright in the chair. Wipe my palms on my jeans. Swallow the copper. Look straight ahead.

"Sure," I say. "Let's continue."

My voice is steady. My hands are in my lap where no one can see them shake. Inside, somewhere beneath the dampeners and the copper taste and the fail-safe purring at the base of my skull, a small, bright thing is burning. Not magic. Rage. The clean, clarifying kind—the kind that doesn't make you stupid, it makes you patient. I file it away.

I'll need it later.

Leyonna studies me for a moment. Something in her expression has changed—still composed, still gracious, but there's a new layer underneath it. Assessment. She's watching me pull myself together the way you'd watch a structural beam take weight, checking for fractures.

"The terms of your enrollment," she says, taking the room back from Balcour with a voice that doesn't need volume to command attention. "You'll attend two courses: Magic Theory, taught by Professor Harlow, and Combat and Defensive Application, taught by our combat instructor Midus. Both are already in progress—you'll be joining three weeks into the term."

Three weeks behind. Starting at zero in a room full of people who've been training since childhood. Wonderful.

"In addition, you'll have private sessions with Professor Aamon every other day, focused specifically on your... particular needs." She says it delicately. The way you'd say condition when you mean time bomb. "These sessions are mandatory and take priority over all other obligations."

Every other day. Alone in a room with the man who just ripped my magic out of my body without warning. The man whose thumb is on the button, whose jaw shifted one centimeter when I challenged him and that was the most emotion I've seen from him in twenty minutes.

He's moved back to the window. Resumed his lean against the frame, arms crossed, that same still composure—except his sleeves have shifted. Pushed up slightly from the movement, just enough to expose his forearms. Ink there, dark against his skin. Tattoos. I can't make out the shapes from here but the lines are precise, deliberate, and I'm staring at them for a beat too long before I catch myself and look away.

Threat assessment. That's all that was.

Every. Other. Day.

"Your progress will be assessed monthly by Mr. Balcour," Leyonna continues. "These evaluations will be submitted to the council for review. Your continued enrollment is contingent on satisfactory reports."

Balcour adds, without looking up: "Unsatisfactory reports will result in immediate reassessment of your provisional status."

Immediate reassessment. There it is—the polite language for we'll drug you and put you back in the box. I know this. I've always known this. But hearing it spelled out in this room—in this beautiful, warded office with its fireplace and its three vampires who hold my life in their hands—makes the small bright rage in my chest burn a degree hotter.

Monthly evaluations. By the man who won't look at me, submitted to a council that doesn't have a single witch at the table. My future decided by people who've never felt what it's like to carry something too big for their body, who've never woken up on a wet pillow because the sedatives didn't quite stop the nightmares, who've never had to count backward from fifty just to keep the walls standing.

I smile at Balcour. It's not a nice smile. He doesn't notice, because he still isn't looking.

"You'll have a preliminary baseline test tomorrow morning," Leyonna says. "Before your first class. To establish where you are currently, so that future progress can be measured against it."

"What kind of test?"

"A practical assessment. Creation, defense, and emotional regulation under stress." She says this evenly, as though she's listing items on a syllabus and not describing the three things I'm worst at. "Professor Aamon will supervise."