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At first there’s only breath.

Then—almost nothing—the faintest lift in the air around my palms. I reach too quickly, and it slips away again.

“How do you see your theïkós?” Lyxander asks.

“How do you see something that’s meant to be formless?”

“By giving it a form,” he says simply. “Picture a color.”

I open my eyes and arch a brow at him.

“Don’t be difficult.” His hazel eyes glint with amusement in the low light.

I turn away and try again. At first, there’s nothing but darkness, the same restless chaos I’ve always felt. But then, silver wisps form, curling and twisting like smoke caught in a breeze. They’re delicate, but they move purposefully, weaving through the darkness in intricate, fluid patterns. I open my eyes and look toward the cave’s mouth; my heart skips a beat, then speeds up as the same wisps trace the invisible currents of air through the rainfall.

“What do you see?”

“Silver,” I say softly. “Like smoke. Or threads of light, twisting through the air.”

“Good,” he says. “Now hold on to that. Try to visualize the source of your power. Give it a form so it’s easier to draw from.”

I let my eyes fall closed again.

A form. A shape to hold.

I’ve always pictured my soul magic as a spool of gold in my chest, a thread I can feed and knot and cut.

I conjure the image of a vessel. A narrow-necked amphora cradled beneath my ribs, and inside it a silver substance, not heavy enough to be water but not light enough to be air. It gleams with its own soft light, slippery as quicksilver, waiting.

I tell him what I see.

“Test its depths,” he says. “It will give you an understanding of how much you can draw upon.”

I dip into it, expecting a bottom to brace against. There is none. Only other channels, fine as capillaries, branching out and away. I can’t tell which way the silver is moving—if it’s pouring inward to gather or outward to spend. The uncertainty disorients me, and the image wavers.

“Breathe.”

I do, the crisp air scraping down my throat, then I conjure the vessel again. But when I come upon those channels again, my throat tightens, and the image crumbles in my mind. I huff, loosen my jaw, unclench my fingers, and try again. The silvery power shivers, and somewhere deep, beneath the slump of exhaustion and the ache of worry, there’s a slow inhalation that isn’t mine.

“Easy.” Lyxander’s voice tears through what little focus I had managed.

My eyes snap open and the image flutters away. “I almost had it.”

“You’re twisting your finger again.”

My hands still, suspended mid-motion, while a flicker of unease settles over me. Glancing down, I find the finger that had been rubbed almost raw by my ring.

“Did you find its depth?”

I shake my head, my voice unsteady. “No. There’s no depth. Just channels. I couldn’t tell if it was moving inward or outward. It felt like it was both at once.”

He frowns, his expression tightening as he considers my words.

“That may be because some part of you doesn’t want to know how deep your power goes. Especially after avoiding it for so long.”

My gaze drifts to the forked lightning marks licking up his throat, and his warning before we made our bargain echoes through my mind.

Suppressing theïkós has consequences.