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“How do you have one?”

“The night Micah found me on the streets, I killed a demon using it for no good. He told me I earned it, so I kept it. Let’s just see what it does for you. Close your hand and say your spell.”

I pant out a breath and do as she suggests, and for a good ten tries, nothing happens. I’m discouraged. “The stone is a dud, and so am I.”

“Try thinking about the fight you had with Micah last night and all the emotions you felt. The same ones I can sense you’re battling now.”

“Maybe you should put that wall up.”

She laughs. “You underestimate me. Try.”

I close my eyes, and I’m back at my bedroom door with his hands on my face. Damn it, Ember, he’d whispered. It has to be this way. He meant we can’t be more. We’re distracting each other. That’s why he’s not here this morning. He wants this, us, to be all business, and it feels—bad. Just bad. I feel cut and bleeding, and—magic surges through me, and I open my eyes to find the water boiling.

Gabriella is clapping and grinning, but my attention is locked on Micah where he stands behind her, staring at me, his gaze piercing, but he shows no reaction. Following my gaze, Gabriella glances over her shoulder at Micah and then back to me. “Try again. Try for fire.”

“How can I turn water to fire from boiling water?”

“The same way I turn air into water. I pull from sources within the air.”

“There is no fire in the air.”

“But there is water nearby. Use the water and make fire.”

An hour later, I collapse on my back on the ground with utter exhaustion and frustration. I made fire, but the kind of flame that lights a match, not kills a demon. Gabriella kneels beside me. “You had a good day. I’ll meet you here at the same time tomorrow.” She squeezes my hand and disappears.

I sit up to find Micah standing in the same spot he has been for an hour. He says nothing, but his disapproval of my performance, and mine too, for that matter, hums in the air. I push to my feet, shoving aside my weariness, rejecting my failure. “To the forest?”

All he says is, “To the forest.”

I kill a swarm of some kind of giant bugs by boiling them.

I’m pretty darn proud of myself, and even Micah appears pleased with my success, though all he says is, “Next.”

I follow up my success by almost dying by tiger attack. Those white tigers really want to eat me, and I’m too zapped from all the things I’ve been boiling to rift. Micah grabs me, rifts me to the edge of the forest, and declares us done for the day. Next up is the library, where we are awkwardly alone and back to reading about demons.

This time, when he orders his meatball sub, I order a sub of my own. Egg salad, extra-large, and I down two bottles of water. It’s only when we’re eating that we finally have a small conversation. “Why are you so mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you, Ember.”

“Then what is this?”

“I told you. This can’t be about us. Neither of us has done a good job of remembering that. I can’t protect you. And you can’t protect any of us if you aren’t prepared. My role here is to make you a badass who makes it to the Diviner without allowing the serpent to control you.”

“And you think the best way to do that is to treat me like I’m nothing to you? Because all it does is make me feel alone.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“Okay.”

“Ember,” he says softly, a plea in his voice. “If I get any closer to you, I will not be objective. I will not know if you are ready.”

“I know,” I say. “I do. I know.” I discard the rest of my sandwich and pick up a book. “The next demon is the werewolf, who we’ve already discussed back in the garrison. What I don’t know is how to get by how strong he is.”

For a moment, he stares at me, and I think he’ll circle back to the topic of us. Instead, he says, “He’s not stronger than you. And you can always boil him to death.” He laughs. “That’s a new one. I’ve never known anyone who can boil people.”

“That sounds like a disgusting way to kill him.”

“Or her. And you could just shove a star in the heart. They’re technically a lower-level demon based on their magic capacity but they don’t fully operate in that category. In this case, just like in human fables, silver is deadly to them.”