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Taly shrugged. “You told me to practice my crystal inscription,” she said, watching as Calcifer wriggled his tail, preparing to make a jump. “So, I did.”

“I can see that,” Azura said a little too carefully. Stepping further into the room, she began to circle the miniature palace, stepping over the piles of leftover coins dotting the area around it. “You were supposed to be waiting for me downstairs.”

“You were late.”

“A queen is never late, my dear.” Azura crouched and began picking through the crystal moat. “Did you enchant all of these?” She looked over, and Taly nodded. “You’re still using too much aether.”

Taly sighed and fell back against the edge of the desk. While summoning and shaping her aether had become second nature to her now, her magic lacked precision. She was always using too much aether, even for the simplest enchantments, but no matter how hard she tried, how long she meditated, how many times she crooked a finger at that inner well of power and begged it to behave—the moment she would start to cast, her aether would rise up, like it had been contained forso long beneath her mother’s spells that it simply refused to be held back any longer.

If she tried to freeze a coin, she ended up canvasing an area the size of her desk. Slowing spells were glacial, accelerations faster than the eye could see.

There was no in between.

Remember,Azura was always saying,your aether is a part of you, linked to both your conscious and subconscious desires. You control it, not the other way around.

But most mages began taming their aether when they were still children, and as Azura had told her many times, a child’s mind was malleable, whereas Taly’s was “stubborn,” “bullheaded,” and “needlessly contrary.” According to the Queen, she would need to work twice as hard to control her power, to push past habits that had ingrained themselves over the course of a lifetime.

Which was just peachy. And unhelpful. And more than a little disheartening. She was no stranger to hard work, but at some point, there just wasn’t anything left to give.

The Queen dropped the crystal she’d been inspecting and rose to her feet. “Still,” she said, pulling Taly from her thoughts. “Your spells are consistent from crystal to crystal, and the penmanship is good. The enchantment is robust despite the oversaturation of magic. Overall, I’d say not bad.”

For reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, Taly found herself smiling at the praise—but then quickly cut off the expression mid-way. She didn’t want this woman’s approval. It was just… nice to do something right for once. Azura was always finding her lacking in one way or the other. It was almost laughable. In a very depressing sort of way.

Azura gave the coin palace one more look, throwing a pointed glare at Calcifer lounging in the courtyard, then snapped, “Well, come on,” as she turned and exited the room. “We haven’t got all day.”

Taly cursed under her breath—the Queen had left her waiting for two hours, after all.

She was still cursing as she ducked to retrieve her boots from underneath the desk and slipped on a blue brocade vest over her tunic before following Azura out of the apartment and down the stairs. She was wearing far too many layers for the weather, and the fabrics made her skin itch, but Leto... Well, the fairy had an eye for fashion, and Taly had learned to pick her battles when it came to the wisp and clothing.

Taly jogged to keep up with Azura’s brisk pace as they passed from hall to hall, each one draped with silks and hung with paintings and decorated with those same rich furnishings that seemed so commonplace to her now.

“Where are we going?” she asked when they came to an unfamiliar part of the palace. The windows and doors were all closed tight, and the air was near sweltering. She was suddenly very glad she had let Leto fuss over her hair while she yawned into her coffee that morning. The coiled braids kept her hair from sticking to her neck.

Azura clicked open a fan. “I thought we could both use a change of scenery this afternoon. Classrooms have their place, but for this lesson, I have something special in mind.”

“What about my weapons training?” Taly asked. She actually enjoyed that part of her day.

“Canceled.”

“And my—”

“Also canceled.”

They approached a wide set of double doors at the end of the hallway. The wood was nearly black, and the crests for each of the Shards were carved in even intervals. Crystals of every shape, size, and color flickered, flanked by circles and runes that had been etched into a delicate geometric pattern.

Azura raised a hand, and the fairies that had been bouncing along behind them rushed forward, pushing against the wood. The doors slid open on silent hinges.

From stifling heat to open air, the room beyond was breathtakingly large, big enough to fit an airship and still have space left over, and Taly gasped, looking around with wide eyes. There were no windows or walls, just staggered rows of ivory columns holding up a gray ring of stone. Set around a central altar were pews carved from ivory and inlaid with long strips of that same black wood. They fanned out to the far reaches of the room in ever-widening circles, the aisles like the spokes of a wagon wheel.

Taly grinned, craning her head to stare up through the wide wooden rafters at the clear blue sky. The ceiling had been left open to the elements, protected by a dome of air magic that shimmered if the light caught it just right. “You brought me to temple.”

“Obviously,” Azura muttered as she strode down the main aisle. “Close your mouth, dear. You look like a fish.” Avoiding the row of golden thrones off to the side—one for each of the Genesis Lords—Azura took a seat in a pew near the altar. “Come now. Hurry up. I was hoping to get an earlier start than this.”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Taly made her way to the front of the temple, smiling at the fairies that bounced off the dome, seeming to make a game of it.

But wait… No. They weren’t bouncing off the dome. They were ping ponging through the rafters, throwing down dust and splinters and—

There was a loudcrack. Then another as one of those long beams buckled in the middle. It was solid wood, at least three feet thick, and there were countless others like it all stemming from a massive marble column at the center of the room and terminating in that gray ring of stone. All of them cracking and bowing as the fairies ricocheted back and forth.