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“Tell me how it works,” Dawsyn presses, curiosity besting her.

“Why? Are you scared to grow old?”

“I’m merely ensuring you aren’t some demonic heart-eating forest dweller.”

Baltisse’s lips twitch. “It is no great secret, Dawsyn. I was the daughter of a mage. It is the mage blood that keeps me from aging.”

The tension collecting in Dawsyn’s shoulders melts a little. She’d never much thought of Baltisse having parents. Or a childhood.

“How do you feel?” Baltisse asks. She scrutinises Dawsyn in the way that only she can, like she is stripping the flesh away and peering within. As she watches, the mage unbuttons the front of her dress and disrobes, leaving only sparse underclothes. She retrieves a cloth from the basin and runs it over her collarbone and down each arm, her pale skin pebbling.

Dawsyn assesses herself, flexing her fingers experimentally. “I feel… spent.”

“Do you feel any lingering power in your palms?”

“None.”

“Hm,” Baltisse murmurs, gaze distant and searching.

Dawsyn looks down at her hands to confirm – no different from usual. Dry, lined, callused. “I cannot control it,” she mutters. “This magic. It does not come when I need it. Why?”

Baltisse turns to face her, her lips dipping at their corners. “It is the greatest mistake of us all to believe we can control magic.”

“Youcan.” Dawsyn frowns. “You use it at will.”

“I call it, and it comes,” Baltisse counters, raising her palms before her. She closes her fingers inward and the candle wicks that line her windowsill flicker to life. “But I do not control it. You should look at magic the way you would look at an animal. It is wild and sentient. It has its own motives, its own language. You can teach it to trust you, to serve you. But it cannot be done by force, it cannot be owned or ruled.”

Dawsyn hesitates before responding, mulling on the words. “I called it to my palms in the Glacian palace and it unlocked the gates. But it would not help me when I was imprisoned in Terrsaw. I pled with it, and it would not listen.”

“Yes. An animal is most wary of those who have abused it.”

“I did notabuseit.”

“You forced it to do your bidding in Glacia,” Baltisse says calmly. “And now it shies away from you.”

“It came out last night. Why?”

“Of its own accord, I presume. Unless you called to it?”

Dawsyn only remembers the anger boiling through her and suddenly out. She hadn’t controlled a single thing in that moment. Not the pounding of her blood or the shaking in her hands. Not the light that had exploded from her, nor the ice that had coated her skin. “No,” she mutters.

Baltisse nods gravely. “It fed from your anger and rose in the chaos. You should be very careful, Dawsyn Sabar,” she says, eyes alight with unmasked curiosity. “If you feed that animal inside you with wrath and hate, it will tear everything down before even you are given the chance.”

Dawsyn’s magic roils inside her, as if in approval. She shudders. “Who taught you to use magic?” Dawsyn asks slowly, wondering if the mage will answer.

“My mother,” she says, walking to a tiny closet, extracting a robe within. It seems so very human, the act of washing and dressing. Not at all like a creature of the underworld.

“Watch your thoughts, Sabar. Unless you would like apersonaltour of said underworld.”

Dawsyn grins. “Take no shame in it, mage. I came from nothing better.”

“No,” Baltisse allows. “I suppose not.”

“You said your mother was a mage. Are there many mage bloodlines?”

Baltisse eyes her carefully, those liquid irises delving uninvited. Dawsyn finds it difficult to look away once they capture her.

“Not anymore,” she says. “But once… Once, there were many.”