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An annoyingly good point. I wrapped my fingers around hers, finding her light-drenched shape more solid than expected. She squeezed down with the firm reassurance I’d come to know from her, and for a moment, the silhouette of materialised power before me seemed a little less intimidating.

‘Very well.’ If she was still tense, her voice did a stellar job of hiding it. ‘Now I need you to listen closely and repeat what I’m saying. Not the words that you understand. The words I’mspeaking.Is that clear?’

I swallowed but nodded, chest tightening. That odd divine language underlying the words I’d easily interpreted from the very first time I heard it … it took an effort to dig below that comprehensible surface and identify the alien sounds she was truly pronouncing, The sight of my own small hand caught in those fingers of divine light made me feel a little faint – which did nothing to improve my faith in my own reciting abilities.

‘Good,’ Zera said, except she didn’t saygoodat all. She saidikaz, and once I’d deciphered that true sound of the word, I could no longer figure out how I’d ever understood it asgood.‘Then repeat after me …’

She went through the oath slowly, two, three words at a time, allowing my lips the time to find their way around the strangeness of her language. Coming from me, the sounds were utterly meaningless to my ears. My only sense of what I was saying came from Zera, from the shreds of meaning I caught between my intent listening. Loyalty. Service. Lifelong. Bargain.

Magic.

My tongue almost twisted at that particular word. But I forced it over my lips, and the warm blush on my skin abruptly drew inwards, solidifying into a brewing little core of something …newjust below my midriff.

Was it working?

The final words seemed to take an eternity; I could barely muster up the self-restraint to sit still and repeat the rest of Zera’s oath. The moment she released my hand, my fingers flew to my chest, prodding that brand new sensation of warmth just below the lowest ribs. It felt new, and yet it was a part of me I recognised, something that had always slumbered just below my skin yet escaped my notice.

‘You can feel it,’ Zera said, sounding breathless.

‘I … I think so?’ When I looked up, she had taken on her human form again, not nearly so grandmother-like anymore now that I knew what lay beneath. ‘What am I supposed to feel, exactly?’

‘Power.’ She jumped up more easily than ever before, nodding for me to follow. ‘Come. Let’s try.’

I couldn’t get to my feet fast enough, and still she was faster, rushing off with the bag of grief as if her very life depended on it. As I hurried after her, she added, ‘The fae interpretation of colour magic is rather limited, you see.’

It took a physical effort to steer my brain back to magic theory after the whirlwind of developments it had already been forced to process. ‘In what way?’

‘It’s all about hue. Etele’s magic was not strictly limited to colour, but rather the broader concept of light and surfaces and the external appearances that we see. Once …’ She interrupted herself as the bag got stuck behind a rogue root; the gnarled wood slithered obediently back into the earth when she glared at it. ‘Once you start looking beyond the obvious powers of hue, far more interesting possibilities arise.’

‘I see,’ I said, which was a hopeful statement at best and an outright lie at worst. Every minute of this day sucked me deeper and deeper into a swamp of bewilderment. ‘Do you, um, have a concrete example of—’

‘Light reflections.’ She’d never interrupted me with such urgent agitation. ‘Of course, colour is just light reflection, too, in the end …’

‘Of course,’ I said weakly.

‘… but so is texture and shine and all of those other factors. Which brings us to the ones Etele never taught most members of your people. Smoothness for mind. Softness for movement. Iridescence for magic.’

‘Wait.’ Only now did my brain slowly come around to the point she was making. ‘You’re saying there aremorecolours. Different colours. Things that aren’t colours, but …’

‘You could probably call it surface magic rather than colour magic,’ Zera said without turning around, ‘and then consider colour just one of the many surface properties that you can draw power from. Does that clear things up?’

It did – marginally so, but an improvement nonetheless. I glanced at the world around me, the willow trees and the cottage appearing at the end of the path, drenched in colours I had learned to instinctively take stock of wherever I went.

Just the reflection of light.

Like the sunlight dazzling on dewy leaves. Its soft glow on flower petals. The shadowy grooves of tree bark. I blinked and blinked again as my vision shifted, gaze latching on to sights I had never given much consideration before.

Softness for movement.

Like the Mother, who had moved heavy iron chains with her magic, that night she hung Creon by his wings in the bone hall. I stumbled to a halt as understanding rose into my mind with a sensation close to nausea.

‘Those pillows.’ My voice had gone rough. ‘That mass of velvet and silk she’s sitting on – she usedthatto draw magic? The … the soft gleam of the light on their surface?’

‘Very good, Emelin. Very good.’ Zera finally lowered her bag at the fence of her garden and turned around, panting lightly. ‘Soft surfaces with a diffuse light reflection make it possible to create movement. Or the opposite – it’s an application of that same magic that binds human servants to the island, restricting their movement.’

‘But—Oh.’ Light flickered around me, and my thoughts appeared to do the same, jumping from memory to memory faster than I could follow. ‘Iridescence for magic, you said. Is that what she uses to bind people, then? The surface of … of things like pearls and feathers and opal and …’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘That is part of it.’