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Which mirrors light, he finished, nodding as if that made perfect sense.And softness should be surfaces with a more diffuse reflection, then?

‘I hate that you make it look self-evident,’ I said, ‘but yes. She said surfaces work better the more reflective they are.’

So velvet, which has an obvious gleam, works better than wool, which does not?

‘Suppose so.’ I pulled a face. ‘We’ll have to find out.’

Fascinating. Last time I’d seen him this enthralled by a theoretical question, it had been that damned blinking star of Kothro.Let’s try— Wait …

Yellow light blazed around me before I could blink. When I glanced down, my simple linen dress had changed into black velvet, falling loosely to my knees.

‘This is a terrible model for velvet,’ I said, pulling a face at him. ‘You’re making me look like a shiny bag of turnips. What should I try to move? I suggest something that isn’t likely to hurt anyone or break anything.’

He sank down beside his own bag, pulled out a tightly folded coat, and chucked it onto the path before me.Go ahead,my lovely turnip.

I tried to magically fling his coat at his face.

My first attempt was an utter failure. The tightly woven cloth fluttered like a dying bird on the ground but didn’t shift even the smallest inch closer to where Creon was sitting. Perhaps, I admitted, I should have taken a moment longer to see the soft gleam of my dress in my mind’s eye, the way I instinctively imagined colours whenever I drew.

On my second attempt, the coat shot past Creon and ended up tangled in the branches of the plants that still obscured half of the eastern wall.

Typical, Creon signed, looking delighted.

I yanked the coat from the towering hedge and dropped it onto his head, then tried to change my dress back from that strange flat texture of drained softness to lush velvet. The black cloth should have provided plenty of colour, yet no matter how much yellow I swung at it, the texture of my dress wouldn’t change.

‘Creon?’

He was raking his long hair back into place, still chuckling lightly.Yes?

‘What did you do to change my dress to velvet, exactly?’

With a minimal flick of his fingers, he swung another burst of yellow magic at me. The dress went back to unblemished velvet at once.

‘That …’ I blinked at it. ‘That’s what I tried to do. Do you … do you think it’s like not being able to change colour?’

You mean you’re no longer able to change texture with yellow magic now that texture has also become a source of magic for you?

‘Because magic can’t affect its own source,’ I said blankly, repeating what he’d told me months ago. ‘And you don’t have texture magic, so it’s no problem for you … But that means we can produce almost infinite magic as long as we’re together, doesn’t it?’

So you’ll have to spend more time with me?he signed dryly.Such a shame.

I magically yanked the coat from his hands – my best attempt yet.

Lyn and Tared returned after fifteen minutes of magical experimentation, announced a good thirty seconds in advance by Lyn’s cheerful chatting echoing through the temple halls. If we’d been in a state of rumpled undress, we’d probably have had time to make ourselves decent before the two of them finally emerged from the high open gate. But as it happened, I was busy dragging Creon’s ruined coat from a puddle of muddy water at the moment of their arrival; no effort was needed to make the scene look utterly unerotic.

Even Tared looked a fraction reassured at the sign of my progress – sufficient proof that we’d spent most of our unchaperoned time in a properly educative manner.

Lyn beamed at me as she hurried towards me and brightly said, ‘We found you something, Em!’

‘A goddess?’ I suggested wryly.

She chuckled, pulling something from her loose trousers that looked far too sharp in the hands of a seven-year-old. It was a long, curved dagger, the blade a strange, black-veined steel, the hilt inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl. ‘A god-gift from one of the altars. Thought it might come in handy.’

In case I needed more weapons for Tolya? The point reached me only after a moment of owlish blinking – mother-of-pearl.Iridescence for magic.

‘Oh!’ I whirled around. ‘Creon?’

Planning to bind me on the spot?The brightest of his laughter had melted off his face at Tared’s arrival, but there was enough of it left in the twinkle of his eyes.