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She slips a ring on her finger: a gold one without a stone, like I’ve seen before. “Your body temperature is a bit warm.” She hooks her fingers in the air above my ribs, on the side of my body where my toushana usually slumbers. Something near my hip shifts. Shadows seep from that side of me. She catches some of them midair in a fist. Then fans the dark mist away.

“Everything feels normal now. I think that should do it. A bath would be good to cool you down. Come see me again if you have any pain. The Healer ward is in the Dysiis Wing.”

“Thank you.”

She leaves, and my body is a bit sore where my magic moved. But I grab my books and hustle to meet Beaulah.

I was up late, learning how Darkbearers first discovered they could bind with toushana. There were no Houses or Cotillions or Third Rites back then. But someone, somehow, figured out that if you took the blood from a person born with dark magic and used toushana on it, the toushana didn’t destroy the blood. It actually healed any abnormalities in it. And if you boiled it to concentrate the magic even further, then froze it into a blade, you could plunge it into your heart to bind yourself. Third Rite was modeled after this practice. And no one gives Darkbearers credit for that. They all hate Darkbearers, but their very magic is based on Darkbearer knowledge…

Beaulah is waiting for me when I reach the session room. Adola is there, too, getting a talking-to.

“That’s all, niece.” She pats her shoulder. “One more day.”

“Quell?” Adola lingers in the doorway. “I’m heading to the atrium, if you want to come?”

I hate that we’ve found ourselves at odds like this. But if she’s determined to see the world one way, there’s only so much I can do. And I’m done making excuses for wanting to understand all I can do. It’s time to put myself first. “I’m actually meeting your aunt.”

“Oh, sorry. Right.” She shifts. “After?”

“We’ll probably be here for a while, but I’ll see you at Trials tonight. And tomorrow.”

She gazes between us before leaving.

“So what are we working on today?” Beaulah’s bin of rocks is on the top shelf. The manacles haven’t been moved. I’m taking the lead, and she’s prepared to follow.

“You mentioned preparing my toushana before I use it intensely. I want to understand how to do that.”

“Alright.”

“And—I want to see how intense it can get.”

Beaulah steeples her hands, then cracks her knuckles. “I’m glad you met my Healer today. You do understand you may need to visit her again?”

“I’ve run from people my entire life. If I’m going to stop running and start living, I need to understand how safe I am in my own skin.”

“Latch yourself into the manacles.” She puts distance between us. “There is a reason the Order fears Darkbearers, Quell.”

“I want to feel the power they fear.”

She starts by having me summon my toushana. I call to my magic, letting it build in me slowly. Cold hums through me at an easy pace.

“Don’t hold back. Enliven as much as you can without releasing it.”

I don’t breathe, letting pressure swell in my chest. Magic coats my lungs, claws up my ribs, wraps around me. The weight tugs, pulling me down. Metal digs into my wrists, and I bite down, trying to not scream.

“More.”

Magic grows in me as I tighten and strain. Pain ripples through my body, then it melts into a wave, an unrelenting aching. My bones throb with an icy sensation until my arms no longer have feeling. The burning chill of magic gathering in my body scrapes my bones, scratching like the prick of a thousand needles under my skin, demanding to be released. “Please!”

Beaulah doesn’t respond. She fumbles through her bin for something.

My temples pulse, my heart rocks, my lungs burn like they might explode.

“When I step outside and bolt the door, release. Let every particle of it flow through you. Hold back nothing. And when you get scared, let yourself feel the fear.”

Fear. My insides quiver with nerves as a wave of memories flash through my mind: a burning room and me on a bed in the center of it, sprouting black metal from my head, staring into the face of Yagrin the first time I found out he was after me, the moment I said goodbye to my mom, and the time Jordan felt my blood turn cold. The most terrifying moments of my life and she wants me to lean into it? “Wait! What if I can’t do it?”

“Remember your Cotillion. All that resilience is who you are. The darkness fears no one.”