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Larissa clicked her tongue, and Briony met her gaze. “Well,” Larissa said. “Let us continue then.”

Briony flicked her eyes to Toven, who seemed to be making himself comfortable in his chair, lifting his calf to rest on the other knee.

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “We left off with the clearing of the mind.”

“Can we skip forward?” Larissa said.

“No.” Briony let her hands drop to her knees, pointing her toes forward. “First we come to a neutral posture, finding a place for our eyes to rest.”

Just as she let her gaze relax a few feet beyond Larissa’s chair, she saw from the corner of her eye that Toven was uncrossing his legs, mirroring her pose.

Her heart skipped. He wasn’t just observing; he was here to learn.

From her.

She swallowed down her nerves and continued.

“There will be plenty of distractions in real-life situations, so now is the time to take in everything—every sense you have. What do you hear, what movement do you see, what do you smell?”

Briony smelled Toven’s aftershave—but this was a familiar distraction to her at this point.

“Feel the chair beneath you. Feel your feet on the ground.”

There was a symmetry here that hadn’t been present earlier. And she wasn’t sure if Larissa was taking it more seriously now that Toven was in the room, but Briony suddenly sensed, with perfect clarity, three people breathing in tandem.

“Move your toes in your shoes. Pay attention to your ankles and calves. What muscles move there?” Briony’s voice had dropped low and smooth. “Feel where your calves connect to your knees, your knees to your thighs …”

Unbidden, Toven’s thighs came into her mind. And the image of her bracing her weight on them as she used her mouth on him. She breathed deeply.

“Distractions are normal,” she said to them, but mainly to herself. “Focus on your being. Your hips, waist, and chest. Feel your blood flow—the vein you tug when you use heart magic. Find that in your chest.”

Before Toven arrived, she had been checking with Larissa every few seconds to make sure she was paying attention, but now she knew from the three layers of breathing in the room that they were all ready.

This next part was key to the difference between heart magic and mind magic, and the first thing one learned in the study of mind magic.

“Imagine it as a thread that slithers through your veins. It connects your blood to your intentions. As that thread moves upward, into your shoulders, your neck, it rounds the back of your head and connects to your forehead. Right between your eyes. Because blood moves everywhere in the body.

“This thread, attached at the center of your forehead—imagine that it has the most power of anywhere in the body. It connects your mind to your blood. Let yourself find this thread. Become acquainted with it. If you lose it, start at your heart again and sew it through your neck and shoulders, around the back of your skull, to the place between your eyes.”

Briony allowed her instruction to come to an end. This was the area on which mind magicians spent most of their education prior to school—the communion with the thread. She knew it was important to just let Larissa be in silence.

She lifted her eyes slowly from the floor. Larissa was sitting perfectly still, eyes unfocused and breath slow. Briony was careful not to twitch a muscle, so as not to pull Larissa’s attention.

She flicked her gaze to Toven and flinched—he was watching her. She looked away, checking on Larissa again. Her attention was focused still.

Briony wondered if Toven would have ever come to prefer mind magic as a root source if he’d learned at a young age like she had.

He clearly had some experience with mind reading and barriers, but he didn’t use mind magic for casual casting.

He still relied on his familiar daily, like most heart magicians.

Briony let Larissa meditate for another half hour before finally pulling her out of it with quiet instructions. When Larissa’s eyes finally lifted and met hers, she looked exhausted.

“Were you able to connect with the thread?”

Larissa nodded. “It slips out of my grasp a lot.”

“Yes, it will,” Briony agreed. “There are two parts to it. You have to meditate to find that thread and keep it for hours on end. And then to cloak, you begin to tug on it when you cast. Only a meditated, clear mind can do it. Apologies that the beginning is so boring.”

Toven cleared his throat, and Briony looked over at him. “Only a meditated, clear mind,” he repeated. His brows were drawn together. “This is incongruous with mind barrier magic, is it not?”

“It is,” Briony agreed. When his confusion didn’t clear, she said, “There is no known mind magician who has been able to cloak while keeping up mind barriers. Not even Vindecci could do it.”

Toven’s lips tightened. “So if you are in the presence of a mind reader, such as Mallow …”

“You can either cloak your mind or barricade it,” she said. “In our history texts, many spies were executed for transmogrifying into another person, only to have their thoughts read as their mental defenses were down.”

“Invisibility is the only real power then,” Larissa said shrewdly. “If they don’t know you’re there, they can’t read your mind.”

Briony shrugged. “Possibly. I suppose it depends on your intentions.”

Larissa stared back at her, giving nothing away. When she glanced at Toven, he was staring out the window, looking displeased.

***

They kept at it for another hour before Larissa developed a nasty headache. Briony knew it wasn’t fake. She’d had her own headaches back in school.

But when Briony released her for the day, and Larissa said, “I’m going to lie down. Maybe I’ll try again in the afternoon,” Briony realized something for the first time.

“You’re …” She glanced at Toven, then back to Larissa as she rubbed her temple. “You’re staying here?”

“Just for the week,” Toven said quickly. “While she’s under your tutelage.”

Briony’s throat was dry. “Ah. Well, that’s helpful.”

There were eels swimming in her gut as she thought about Larissa in Hearst Hall. Larissa accessing Toven. Larissa sharing meals with him, even.

Briony stood and put her chair back where she’d taken it from.

“Don’t worry, Rosewood,” Larissa said loftily from the doorway. “You’ll still be the only one visiting him at two in the morning.”

Briony snapped her eyes to her just as Larissa smirked and walked out. She glanced at Toven. He was in profile, twisting his ring around his finger, shoulders tense.

“Speaking of last night,” Toven said softly, and Briony’s chest clenched. “I apologize. Nothing like that will happen again.”

He kept his gaze on his ring. Briony felt an emptiness in her stomach.

“All right,” she said, uselessly. “I suppose I did ask for an example of what would be expected of me on the elixir. And you … provided an example.”

His gaze lifted to her. “‘An example,’” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said, fiddling with the teacup she’d let go cold on the side table. “You conjured a scenario, detailed though it was …” She coughed, feeling her cheeks heat. “It was … It was much softer than I expected, though I’m sure you were diluting the scenario for my benefit.”

She should stop talking. She drank her cold tea to silence herself. When the teacup clinked back down on the saucer, she turned to face him.

He stared at her, his lips attempting to form words. Then his jaw closed with an audible click, and he cleared his throat.

“Right. It was … softer. If anything were to happen in that vein behind the locked door at Biltmore, it would be much different.” He took a deep breath and stepped back to face her fully. “But we were playing a dangerous game last night, and I should never have entered your mind.”

She snorted. “Please. You’ve been entering my mind for years without permission, Toven.”

His brows twitched in surprise, but he stayed silent.

“How else would you know about Didion and me at the lake? And the laces ,” she said, crossing her arms in a way unbefitting a princess. “Not to mention the pains in my legs all throughout year three. You knew all about them without me supplying the information.”

Toven stared at her from across the room. “Ah,” he said slowly. “Yes, I suppose I did know all about that.”

Briony narrowed her eyes at him. “But fine, yes. I accept your apology, and we shan’t be entering each other’s minds without permission again.”

He nodded. “Fine.”

Shifting on her feet, Briony said, “I don’t think Larissa will be ready to cloak on Friday unless she gives it her full attention this week. What is it that you hoped Larissa would ‘teach’ me for Friday night?”

He looked away from her, over her shoulder. “We can worry about that later, now that Canning’s elixir has been eliminated.”

She lifted a brow. “Please don’t tell me you intend to send me into the lion’s den without any more knowledge than last time.”

He sighed. “What do you want to know?”

She threw her hands up in the air. “You’re so frustrating. You say I need help from Larissa, but when I ask you outright what that is, you refuse to tell me.”

“Perhaps it is awkward to tell you—”

“This entire situation is awkward , Toven. Just trust me to be an adult in this,” she said. “I have seen many examples of the heartsprings’ behavior at Biltmore. Just tell me if I should be more like Cecily Weape or like Phoebe.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not as simple as that—”

“Tell me what’s so complicated—”