Page 85 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Gravel sprays up, and a vivid red line stains the ground, precise.

He gestures her over, a hand clinically on her hip, arranging how she’s standing, and her breath sticks in her throat.

“Here,” he says, then, gently, stands behind her, a hand on each of her wrists, guiding her into the motion, solid against her back.

She leans against him for a split second, cozy and comfortable, until she realizes what she’s doing and straightens.

He clears his throat, then spreads her arms a bit wider. “When I snap your arms down, release the magic, just like you did before with the threads, but this time try to place it in a straight line.”

“That’s it?” Delina asks, and he’s warm against her, her heart pounding.

“No, I’ll activate them after, that’s the complicated part of this,” he says. “It’d take a bunch more training before you can do that part. Ready?”

Delina swallows again. “Sure.”

Like the one time he tried to teach her to paint, he guides her arms down, fast, and she lets the magic slip out of her fingertips with the motion.

It sends another jolt through her, and he hisses, as if he could feel it too, before he releases her and steps back.

A thin line of red glows on the dirt, much wavier and less precise than Maison’s.

“Oh hey, I did it,” Delina says before she can think of something more clever. “Look.”

“Does all magic feel like that to you?” Maison asks instead, shaking out his hands as she nods. “Jesus Christ.”

“What now?”

He stares at her for a few seconds, then shakes his head, as if clearing his mind. “They should have never sealed you away.”

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop her retort.

“Literally they could’ve just kept you away from Frisse and actually train you,” Maison starts, his face twisting in frustration, “and they’d have a powerful necromancer at their use and you’d have a grasp of these things.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Delina says, smarting a bit.

“No,” Maison almost cuts her off, “this is not on you, this is on them.”

She eyes him, then down at the cut of red in the ground.

“They did the most convoluted system of keeping you ignorant, they arranged your entire life, when literally all they had to do was train you. That’s it. It would have been the easiest thing, you would have grown up knowing about yourself and your power, and we could have met without secrets.” He turns his eyes down to the red mark she left. “Instead, we have…this.”

“What, so you could’ve met me while in the college and wouldn't have had all the pesky betrayal to worry about?” Delina asks, and he straightens, folding his arms over his chest.

It might’ve been a bit of a cheap shot.

“Are you asking if it would make my life easier? Cause that answer is yes,” he says, voice clinical, and she hates it. “Yes, then I wouldn’t have had to lie all those years and we could’ve actually been honest with each other. Yes, then they wouldn’t have used my mom to literally make me afraid of my own relationship failing, and that would have been easier.”

Delina shrugs into herself. “I’m still having trouble getting over it.”

It’s honest, too honest, and her face twists the moment the words are out of her mouth.

He stares at her over the vivid red lines in the ground, his mouth unhappy, before he squeezes his eyes shut. “How can I fix it?”

It’s such a stark question.

“I want to fix it, how can I fix it?” He stalks closer to her, over the red lines in the ground, and the hair on the back of her neck raises. His voice dips low. “Tell me there’s a way to fix this.”

Her mouth goes dry, and she stares up at him.

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