Page 65 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

So even with a firm grip on the leash, even with someone else undeniably there, she’s not in pain.

“Tell me if I do,” he commands, and a thrill slams into her, softer than a normal compulsion but still…

She would obey that. It would be pulled from her if she tried to stop it, even if she didn’t want to tell him.

And with equal certainty, she knows he has no clue that he could hold that power over her.

Dud or not, he must’ve been so fluent before.

“Were you a spell weaver?” she calls out, and he nods, the shadow dancing across the floor. “I can tell!”

Even being so far away, his smile lights up his face.

He clenches his hand around the leash again, drawing it tight, until all of her is at attention to him. All she can do is watch him, try to piece out the details dimmed by the firelight, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Still okay?”

“Yeah,” she manages out. He’s not restricting her airflow, he’s not making it impossible to breathe at all, but each rise and fall of the lungs is shallow.

Finally, his eyes glance up from whatever he could see in the leash, and even across the distance they glitter at her in the darkness.

And she doesn’t even see the motion, doesn’t even catch a glimpse of his hand working on the leash, until betweenone moment and the next she’s beside him, her feet catching on the uneven ground.

He catches her by the shoulders, bracing her upwards, his grip on the leash dropped, and just like that all compulsion to answer, all commands and all strange knots of confusion is gone.

“You good?” he asks, and she could swear his hands are burning hot, even through the wool coat and even though the skin on his knuckles is already chapping from the chill of the air.

“I’m good,” she manages out, blinking. She’s dazed, as she normally is when someone summons her, but she didn’t black out. She didn’t suddenly lose consciousness in the transition.

Whatever Gurlien can or cannot do, it’s kinder. And she’s not sure if that’s something innate to him, something to do with his abilities, or if it’s something he chose to do.

She straightens herself and his hands fall away from her shoulders. “Good,” she says simply. “That was good. Well done.”

He squints at her, like waiting for her to trick him.

“You do that with me, you can disrupt them easily,” she continues, and a bubble of hope wells up in her. Hope that this is possible. That she could be successful, that she could escape, actually escape, and be okay.

That one day, the hold the College wields against her, could be gone.

“And I didn’t hurt you?” he restates.

“Not at all,” she says, then grins at him, and his eyebrows flash up. “Do it again, take a few steps back, let’s dial down on your limits.”

17

Gurlien’s limits end up being roughly forty-five meters away with his back turned, before all he can do is manage a whisper of sensation around her neck and no compulsion. The work, whatever it may seem to him, draws sweat from his brow despite the cold and bright pink to the tops of his cheeks.

So Ambra takes him back to the apartment with the too large bed, and he immediately chugs one of the protein drinks and then a glass of water, all before resting his forehead against the cool granite counter.

Ambra sits on one of the stools after shedding the giant wool coat, resting her chin in her hands.

“I haven’t done anything like that in a year,” he grumbles at her waiting expression. “That’s not easy to do.”

“Lie, you did it two days ago, in this very room,” Ambra remarks.

“Not like that I didn’t,” he mutters, then pushes himself up straight, grabbing a stick of…cheese?…from the fridge.

She tilts her head at him, observing his motions.

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