Page 14 of Forged in Flame and Shadow

“You have to fight the shape they’re trying to bend your mind into. Make it rigid, like a steel wall. Imagine that and nothing else, and you’ll buy yourself some time.”

I close my eyes, picturing a cold, hard surface stretching as far as my imagination will take it.

“Now.”

Instantly, something is tickling my brain, dancing on my imagined wall with a feathery, intrusive touch. It takes seconds for the steel to start buckling under the sensation. Then I find myself wondering why exactly I’m getting the urge to?—

A deep belly laugh rolls through me, then another. I can’t help it, and once my muscles start spasming, they’re impossible to stop.

“I…ha…can’t…ha…” I try to splutter the words out, but they won’t come. I’m doubled over, clutching my stomach as I look up at Damia. There’s a little furrow between her eyebrows as she focuses on incapacitating me. I couldn’t fight her now if my life depended on it—I can barely even breathe in enough air to release the next laugh.

“Stop focusing on the physical sensations,” Leon orders. “Remember it’s coming from your mind.”

But it’s no use. By the time Damia’s done with me, my face is aching. At least Hyllus’s test is a little kinder. He fills my ears with chirping birds and sweet melodies, but something about them is so tempting they’re almost as hard to keep out as Damia’s magic.

“Sorry,” he shrugs at me as I admit defeat. The only upside is that the exercise has made me realize now what the music in the Lyceum’s halls must’ve been. I doubt anyone else heard the exact tune I did yesterday. This place is full of sensic magic, and sometimes it must latch on to you in subtle, hopefully harmless ways—like thinking you hear a familiar song on the breeze.

“Look, I’d probably be doing better if I hadn’t just used up all my energy with Gallis,” I point out when Leon deigns to give me a break.

“Precisely,” he says, offering me no sympathy. “And a good sensic caster knows that and will wait until you’re tired and at your most vulnerable.”

The harshness of his tone bites at me, especially as he seems to have forgotten the reason I demanded we do this.

“Is that why your magic is so effective?” I snap. “Because you only strike at people when they can’t defend themselves?”

Leon’s eyes narrow, but before he can say anything, Alastor interrupts.

“Sooo, seeing as you won’t be using my skills today, can I go? I’m not really entertained by all this,” he says, gesturing between Leon and me.

“You’re not?” Stratton asks the blond fae. “I am.”

Leon glowers at them both. “You’realldismissed. We’re done for today.”

As they file out, Leon throws me a dark look. “Youasked to be taught, remember?”

“Andyou’rethe reason I need these lessons in the first place,” I throw back.

His features tense, and I can’t read him, his gray eyes closed to me.

“Let’s just hope you’re better at mastering your celestial powers than you are at this, or making you hate me will have all been for nothing,” he says before leaving me alone in the training room.

I stalk through the Lyceum corridors, trying to cool off. Whatever security this place has, Leon obviously thinks it’s enough that he’s not worried about me or Tira wandering the halls unaccompanied. That’s good—it means that we probably won’t face an army when we make our move to leave. Leon spouted all that stuff about keeping an eye on me, but he obviously doesn’t want to drag the mages into helping him hold me hostage.

And what about what he said in the training room?

“Making you hate me will have all been for nothing.”

What in the Gloamlands doesthatmean?

Well, it does tell me something. Leon definitely didn’t just bring me here for my own benefit. He needs me to get better with my celestial magic because there’s something in it for him. And Gallis knows it too. That’s why she started bringing up the moss earlier, when we’d been talking about twin-blessed celestials…

No, not twin-blessed. “Solari with multiple abilities,” she’d said. Multiple, not necessarily two.

Hadn’t Leon mentioned me maybe havingotherpowers once? And then Gallis was talking about me being able to connect with the plants somehow. Something I’ve never even tried to do.

If it’s a new power they want, what is the real goal here? What exactly are they hoping I’ll be able to do?

Gods, I’m so angry I could kick something. Of course I’ve been suspicious of everyone here from the start, but it still burns to be proven so right. One day in this place and they’re not even trying to be subtle about the fact that I’m being lied to.

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