Back then, Luna hadn’t yet seen her aunt’s other persona, the one she employed to whip Luna’s magic into shape. She also wouldn’t have recognized Adrianna as Priscilla’s sister even if the two had stood side by side. Especially if the two had stood side by side. Not just in appearance, but demeanor—Priscilla could sit for hours on end like a statue, but Adrianna could never seem to keep still for more than a second. Her fingers tapped perpetually, and Luna remembered asking if she played the piano. Adrianna laughed heartily and commented that she didn’t have a musical bone in her body. But Luna disagreed. There was something about her aunt that filled the air with sound and color and life, just like music, as if nothing thrilled her more than simply existing, dancing from moment to moment with insatiable vigor. Priscilla, in comparison . . . seemed too tame, too bloodless. Too highborn.
At the time, little had Luna suspected that her auntie had also spent years tutoring magic at an elite institution of some sort . . . and that she would volunteer for the job of mentoring Luna herself.
“You’re slipping! Focus! ”
Luna gritted her teeth and wrenched herself back into the present. Two doves had reappeared fully, glaring at her with their beady little black eyes. Her vision doubled. “Immortals,” she gasped. Frustration coursed through her veins, beating and battering her from the inside out, until she wished she could rip out of her own skin and shed it to become someone new. Someone better.
“Do not yield,” Adrianna murmured, her silken voice soothing the pressure in Luna’s head. “One more minute. Get those doves out of sight.”
Luna’s knuckles strained white around her two affinity stones. Every muscle quivered, but she forced in a deep lungful of sweltering, stale air and squeezed her eyes shut. Rather than try to match the doves by sight to the bookshelf behind, she reached out with her magic and felt for them—
There.
She traced the contours of their plump little bodies in her mind, and then enveloped them in illusion like a second skin, magic clinging to every last feather.
Be gone, she thought.
When she opened her eyes, a smile rose to her face. The birds had vanished completely.
“I did it,” Luna breathed. A bubble of triumphant laughter escaped her lips.
To her surprise, however, Adrianna frowned. “Release.”
The coil of tension in her core eased. She loosed a sigh, ribs aching, and let her posture relax. Her magic followed, unwinding from the doves.
The doves.
She blinked in disbelief and approached them slowly, one hand pressed to her mouth in horror. Her knees gave out and she crashed to the floor. Gingerly, she picked up the body of the bird closest to her. Its tiny snowy head had flopped to the side, eyes gone glassy, and its wrinkled pink feet dangled in the air.
Dead. All three of them.
“What happened?” Luna demanded, tears rising to her eyes. She choked back a sob and placed the dove back on the ground.
Adrianna walked to her and squeezed her shoulder. “You might have wrapped your illusions around them a tad too tightly, sweetheart.”
Luna cursed herself. “How much longer until I can control my powers?” Adrianna didn’t even deign to answer. Luna braced herself on clenched fists, rocking back and forth slightly to soothe her agony—at both the blood on her hands and her own incompetence. Sweat and hot tears mingled as they dripped down her face, plopping onto the floor in fat droplets. Only in a whisper did she dare ask, “What if they had been people?”
Adrianna sighed. “Just be glad that they weren’t.” When Luna looked up, her aunt’s eyes had taken on a sharp, cobalt-edged glint, revealing just a hint of what truly lay beneath her matronly surface. She waved at the row of cages. The doves within flittered nervously, as if sensing their impending doom. “They were birds, and we have a lot more of them. You should take a rest first, though.”
“No,” growled Luna, startling even herself. Determination lit her veins like gunpowder set aflame. A phantom noose wrapped around her neck, the darkness set in, and there was Asterin, bleeding and exhausted and helpless, standing in the middle of it all as Priscilla fired her shadow arrows—
You chose Quinlan.
“No,” Luna said again. She dragged herself onto her feet, trembling, and wiped the sweat from her eyes. Fight, Luna. “I don’t need any rest.” She could rest when she was dead. Today and tomorrow and however many days after, she would push her boundaries further than ever before, and then she would keep pushing still.
For herself, she refused to break.
“Good girl.” Not a flicker of surprise graced her aunt’s expression—only the ghost of a smile. “Let’s see how many more doves you’ll kill before bedtime.”
Chapter Three
The chandelier fell like a winged behemoth losing flight. Utterly silent—until it smashed through the piano in a deafening explosion of crystal. The strings severed in a chorus of unholy, ear-splitting twangs. Iron candelabra arms skewered the leather bench where the pianist had been sitting less than a heartbeat before. Screams tore through the air as chunks of ice and shrapnel rained down from above, but the wicked shards ricocheted off the shields cast by the Elites on the first balcony. Eadric and Nicole raised their affinity stones and summoned howling gales to blow aside shrapnel as best they could, and once the debris settled, all the shields extinguished and everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
Asterin lay tangled with the pianist on the edge of the stage, sheltering the girl’s body with her own. She left her magic humming just beneath her fingertips, and gingerly removed herself before helping the pianist shakily to her feet.
“Your Royal M-Majesty,” she stammered, unable to tear her eyes away from the piano’s mangled carcass. The people not fleeing the hall began mounting the stage to gather around them, staring in wonder at Asterin and whispering to one another. Those sitting on the balconies flocked close to the railings to peer over the edge.
“I’m so sorry your performance was cut short,” Asterin told the girl, her voice soft. “You played beautifully.”
The pianist startled everyone with a laugh. “It was either that or my life.” She smoothed out her fiery ruby gown and sank to one knee in the traditional Axarian salute, her right hand clasping her shoulder across her chest. “I will never be able to repay this debt.”
You healed a part of my soul, Asterin wanted to say. If anything, it is I who owe you. But she couldn’t, not with everyone watching them. Instead, she placed one hand on the pianist’s head and said, “Rise. Your art is payment tenfold.”
Someone near the back of the crowd began clapping. Soon, everyone joined in, their cheers and whistles a dull roar in Asterin’s ears.