calloused and scarred, flipped through folded pages. A language I couldn’t read that looked like ancient Deme. Neat, stylized handwriting in red ink. A flash of magic so powerful… My eyes outside of the vision burned.
I jerked back. The magic fell apart, slipping through shaking hands. That wasn’t possible. The midnight arts weren’t physical. They couldn’t affect physical things, especially not through divination. It was just…watching.
“Are you incapable of taking care of yourself?” Coline crumpled up the cloth and threw it on my bed. “Stop. You’re hurting yourself.”
That one hadn’t hurt at all, and I tapped the corner of one eye then nudged Isabelle. My vision blurred.
“You saw it?” she asked. “You saw something bad?”
I was terrible at divining, and maybe, if that were Gabriel’s future, we could stop it now that we knew.
I shook my head.
Knowing your sibling was about to die and not knowing what to do was the worst feeling in the world, and I would suffer no one through it. I had to find a way to help Gabriel first.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Coline turned to the door, and I covered my face with my hands. Blood pooled in my cupped palms.
Let it be Vivienne who probably wouldn’t kill us too badly. Please, Mistress, anyone but Estrel.
I blinked, and it didn’t get better. The footsteps grew closer, the clack changing to a shuffle on the hall’s narrow rug. The headache I’d carried since coming here gnawed at my temples. The door opened. Isabelle stiffened.
“It’s rude to scry on someone without their permission,” a voice that was not, could not, but absolutely did belong to Estrel said.
“I tried to divine earlier and failed,” Isabelle said quickly. “It’s my fault.”
“I know. I don’t mean that. Unlike Vivienne, I find power and trouble go hand in hand and expect such experimentation from my students.” Estrel laughed, breath rippling between her lips, and the red-crowned smear that was her crept closer. “Now, which one of you scryed me?”
I lifted my head and tried to deny it, but the words were a bloody mess.
“What for all the gods have you done?” Her voice was a rough, low thing with no humor, and the bed to my left dipped. Warm hands touched mine. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I cannot believe you two let her do this,” she said. “You should have helped.”
“Is that even possible?” Coline asked. “We’re not trained as hacks.”
“Are you asking me is it possible for you three to do what the majority of artists do? You don’t need training to share, I would hope.” Estrel’s fingers tilted my face back and forth, her gaze unreadable from all the snow in my vision. Then, after what felt like a century, she brushed my hair from behind my ears and slipped her spectacles onto my face. “I can’t believe Vivienne didn’t notice you.”
Why would anyone ever notice me?
The whole bottom of my stomach dropped out. Maybe this was it. The worst fate in the world. My legs were numb and my brain was of fire and the little bundle of nerves I’d been keeping in my belly since she’d arrived was finally eating me in two. Maybe I’d get lucky and there’d be nothing left of me to be embarrassed. I was so bad, she wished Vivienne had told her about me.
“Open your eyes,” she said. “Does that help?”
I blinked, the world tinted orange-yellow, and the snow in my vision cleared. The power I’d been seeing everywhere was gone. My head still ached and my stomach still rebelled, but this was better. The little itching pain in the back of my mind since first entering the silver room faded.
I nodded again.
“You two rest, and no more midnight arts. If you do any, I will know and I will not be happy. I know you are Vivienne’s rebellious group for the year, but this is really beyond the scope of her capabilities,” said Estrel. “Understood?”
They both agreed.
“And you.” Estrel Charron, the best midnight artist who had ever lived and maybe the best artist of the decade, gently took me by the shoulders and smiled. “You are coming with me.”
Estrel led me to her quarters on the upper floors. The halls looked different, stained gold by her spectacles, flickers of magic dancing across the lenses when I looked sideways. She’d a real laboratory with divining bowls in every shade of silver and glass, vials of quicksilver and water full of arts, and two gold-plated tables lined with tall gold