THE LIBRARY AFTER DINNER, and led Aurora through a door on the second balcony. The room beyond was small and square, with a table in the center, a few boxes against one wall and an empty grate. “This is the antechamber that connects my rooms to the library. I thought it might be a good place to practice, so I cleared it out.”
“You cleared it out?”
“My servants cleared it out,” he corrected. “Either way, there are candles in the boxes, and there are no books to burn. I thought it would help.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She walked over to the nearest box and looked at the candles inside. They were all different sizes, all different colors, as though Finnegan thought the shade of the wax might make a difference. She picked out a solid, square-looking one and placed it on the table. Then she stepped back and stared at the wick.
“Wait!” Finnegan strode toward her. “The necklace. We should remove it first. I’d rather you didn’t burn the whole palace down.” He picked it up by the chain and unclicked the clasp. The metal tickled Aurora’s neck as he pulled it away.
The dragon was a small thing, but she immediately missed the weight of it. She pressed her fingers to the spot where it had rested.
“Do you think the necklace is why my magic got so out of my control, in that village in Alyssinia?”
“Possibly,” he said. “But I’d rather not be in my own chambers when we find out.”
Finnegan stepped back into the shadows, and Aurora focused on the candle again. All she had to do was light it. She had done that before. So she stared at it, forcing her intention through the air, willing it to obey. Burn.
Nothing happened.
She could feel Finnegan watching her. Waiting. Anticipating her magic. “Do you have somewhere else to be?” she said.
“Trying to get rid of me, dragon girl?”
“No,” she said. “But aren’t you worried? I don’t know anything about controlling my magic. And I’m pretty sure I once nearly set Rodric on fire. Don’t you find it . . . unnerving? It would be safer not to be here.”
“Unnerving?” Finnegan laughed. “Aurora, it’s amazing. You have the power to make things burn, just because you want them to. You can stare a dragon in the eye and live to laugh about it. Why wouldn’t I want to be there to see that?”
“Because I could set you on fire.”
“I didn’t know you were so concerned for my well-being. Don’t worry, Aurora. I’ll try not to incur your wrath.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Do you think you can manage it?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m willing to risk it.”
She brushed her hair away from her face and stared at the candle. “The problem is that I don’t know how to begin. I’ve tried before—standing in a room, trying to set a candle on fire. And it’s never worked. Not once. It’s always been accidental. Or if I meant to do it, it’s as if . . . I was so caught up in the moment that I couldn’t even think about it. It just happened.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t try so hard,” Finnegan said. “Stop focusing on lighting it.”
“I should focus on not lighting it?”
“I mean,” he said, “that you can’t do anything simply by willing it. If you think to yourself, walk, you won’t move anywhere. You can’t think about moving your foot. You just have to move it.”
She ran her fingers through her hair again. “That’s not true,” she said. “Children must have to think about walking. And how am I supposed to practice if I’m not supposed to think about what I’m doing?”
Finnegan stepped closer and rested a hand on her shoulder blade. “Well,” he said, his voice low. “What did it feel like, the last time you used magic?”
She closed her eyes, reaching for the memory, for the traces of magic that she had not allowed herself to feel. It felt like power, like desperation, like she could no longer be contained by her bones and skin. Dangerous.
But as she stood in the darkened room, she only felt like herself. Flesh and blood and golden curls, too aware of the walls around her.
“It’s hard,” she said. “To feel something that you don’t really feel.”
“If you felt it once, not so long ago, you can feel it again.”
She remembered the first time she had tried to light a candle, locked in her room in the castle in Petrichor. The