slammed into the door, shattering it open.
“I need to get better control of that,” Jayna muttered.
“I thought you’d avoided using power like that.”
Jayna held out the ring and tapped on it. She had been avoiding showing it to Eva, concerned about how she might react after learning that she had added the bloodstone to the ring, but maybe that was a mistake. “There’s something in this. I don’t really know what it is, but the combination of the bloodstone and the dragon stone has allowed me to access even more power.”
Eva frowned, staring at the ring. “That’s how you call the power away.”
Jayna nodded.
“Bloodstone is connected to what I can do. I don’t know how or why, but it is connected,” Eva said.
“I’m not trying to misuse your power,” Jayna said. She didn’t need Eva thinking that, especially since Eva already struggled with how her power would—and should—be used.
Eva nodded once. “I know you aren’t.”
They started forward into the darkness.
The cold washing around her began to build, and she pushed out through the bloodstone the way she had before, layering a fog of smoke around the room, muting the enchantments that were meant to limit her power, which allowed her to move through here without fear of losing control over her magic.
When she reached the next door, she paused.
“You might need to open this one,” Jayna said.
Eva held out her hand and a drop of blood dripped to the ground. Then she summoned the smoke, turning it into something like a spike of power, and it streaked into the door where she twisted it.
The door opened with a click.
Jayna chuckled to herself. “That certainly is easier than what I’ve been doing.”
“Not for me,” she said.
They stepped forward and Jayna sent out a spell that formed a glowing light in front of her to guide their way, but they were soon met by a blast of wind. Jayna braced herself, creating a barrier with the magic ball spell in front of them, shielding them from the wind.
It gusted for what seemed an hour, and when it finally faded, she pushed outward with the ball of flame and stepped into the room.
“You can stop using your enchantments on us,” she said to Raollet.
He stood behind the desk, a table full of items arranged on it, and held a wand-like object upright, as if to attack again. “Jayna Aguelon?” He glanced over to Eva then back to Jayna. “How are you capable of doing that?”
“Let’s just say I have a little experience in this kind of room,” Jayna replied.
“You should not be able to defend against this. This is an outpost.”
“Exactly.” She looked around. The room was unharmed.
“I take it you came down here when your shop was destroyed?”
He nodded. “The shop. Everything within it. The sorcerers came here, thinking they would destroy all the dular enchantments in the city.”
“Not destroy them. Activate them.”
“They don’t need to trigger them,” he said. “They have some way of mitigating the enchantments’ power.”
Jayna frowned. That fit. When she had been placed in the cell, Agnew had some way of neutralizing her enchantments, but not all of them—at least, he hadn’t managed to neutralize Topher’s enchantment, for whatever reason.
“I’m sorry about your shop.”
“It’s not your fault. This time.”
“I’m not entirely sure about that.”
She didn’t know what was her fault, what was the fault of the Ashara, or what was the fault of the Sorcerers’ Society. But she knew she needed to get more answers.
“I need to understand the Ashara.”
“That’s why you came here?”
“I came here for answers. You’re the only one who knows about them.”
“I’ve told you. All I know are stories. Nothing more than that. Anything known about the Ashara, truly known, has been lost.”
Jayna sighed. She hated the pressure in the room, hated the way it made her feel, the way it seemed to constrict around her, fighting against her use of magic. All she wanted was to end that, to find some way of overpowering it.
She pushed out a hint of smoke and it trailed out along the walls, muting the enchantments in the area. Then she took a deep breath, slightly more relaxed. Before muting them, she had felt an ongoing unease.
“What did you do?”
She looked over to Raollet. “Why does it matter?”
“You shouldn’t have been able to . . .” He tipped his head to the side, and for the first time, he seemed to see her ring. “Bloodstone. That’s what you have, isn’t it?”
Jayna grasped her hand around the ring and