I don’t know how long I sit in the darkness of the tent, listening to her. She gives me far more than I could have ever hoped to scrounge from books. Far more than I expected to get from this. Everything Elsie needs to know about her powers. I still feel terribly uneasy about it all.

Finally, she stops talking and stands.

“That’s it?” I ask, pushing my chair back. “Everything?”

“Everything? No. But it is all that I understand and will tell you.”

“Then thank you,” I say, getting to my feet. “Really. Thank you.”

“Thank me by keeping your promises.”

Yes. My promises. Secrecy, memory, and to some day not do evil for a greater good. It’s the first of those that I’m concerned about: I have too many secrets that aren’t mine already, and a little part of me is afraid of the consequences of keeping this one. “I will. I – I just realised I don’t know your name.”

It seems silly: that’s supposed to be the first thing you learn about someone, but we’ve been talking for what must be hours and I haven’t thought to ask it.

“Amara,” she says. “It’s been good meeting you, Tallulah. You are… not what I expected.”

“It’s been good meeting you too, Amara,” I reply. “Thank you.”

She walks over to the tent entrance and unlaces the flap so we can leave. My light is hardly enough to see by, so I’m surprised that she does it so easily – no. No, I’m not surprised, because I’ve figured something out.

“What cannot be seen,” I say. “That includes things hidden in the literal darkness, doesn’t it?”

She turns in the act of opening the flap and studies me for a second. “It does.”

So maybe someday Elsie could – there’s so much to process, so much to think about, and I don’t even know where to start – I do know where to start. I have to leave, find a Holy Days gift for my dad, and then go back to the Academy and pretend that none of this happened.

And I have to learn to create proper privacy wards so that when Elsie returns after the holidays, I can tell her all of this without fear of being overheard.

The skies are beginning to grow dark. It happens early so close to the solstice, but Edward will still be wondering where I am by now. I feel bad for having to rush finding my dad’s gift, but there isn't a choice. How can I explain my absence? I got distracted by something I saw here. A musician? Yes, there’s a group of three women singing Holy Days hymns to the passing crowd. I stayed and listened, because their voices were beautiful and I wanted to stay, and then I just lost track of time.

There we are. At least now my lies will be somewhat plausible.

I buy my dad an inkwell engraved with constellations around its sides. I don’t know if my dad will like it, but at least it’s practical. Or – no, does he use quills with self-inking enchantments like I do? In that case it’ll be useless. Well, possibly; it’s heavy enough it would serve as a good paperweight regardless.

It’s growing colder, and despite my coat I’m shivering by the time I make it back to the Academy. I add get Edward to teach me those warming spells so I don’t freeze to death over the holidays to my mental to-do list, and once I track him down I do ask.

He agrees, and inevitably asks why I’ve been gone so long. My lie about the musicians provokes an unexpected response: “I didn’t realise you were interested in music.”

I laugh awkwardly. “Only in listening to it, when I have the chance. I can’t sing to save my life, and I’ve never got on well with an instrument.”

“Pity,” he said. “I thought – never mind.”

Now I’m the curious one, though. “What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’re secretly an opera singer or something.”

“I’m not,” he says. “I probably could be if I wanted, though. I’ve had professional training.” He looks confused for a second at my equally confused expression, then adds “Oh, you wouldn’t know, would you? It’s tradition for children of the old families to be trained in music. Singing especially. One of the few traditions that my dad actually supports, so…”

I’m still confused. I can’t imagine Lord Blackthorn being in favour of something so impractical, and I don’t know why the tradition would exist in the first place. “Why?” I ask.

“Spellsingers,” he says as if that’s an explanation.

I hadn’t really thought about what spellsingers were beyond powerful magicians who could do seemingly miraculous things, individuals who could turn the tide of a battle single-handed. “You mean they literally sing – sung – spells?”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

He nods. “It’s far more powerful, more fluid and instinctive, than normal casting. But it comes at the price of giving a part of yourself up to the music and magic.”

I’ve learnt enough magic by now to realise that that is a very bad sign.

“It’s been agreed for a few hundred years that the death toll makes it a bad idea to train more spellsingers. But the musical education stayed.”

“So you’re not going to get yourself killed trying to become a spellsinger?”

Edward laughs. “I do have some sense, Tallulah.”

I’m glad one of us does, at least.

We work on the warming spells for the rest of the afternoon, and after dinner I don’t need to curl up besides the fire or smother myself in blankets to be comfortable. “Why isn’t this the first spell every magician is taught?” I complain, smiling.

“Because it’s technically difficult and requires precise control,” Edward says. “Putting too much power into this spell tends to be… uncomfortable at best.”

I assume that for this spell, power roughly corresponds to increase in temperature. So too much power would imply an unpleasant level of heat, or worse. I grimace. “That was supposed to be a rhetorical question.”

“Oh,” says Edward. “By the way, have you decided?”

“About…” I ask, knowing the answer.

“Electra’s lessons,” he says impatiently.

“No,” I say. “As in, no I haven’t decided, not no I’m not doing it.”

“Are you going to decide before tomorrow morning?”

I shrug. In truth I’ve mostly decided that I’m doing it, I just don’t quite want to admit it. Maybe because I’m scared – not of Electra herself, but of the knowledge of just how hard she’s going to make the next week. Then again, it’s not as if an attacker is going to go easy on me, is it? “I’ll do it,” I say before I can talk myself out of it.

Edward grins. “Breakfast at six and thirty, then?”

It’s not that much earlier than I usually eat breakfast. I can do that.

I want Edward to keep teaching me privacy wards next, but I definitely wouldn’t if it wasn’t for the whole Elsie thing. Which means that asking him now would look suspicious. If Electra’s lessons are going to take up the whole week, though, I’m running out of time. Why wasn’t I more willing to learn back when he first suggested it, before I knew about Elsie?

Instead we read for the next couple of hours. I found an intriguing-looking book on the century between the two Civil Wars on my last visit to the library, but I barely take in a word of what it says.

Amara isn’t alone. She might not have said it explicitly, but reading between the lines, she’s part of some secret organisation. An organisation of the people I still can’t think of as mine, dedicated to preserving their history, their traditions, their understanding of magic and prophecy.

But is that their only ambition? And, perhaps more importantly: if Lord Blackthorn knew what I knew, would he believe it was their only ambition? No, is the answer to the second question. He’d see their very existence as a threat to the stability of the kingdom.

And that’s not a judgement I can make, not without more information.

As if that isn’t enough, there’s everything she said about me. One of those who came before, who were monsters before. I don’t understand what that means; monster could mean mala sia, I suppose, but that’s a kind of monster any Malaina could become. And I’m getting the sense I’m a lot more unique than that.

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t supposed to Fall. Maybe that makes me a new and different type of Malaina, and the way I could become a monster is different.

I’m not convinced, though. The crime of those that came before me was to do evil in pursuit of the greater good. Was that what made them monsters? Does she mean more in the sense that Lord Blackthorn can be monstrous?

I don’t know. And there’s no-one I can trust to give me answers. Amara’s price is too high, there’s no way I’m revealing anything to Lord Blackthorn or any other powerful magician who might be able to find out, Edward’s mother might be a sensitive but she isn’t here…

Which leaves Electra. Who’s already decided to keep whatever it is a secret from everyone, including me. And while I might trust her enough for these lessons, there’s a big difference between that and confronting her over something like this.

It’s a good thing Edward is absorbed in his own book, then, because otherwise he’d probably notice how long it takes me to turn each page. I must have read the same paragraph on Philippa the Bright’s reforms to the army half a dozen times. I force myself to pay attention to it, even though I already know what it tells me: that Philippa was the first to introduce a separate unit for magicians – what we now call the Twelfth Division – rather than having a group of them attached to each regiment.

Military history isn’t my favourite area of the subject, so the page or so’s discussion on whether that was a strategically sound decision is hard going and my attention wanders further. I do get the general sense of it, though: the author disagrees with the decision, but can’t bring themselves to criticise the great king and army who defeated the Usurper and brought peace and prosperity to the country.

It's one of the more frustrating trends across the history books I’ve read, this tendency to view Philippa as almost a walking star and someone who could do no wrong. Seeing it here doesn’t encourage me to persevere despite my mind being mostly elsewhere.

I don’t have to for much longer, though: we’ve agreed to go to bed at nine after noon, in preparation for the early start tomorrow and whatever Electra has planned for us. I’m already regretting my agreement; Edward shows no sign of regretting his decision.

I find my fingers itching for a quill when I reach the dormitory. I want to write down every detail Amara told me about prophecy and about how I can help Elsie. To make sure that I won’t lose crucial information because of my imperfect memory.

But I can’t. Even if I don’t respect the traditions of the Shadow People (if that’s what they call themselves), I’ve developed a respect for being careful with secrets. And if anyone found something like that in my possession, it would reveal both Elsie’s secret and Amara’s. I can’t let that happen.

So I’ll have to rely on my memory. Magical solutions to the problem, either to ensure the information is retained in my mind or to allow me to write it down in a way no-one else would understand, are well beyond my current ability. I feel so powerless, so far out of my depth. I’m not prepared to deal with any of these problems –

I am, at least, prepared to deal with the Malaina episode that those thoughts trigger. My list of kings serves me well, despite my earlier difficulty in Amara’s tent. Perhaps it’s because the Academy is very much a place for the history that they belong to.

Even after the episode passes, though, sleep does not come easily.