I thought Edward would want to tell his father – I was prepared to beg him not to – but he’s vehemently against it. “The potential of what we could do,” he says. “It’s… he’d want to use that. Anything else would be a waste of resources. What we want would be irrelevant.”

I don’t object. It almost makes me reconsider my decision not to tell him about Elsie – almost. Because Edward, like his father, has a concept of his people, but it’s a very different concept to Lord Blackthorn’s. Those in his circle are expected to be completely loyal to him, and receive the same unflinching loyalty in return.

I know I’m in this circle of Edward’s. But Elsie isn’t. That, for him, is the crucial difference between the two situations that might well lead to his making a different decision. So I can’t give him the opportunity to do that.

“The problem,” he says, “is Electra.”

“You can say that again,” I mutter.

He does. “More specifically,” he adds, “what Electra knows.”

“As much as us,” I agree. “Possibly more.”

“And,” Edward continues, grimacing, “we don’t know what she wants.”

I believe that she’s not quite as evil and twisted as she likes to pretend she is. I believe that she genuinely wants the best for her students. I believe that she wants to help us specifically, or at least wants us to view her favourably.

But when it comes to something as big as this? I can’t predict what she’ll do. And that terrifies me.

“What’s the worst-case scenario?” I ask.

Asking that question of Edward of all people would generally be a mistake, but in this case I think it’s necessary. “She sells us out to someone. If it’s Sirgal – or another foreign power, I suppose – they’ll want to have us kidnapped or assassinated, and with Electra’s help they probably have a reasonable chance of managing it. If it’s someone in the Rasina establishment… that’s harder to predict.”

He hesitates for a little while. “Maybe they tell foreign powers. Maybe they tell my dad – in which case as well as what we agreed he then knows we’ve kept it from him and loses trust in us as a result. Maybe they keep it a secret and plan to use us in some way. Stars, maybe they even decide to make it public.”

“Why – “

“To hurt my dad. People would assume we’re his assets, and it would be impossible to prove we’re not. And the merest hint of my dad having secret and powerful combat assets – “

“You’re not saying we’re – as powerful as the best the Ministry of Intelligence has to offer?”

“Probably not, but – “

“Probably?”

“I think we can safely assume that Electra was part of an SMO, which means she was at least close to that level. And even if we allow for her being retired, out of practice, it’s still got to be close. And at the end, I don’t think she was holding back against me.”

“And you neutralised everything she did,” I finish. It’s beginning to sink in that what we did – what Edward did, in particular – really was extraordinary. More than anyone should realistically be capable of. And that something like that matters.

Edward nods grimly. “In hindsight, given all of that, I’m not sure we should be having this conversation here, even with the best privacy wards I can manage.”

“We do need to have this conversation, though,” I say. “And… are there more secure places that don’t belong to your dad?”

He shakes his head. “That’s the problem.”

Stars. On second thoughts, maybe I shouldn’t have asked Edward for the worst-case scenario. No-one with any stake in political or military matters can ever find out about this if I want any hope of a relatively normal life, that’s the impression I’m getting.

But… “There isn’t anything we can do about it, if Electra does decide to sell us out. Is there?”

Edward shrugs. “Not unless we could offer her something more than what she’d get from doing it. Which is… not something I think we can do without my dad’s involvement.”

That’s what I thought. “So… she already has enough to ruin our lives, if she wants to.”

“Yup,” says Edward with fake cheerfulness. Then he realises my point. “You’re saying – we have nothing to lose by asking for her help.”

“Yes.”

He lets out a slow breath. “Instinctively that feels wrong. It’s certainly risky. If we go back to her, trust her, it makes it far easier for her to directly act against us. And we’d be giving her more information on our exact capabilities, most likely – she’d want to experiment with them – we should do that on our own, really.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“It’s still less risky than telling anyone who doesn’t already know,” I say. “Unless there’s anyone we can trust absolutely who’d also know enough to help us.”

His silence answers my unspoken question.

“Do we need to tell anyone at all, though?” he asks after a pause.

“If we want to understand what we can do and why, we’re not going to be able to do it on our own. Are we?”

“No,” he agrees. “And… we do need to at least talk to Electra about this. We can’t just leave it hanging.”

And so we have a next step. I’m not convinced that it’s the right one – I don’t have the faintest idea how to find the right one – but just having it makes me feel a little better.

“But we should figure out as much as we can on our own before that,” he adds. “Information is going to be a precious resource for us now.”

“You mean you just want something to experiment on,” I tease.

“That as well,” he admits shamelessly.

We don’t begin the experiments immediately. Instead we just discuss the evidence we have so far. There isn’t much of it, at least at first. The anomaly which I have and which Edward may share. The feeling we both had immediately before, failure and frustration.

“I think I might have experienced something similar before,” Edward says suddenly.

I narrow my eyes, trying to think when it would have been, and then I realise: “The riot. When you were… holding back the crowd.”

“Yes. Not for most of it. But you remember, towards the end, I made a mistake?”

I nod.

“I thought… well. I thought we were both going to die. And some part of me… I just remember thinking I wouldn’t let that happen. And then I was moving faster than I knew how to, getting every spell perfect. It was only for a few seconds, until my dad showed up. And I was under a lot of stress at the time. So I didn’t think anything more of it, but now…”

“I think it was, as well.”

“What about you?” he asks.

My immediate response is no, of course not, but I bite it back. I can’t afford to miss any details with something like this. I think back through everything that’s happened today. The clue isn’t where I expect to find it, though: it’s the conversation between Edward and Electra before either of us reached a flow state. About failure. About a time he failed previously, and a time I didn’t when I should have.

“Maybe,” I say. “Do you remember that time in Felicity’s lesson?”

He does. “The illusion. You worked it out on the spot, under pressure, when no-one expected you to be able to.”

“I felt just the same as I did today. I just wanted to wipe that smile off her face, and then… it just happened.”

“Stars,” Edward whispers.

I stare at him blankly. Surely that’s not any more impressive than what we’ve already done? “Do you think it was the same thing?”

He shrugs. “It seems quite the coincidence for it not to be. But if it is… you know what that would mean?”

I shake my head.

“Being able to slip into a flow state far more easily than we should is one thing. That implies it’s something far more than that. Near-perfect understanding of magic, in the right circumstances. The ability to learn it far faster than should be possible.”

I’m beginning to see his point.

“Stars, Tallulah. If we could learn to summon that state of mind at will, without getting ourselves killed or turning into mala sia in the process… we could be the greatest magicians since the Mages.”

I can’t process his words. I can’t process any of this. It’s not something that should happen to me. I’m not supposed to even be a magician. I think I’ve somehow convinced myself this is an abstract problem affecting some stranger. It’s not real. It’s not me.

“If,” I repeat, feeling a little afraid for this hypothetical stranger.

“New magic is always risky. And something like this… you know what Electra said about the dangers of the flow state.”

I nod. Was it really only a few hours ago that she explained how a magician could get themselves killed or worse by losing themselves to the flow, and I decided I never wanted to risk that happening? “We don’t have to,” I say.

“What?”

“We don’t have to take so many risks to become the greatest magicians since the Mages. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stay alive and sane.”

Edward stares at me blankly for a moment, and I realise that the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind until that moment. Of course he’d want to use that kind of power. Becoming the sort of magician that he’s talking about is everything he’s ever wanted.

He’s also right about the dangers, though. Not just of the flow state. The more I think about it, the more a disquieting idea lodges itself in my mind. “Is it possible to… possess someone by magic?”

Edward tenses immediately as he realises my meaning. “There’s a spell that lets you sense what another person senses. There are animation spells on another person’s body. Assuming you can work your way around the human-targeting barrier.”

The human-targeting barrier is an important concept in magical theory: put simply, it means that spells become exponentially harder to cast and require far more power when you attempt to use them on another human. It’s not impossible to work around, though, and its limitations have been the subject of much study.

“That’s not what you mean, though, is it?”

I shake my head.

“All study and practice of mind magic has been outlawed for centuries, and for good reason.”

I don’t ask what those reasons are. I don’t want to know.

“I do see your point, though. It didn’t… quite feel like it was me blocking those spells. The closest analogy was, well, when I Fell. Do you think it could be related to Malaina?”

I shrug, thinking back to that day at Genford and then to the incident in the library. “Yes and no,” I say. “The feeling that I wasn’t the one in control – that’s the same. But… with this, I’ve never done anything I wouldn’t normally do if I were capable of it.”

Edward grimaces. “There are theories about Malaina that propose the same is true of active episodes.”

“It’s not, though. Is it?”

“Stars, I hope not,” he agrees. Then, after a pause, he continues: “So. Possession. That’s your theory, then?”

“Calling it a theory seems a bit of a stretch. Do you think it’s likely?”

“I think that according to what’s known and believed about magic, it’s impossible. I also think that according to what’s known and believed about magic, what we just did is impossible.”

That scares him, I realise. Magical theory is almost like a religion for him: yes, so much of it is dependent on belief, but there are fundamental truths to it, unchanging constant rules. And we’ve just broken them.

“Given that, you might be better placed to figure this out than I am.”

I can’t help laughing at that. “But you know far more – “

“Exactly. This isn’t a problem that can be solved within the bounds of what I know. So someone who isn’t constrained by those boundaries – “

I can’t work out whether to take what he’s saying as a compliment or an insult. So I take it in the way it’s meant, as a pragmatic and quite likely accurate assessment of the situation. “Okay. Possession, then.”