Guess we’re getting right into it.
I swallow the shame that floods my throat. “I did, yes.”
“Did she resist?”
“Yes. Well, actually, no—at first, she didn’t realize I was in her mind. Which I suppose makes sense now that I know Mods can’t detect a manipulator because there’s no electric shock.” I pause, trying to get back on track. “She only realized what I was doing once her hand started to move on its own. That’s when her mind began to resist me. I could feel her trying to push me out, to stop the command from taking hold.”
“They fight hard,” he concurs. “It’s a survival instinct.”
“I can imagine. I’m surprised you agreed to let me practice on you.”
“I didn’t. I’m helping you harness gold, not letting you incite me.” Hawkins snorts. “Sorry, but I don’t know you yet, and I sure as shit don’t trust you.”
“Then how am I supposed to train in it?”
“You’re in luck,” he says, dripping sarcasm. “A lab rat offered themselves up.”
He means Gray, I realize. Kallister used that same phrase yesterday, referring to Gray as my “rat.”
I don’t know whether to be touched or call him an idiot for agreeing to let me practice incitement on him. Gray knows I have no control over it.
“But your rat is useless to you until you can harness,” Hawkins says. “Tell me what you do when you see the gold dust.”
I purse my lips. “When I was inciting the firing squad at my uncle’s execution, the gold was swirling in my head and distracting me. I was trying to maintain control of their minds, but the dust kept clouding my vision. I tried to clear it away—”
“That’s your issue. You don’t want to clear it. You want to gather it. What was the energy drain like?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Was your own mind resisting as hard as theirs?” Hawkins clarifies. “Were you tired? Weak? Headaches? Dizzy?”
“All of the above,” I say wryly.
“That’s what happens when you’re not harnessing the gold properly. Or if you possess an ability that requires a massive amount of energy. Corruption, for example. Adrienne has a perfect grasp of it, and she’s more than proficient at harnessing, but no matter how skilled she is, corrupting a mind will still drain her.”
I nod slowly. “The night she corrupted the General’s mind, she could barely walk afterward. I practically had to carry her. She couldn’t even use telepathy for almost twenty-four hours.”
“Because it drained all her other abilities, too. It takes time for everything to recharge.”
“Why doesn’t that happen with incitement?”
“No idea. All we’ve been able to determine is that corruption is the most strenuous of the manipulation powers. Anyway. Sounds like every time you consciously attempt to incite, you try to push the gold away, right?”
“I guess?”
“That’s why you’re unsuccessful. Youneedthe gold. Once you know how to harness it, you’ll be able to incite at will.”
“Can you incite at will?”
“Yes. It’s simple.” His tone is matter-of-fact, not smug. “Easy to do, easy to hold.”
“What do you mean, hold?”
Hawkins pushes a lock of dark hair off his forehead. This is the most animated I’ve seen him since we met. “Say I wanted to incite you to leave the Temple and grab me a coffee from the mess hall—”
“Wait, what? You can incite me when I’m not even in the room with you?”
Now hedoeslook smug. “Like I said, easy. It’s similar to telepathy—the first time you establish the link, you need to be sharing the same space, right? But after that, you can access that link from anywhere. With incitement, think of it like…a leash. You need to be in the same space to open a path, to harness the gold and capture their mind. Once it’s been captured, you’ve created a leash from your mind to theirs, and as long as you can hold on to that leash, you can continue to incite the other person even if they leave your sight.”
