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“I don’t need a lecture. I need you to teach me.”
“You’re missing the point,” he says. “You already know what to do. You have to learn to control your skill.”
So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.
“I’m trying!” I explode.
Dante sighs but his face softens. The crease in his forehead vanishes. “Close your eyes.”
“But—”
“Do it,” he snaps. “You need to find the time strand moving past you. You must isolate it if you want to protect the objects and people around you.”
“No sh—”
“Feel for the pulse,” he says firmly.
“Time doesn’t have the pulse, the matter does—the life,” I argue, but I keep my eyes closed. I can feel the matter around me. If I concentrate I can hear its crackling vitality under the room’s ambient sounds.
“Time’s pulse is different. It’s more like the wind—ephemeral, always changing a little. Matter is vibrant, throbbing with energy. Time is like a whisper. You can only catch it if you listen closely,” he murmurs. “Accept that you’re a part of it and that it’s a part of you like the beat of your heart.”
I clear my mind and reach out with my fingers. I don’t grab anything, I caress the strands around me. They pulsate, pounding with vital life. Strands of matter. I’m shocked at the sensation in my fingertips. Maybe I didn’t concentrate so intensely in Arras, but every strand I touch throbs through me. I drop them and focus on the space around me, tuning out everything but the thrum of the world. And then it’s there—a tinny whistle that fades in and out of my hearing. Almost metallic, it oscillates between a faint rhythm and a heavy, inelegant hammering. I let my fingers reach out, trying to match the sound with the tactile sensation. They close over a thin strand and I feel the intensity of its pulse shift, growing louder and more demanding in my hand.
“Better,” Dante says, breaking my concentration.
As I open my eyes, he fingers a glowing strand of time.
“I’m glad you approve,” I say. “But I can’t stop and concentrate in a fight.”
“Of course not,” he agrees. “That’s not what I’m trying to make you understand. You must let go to unleash your ability. You are strongest when you aren’t trying.”
I try to hold back a groan, but I can’t. “Then isn’t training the exact opposite of what I should be doing?”
“Don’t think of it as training, think of it as honing.”
“A differentiation worthy of a politician,” I mutter. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“You were made for this,” Dante says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We both were. Weaving and altering skills aren’t accidental. They’re your genetic legacy. But you have to accept your gift. Once you do that—once you make it a fundamental aspect of who you are—it will be as simple as breathing.”
Something I’m looking forward to, especially if it means I can stop training and get some sleep. It’s going to be tricky, considering my parents trained me to ignore my weaving ability, not to accept it. I practiced that for years, and now Dante thinks he can undo that preparation.
“What happened to your hands?” he asks.
I hold out my hands and he inspects them.
“A Spinster punished me,” I say.
“By trying to destroy your fingers?”
“I wove razor wire and steel.” I pull my hands back, suddenly self-conscious about the scars that are still visible from Maela’s revenge.
“You’re lucky to have fingers at all,” he says. “But, Adelice, your skill lies as much in your mind as your hands. Stop being so tentative, it’s making you clumsy.”
“That’s what’s holding me back?” I ask.
“I’ve seen you let go when you need to. In that alley to save your mother and in the ammunition factory.”
“I thought you didn’t approve of my use of my skills,” I say.
