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“I didn’t. You reacted brashly,” he says. “But you relaxed and channeled your ability in those instances. Your hands didn’t stop you. Don’t let that stop you now.”
I nod, embarrassment growing a lump in my throat.
“I think we’re done for the day,” he tells me. “There’s a problem with the photovoltaic array at the power plant that I need to look into.”
“Is Jax helping you?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him in a while.” Jax and I aren’t exactly friends, but after Erik he is still the friendliest person on the estate.
A shadow passes over Dante’s face. “He’s on the mission.”
“He is?” I ask. “Sorry, I thought he had stayed.”
I consider accompanying Dante to the power plant, but even the sight of the smokestacks makes me cringe. I’m still embarrassed by my mistake at the ammunition factory. If Jax isn’t going to be there, I’m not sure I want to go with Dante. Thinking of the plant, I recall what he said earlier. “What happens if I catch someone in a warp?”
“In the best-case scenario, you merely trap them in the caught time.”
I know that from experience. I count on it actually.
“What if it’s more serious?” I ask quietly.
“You could damage their thread. Maim them. Kill them. That’s why it’s imperative you learn to focus on time. Grabbing matter uncontrolled is too risky. You know how delicate we are. One wrong move and you could rip someone in half.”
“What I really want to know is how to alter,” I admit.
Dante stops and gives me a heavy look. “I assumed so. It’s not as glamorous as it looks.”
“I saw what they did to Deniel,” I say. “I’m aware of how glamorous it is.”
“You saw the worst thing that Tailors do,” he says.
The worst? Yes, what happened to Deniel was horrible, but what about removing people’s souls or altering their memories? What about the other ways Tailors and the Guild take away people’s lives? Take away the very essence of who they are?
“Tailors can help people, too, Adelice. A trained Tailor can patch a thread and heal someone,” Dante says.
“I’ve only seen them do that to people they hurt in the first place,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. It’s true. My only experience with renewal patches is seeing them misused by men like Cormac and Kincaid.
“I need to know what I’m doing,” I say. “You’ve been teaching me this so that I don’t hurt anyone, but what I did to Deniel when he attacked me—that could have been worse. I need to understand how alteration works.”
“Fine. I’ll give you an hour, but then I have to check on that array.” But the look on Dante’s face says it’s anything but. He doesn’t want me to see this or understand this or do this. But why? “Maybe your friend will volunteer.”
I’m not imagining the way Erik swallows before he nods. “Sure.”
“Maybe we could start with something smaller and less prone to bleeding?” I suggest.
Dante’s jaw tenses but he bobs his head in agreement, gesturing to the fern he’d been fiddling with. It’s only a plant, but I don’t like the idea.
“I can unwind this,” he says, “or I can change the shape it grows in, make the leaves longer. I can steal strands from another plant and wind them through it, and create a hybrid.”
“Could you make it look like another plant?”
“Sure,” he says with a shrug, and as we watch he tugs apart the fern and then carefully adds its strands into a small bush. The plants blur and shift, growing, changing in front of our eyes until the stubby little bush is a baby fern.
“You are possibly the best gardener ever,” Erik says, clearly impressed. “Don’t tell my brother I said that.”
Dante grins despite his earlier foul mood.
“Make it grow,” I say.
He runs his hands over a leaf and it blurs, stretching into a long green leaf.
