Page 61 of The Crown's Awakening
Heat rises at once beneath my skin. “You mean by loyalty?"
“I mean by anything that allows you to mistake instinct for strategy.”
A reply I would regret rises to the front of my mind, so instead I push back my chair and stand.
Petunis rises as well. “Good,” she says. “We are finished here.”
Nyara looks between us. “You are both going to the throne room like this?”
“Not all warfare uses blades,” Petunis says.
Nyara considers that. “Then I am very glad Lord Eskarin offered me a tour of the city instead.”
Petunis turns to her. “Enjoy your morning. Return before dusk. You will sing tonight.”
Nyara inclines her head with mock solemnity. “As commanded.”
I leave the chamber beside my aunt with the taste of tea and poison still lingering unpleasantly at the back of my throat.
The corridors beyond breakfast are colder than the room we left. Servants flatten themselves against the walls as we pass. Two guards fall in behind us without being summoned. Petunis says nothing at first, and for several turns of the hallway I begin to think she means to let the conversation die there.
Then, without warning, she says, “Show me.”
I glance at her. “Show you what?”
She does not slow. “I want to see if you are worthy of a queen’s staff.” She inclines her head toward the one in her hand, its length catching the pale light as we move. “Your power.”
My steps falter for only a moment before I match her pace again. “Now?”
“Yes.”
We descend a narrow stair and emerge into a long gallery lined with tall windows, the snow beyond them casting a cold brightness across the floor. Petunis lifts her hand as though the air itself belongs to her, and somewhere ahead of us a window opens without touch, the latch giving way as the frame swings inward and the winter air presses into the corridor.
“Close it.” There is no urgency in her voice, no expectation that I might fail, only the quiet certainty that I will try.
I reach for it. The power does not come the way it does when I am fighting. It resists the first pull, slipping just beyond my grasp, and at first I feel nothing but the emptiness where it should be. Then something answers, faint at first, rising beneath my ribs and threading its way into my hand. I push, too quickly, and the force catches the window hard, driving it back into place with more strength than I intended.
The sound carries.
Petunis does not look at the window. She looks at me. “You strike when you should guide,” she says, and continues walking.
Another window stands open further down the gallery, the cold moving through it more quietly this time.
“Again,” she says.
I reach for the power more carefully now, allowing it to gather instead of forcing it forward. It comes more willingly, though still uneven, and when I press outward the movement is narrower, more deliberate. The window yields to it, closing without the violent snap from before.
Petunis inclines her head once, as though acknowledging a correction rather than a success. We turn into the next corridor, where a small carved object begins to shift from the edge of a table, drawn by an unseen pull that is not mine.
“Catch it before it breaks.”
I do not hesitate. The light answers faster this time, rising into my hand and extending outward, wrapping too tightly at first before I adjust, easing the pressure enough to lower it back into place without damage.
Petunis watches the movement of the power rather than the object itself. “You assume force will solve the problem,” she says. “It rarely does.”
“It usually has.”
“Because you wait until it is required,” she replies. Then, more quietly, “Lightcraft is control, not force. You are not pushing the world. You are deciding how it is allowed to move.”
