Strutting across the room, carrying all the dignity in the world, she hangs the leather cord from a golden claw sconce hanging from the wall. The raven on the pendant sways back and forth, its wings spread wide and undeterred by the night we spent separated. When I look at the pendant, I see Cloak. I feel the brush of his fingers against my neck, the weight of the world slowly disappearing from my shoulders with his warmth at my back.

"Now, let's begin," she says, her eyes flaring with excitement. She rubs her hands together. "What are your favorite powers?"

"When I could, I enjoyed using ice and lightning," I respond with ease. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the pendant. Half my focus goes to her, the other tries to figure out a way to snatch something with two pairs of eyes watching my every move.

"What did you enjoy using them for?"

I shrug. "I didn't...use them for anything."

Wyetta stops her pacing in the middle of the room and frowns at me. From the corner, leaning against a stone pillar, Zikkora snorts. "Each power has a purpose. If ice or lightning, you must do something with that power rather than watch it flutter with no purpose," he instructs.

With his presence there, I can hardly focus. Learning how to be around the Void Queen is one struggle, but this powerful of a trainer sizes me up every chance he gets. The thought of not being good enough crawls up my throat and suffocates my airways. He's powerful, strong, yet we're of the same make. Zikkora doesn't wear a Luminary form, so does that mean I have the potential to best him?

I look between the two of them, swallowing hard. "I...used ice to create a wall that kept out the army of the soulless," I squeak.

Wyetta waggles a finger at me. "I remember that fondly." All her amusement fades quickly, leaving behind determination. "But that's not good enough. Your power is strong, yet confined in what you're forcing it to do. Think bigger, Marie. You must wish to be stronger than that ice wall."

"There are limitations to what I wish to do. I have no desire to destroy what doesn't belong to me, but I want to protect others that can't protect themselves."

Wyetta gives me a saddened look. "You can still protect. Being a Luminary isn't always about having the upper hand, sometimes being a Luminary involves offering a helping hand." How poetic. "Now, I want you to reveal your ice."

"Reveal it?" I ask.

She spins on her heel, gesturing to a golden statue of an ogre. "Do what you wish with it."

My eyes dart between the two of them, but Zikkora makes no moves to help me. I call for ice and wave a hand towards the statue. Frozen crystals cut clean through the gold, trailing from the bottom and carving upwards, slicing into the solid foundation. Gold fades, blue and white emerge. The ice splinters over the surface—cracking—and I clench my fist as that ice reaches the top to close off the entire statue.

Zikkora is not so easily impressed. "You can do more than that," he snaps impatiently. "Don't just freeze the statue. Obliterate it."

For confirmation to break what doesn't belong to me, I check with Wyetta. She nods quickly, the golden hoops hanging from her ears bouncing with the movement. A single blue bird sways in the middle.

I focus on the statue and wrap another layer of ice around it, thicker and deeper this time. My power pushes hard into the gold statue, searching for any crack it can find. When I'm certain I have a decent hold, my fists clenched, I thrust my hands outward and ice splinters. Digs deep into the center of the statue. Then it explodes. Pieces of statue crumble to the marble floor, tripping down the three-step staircase around the entire room.

A large clump lands at my feet, another cluster around Wyetta's, but Zikkora avoids the debris. Where a statue once stood, frozen chunks of gold and ice pile the stand. The world comes back to me in waves—the smell of raw, warm magic pulsing through the room like a layer of dust, cold prickling on my fingertips, the twinkling of freedom in my ears.

Then, the statue. Completely demolished and broken to so many pieces that no one could repair it. Breathing heavy from the rush of adrenaline casting a shield of freedom over my soul, I say, "Sorry about the statue."

Wyetta steps towards the rubble, her eyes filled with newfound purpose. I imagine her softness with Edire is similar to the gentle dropping to her knees, the graze of her fingers against the frozen gold of a precious statue. The ogre symbolizes brute force; the others circling the room cast a light of differing battle tactics. Easily, physically large forces fall without proper defense or protection.

Her fingers trail along the rough grooves of the ogre's head, and with a flick of her wrist towards the crumpled hill of what remains, the pieces begin to shift. Moving on their own. She granted them life. No, not life. She's putting the statue back together. Heavy shards of stone brushed gold roll across the room, one bumping into the backs of my legs. I lurch forward and out of the way, granting it room to roll past.

Wyetta's hand raises into the air and pushes that final piece of stone back into its place. With a snap of her fingers, the cracks disappear. The statue is whole again. We truly are limitless.

"Luminaries are known to destroy," she claims, training her gilded stare on me. Life reflects from her to the statue. "What we forget is that Luminaries can repair. They can recover from their mishaps and reshape what they broke. The truth to limit is not how much we can bring down, but how much the world gains once we leave."

Zikkora dips his chin in agreement. The more the room smells like magic, the more comfortable I become. Soon, he's a shadow in the corner of the room—not judging. Just observing what I can do, and what he can do to help me improve.

"I want you to focus on lightning instead," Wyetta urges. She walks to me, the thick white robes hanging over her shoulders swaying between her legs. The velvet trim hangs just above the ground, dotted with little amethysts. "Lightning is stronger than ice. More destructive. It's a difficult power to harness, but I want you to test your limits."

Immediately, I shake my head. "My goal isn't to be destructive."

"You don't have to be." Her voice comes fast enough to catch me off-guard. "But the skill is useful. Along with every other Luminary ability, you must learn to strengthen it."

Years spent succumbing to her lies and trickery make it all that much harder for me to accept to her terms. My only condition for staying here is to train when she asks, to bring life into something I have kept in darkness for so long. If I can't do that...I may have to be destructive. Until then, I must bide my time.

Zikkora steps forward, like an angel tearing from the shadows, with a renewed sense of calm on his face. He peers at me, studying the change in my face. The elation in my hurried breaths. "Like this," he says deeply. Without a single movement, nothing more than a quick blink, lightning bolts spring to life from his palms.

They're deep red like strikes of blood splattered on a wall. His fingers become encompassed with them, then the backs of his scarred hands. Like constricting snakes, they wrap around his forearms and stop at the elbows, treading high enough to cup the bottom of his bicep with lethal grace. This magic is meant to be admired from a distance, not touched. I resist the urge to run my fingers over the bolts grazing his skin. The lightning sputters in rapid, uncalculated movements like it truly is another life form, and moves in waves without actually expanding or retracting.

I look down at my own fingers. I am no stranger to lightning manipulation but nothing this serious—nothing that Zikkora has shown me thus far. As if waiting for that command, brutal lightning tears from my fingers in blue streaks and moves suddenly, wrapping higher and tighter than what Zikkora has created. Luminaries with a second form are stronger and harder to control, but just as powerful and complacent.

Zikkora doesn't stop me as I raise my hand to my face, palm facing towards the ceiling, and study those beaded blue threads sprung to life. A soft buzz rumbles from the edges, and when two bolts collide, they twist and sag before wrapping around each other to form a new, stronger charge. Magic. How blessedly beautiful magic has become in my grasp.

"Open the ceiling, dear," Wyetta's voice calls to me from beyond the amazement. She says something else, but lightning has taken over my hearing. The thick thunder that accompanies it, deep clouds clogged with rain.

"The ceiling," Zikkora repeats. His voice, I hear. He shoots a knowing look into my eye when I raise from the fog, brushing hundred-year-old debris off my shoulders.

"Open the ceiling and protect us from the wreckage." Wyetta's voice again. "Use one power for two purposes."

My voice tumbles out rough and thick, like molasses on my tongue. "Isn't it too soon to try something so dangerous?" I ask.

The Void Queen only shakes her head, closing her eyes shut just for a moment to welcome the incoming dark. As much as I don't want to admit it, she's beautiful. Stunning. Carved from marble and the perfect canvas to be made into a statue; if she doesn't have one already. Something about her is gentle; I can't quite grasp onto where it originates, but she's a mother without a child. A mother to hundreds of Luminaries that she loves and wishes to protect.

They're disposable.

Cloak's voice. I recognize it easily.

We're disposable. My mother uses us for different purposes, but when it comes down to it, and we can't perform as we should, she'll get rid of us. Like livestock, once we stop living for our purpose, once it's fulfilled, she'll kill us.

The Terravale sisters are not as different as they wish to believe. Millicent doesn't wish to hear comparisons to her insane sister hiding in the north; Wyetta knows her younger blood is weak in the capital, hiding beyond walls and four children that weren't hers to bear.

"Nothing is too dangerous for you," she whispers. Did she speak aloud, or is that her voice in my head?

Either way, I hesitate. Strictly speaking, I don't want to open the ceiling and rain down terror on a home I haven't lived in for very long. Annihilation isn't in my nature, but protection is. Separate the two, divide them into separate parts of the body to handle them easier. Don't force control over one, provide equal strength to both.

Protect, but learn to destroy. Have opposites work as one.

For the first time in my life, I indulge in freedom. Second-thoughts vanish from my mind and leave behind empty valleys, spare room for my power to focus. And breathe. My chin tips upward, greeting the ceiling, and I throw one arm towards the glass. The bolt connects from the clouds beyond, arching down to the roof. I'm pulling from nature, from the clouds.

A blue bolt from my own hand connects with that of what hides in the clouds, and the glass roof shatters over our heads. Lightning snakes through the broken edges and I thrust outward, tearing my fists at my sides to mimic ripping the roof to shreds. Ripping a heart in half.

For a moment, I forget about the debris. Glass shatters down to the floor in jagged rain, and Zikkora shouts to bring me back. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the red shield over his head. He knew I wouldn't have the concentration to control everything at once; he's one step ahead of me. As I should have expected from a Luminary trainer meant to weed out these faults.

My protective instincts are second nature at this point. As bits of glass continue to trickle down from the roof, tipped with blue lightning, I wave my free hand towards the ceiling. A shield constructed of a similar make—a dome—glitters where the roof should be. When glass falls, beams of lightning stream out to catch it, snaking around the shards and pulling back.

This is what my power was born to do. I have spent three years hiding away in a basement, using only what it took to quell the ache in my head, but this feels like destiny. I thought freedom was making snowflakes dance together in harmony or making myself float high in the air as if I'm underwater.

But I was wrong. No wonder I was never satisfied with what hiding away can give me. Being a Luminary is more than that, and always will be. For once, this doesn't seem so bad.

Once the roof is completely obliterated, I disconnect the two bolts and focus on the debris lodged within the shield. As easily as I can without breaking another shard, I ease them to the ground, wrapping them to appear like snowflakes. As snow whips through the open ceiling, my calm power takes hold of secondary nature and drifts it to the floor.

Zikkora steps back, his eyes twinkling with admiration for a Luminary's magic. I swear I see the crooked raise of a smile crest his lips.

Feet shuffle next to me and I turn, finding the raven pendant dangling just inches from my face. Before I can think, I snatch it, wrapping the entirety of my palm around the rough edges. Wyetta grins mockingly, and slowly looks back to the destruction before us. Without a word of 'well done' or 'I expected more', she twirls a finger.

All the glass shards I just spent turning to rubble twist together in a spiraling tornado. A soft clinking sound cascades across the ceiling in quick reconstruction, each piece fitting together like a mold. In a matter of moments, the whistling wind stops and all is silent once more. I don't realize it until the buzz of my power leaves, but something has cracked loose inside my chest.

Not something that causes pain. A revelation. Realization that I can be more than what the world expects me to be. Millicent was wrong. Luminaries aren't the problem. The world that molds them into beasts is what should face the blunt edge of an axe.

I force myself to stop creating those thoughts of evil origin. As if sensing I'll slip back into contentment with the smallest of abilities, Wyetta's hand presses to my shoulder. "Come. It's time to eat," she says.

I hadn't realized how hungry I was. My stomach rumbles expectantly, mixed with newfound excitement.