In the same training room as the first day, I stand in the middle, Zikkora taking to the staircase floating along the outer rim. As every other day, he paces relentlessly, needing to do something with his feet and his body. He can't remain still, especially not when giving orders.

Today, it is just the two of us. The Void Queen has other matters to tend to, and though I wish to ask, I resisted the urge to blurt that question. I have to keep believing that her private business is just that, not for my eyes or ears. Similar to her sister's tendencies, she keeps herself locked away in the belly of the beast, biding her time. It's strange for me to think I once walked into that room and felt comfortable enough to sit on her sofa. The Void Queen's deepest, darkest secrets are there, and with all the time she spends hidden behind that ordinary door, I wonder if I missed something obvious.

Zikkora retrieved me much earlier than he has over the past four days. I practiced enough of lightning and ice that he doesn't want to see another lick of it, and the premature arrival is a sign that he wishes to focus on something different. After a brief endeavor of 'warming' my magic, both of us are ready to go. 'Warming' the magic, as Zikkora says, activates the heightened senses Luminaries can take advantage of.

He takes powerful strides down the stairs and stops within feet of me, planting himself firmly on the black marble floor. White flickers resemble stars, grey wisps the clouds. I can hardly look at it without recognizing Castiel's face, the nights we spent sitting on the rooftop, our knees tucked into our chests to ward away the cold. He pointed out constellations, but they were never there.

I blink myself back into focus. Zikkora's relentless training schedule has left me with no time to think of my family, nor everything else I left behind, but an invisible tether tugs towards home, towards my family and friends. I haven't had time to wonder if the royal children plan to rescue me, or if their mother has put her foot down.

Does Chaska cry? Does my brother lay awake at night, wondering where I could have gone? Pitiful isn't an understatement. I shouldn't long for their attention as much as I do, but appreciation is nothing short of hard to come by. They're devastated, I know they are.

Zikkora's throat clears. "Are you ready, Marie?" he asks.

Without his leader in his presence, his tone is not nearly as angered. I didn't think him to have a soft side until the day after our first training bout when she had too many responsibilities weighing down her shoulders to show. He even smiled. Though unnatural, something about it felt like he should avoid expected toughness.

I nod, a firm jerk of my chin. "I'm ready."

"Today we'll train you to protect against weapons without using weapons of your own."

My jaw tightens involuntarily. "You won't fling knives at me, will you?" I ask cautiously.

This time, he resists the urge to laugh at my plausible weakness. I hope he hasn't spent many of his days throwing weapons at heads, but he is employed in the Void Queen's forces. Without her here, he doesn't carry that similar swagger. Zikkora tucks it away for when she returns, then he applies the mask of calculated, frozen rage into his movements.

"No, I will not fling knives at you. I want to train your energy manifestation." He starts to pace once more, circling around me as he speaks. "In Luminaires, the energy manifestation is the physical form of your power. You can use it as a shield or a blockade, or a weapon itself. Energy manifestations help Luminaries reach beyond their limits, so your true body can extend without actually moving."

Nothing in Gustus's Luminary manuscripts and scrolls prepared me for this. I read faintly on energy manifestation, but the script was almost always faded, and the truth muddled. Considered a Luminary's extensive power, I always thought of it as...lackluster. Without reason and weaker than the rest of what I could do. Without the proper resources and history, I don't quite know the truth.

"Is there anything it can't do?" I question, almost mockingly.

Zikkora halts his pacing and spins on his heel, puckering his lips together in consideration. "Don't use it underwater. It's quite fickle."

I snort. "Was that a joke, Zikkora?"

He flattens his stare, mouth thinning. "Not even close. Now, back to business." I knew I wouldn't get a sliver of a reaction out of him. "The energy manifestation can also be useful for inanimate objects. Furniture, the earth itself, anything that has a physical form—your energy manifestation can gather it, throw it, lift it. Anything you please."

Stepping back to firmly plant my boots in the middle of the room, I raise my arms at my sides, bending them at the elbows. "I certainly hope this is something that can be easily conjured."

"That depends on your willingness to conjure it."

I allow myself to smile but tip my chin down so he doesn't see. If we keep going on like this, we'll never get anything done. With Zikkora, any answer he gives is never a straight one. The unlucky on the other side of the conversation—me—must dissect the language of what he expects to be direct orders and reasonings, but is actually uninspired circling around the truth.

"Create a shield," Zikkora orders.

Easy enough. I stick out my hand, imaging my fingers curling around the strap of a circular shield, but nothing comes. Nothing exciting alerts me that magic is coming to life in front of me, blossoming into a shape. As quiet as it is with an iron band, the Luminary powers kick their ankles up and wait for me to figure it out. Of course, nothing such as this comes as easily as it should. You'd think it would spring to life after waiting for three years to have access to an open door.

I wince and shift my stance, forcing tension into my fingers. My muscles go rigid. Not a spark. "Nothing's happening," I grumble.

Gustus never mentioned anything about this. If he did, I was too busy trying to toss an inanimate object into the air above my head and catch it once it fell. He sparsely used magic when hidden away in his chambers, only to remove a knot from his hair or wipe pesky dust from his dining table. On rare occasions, on lazy days where he and Theo didn't want to leave the bed for fear of loss of cuddling time, he wafted items across his chambers so he didn't have to stand and physically grab it himself.

I should've listened. I should've asked if there was more. The prince must know something about this, and if he doesn't, he's in for a rude awakening.

Zikkora folds his hands into fists and threads them to his chest. "Think simpler, Marie. I understand your determination to impress, but forcing something to rise will not result in success."

"There's nothing about my power that wants—"

"It's not about what your power wants," he snaps, holding up a hand to stop me. "Don't think of this as a shield, think of it as an extension of your power. Force the power out, and control it from within. Pull on the thread."

Pull on the thread. Pull on the thread. What does that mean? I wonder if Zikkora is joking with me, waiting for me to try, and fail, with these tactics, and the unbreakable tension in the air doesn't help matters. Then again, the tension might be coming from him.

I raise my hand again, out towards Zikkora, and he blurs in my vision. My fingertips twitch, palm pulsing with unused tension. Pull on the thread. Available magic thrums from within me—an all-powerful power that just needs a simple command. But a physical presence of that power is different than creating ice or melting something or reading into the dreams of someone deep in slumber. That, I have yet to try.

Ice doesn't come to my fingertips without me telling it to form from my skin. Luminaries need a command if their magic wants to obey. First, they must receive something to obey to. I imagine threading string from my fingertips, pulling out from the length of my arm. Warm air trickles from my palm and manifests, pulsing a paranormal breath out from something that shouldn't exist.

At least Zikkora is patient. I continue pulling hard and as fast I can, yanking the power out before it's ready to be exposed. And before it can take a shape of its own, taking control, I shape the nonexistent thread into a shield—a small circle. To my surprise, blue light glows. Only a flicker, and beyond my recognition, but it's there.

To avoid startling it, I wrap that thread tight around my soul, enough to suffocate air from my lungs and wait for Zikkora's next order. The blue shield reflects in his widened eyes—we have made a breakthrough. This...physical manifestation of my power feels like nothing else I have ever conjured. A raw intensity snakes through it, more powerful and difficult to control than lightning, and I thrive on the fact that this physical energy I'm displaying is more than I ever thought I could be.

"Bigger." Zikkora's voice is muffled beyond the ringing in my ears.

I grab hold of that thread once more and tug on the end, widening the trail. Slowly, my power slips into place. The ability to create a physical manifestation like Zikkora requests comes easily; the hold doesn't snap nor sever.

A blue tinge sparkles wider, brighter, stronger. For the first time, what trails underneath my skin meets my eye. Our introduction is mild in the fact that I can hardly focus on its beauty for I have bigger plans. Plans that involve crafting a shield strong enough to halt the thrust of any weapon. Blue energy crackles and spits off the edges and the shield grows until it's the same size as that of soldiers, but lighter than a raven's feather.

My smile comes without warning. I can hardly hold back my tears at the realization of what I have just done, what no other Luminary has taught me over three years of hiding. I never received the chance, and in the Void Queen's palace, my soul has unlocked newfound freedom for the unmistakable. Distinctive in beauty and power. My physical embodiment.

Something fast moves out of the corner of my eye and I don't see until the last second that Zikkora has completely removed the list of directives and has chosen to act on them instead. With or without my knowledge. A very-real sword swings for my head and I duck out of the way, the shield faltering. I stumble, nearly tripping over my own two feet, but Zikkora doesn't swing.

Instead, he frowns. My time might be done here. These few days I have spent getting acclimated to living in the Void Queen's palace with no end in sight have taken a turn for the worst. I'm not as strong as she claims me to be, she gave Zikkora the silent order to kill me behind a closed door.

My trainer stops, the sword raised high above his head. The muscles underneath his coat tighten, straining to hold the blade in such a position for so long. "Trust the shield," he practically growls in disappointment. "Use it. Wield it. Don't, and you'll never understand it."

"You don't mean to kill me?" I blurt without thinking twice.

Zikkora drops his arms. His shoulders hang like I just knocked the wind out of him. "Why would I mean to kill you?"

"You...I...I really don't know." I loosen the tightness in my muscles, present since I walked into the room not too long ago. Freedom doesn't always convey the expression of such, something more dreadful always looms over the shoulders of those that claim they're free. Invisible shackles, irremovable nerves. My doubts weigh me down.

Don't shove it under the rug.

The statement is so familiar, the voice foreign. It has only been three years, but I fear forgetting my mother's voice. Her face. Her kind smile and gentle, cautious laugh. Anyone living in Gudgeon knew not to bring too much attention to themselves.

Her presence in my mind is unmistakable. Don't shove it under the rug. In regards to hiding my emotions when something upset me or refusing to tell a bully that they could shove it the next time they thought I would accept their insults. Regard happiness, regard doubt. Succumb to neither.

I try to think of happier times; when my parents were still alive. I remove myself from the magic-tainted room and imagine a time before I felt another heart taking claim over my own. Slowly swallowing mine and leaving a different person behind. The same in features, the same in presence and soul and kindness and love, but different in heart. Stronger. Brave as my father wanted me to be.

My family is everything. My parents were everything to me, and I would've given my second heart to protect them. Zikkora is not my trainer. He is the army of the soulless.

The shield comes back to me with ease, this time with only a simple tug on the thread that connects my physical embodiment to the thrumming box of ancient magic within my being. Zikkora acknowledges the change in my demeanor with a jerk of his hard chin. Burns cut into the corner of his mouth but they don't interfere with the crooked raise of a grin.

When Zikkora comes for me another time, I don't back down. When he brings his sword down on the shield, I reinforce it, bending my arm at the elbow and widening magic over my head to protect the blade from striking high. His sword slams into the other side of the shield, the blue-silver edge of my power, and I hardly feel the reverberation. Adding flare, I push back and he stumbles.

The shield dissipates, leaving only the two of us. I don't recognize satisfaction on his face, but I'm not afraid to admit that is what I'm seeing. "Well done," he says, tossing the sword back and forth from one hand to the next. Blue power fringes off the ends. "Now it's time to control the blade."

That, I don't understand. But for the first time in my life, I'm not afraid of what someone stronger than me has planned for my future.