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little too close together. It’s funny how a home I considered cozy and comforting has so quickly become an eerie shell, made so only by the departure of a friend.
    By the time I slide under my blankets, I know Stormwind should have reached the High Council. Once she was safe in her own room and had set her wards, she should have contacted me. But the mirror has been quiet all evening long. I lie on my side in the darkness, watching the pale blur of my reflection and trying not to worry.
    But I have run out of excuses for why, even now, deep in the night, Stormwind has yet to appear in the glass.

The following day, I teach myself a smaller charm from my now-favorite book: smokers. I bind ash and smoke into a casing formed from an empty nutshell. Given my proclivity for fire, it hardly takes two tries to make one. When I snap it to the ground out by the lakefront, a dense black smoke pours forth in a forty-pace radius from where I stand.
    I take a deep, untroubled breath, stretch one arm into darkest night, and begin a count until I can see again. Even with the gentle breeze blowing in over the lake, the smoke lasts surprisingly long. And, as my book had promised, it merely creates a visual barrier. I can’t see my own fingertips, but neither my throat nor my eyes react to the fog.
    It provides the perfect cover for an escape, and even though it’s based in fire, it neither kills nor harms. I can allow myself this. By the time I’m ready to turn in for the night, I have a handful of smokers to add to my daypack.
    I’ve kept the mirror by me all day, carrying it with me even into the goat byre and chicken coop, and now I lay it beside my pallet. It offers me nothing more than a glimpse of my own features. It isn’t long before I slip into a land of murky dreams.
    I wake to the sound of a voice. “Hikaru?”
    I jolt upright, blinking at the bright oval on the floor.
    “Hikaru?” The voice is tinny but familiar.
    “Mistress Stormwind?” I scramble to pick up the mirror. “Are you well?”
    “Yes.”
    She doesn’t look it. Her eyes are shadowed and her skin sags with exhaustion. She seems a different person from the hardy, confident woman with whom I’ve studied this past year.
    “The trial?” I ask.
    “It begins tomorrow.”
    “So soon? Are you ready?”
    She shrugs. “As ready as I can be.”
    That doesn’t bode well at all. Wasn’t Talon supposed to help her? “What about—”
    “I have only a few minutes now,” Stormwind says, cutting me off. “There’s something I have been meaning to discuss with you regarding your studies. You know that the greatest spells draw on what is around you rather than rote words and stored enchantments.”
    “Yes.”
    “The easiest higher order casting for a mage to make is their first. Mine called up a storm. Now I can replicate that casting as easily as snapping my fingers.”
    “Not mine,” I murmur, realizing where she means for this conversation to go. We’ve discussed my sunbolt before, and I thought Stormwind had accepted that I wouldn’t attempt it again. Apparently she can be as stubborn as I am.
    Stormwind smiles, but there’s nothing happy in it. “You have practiced channeling.”
    I nod. That’s one skill Stormwind drummed into me nearly every day of my studies, to the point that I often dreamed of channeling — water, magic, smoke, goat’s milk, or whatever other unexpected material she assigned to me.
    “You are as proficient now as most master mages ever become. So yes, you can replicate your sunbolt.” Her voice lightens. “In the interest of keeping your hair, however, make sure to channel it.”
    “I see.” I smooth back my hair, feathery soft and surprisingly fine. In the months since I came to Mistress Stormwind’s cottage, it has grown back as slowly as moss on a river stone. Now it frames my face, tickling the tops of my ears. But regardless of whether my spell costs me my hair or not, I cannot fathom casting it again. Unlike