Chapter 326

Chapter 326

Chapter 326

ARIA

I woke

up the next morning with a plan, which was already an improvement over most of my recent mornings.

The library’s restricted section had given me enough over the past several days that I had something approximating a framework. Not complete the texts on bloodline magic were old enough that some of the language required significant interpretation, and the sections on children of the moon specifically were frustratingly sparse in places, like whoever had written them had assumed the reader would already understand things that I absolutely did not understand. But I had enough to try something deliberate rather than just waiting for the power to surface on its own during moments of crisis.

patterns

That was the far. Danger or high emotion, and then the silver glow in my eyes and the lunar energy responding without my permission. Useful in the trials, where everything. had been crisis by definition. Less useful as a long-term strategy for understanding what I was actually capable of.

The texts had been clear on one point: the power needed to be exercised intentionally. A child of the moon who only accessed their abilities reactively, in response to threat, was only ever using a fraction of what the bloodline offered. The rest required practice. Delte sustained, probably awkward practice, in the way that learning anything required going through the stage where you were bad at it before you got to the stage where you weren’t.

I needed a training ground. I needed space and quiet and the absence of audience, because the inevitable awkwardness of being bad at something new was significantly were watching.

Wor

when people

I found the training ground easily enough. Got there early, before the morning sessions properly started, while the grounds were still mostly quiet and the light was the pale, cool quality of a day that hadn’t committed to its weather yet. The space was good – large, open, the practice dummies and target stands arranged along the far end, the ground packed firm and clear.

I set my notes down on the equipment bench along the edge of the space, reviewed the section I’d flagged about intentional activation the

way

the older texts described working with the power rather than waiting for crisis to produce it and turned to face the open practice ground.

The pearl was warm against my hip. It had been warm since the night before with a

ANTIME

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consistency that suggested it wasn’t responding to my emotional state anymore so much as it

was simply present. Active. Like something that had been switched on and was now running in the background waiting for direction.

sensation I’d felt during the trials

I took a breath. Focused inward the way the texts described, looking for the quality of

that particular warmth that had moved through me when the power manifested, the silver light behind my eyes, the sense of something both larger and more precisely mine than ordinary capability.

I found it immediately, which was new. Before the Hunt, accessing it had been like trying to locate something in the dark. Now it was more like reaching for something that was already in my hand.

Interesting. Progress.

I was deciding what to attempt first when I heard voices.

Not many. A few, at the edges of the training ground, the particular quality of sound that suggested people who weren’t trying to be quiet but also weren’t announcing themselves. I turned.

There were twelve people. Pack members, ranging from what looked like a pair of teenagers to adults I recognized from various encounters over the past months. They were distributed around the perimeter of the training ground in positions that bore no relationship to any training activity — one woman was standing near the east wall studying it with focused attention. Two men were by the equipment racks having what appeared to be an extremely engaged conversation about the condition of the fence posts. The teenagers

were sitting on the low wall at the south edge looking at each other with the intense interest of people who have decided this is where they are.

None of them were looking at me.

Or rather all of them were not-looking at me with the specific deliberateness of people who are paying close attention while communicating the impression that they are paying attention to literally anything else.

I turned back to the training ground. Faced front again. The sensation of being watched from multiple directions by people pretending they weren’t watching me was extremely specific and not easy to ignore.

I tried anyway.

Focus. The warmth in my hip pocket, the warmth behind my sternum that connected to it. I reached for it, felt it respond, felt the familiar silver sensation begin to build-

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“That wall is very solid,” said the woman at the east edge, to no one in particular, nodding at the wall she was studying.

One of the fence post men said: “Mm. Yes. Very good wall. That is a wall p>

I lowered my hands. Turned around.

There were now twenty-three people.

I had no idea where the additional eleven had come from. They appeared to have materialized from the general direction of the pack grounds, and they were doing what the original twelve were doing distributing themselves around the perimeter, locating things to be interested in, finding walls and fence posts and pieces of equipment that suddenly required their full attention.

A child of approximately seven years old was sitting on her father’s shoulders examining the roof edge of the equipment shed with the focus of a structural engineer. Her father was looking at the ground near his feet. Both of them had the air of people who had decided this was simply where they were today and would continue to be for the foreseeable future.

I looked at the people around the perimeter. The people looked at the walls.

I turned back to the training ground, took a breath, tried again. The power was there, waiting, available – I pulled on it the way the texts described, shaping intention around do something specific rather than just building pressure and hoping-

inter asking it to “It’s a really good wall,” said a new voice from somewhere behind me, with the e

conviction of someone who had found religion in architecture.

I stopped. Turned fully around this time.

7

Kahe sincere

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