He unclasps his cloak from around his neck and settles himself on the coffee table directly in front of me. I straighten reluctantly, depositing the book I wasn’t really reading onto the couch beside me. I narrow my eyes. “What are we going to do?”
He leans back on his palms, brow furrowing. “I need you to harness your magic. Exert some control over it.”
“I can’t control the daemon, Sitri.”
“Stop calling it that,” he snaps.
I cross my arms across my chest. “Does it really matter what I call it?”
“Yes, it matters. You need to re-frame this in your mind. You are not possessed. There’s nothing wrong with you. Itis you.Your magic,and you’re going to learn to control it. I’m going to help you. Do you feel it right now?”
“I always feel it.” At least almost always.
“Where is it?”
“It’s everywhere. It moves.”
His brow furrows even further. “It’s always moving? Just as it was last night?” I nod. “Where is it now?”
“It moves, Sitri,” I say, throwing up my hands. “It’s everywhere.”
“Tell me where it’s moving.”
I scrutinize his face, his enlarged pupils. “You look…fucked up.”
“Focus, pet.”
“You got rid of the knives. You told me you wouldn’t do that.”
“Things change. Tell me where your magic is.”
I slap my head to the back of the couch with another ragged breath, letting my eyelids drift shut as I focus on the daemon roving inside of me. Its movements have grown more erratic in just the last minute. It quickens even further when I try to focus on it. Lifting a single finger, I track it through me so Sitri can see how it’s moving. “Neck, left ankle, shoulder, right calf, scalp…” I do this for a few minutes, but he remains silent, and I break off. When I open my eyes, he’s frowning at me. “What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing… it’s just peculiar.”
“Yours isn’t like this?”
“No, my magic remains pretty well dormant until I call upon it. Sometimes, it demands release, but that’s more like an itch.” His frown deepens. “It’s like your magic has broken away from you somehow. Was it always like that?”
I bite at the inside of my lip, trudging through long-forgotten memories I’d rather leave in the past. Waking up after the fall, I felt…different. But the daemon wasn’t as it is now. Not always moving, only surfacing here and then. The first time, it broke something. And the first time something broke in front of other people. “I think…it got worse,” I admit.
He nods slowly. “Can you try to hold it still?”
“I can’t,” I say firmly.
“Can you try?”
“There’s no point.”
“I’m just asking for you totry.”
Try Pandora. You hold it. You hold it. You hold it.Syra’s words echoing in my head are bittersweet. I miss her. But it reminds me too much of when the Priest and the Grand Prioress were trying to rid me of the daemon.
I collapse back on the sofa and close my eyes in concentration. I track it up my arm to my hip and back down to my hand. My fingers twitch slightly as I make my move, pouncing my will around it like a cat after a mouse. It slips past me, lancing down my collarbone to my knee. My forehead wrinkles as I try again and again, only succeeding in ratcheting up the intensity.
I center all of my attention on it, and for a moment, I coax it into lingering in my chest. Satisfaction spears me when it stills. It begins to throb, each beat more painful than the last, and I let it go. “I can’t,” I say finally. “I held it for a moment—“
“Good,” he barks.
