“I didn’t mean to,” I said. I clutched at his forearms. I felt very small, very weak, and very young.

“Ariah, it don’t matter if you meant to if the other person does not want it. You cannot take what is not offered to you. You cannot. No excuses. Understand?”

“But it just happens, doesn’t it?”

“Only to those with no respect for anyone but themselves. No. It’s a hard thing, I know it is, but I will have nothing to do with you if you think the inconveniences of your gift outweigh the damage you could do to someone with this.”

“I understand.”

“You sure?”

“I do. I am. I understand. What do I do?”

“You train yourself, you train your body to wait. You stay put. When you feel your grip slipping, you will yourself to stay where you are. You stay with someone who can watch you until you’ve got it under control. You tell a person who links you like that you’re willing, if you are, but you will wait for them to decide when and where and how.” He sighed. He grew softer with me. “And Ariah, you…you have to remember you owe it to no one, all right? No matter how much they want you, you never owe them a thing, link or not.”

Vathorem sent me home early. He spoke to Fallinal about it. She knew him, and she had a rough understanding of what shaping was, and apparently she’d heard rumors about what shapers can do. And apparently that made her curious. Dor must have told her where I lived. I am certain Vathorem never would have. In the late afternoon, there was a knock on my door. Sorcha went to answer it. As soon as the door opened, I felt the force of that link. It drilled into me, inexorable, inescapable. “Afternoon,” she said. “Does Ariah live here?”

Sorcha turned towards me, surprised, but I was already past him. I don’t remember moving. I don’t know how I got from the couch to the door, but there I was, and there she was, and then my mouth was on hers, and my hands were already working at her clothes. What I remember most is the pattern of her breath as it caught or deepened. I remember the rhythm of her body as mine moved against it. I don’t know how we wound up on the floor. I have no idea how long it was. All I know was there was pleasure, her pleasure and my need to give it to her. I was a slave to it, enraptured by it, and I must have felt some myself, but I can’t remember what she did to me.

My first clear memory afterwards is her laugh, and the feeling of her fingers in my hair. “A shaper,” she said, and she laughed again.