“I welcome you to do it,” Dirva said. He pulled our papers from the policeman’s hand, shouldered his bag, and led me out the door. We did not speak until we were safely back in his apartment with the door locked and the curtains closed. Once we were assured of privacy, he read me. He had never done it before, and the force of it shocked me. I had underestimated how much he had in him, I think, though looking back it should have been obvious. I was horrified at the intrusion, and at the same moment, I was impressed at the level of control with which he wielded it. It was masterfully done, his reading: penetrating, but subtle, with little of the burn one usually feels.

“Ariah, I cannot keep snatching you from the law like this,” he said. “This anger you have, you should think on it. You should think on whom you’re really angry at,” he said. He left me there by my old cot, but his words hung heavy in the air. I hadn’t admitted the anger to myself. I certainly had not admitted that I was angry at him, or that I was angry at him because I had left Sorcha. He read me, but more than that, he shaped me: he pulled it to the surface, this bitterness, this confusion, and forced me to face it. I had been read before, but I’d never been shaped. I’d never had someone reach deep into my soul and show me its inner workings. It is a profoundly unsettling thing. When he did it, I understood a little why the Qin were so uneasy with magic. I think, until then, I had taken the power of it for granted.

There are parts of ourselves that, once seen, can never be unseen. Things that, once thought, will exist in every thought after. He made me acknowledge it had been a sacrifice to return, and he made me face the guilt I felt at leaving Sorcha behind. Guilt that I’d tried to pin on him, but which I couldn’t blame him for once he’d rescued me, and then rescued me again. As I made my bed, I had to reconcile myself to the fact that Dirva had only offered me a place with him, he had not demanded I take it, and he was not responsible for the fact that I took it. Leaving the City had been my own choice made for my own reasons, and he had shaped me into being just grown enough to own it.

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12