My magic blazes.

“Aristelle, that’s not helping,” Xander snaps.

She ignores him and smirks at me, but it’s not a cruel expression, only satisfied. She takes in my fingers clenched around my knives and nods to herself. Her doubt makes my own belief double, and she can tell. I don’t know whether to be grateful or angry. I go with anger because it’s what I need right now. Plus, it’s easier.

I force myself to turn from her, focusing instead on the tree.

My palms burn. I need to release the knives. They grow hotter in my hands by the second. I don’t have any choice.

I know where they will fly.

The knives loosen in my grip as they slip down until I’m holding just the ends of the handles firmly in my fingers. In an instant, I shift my stance and let the knife in my right hand fly. Taking the slightest step forward, I snap the left knife after it.

The first knife glances off the side of the tree and clatters onto the stone.

But the second thuds into the bark.

Xander chuckles, letting go of me and clapping his hands in slow appreciation.

Aristelle even looks pleased.

My chest heaves, and my palms itch to have the knives back.

Aristelle brushes invisible dust from her black skinny jeans. “My work is done here. Train her.” She strides away and leaves me with my mouth hanging open.

I turn to Xander. His smile is wide and open—whatever hesitation he had about me is hidden or gone.

“Welcome to the troupe,” he says.

He lifts my hand, bending to press a light kiss to my knuckles, and I’m pretty sure the thrum in my stomach when he does has nothing to do with the magic.

I expect him to drop my hand and end our little moment of flirting, but he doesn’t. He laces his fingers through mine and tugs me forward, past the cherry tree and out of the courtyard to the dauntingly high hedges at the very edges of the compound. We stand there, facing the wall of green.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Showing you around, giving you a taste of what you’re fighting for.”

I stare at the dense green leaves in front of me. “Uh, yeah, nice plant. Matches your hair.”

But then the leaves start shifting, pulling back as the branches wind into each other, slowly revealing a glossy black door with a copper handle. “Think of somewhere you were happy,” he instructs.

The command makes my chest ache, and for a second my mind is painfully blank, but then he opens the door and steps through, and I hear the steady roar just before my boots sink into sand. Ocean waves foam against a beach littered with shells and sand dollars.

“Damn,” Xander says. “It did mine. Not yours.”