I felt a bead of perspiration trace down the curve of my back. Why was he looking at me like that? I wondered if he saw through my guise, if he knew it was me. Although how could he? Not even Imonie had recognized me.

“Mr. Vesper?” I asked, pitching my voice deep.

“Yes. Forgive me, I thought . . . I thought you were someone else for a moment.” He gave me a disappointed close-lipped smile and walked to the table and chair. The receptionist hurried to place an inkstand on the desk before departing the chamber, and Phelan sat and opened the book, taking a quill within his hand.

“Do you have any experience? Have you ever fought on a new moon before?” he asked, marking a new entry on the page.

“No, I haven’t,” I lied. “But I’ve always wanted to be a dream warden.”

“Very well,” he said, and leaned back in the chair, looking at me again. Dust motes spun in the air between us. “Prove to me that you would be my perfect accompaniment.”

I had expected more questions from him. His lack of them was telling—he didn’t expect me to last two minutes into this interview. He found me unremarkable, underwhelming, a face that melted into all the others he had beheld that morning.

I turned to hide the emotion that flickered through me. I was fulfilling the very role I wanted, and yet Phelan irritated me so greatly that I wondered how I would be able to work alongside him. How long would it take me to usher his family’s downfall?

I would need to enact a stellar performance, and I thought about all the things I had learned from my mother, who flourished on the stage with metamara spells. Once, I had thought her tricks simple and harmless, mere whimsies to delight a crowd. She turned handkerchiefs into doves, pennies into fireflies, a sapphire bracelet into falling rain. She made it look effortless, and I stopped before a painting of ravens perched in a persimmon tree.

I suddenly knew what I wanted to do, my avertana magic yearning for a spar. I took what I knew best of both threads of magic, and I called the birds to me, coaxed them from the canvas into our realm. They emerged with a thunderous flap of wings, hovering around me like a storm until I whispered Phelan’s name and they dove to him.

Phelan’s eyes widened. He rose in haste, the chair flipping over behind him, and the ravens swarmed him, clawing at his jacket, his hair, his face. I heard him utter a curse of surprise, and I watched as he winced and outstretched his hand, cutting through wings and turning the ravens into feathers. They drifted to the floor in sad spirals.