She didn’t even know where she was going until she got there, grabbing onto a wooden column supporting an overhang in front of the entrance to the bunks, and then she was shimmying up it, dragging herself onto the roof, and then throwing herself off without the slightest shred of fear.

Julio tried to catch her, but he was a few steps too slow.

THUD!

Her body made a sound like a sack of oats or potatoes smacking into the ground, pain shuddering through her, sharp at first but then a heavy, rolling wave. “Ow,” she groaned.

“Are you alright?” Jereb asked, crouching beside her. One of his hands moved toward her hair as if to push several sweaty locks away from her face. She stiffened, but then he stopped.

“I’m fine,” she said, rolling over and sitting up, surprised when her body obeyed her. “Wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“We all know how you feel,” Jereb said softly. “We’ve all had our first dose of godsblood. We’ve all felt that exhilaration, that sense of invulnerability. Harnessing it, focusing it, is what allows you to channel your Ability.”

“An’ how ezzactly do I do that?”

“Practice. Trial and error.”

“Are ye sayin’ I need to keep throwin’ myself off o’ things?”

Jereb smiled and nodded. “Yes. But maybe lower things from now on?”

Despite herself, she managed her own smile. Once more, the pain was gone. “Can someone git me a box or sumthin’?”

“On it,” Julio said brightly.

“I’ll never git it,” Perfidy said glumly, wiping away the hair that was plastered to her face. She’d lost count of her failures sometime after one hundred. Aliza had stopped watching after twenty attempts. Julio departed after fifty. The dwarf, Gruff, had popped his head out of the woods and into the clearing at one point, snorted as he watched her fall flat on her face, and then slipped away again. Even Lady Brenner had cracked open her yellow door at one point to take a peek out, but as soon as Perfidy glanced in her direction she slammed it shut. Clemmy, on the other hand, having slept off the poison from Aliza’s quill, had lurched out of the sleeping quarters a full hour ago and had been sitting with her back against the wall with her eyelids at half-mast ever since. Now it appeared she’d fallen asleep again, soft snores buzzing from her lips. Mirac, half-hidden in the shadows, seemed more interested in inspecting every stone he happened to find near his feet.

The only one who’d been there consistently from the start to now, was Jereb. Occasionally he offered her encouragement, sometimes advice, but even his relentlessly positive attitude was beginning to wane. “You will,” he said. “But maybe not today.”

“I don’ unnerstand,” she said.

“Unnerstand—I mean, understand—what?”

“Why I cain’t do it. I even got my first gold leaf.”