“We don’t know who is going to get it, and we’re blindfolded,” Roake muttered in irritation.

Zina smacked him in the back of his head with a lob of air. “Those are the rules, not your failure.”

“We can’t anticipate each other’s moves,” Kerrigan tried.

“But can’t you?”

“No,” Noda said. “But we should be able to feel the magic moving. It’s a basic tenet of Flavia’s air teaching.”

“Bah! Flavia was a hack! I couldn’t teach her anything,” Zina said, banging on her head. “And I won’t teach you either if you don’t embrace what is around you. The air is already there. You aren’t catching a ball thrown. There’s no ball. You’re embracing the magic that exists in front of you.”

They all stared back at her blankly. This wasn’t how magic was taught at all. Kerrigan had never heard this sort of rhetoric in all of her time in the House of Dragons.

“Let me show you. You throw the ball with your eyes open. I’ll tell you who has it,” Zina said. She crossed her legs and sat folded in on herself, floating in the air before them. A blindfold appeared across her eyes. “Begin.”

The others shrugged and started up the game again.

Zina couldn’t see a thing, and she called out, “Fordham, Audria, Roake, back to Audria, Noda, to Kerrigan, back to Fordham, back to Kerrigan, Roake, to Audria, back to Noda, to Audria, to Noda, to Audria.” Zina removed the blindfold. “Stop that.”

“But how?” Noda whispered.

“I’ll teach you if you’re willing to learn. Most aren’t.”

But they were.

17

The Problem

The rest of the magic masters weren’t half as interesting or helpful as Zina. Water on Tuesday with Master Raysor, who fell asleep halfway through his own lesson and only woke up to talk to Audria about healing lessons outside of class. The rest of them clearly didn’t matter. Wednesday earth lessons with Master Tippan, which were not much fun for anyone but Roake, who apparently had an affinity for earth. On Thursday, they met with Mistress Sencha, who Kerrigan had had most of her magic lessons with in the House of Dragons. At the time, Kerrigan had been trying not to draw attention to herself, and so Sencha seemed surprised that Kerrigan had any mastery of the element. But still, the lessons weren’t that different, only more rigorous.

Each afternoon when they left magic lessons, they left with their well depleted. Their bodies ached from morning training and their mind and magic were just as bad. Kerrigan, who usually fought with her sleep schedule, crashed face-first into the mattress every evening and didn’t wake up until breakfast. No interruptions. No time to do any other research. No time to even think.