The cold drizzle felt good on Jamie’s skin, the sensation soothing some of the burning inside him, if only for a moment. He was sure it was getting worse, and, while difficult to pin down, he knew it was tied up with Lottie. There was something wrong; her light dimmed and fractured like an eclipse, and that’s what hurt, the prickly heat starting in his chest and steaming through every crack and pore of his flesh, because he couldn’t reach out to her, not with Ellie’s pact – he could only watch and let it pass.

‘I need to fight something,’ Jamie said, barely even breathless from their run around the field.

Both cooling down under the cover of a large oak tree at the edge of the field, Raphael and Haru looked up at him, their faces dewy and pink.

‘I’d volunteer, but I think you’d probably kick my ass,’ Raphael said, laughing. ‘Besides, I’m gonna go and take a shower.’

Patting Jamie on the shoulder, Raphael set off, giving a small wave to Haru before pausing to call back. ‘Jamie, you still on to watch a movie in my dorm tonight with Percy?’

Jamie held up a thumb, but his sights had already turned to Haru, the Partizan coming to stand in front of him.

‘You want to fight?’ Haru’s head tilted to the side, a lock of hair falling out of place that coiled in the damp air.

‘I’ve got a lot of steam left in me,’ Jamie said, pushing his wet hair back out of the way. ‘This weather is making everything too subdued. I feel like …’ He trailed off, embarrassed to admit the endless fire in his body. It wasn’t controlled; it wasn’t how a Partizan should behave.

But Haru didn’t ask any further questions, and, with a curious half-smile that reeked of mischief, he adjusted himself, falling comfortably into a hapkido fighting position. Jamie followed suit, unable to stop the grin of anticipation. This was the first fighting style you learned in Partizan training, the one you had to master to be allowed to graduate, making it widely accepted as the preferred martial art of Partizans. Jamie had always been a natural, his body flowing with the moves like water in a stream. It’s how he’d known he was meant to do this, that it was inside him, like it was in all good Partizans: a demon of strength that needed to be put to use. At least that’s what they’d been told.