“Are the incantations really necessary?” Lena asked. “They’re all the same. All of them just repeat a command three times.”

“They have been shown to help,” said Emris. “Maybe it’s just psychological—I think it concentrates the mind. But no, they’re not all the same. Complicated spell incantations sound like a song and may be written in two other languages. Theodorus, the language of the gods—that’s the one used in the godspeed spell, for instance—or, in some older spells, Chaortus.” He looked at her expectantly.

“The language of Chaos?” At the mention of a song, Lena remembered the night she’d found the butterfly. She’d thought someone was singing in a foreign language.

Emris was speaking again. “That’s right. But for simple spells like this, our common tongue works perfectly well. Ready to try it?”

Lena placed her hand over the bowl of feathers. She focused on her magic, drew it out gently until she felt its cold burn at her fingertips. It was a little like holding a taper to a fire and watching the wick light, and then transferring the flame to a series of lanterns, never letting the light flicker out. It was delicate work. As a cryptling, she had often been tasked with lighting the lanterns in a crypt in preparation for a ceremony. A too-quick movement or an unexpected draft could leave her standing in darkness, the taper smoking into the shadows.

“By the power of Faul, I command thee to rise.”

Coldness flooded her, tingling through her arm and into her palm. Too much. She tried to pull it back—so the wax of her inner taper wouldn’t catch fire.

“I command thee to rise.”

She felt a mist flowing out of her hand, surrounding the bowl and the feathers inside. She held her magic close to the feathers, commanding the vapor to weave in and out of their light, almost weightless forms. They shuffled in their bowl.

“I command thee to rise.”

A moment’s silence—Lena was convinced she had failed—and then the bowl shattered as the whole flock of feathers shot up into the air, exploding into the roof, surrounded by billows of gray cloud. They drifted down slowly, covering Lena and Emris in a ghostly kind of snowfall as the cloud disappeared.

Why can’t I control it? she wondered, frowning at her feather-covered robes as panic rose inside her.

“It’s all right,” Emris said gently, sensing her mood. “That started off well. But you put too much into it.”

“I’m going to fail, aren’t I? I can’t do it.” Lena met his brown eyes, her body flooding with fear. “They hate Rogues anyway. If it looks like I can’t control my magic, they’ll never let me pass.”