Chapter 6
The room Aamon takes me to is not what I expected.
I expected the testing room, I guess. Stone walls, ward-lines in the floor, the bunker where they put dangerous things and wait for them to explode. I expected cold and clinical and designed for containment.
A jail cell basically.
What I get is a library.
Underground, yes—Aamon leads me down a narrow staircase behind his office, through a warded door that hums against my skin as we pass through it.
But the room at the bottom is warm. Low-ceilinged, softly lit by sconces that flicker with the same not-quite-electricity as the ones upstairs.
Bookshelves line three walls, floor to ceiling, packed with volumes that range from leather-bound and ancient to cracked paperbacks with broken spines.
A worn leather couch sits against the far wall, the kind that sags in the middle from years of use.
A heavy wooden coffee table takes up the center of the room, and on it: crystals arranged in neat rows, bundles of dried herbs tied with twine, glass vials of things I can't identify, smooth stones in various sizes and colors, a brass bowl, a mortar and pestle.
Tools. Not weapons. Not containment equipment. Tools for work.
It’s like a witch’s wet dream down here.
The wards are dense but different from the testing room.
Those were built for explosions—heavy, industrial, designed to absorb force.
These are finer. More intentional. Woven into the stone with a precision that reminds me of embroidery rather than engineering.
They don't press against me the way the testing room's wards did.
They settle. Like a blanket pulled over something restless.
And the room smells like him.
I don't mean to notice. I don't want to notice.
But it's there—old paper and cedar and something warmer underneath, like woodsmoke or sandalwood, the kind of scent that suggests a person has spent enough time in a space for the space to start smelling like them.
It's in the leather of the couch, in the book spines, in the air itself.
I've been in this room for ten seconds and I'm already breathing him in.
File that under things I'm going to aggressively ignore.
"This is where we'll work," Aamon says. He moves to the coffee table. Starts arranging things—shifting crystals, pulling a bundle of herbs closer—so casually I’m not sure how to react.
"The wards here are designed for sustained practice, not emergency containment.
You'll be able to work at your own pace without the pressure of a testing environment. "
I look around. At the couch. The books. The herbs that smell green and sharp and alive. Then back at him.
"Is this your little antisocial cubby?" I ask. "Where you come to brood and avoid making eye contact with people?"
His hands pause on a crystal. Just for a beat. Then they resume.
"It's a training space," he says. "Designed for comfort. Stress inhibits magical control. The more at ease you are, the more accurately we can assess your baseline responses."
"So you made it cozy for science?"
"I made it functional." He sets the crystal down. Looks at me. Those hazel eyes, catching the warm sconce-light in a way that turns them almost amber. "Sit down."
I sit on the couch. It's as comfortable as it looks—the leather gives under me, warm and soft, and I sink into it before I can stop myself.
My body, which has been running on adrenaline and fury since combat class, relaxes slightly before I smooth the edges of my skirt against my thighs. The wards hum around me.
The scent of cedar and old paper and whatever-he-is settles against my skin.
I hate that it's working. I hate that cozy for science is actually making the knot in my chest loosen by a fraction.
Aamon pulls a chair and sits on the other side of the table across from me. The distance between us is precise—close enough to speak without raising his voice, far enough that I don't feel crowded. Calculated. Everything about this vamp is calculated.
"Today we're going to work on grounding," he says. "Before you can control your magic, you need to learn to anchor it. Right now, your power responds to emotion—any emotion, any intensity—and expands outward without direction. Grounding gives it a focal point. A place to go that isn't everywhere."
"Like the water glass," I say. And then wish I hadn't, because I haven't told him about the glass.
He waits.
"Yesterday morning," I say, because there's no point hiding it now. I swallow around the slight lump in my throat. "I tried to warm a glass of water. Baby magic. The glass exploded."
Something shifts in his expression. Subtle—a softening at the corner of his eye, a fractional easing of the set jaw. He nods.
"Hm. That's exactly the problem grounding addresses," he says.
"You reached for your magic and it answered with everything it had, because it doesn't know how to answer with less.
The grounding ritual teaches it proportionality.
You're not reducing your power—you're giving it a channel.
The difference between a river flooding a valley and a river flowing through a riverbed. "
I think about the glass. The crack in the counter. The seed that turned to ash.
"And the riverbed is...?"
"An object." He gestures to the table. "Physical, tangible, something your magic can bind to temporarily. The object becomes an anchor—a fixed point your power can orient around instead of radiating outward. Choose something."
I slide off the couch and sink to my knees in front of the coffee table, scanning the spread.
Everything is right there—crystals in neat rows, bundles and glass bottles of dried herbs, smooth river-tumbled stones, glass vials of strange liquid of poultice, a brass bowl.
No hidden compartments. No trick. Just a table full of options and I have no fucking clue how to choose.
"How do I know which one?"
"You don't." He rises from the chair and moves to the couch behind me, sitting on the edge of it so his voice comes from just over my shoulder. Close. "Your magic does. Close your eyes. Run your hand over the table. Don't think about what looks right or what makes sense. Follow the pull."
I give him a look. "Follow the pull. That's your professional advice."
"Your instinct is more developed than your technique. Use what you have."
I close my eyes and shake out my shoulders as I hold my hand out.
I feel stupid about it for approximately two seconds, then let my hand drift side to side over the table.
My fingers pass over the crystals—cool, buzzing faintly, polished smooth.
The herbs give off warmth but it's diffuse, scattered.
The river stones are pleasant but quiet, like background noise.
Then my hand stops.
I don't decide to stop. My magic decides. A low, insistent tug in my chest that routes straight down my arm and into my fingertips, pulling them toward something on the far edge of the table. My eyes pop open.
It's a piece of raw stone. Unpolished. Rough-edged.
Dark, almost black, with veins of something that catches the light—copper, maybe, or gold, threaded through the dark like fault lines.
It's the only thing on this table that hasn't been refined, shaped, or arranged.
It looks like someone pulled it out of the ground and set it down without deciding what to do with it.
It hums.
I swear it fucking hums.
The same ambient frequency as the apothecary garden, the same wild, earthy magic that my power keeps reaching for. This isn't an academy tool. This is something old and unprocessed and still connected to wherever it came from.
I pick it up. It's heavy for its size. Warm.
Behind me, Aamon inhales deeply. I turn, the stone cradled in my palms, and look up at him over my shoulder. For one unguarded second, something crosses his face that I've never seen on it before. Surprise. Real, unfiltered surprise—there and gone so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.
"That one," he says. Neutral again. Composed. But his thumb presses against his opposite palm—a tell I catalogue.
"Problem?"
"No." A pause. "That's a resonance stone. Uncut, untuned. Most practitioners can't feel them through the refined crystals."
"I felt it through everything else on the table."
Another pause. His eyes hold mine for a beat longer than professional. Then his jaw clenches as he nods at my hand.
"Begin when you're ready," he says, rising from the couch and returning to his chair across the table. "Hold the stone in both hands. Close your eyes. Find your magic—the warmth behind your sternum. And instead of pushing it outward, push it down. Into the stone. Let the stone take the weight."
I settle back onto the couch. Wrap both hands around the stone. Close my eyes.
Find the warmth of my magic. It's there—always there—the sun behind my sternum that woke me up this morning, that cracked the glass, that sparked at Kage's touch. Running hot. Restless. Pressing against the inside of my ribs like something pacing.
Down. Not out. Down. Into the stone.
I exhale and focus and then reach for it. Carefully. The way I reached for the glass, the way I reached for the seed—
Stop. Don't think about the glass. Don't think about the seed.
But this is different. The stone is different. It's not fragile. It's not alive. It's stone—dense, patient, built to take pressure. And it's humming back at me, a low invitation, like a hand held out in the dark.
I push.
The magic flows down my arms. Through my palms. Into the stone.
And the stone takes it.
The warmth leaves my chest—not all of it, not even most of it, just a thread, a trickle—and pours into the rough dark surface between my hands. The stone's hum deepens. I look down and the copper veins catch the light and glow, faintly, like embers buried in ash.
Something happens in the room.