Altered

“If you are in a fight, your skill has to be controlled. What would happen if you grabbed the wrong strand?” It’s not a question. We’ve both seen what happens, but I’m getting tired of him constantly bringing up the ammunition factory as an example.

“We’d get out alive. That’s what matters.”

“Is it?” he demands. “And how can you be certain you would, with such a cavalier attitude?”

“I haven’t killed any of us yet.” I stop fingering the strands around me and plant my hands on my hips.

“You nearly did at the factory. You weren’t in control,” he says. “I’d call that dangerous.”

“I’d call that lucky. It bought us time.”

Dante shrugs, rubbing the frond of a tall potted fern. “We view things with a different perspective, Adelice. Your escape from Arras was brave but too risky. When you wield your power like that, you put everyone in your path at risk.”

“No one was hurt,” I argue, but this time my argument sounds small and weak, because I know he has a point.

“Perhaps not, if that makes you feel better, but how would you feel if someone was caught in the tear? If Jost, for instance—”

“I don’t need a lecture. I need you to teach me.”

“You’re missing the point,” he says. “You already know what to do. You have to learn to control your skill.”

So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.

“I’m trying!” I explode.

Dante sighs but his face softens. The crease in his forehead vanishes. “Close your eyes.”

“But—”

“Do it,” he snaps. “You need to find the time strand moving past you. You must isolate it if you want to protect the objects and people around you.”

“No sh—”

“Feel for the pulse,” he says firmly.

“Time doesn’t have the pulse, the matter does—the life,” I argue, but I keep my eyes closed. I can feel the matter around me. If I concentrate I can hear its crackling vitality under the room’s ambient sounds.

“Time’s pulse is different. It’s more like the wind—ephemeral, always changing a little. Matter is vibrant, throbbing with energy. Time is like a whisper. You can only catch it if you listen closely,” he murmurs. “Accept that you’re a part of it and that it’s a part of you like the beat of your heart.”

I clear my mind and reach out with my fingers. I don’t grab anything, I caress the strands around me. They pulsate, pounding with vital life. Strands of matter. I’m shocked at the sensation in my fingertips. Maybe I didn’t concentrate so intensely in Arras, but every strand I touch throbs through me. I drop them and focus on the space around me, tuning out everything but the thrum of the world. And then it’s there—a tinny whistle that fades in and out of my hearing. Almost metallic, it oscillates between a faint rhythm and a heavy, inelegant hammering. I let my fingers reach out, trying to match the sound with the tactile sensation. They close over a thin strand and I feel the intensity of its pulse shift, growing louder and more demanding in my hand.

“Better,” Dante says, breaking my concentration.

As I open my eyes, he fingers a glowing strand of time.

“I’m glad you approve,” I say. “But I can’t stop and concentrate in a fight.”

“Of course not,” he agrees. “That’s not what I’m trying to make you understand. You must let go to unleash your ability. You are strongest when you aren’t trying.”

I try to hold back a groan, but I can’t. “Then isn’t training the exact opposite of what I should be doing?”

“Don’t think of it as training, think of it as honing.”

“A differentiation worthy of a politician,” I mutter. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

“You were made for this,” Dante says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We both were. Weaving and altering skills aren’t accidental. They’re your genetic legacy. But you have to accept your gift. Once you do that—once you make it a fundamental aspect of who you are—it will be as simple as breathing.”

Something I’m looking forward to, especially if it means I can stop training and get some sleep. It’s going to be tricky, considering my parents trained me to ignore my weaving ability, not to accept it. I practiced that for years, and now Dante thinks he can undo that preparation.

“What happened to your hands?” he asks.

I hold out my hands and he inspects them.

“A Spinster punished me,” I say.

“By trying to destroy your fingers?”

“I wove razor wire and steel.” I pull my hands back, suddenly self-conscious about the scars that are still visible from Maela’s revenge.

“You’re lucky to have fingers at all,” he says. “But, Adelice, your skill lies as much in your mind as your hands. Stop being so tentative, it’s making you clumsy.”

“That’s what’s holding me back?” I ask.

“I’ve seen you let go when you need to. In that alley to save your mother and in the ammunition factory.”

“I thought you didn’t approve of my use of my skills,” I say.

“I didn’t. You reacted brashly,” he says. “But you relaxed and channeled your ability in those instances. Your hands didn’t stop you. Don’t let that stop you now.”

I nod, embarrassment growing a lump in my throat.

“I think we’re done for the day,” he tells me. “There’s a problem with the photovoltaic array at the power plant that I need to look into.”

“Is Jax helping you?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him in a while.” Jax and I aren’t exactly friends, but after Erik he is still the friendliest person on the estate.

A shadow passes over Dante’s face. “He’s on the mission.”

“He is?” I ask. “Sorry, I thought he had stayed.”

I consider accompanying Dante to the power plant, but even the sight of the smokestacks makes me cringe. I’m still embarrassed by my mistake at the ammunition factory. If Jax isn’t going to be there, I’m not sure I want to go with Dante. Thinking of the plant, I recall what he said earlier. “What happens if I catch someone in a warp?”

“In the best-case scenario, you merely trap them in the caught time.”

I know that from experience. I count on it actually.

“What if it’s more serious?” I ask quietly.

“You could damage their thread. Maim them. Kill them. That’s why it’s imperative you learn to focus on time. Grabbing matter uncontrolled is too risky. You know how delicate we are. One wrong move and you could rip someone in half.”

“What I really want to know is how to alter,” I admit.

Dante stops and gives me a heavy look. “I assumed so. It’s not as glamorous as it looks.”

“I saw what they did to Deniel,” I say. “I’m aware of how glamorous it is.”

“You saw the worst thing that Tailors do,” he says.

The worst? Yes, what happened to Deniel was horrible, but what about removing people’s souls or altering their memories? What about the other ways Tailors and the Guild take away people’s lives? Take away the very essence of who they are?

“Tailors can help people, too, Adelice. A trained Tailor can patch a thread and heal someone,” Dante says.

“I’ve only seen them do that to people they hurt in the first place,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. It’s true. My only experience with renewal patches is seeing them misused by men like Cormac and Kincaid.

“I need to know what I’m doing,” I say. “You’ve been teaching me this so that I don’t hurt anyone, but what I did to Deniel when he attacked me—that could have been worse. I need to understand how alteration works.”