“No, it’s okay.” I let out an exasperated sigh. “Though these two should know better than to bring people to my room unexpectedly. Things are a little tense, you guys. What if I’d left a trap on the door?”
“Then I would have disarmed it.” Hahen puffed out his chest.
“Yeah, yeah.” It was impossible not to chuckle at the rat spirit’s confidence. “You dragged her all the way up to the dormitory, so you might as well tell me why.”
“Christina?” Niddhogg hopped off the headboard and settled in next to my student. “He won’t bite. Tell him what you did.”
That set alarm bells ringing in my head. Niddhogg seemed suddenly very serious, and Christina looked like she expected me to bite her head off for whatever had happened. She’d scarcely meet my eyes, and when she finally spoke I had to strain to make out the words.
“I asked Hahen about your core.” My student fidgeted on the bed and squeezed her hands between her knees. “He explained the problem to me. I tried something I thought would help, and it just happened.”
“What happened?” I struggled to keep my voice calm. Hahen shouldn’t have been telling stories about me, and he definitely shouldn’t have been confiding that information to my students. It was hard enough to make them see me as someone they should respect without their knowing all my weaknesses. Still, it wasn’t Christina’s fault. She was only trying to help. Yelling at her wouldn’t solve anything.
“I did something to the jinsei.” Her lips hardly moved at all. “It doesn’t work very well anymore.”
I glanced at Niddhogg, who tilted his head slightly toward Hahen. The rat spirit seemed very pleased with himself.
“What do you mean it doesn’t work? Is it tainted?” That didn’t make any sense, though. Christina was almost as good at cleansing the sacred energy as I was.
“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s slow. When you drink it, I mean.”
Well, that was interesting. I’d never heard anyone describe the sacred energy as slow before. Normally, you drank it, the jinsei went into your core, and then you could manipulate it or force it into your channels. Unless, of course you were a hollow core.
Then it ran out of your core and was wasted.
“Show me,” I demanded.
Hahen tossed a vial from inside his robes to Niddhogg, who handed it to Christina. She glanced nervously up at me, then popped the cap and downed the jinsei in a single gulp. The silver fluid glowed from within her mouth for a moment, then she swallowed with a grimace and it was gone.
No, not gone.
It was in her stomach. It was easy to see at my core level, and that didn’t make any sense. The jinsei should have been in her core and then gone. The fact that it wasn’t was both exciting and terrifying. If Christina had figured out a way to fundamentally change the nature of sacred energy, I’d have to make sure she never came anywhere near the Inquistor again. I didn’t know what this meant, but the Church would figure out a way to turn it to something evil. I needed to know more about this development.
“Well,” I said. “That’s not at all what I expected. Why didn’t the jinsei go into your core?”
“Time aspects,” Hahen said.
“Yes,” Christina said, “those. I stripped all the impurities out of the jinsei, then put time aspects back in. Past aspects, really. They slow down absorption. People like us can control it, a little at a time, that way. See, there’s some in my channels now.”
“How many of these do you have?” I wanted to be very sure they didn’t fall into the wrong hands. I’d never heard of time aspects before, and wasn’t sure anyone else had, either.
“Just ten.” Christina shrugged. “I only learned to make them today.”
“She tried to teach the other hollows, but they couldn’t get the hang of it,” Hahen said, his eyes locked on mine. He tilted to one side to show me a small open case on my desk that contained more of the vials. “Neither could I.”
To be honest, I didn’t think I could do it, either. I’d never considered time aspects and had never read anything about them. If Christina could manipulate those, she was even more valuable than the headmistress or Inquistor Rhône knew.
“Christina.” I kneeled in front of her and looked up into her downturned face. “Listen to me, very carefully. You’re on the verge of something amazing. But you can’t tell anyone. Do you understand?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she whimpered, her wide eyes wet with unshed tears. “I only wanted to help. Please don’t send me off to the Church.”
“No.” I took her hands in mine. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just... unexpected. Hahen and I need to talk about this, but you’re not in trouble. It’s best if no one else knows what you’ve done, though.”
“It’s like what you warned us about.” Her eyes went cold and hard. “You’re afraid people will want to use me if they know what I can do.”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I know they will. But you’re close to a breakthrough, Christina. I’ve never seen anyone do this. It’s your path. You just have to push yourself to take that next step. If you keep pushing, you’ll heal your core. I know it.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Can I go back to my dorm?”
“Of course.” I stood and helped her to her feet. “Mum’s the word, okay? And tell the rest of the students, too. We can discuss it at class tomorrow, but until then, everyone zips their lips.”
She mimed locking her mouth and throwing away the key. For the first time since she’d come to the School, I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. Christina didn’t know it, but she’d done the impossible. If she could manipulate time aspects...
“And thank
