He’s using his fire to counterbalance my cold. Battling a swoop of frustration, I redouble my plea to the ice. “Come on,” I mutter. “Ouch!”
The flame shrinks back after licking my cheek, and Sig sighs. He says a word in Kupari as if he expects me to understand it. Terah, it sounds like. He says it over and over, and finally I step back from him, from the heat he’s radiating and the undulating torch flame. Both are making me sweat despite my ice. “I have no idea what you’re saying, you idiot!”
Sig makes an irritated noise in his throat, then bends over and swipes the dagger from my leg, the dull training blade I used in my sparring session with Jaspar this morning. I forgot to take it off in my desperation to get away from him. Sig waves it in the air and points to the blade. I don’t strip it from him because he’s clearly not threatening me with it—he’s tapping his fingers along the edge and saying that same word again.
“Blade?” I ask, touching the edge of the dagger. “Is that what you’re saying?”
He closes his fingers around the metal. “Blade?” he asks.
I nod, and so does he. “Blade magic,” he says. Before I can move, he presses the dagger into my hand, then steps behind me. He places one hand on my waist and closes the other around mine, lifting the weapon and pointing it at the torch.
I gaze down the length of my arm, down the edge of the blade, which is now aimed right at the center of the fire. If it was my enemy, all I’d have to do is lunge, and I’d stab it right in the heart. “Oh, heaven,” I whisper. This, I understand. This, I know how to do.
“Ice,” he murmurs, shaking my hand a little and making the tip of the blade tremble. “Blade.”
I concentrate on the ice inside me, drawing it up from the bottomless well where it hides. And this time, instead of begging, I command it. I imagine it sliding along my arm and into the blade, and I gasp as I feel the hilt turn frigid in my grasp. Sig’s hand is hot and clammy over mine, but he smiles as my own skin turns cold, as a lattice of frost begins to grow along the blade, heading for the tip, which is still pointing at the flame. The dull glint of the blood groove that runs the length of the blade focuses my gaze, giving me a path to the heart of my target. Joy bubbles up inside me at the sight of the metal turning white and my ice magic moving toward the fire. This is it. He put a dagger in my hand and it was all I needed. I push the magic forward with all my might, intent on darkness and bitter cold, and delight in watching it eat up the length of the blade.
The weapon shatters with a sharp crack, followed by the spatter of metal splinters pinging off the walls and floor. Sig cries out and stumbles back with his hands over his face, and when I pull them away, his cheek is pocked with two dark shards, blood welling around them. I grimace and pull each of them out as he clenches his jaw and fists, obviously trying not to scream. They plink coldly when I drop them into an empty, shallow stone basin. Failure makes my eyes sting as Sig does the same for me, tugging a needle of metal from my shoulder.
He presses the sleeve of his tunic to the wounds on his face and sighs. “Tomorrow.”
“What? Did you see what just happened?” I gesture at the bloody splinter of metal he pulled from my skin. “It got so cold it shattered like pottery! I could have killed you.”
His brows draw together. “Tomorrow,” he says, even louder. “Like this, tomorrow.” He offers me the splinter. “Magic. Like this.” When he sees the confusion on my face, he rolls his eyes and points to one of the shards in the basin. His nostrils flare as he aims his fingertip at it, and I watch in awe as it turns red hot before melting—while the one only a few inches away from it remains gray and unaltered. He holds up the blood-covered needle of metal again and stabs it at the basin. “Like this.”
Magic so focused that its target can be the size of the point of a needle. “I can’t hit a target the size of that entire basin, let alone something smaller!” The only time I even came close, when knives of ice danced on my palms, when I hurled fire, was in that fight circle—only moments before the magic turned on me like a mad wolf. “I can’t control it!”
“Control?” He shakes his head, sweating in his frustration. “Don’t control magic! Be magic!”
I rub my eyes and laugh. “Be magic,” I say, mimicking his accent. “Thanks. That helps a lot.”
He tosses the metal splinter into the basin. “Soturi,” he whispers. His lip curls, and he spits on the floor at my feet.
The Kupari word for warrior. Except . . . I think he’s telling me I’m a coward. I square my shoulders. “Fine, if you want me to scar the rest of you, that’s your choice.” And if I want to have even a chance of regaining Nisse’s confidence, I don’t have a choice at all. “Tomorrow.”