Eliana didn’t think he was mocking her, but she nevertheless bristled. “If you pray with me, I’ll kill you. Doing this alone is bad enough.”

“I’ll sit quietly, then.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Zahra’s voice was patient. “Try again, my queen.”

Eliana shifted, feeling the reassuring pressure of the knives strapped to her body. She exhaled sharply, closed her eyes, and raised her hands once more. With her eyes shut, she shifted her imagination, pictured something new. Instead of miniature storms, a set of strings. An instrument. She would pluck threads of air from the cavern, sculpt them into a new shape with mere taps of her fingers, compose a symphony using the power in her palms.

She slowed her breathing, measured each inhale and exhale. Long minutes passed, during which she forced her mind through memories of Remy’s incessant ramblings about the empirium—how it was a power left behind from the creation of all things. The footprints of God. A power that bound the air to the earth to the water, wind to sunlight to time and space. The command Obey me, obey me cycled through her mind until her thoughts became a muddled fog. The muscles in her arms, sore from forging her castings, burned hot as fire.

At last she dropped her arms, spat out a curse, pushed herself up from the ground, and walked away.

For a few moments, the only sound in the cavern was the occasional drip of water into the vast, dark lake.

“We’ll keep trying,” Harkan said, his voice cheerful. “You can’t give up after only a few minutes.”

“I agree, my queen,” added Zahra.

Eliana scoffed. “It won’t work. The only time this has worked has been…”

She hesitated, an idea forming slowly. As it did, her mind cleared, and a grim sort of satisfaction overcame her.

Zahra made a reproachful sound.

“What is it?” Harkan asked.

“Twice my power has surfaced,” Eliana said, turning back to them. “Once on the beach, and once last night as I forged my castings. In the Forge, nothing happened. I didn’t summon a storm or crack open the earth or anything so dramatic. But I felt something. I felt near a precipice, an understanding. For a moment, my body opened up as if to receive a new light, and I could see beyond the world as you see it, to something greater.”

Zahra nodded. “You glimpsed the empirium.”

Eliana glanced at Harkan. “You think this is mad.”

Harkan hesitated. “I do. But here I am, and here I’ll stay.”

How generous of you, Eliana wanted to snap. “In both instances,” she said instead, “I was exhausted, hungry, parched. My mind was stretched thin, my body close to breaking. In the Forge, the heat and strain were unbearable. On the beach…” She hesitated, pushing past the mental wall that kept her grief from consuming her. “On the beach, my hands were hot with my mother’s blood. And my power awoke.”

Harkan searched her face. “You think that by returning to such a state, you can summon your power again.”

“My queen, I must advise against this,” Zahra said. “My knowledge of elemental magic, and your own mother’s practice, is not complete, but I know this much: magic forced through duress is unstable, unkind, and bound to break.”

But Eliana had already decided. “I have no other choice, and neither does Navi. We’ll come here again tomorrow night, at the same time. And the night after that, and the night after that, until it’s done.”

Then, with one last glance at the silent cavern, Eliana turned away and began the walk back up through the mountain.

• • •

The next day, after a bath so frigid it was painful and a breakfast she did not eat, Eliana tied her hair back into a severe braid and joined Simon in a corner of the palace’s central library.

A table and two chairs awaited them by an open window that let in the morning breeze. On the table sat a bowl of water, five metal scraps, a chunk of rich black soil, a squat candle and matches, a pitcher of water, and two glasses.

Eliana looked away from the water, her throat dry as she swallowed.

In silence, they read the passages the temple scholars had marked. They attempted small exercises with the materials spread out before them—Eliana muttering prayers as she directed her castings at the water, the earth, the flickering candle; Simon reading notes scrawled in the margins of various texts.

Lunch arrived, brought by wide-eyed servants. Simon wolfed his down immediately; Eliana ignored hers, and her dinner too.

Night fell. Nothing had responded to her—not the candle flames, not the water in its bowl.

“Disappointed in me?” she asked, ignoring her growling stomach.

“I don’t expect you to learn how to use your castings in a day.” Simon glanced at her uneaten dinner, but said nothing.

• • •

The next day brought more of the same, as did the day after that.

At night, with Harkan and Zahra at her side, Eliana tried and failed to conduct magic in Tameryn’s cavern, and in the small hours before dawn, she sat in her room, alone, and relived the moment of Rozen’s death. She recalled Rozen’s last words: Finish it.

In the mornings, her sleepless mind heavy with the weight of grief and guilt, Eliana exercised her body.

In the afternoons, she met Simon in the library, and on the third day of this, as she stood in a pool of sunlight, reciting the Sun Rite, her vision shifted and darkened.

She staggered, dizzy.

Simon hurried toward her, but she shook him away, catching herself on a nearby chair.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’m just tired.”

He was watching her, in that still, keen way that always left her feeling too seen. “You’re not sleeping.”

“I am.”

“There are shadows under your eyes.”

“I always look like this.”

He laughed, a soft, bitter sound. “I know what you look like.”

Eliana shook his words from her skin. “Read me that passage again.”

“Which passage?”

“I don’t know, the…” But she could not gather her exhausted thoughts well enough to remember.

“You can’t think if you don’t eat.”

She glared at him. “I’m eating.”

“You’re not.” He slammed his book closed. “Eliana, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but—”

“I can’t sleep. Is that what you want to hear?” Her voice cracked, but she refused her eyes their tears. If she cried, she would realize how hungry she was, how tired and frustrated, and her magic, her useless castings, would have defeated her. “I try to eat, and it makes me sick.”