She used that word for it in her own mind, although impatient wasn't quite right. The Gift didn't have emotions in any way Lira understood. It had impulses, drives, directional pressures that pushed against the boundaries of the control she was learning to maintain. Each morning the pressure was a little stronger, the channel opened a little wider on its own before she deliberately opened it, the stored energy in her scar hummed at a slightly higher frequency, like a string being tuned tighter and tighter toward a note that hadn't been played yet.
"You're distracted," he said.
"I'm thinking.", Lira answered.
"About what?"
"About how the Gift feels different today, like it's closer to the surface than it was yesterday."
Soren was standing ten feet away, the distance they had settled on
