William steps inside, rain pinned in drops to his coat sleeves like glass beads. He closes the door and stands there without speaking, gaze flicking over Bella and then to me. The lamps give him a halo he doesn’t deserve.
“Training resumes in the morning,” he says at last. “We’ll move to practicals.”
“I thought today was practical.”
He sets his coat over the back of the chair. “Today you learned you can hold yourself together when someone is trying to pull you apart. Tomorrow you learn to do it while something tries to tear you open.”
I keep my voice even. “If that’s your way of telling me you’re going to hurt me, you can skip the poetry.”
His mouth twitches. “It’s not poetry; it’s a reality you don’t like. There are things in this world that hunt magic. Some hunt it to eat. Some hunt
