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Kate woke up about one in the morning. Instinctively she reached for the light switch then paused as she realised she could see perfectly. It must be an aspect of her new powers. She sat up slowly and carefully moved her head from side to side before sighing in relief. It had stopped hurting. Whatever her benefactor had done had fixed her completely because her head hadn’t felt this clear in a year or so. She pulled herself in to a cross-legged in position on the bed and began lifting things in he bedroom as he had instructed. She started with perfume bottles and hairbrushes and working up to furniture.

When Darlryan finally appeared she had her chest of drawers hovering a foot off the floor and being slowly orbited by various smaller objects. She waved to acknowledge his presence but did not take her eyes from the drawers.”

“Wow!” he said after watching for a long moment.

“This is easy,” she said. “Much easier than the beach ball… was that only a few hours ago?”

“It was.” He sat on the edge of her bed. “I think clearing the blocks has increased you power flow.”

“Can I learn to set fire to things now?” she asked.

“Why?” He looked amused. “Are you planning to burn something down?”

“No!” she laughed. “But the sooner I learn these things the sooner I can be of use to you right?”

“That’s true I suppose, but we’ll want to do the fire raising somewhere safe. If you lose control while practising you really might burn something down.”

“That’s a point,” she conceded. “So what shall I practice.”

“I think we should work on your aim. If you can throw things accurately that will be useful in combat.”

“You want me to throw furniture at Ophelia?”

He laughed again and shook his head. “No, I was thinking of these.” He produced a handful of cruel looking brown bladed knives from thin air.

“Y-you want me to kill Ophelia?” she asked.

“By preference no,” he said. “But it might come to that.” He gave her a serious look. “Would you kill her if I ordered you to?”

“Probably,” she said after a moment. “But only because I don’t want to piss you off. I want revenge on her but I don’t want to kill anyone.” She hesitated. “But I can’t say for sure unless it comes up.”

“Honest girl,” he said. “I should have had this conversation last time. It would have saved me some unpleasantness. If you’re not sure you can stomach it I do it myself should it become necessary.” He narrowed his eyes and smirked. “Who says that I can’t learn from my mistakes, Alsia?”

“Who’s Alsia?” Kate asked.

“An aquaintance, someone who should be a friend and ally but who’s angry about something that happened a while back. If you run into her be careful, she’s cryokinetic which means she’s naturally dangerous to you because of your fire affinity, and she’s at least as powerful as I am.” He tapped the silvery scars on his cheeks. “She gave me these.”

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