As it turned out, Honing as a concept was… weird. Apparently it was something that only happened with wizards, and even then it only happened to those with incredibly close ties to their affinity, like Cassie did with lightning.

  Aside from that, on first glance it was a little bit like the Changing, except it exclusively targeted mana rather than moulding a mage’s physical form. For example, it seemed like Cassie’s mana would take on properties closer to lightning, becoming more potent and quicker to channel at the cost of being less efficient and harder to control.

  Also unlike the Changing, a Honed affinity was actually hereditary. Many of the most powerful wizards in history were speculated to have benefited from this effect, being born with mana that suited the affinity they inherited from the same parent. That was just conjecture on the behalf of the book that we were going through, though.

  All of this Cassie was pretty pleased to discover, aside from the idea of her mana being harder to control. However, that all changed when we got to the practical portion of the volume.

  “I have to meditate for an hour?! Every single day, too?” She complained, slamming the book shut. “How am I meant to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I commiserated. “I don’t have any advice for you, I can’t say I’ve ever had trouble in that area.” If anything, I found it too easy to get lost in my own head, so I couldn’t really help Cassie to get to that point.

  “How long has the magus been gone?” Noren asked as he stepped into the building. “I must have been waiting outside for almost half an hour.”

  I… kind of forgot he was out there. Whoops.

  “A while,” Cassie informed him, before seeming to realise something. “Hey, Noren? You meditate all the time, right?”

  “That is correct,” he answered. “Why didn’t you tell me he was gone?”

  “We forgot you were here,” Cassie responded shamelessly. At least we were on the same page. “Could you show me how?”

  “How to do what?” He asked.

  “Meditate. I just asked.”

  “Ah, of course. I could do so, for a price,” he tried.

  “If you don’t I’m telling everyone we meet that you’re still a teenager,” Cassie shot back immediately. It seemed she was prepared.

  “...Very well, you win,” he conceded. “Might I ask why?”

  “Wizard stuff,” I answered for her as I stood up. “Take my seat. I get the feeling this isn’t gonna be all that interesting to watch, so I’m going back home for a nap.”

  “A… nap?” Noren asked. “It’s barely noon.”

  “We’ve all had a long day,” I argued.

  “It’s no use fighting it, Noren,” Cassie informed him in a stage whisper. “She’ll take any excuse to sleep she can get.”“Hey! That’s… not untrue, but I resent the implication,” I failed to defend myself.

  “Don’t worry, honey, you go get your beauty sleep,” Cassie waved me off. “We’ll be fine here.”

  “Quite,” Noren agreed. “I’m sure that we can manage ourselves for a few minutes without your expert supervision.”

  “I feel like I’m being mocked somehow, but I can’t put my finger on how,” I announced. “Just to be safe, I am removing myself from the situation. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Bye, Lia!” Cassie called as I made my way to the front door.

  “Enjoy your nap,” Noren bid me farewell. I could hear a grin in his voice, but I didn’t bother to turn around and check. I was pretty sure that those two would get up to some kind of mischief, but I really was exhausted from all the talking we’d done today.

  The walk was a familiar one. I’d walked this very path most days for a year not long ago, although the time when my biggest worry was being late for a tagalong lesson with Almon felt like decades ago.

  It was strange, I felt like I was so different to how I had been when I’d left on this journey, yet in the grand scheme of things barely any time had passed. If I felt so different now, how was I going to look back on this day in a year’s time? A decade? A century?

  I shook my head and tore myself away from those thoughts. I couldn’t fathom living for so long, but unless I got cut down at some point hunting monsters I was supposed to. That or I’d burn out in fifty years, if I remembered the few texts we had on changelings correctly. I somehow thought that was unlikely, though. I felt pretty vital right now, after all. Although, wouldn’t I? If I had a lifespan with the potential to last forever condensed into a few decades, I would feel great right now, surely.

  That was another dangerous line of thought, so I instead decided to turn to something less fraught with pitfalls, reflecting on the several revelations I’d had with Cassie recently. It felt like a long time ago that we had confessed to each other, but that was only four or five days ago now. That was baffling to me.

  I already felt like we’d been through just about everything. We’d hit highs when we were together, we’d struggled not to fall apart, and we hadn’t even been a couple for a week. It was a lot. It was worth it, though. I felt like we were getting to solid ground now, a more steady neutral place. Still very good, but less volatile than the huge cliffs and valleys that we had been residing in until this point.

  To tell the truth, I was pretty glad for that. For all I was meant to be a ‘creature of change’ as Selene had put it, I was all for stability. It was comfortable, and comfortable was good, so stability was good. Still, I couldn’t imagine that anything involving Cassie as prominently as my plans for the future did would remain stable for too long, so I would probably have to wait and see.

  When I made it back to my childhood home, which if I was honest still felt a bit like my current home too, I was surprised to hear the muffled sound of talking coming from within. Maybe it was a little mean to my mother, but she wasn’t the most outgoing of people, and she rarely entertained guests. Perhaps that had changed over the last month, I didn’t know.

  I approached the door and knocked, the same pattern of four knocks as always. I felt a strange sense of dread as I waited for it to be answered. No, not dread but anticipation, as if some part of me buried deep knew that something different awaited me beyond this door.

  I pushed the feeling down as my mother answered the door, all wide smiles and happy eyes. She looked very happy indeed, for some reason. “Julie! Come in, come in. I’m glad to see you’re back. There’s someone here that I think you should really meet. I know how you are about new people, but you’re going to love him, I can already tell.”

  “...Okay,” I answered, a little confused. It was someone I didn’t already know, but that my mother did? She’d lived in Vernal her whole life so far as I knew, which narrowed the options down significantly.

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  She shut the door behind me before bustling ahead, giving me a clear view of the newcomer. He was a tall gentleman, lean in build and pale of skin, almost unnaturally so. His clothing was incredibly well-made, as pale as his skin and strangely ethereal in how it followed his movements, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how. He bore the pointed ears and slit eyes of an elf, with long pale hair tied back in a long braid that fell behind him.

  He smiled wide as he saw me, giving me a slight curtsy for some reason. “You must be Julianne. I am delighted to meet you at last, my child.”

  “‘My child’? What are you, a priest?” I asked, suspicious. Although it sounded rude, this fellow was far too interesting to be hanging around my mother.

  “Ha! A quick wit will always serve you well, Julianne. Not at all. I am… well, perhaps it is best if your mother explains.” He nodded to Mum, who was still smiling happily.

  “Of course! Julie, this man is very special to both of us. Do you remember the story I told you when you had your awakening?”

  “Yeah. I was sick, and a mysterious man who… oh, shit,” I exclaimed as I realised precisely who was standing in our home. “You’re Fel?”

  “The very same,” Fel announced, his smile not slipping for a moment. “Although I would like to think my presence isn’t worth cursing over.”

  I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he was saying, though. Instead I was looking at him with new eyes. When I looked closely, and I mean really closely, I could see a couple of things that were off in just the right way. His irises didn’t quite shift in colour as much as in tint, but they were changing. In the same way, it was almost like his clothing was a part of him more than simple apparel, which only really made sense if he was just wearing one of many forms.

  Rather than respond to him I stepped closer, hoping to get a glimpse of his vitae. No matter how close I got, however, I saw… nothing. Less than nothing, a complete absence of any kind of essence. When I looked I felt something not unlike an obstacle, as though whatever ability I used to see the vitae of others was being actively prevented.

  “You…” I murmured, shocked. “What are you?”

  “I would have hoped you had managed to figure that out by now, Julianne,” he answered easily.

  “Not what I meant,” I muttered, still barely keeping up with the conversation. I tried to take another look at Fel’s vitae, taking the visual equivalent of a run-up and ramming my will into the wall, all to no avail. So I tried again, and again. I must have looked a little mad to my mother, standing silently staring at Fel, but I felt compelled to see beyond the veil. For some reason I needed to know.

  After a few more attempts, Fel seemed to clock what I was doing. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said, his smile dropping slightly. “Purely for your own safety. I don’t believe you would enjoy what you see.”

  “Why not?” I argued, ramming into the metaphysical blockade again. Then I had a burst of inspiration and dashed forward, aiming to grab Fel by the arm. If I could just make contact, perhaps I could see more clearly. When I reached him though, only a few feet away, he simply wasn’t there. Instead he stood, exactly as before, another few feet away from me.

  He sighed. “You are a persistent one, aren’t you. Very well, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I was overcome with a feeling almost like refocusing my eyes, only for my mind. For a moment nothing was different, until all at once awareness exploded around me, like I was surrounded by the building blocks of every substance in every room in every home ever built. For a moment I could witness the very world as its component parts, and it was chaos. Half of me howled in delight, revelling in the pure discord that danced around me as I lost my grip on concrete form. The other half, the part of me that originated from a human, could only scream.

  I couldn’t see this. I couldn’t hear it, or touch it or taste it or smell it. I couldn’t know it. Yet I did all of those things, fluid probability soaking my perception as I felt the weight of an observer, witnessing my flailing with a strange amount of care. I felt that same presence lift me from the grasping sea, drag me to shore and resuscitate me, before leaving me to fend for myself. Colours danced within my eyes, burned into my mind.

  I was on the floor. I didn’t remember falling over, but I was on the floor.

  I felt dizzy, and strangely disconnected from myself. I realised that I had defaulted to disconnecting my brain, much as I often did when panic struck these days, only for it to do nothing. What I had just experienced had nothing to do with the flesh. That was a spiritual torment, and not one I was eager to repeat.

  At some point I must have completely lost my grasp over myself, because my body was currently half-way caught between human and… something. It was like my body had tried to copy that pure probability which I had only glimpsed, the memory of which was already fading. I wasn’t supposed to have been able to witness that, and something in me was working to fix the damage.

  With a flex of will, which felt strangely difficult to muster after all of that, I reformed my body to see that my mother had taken a stand between Fel and I.

  “-id you do, you monster! Fix her again!” She screamed, red faced and furious. I’d never seen her so upset, not even close. Normally she was a kind, gentle woman. Yet here she was, standing up to a creature -for no being that contained that within them could be anything but- for my sake, all because of my needless curiosity.

  “She is fine,” Fel defended, perfectly calm. “It was her choice, and I warned her beforehand. She will recover in moments.”

  “I don’t care,” my mother snarled, stepping right within Fel’s personal space. “You cannot come here and do… whatever you just did to my daughter. You had best be right that she recovers, fiend.”

  “Uh… Mum?” I called out, sitting up and wincing at the light streaming in through the window. It seemed brighter than usual.

  Her head snapped back, and in a moment she was by my side. “Oh, sweetheart! Are you okay? What happened to you? What did he do?” She spared a moment to glare at Fel, who still stood as cool as ice and watched on.

  “It’s fine, Mum. I’m fine. It was my bad.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” my mother insisted.

  “Oh, but it is,” Fel answered her. “The young one was curious, that is all. It is a phase we all go through, and one that it is always best to indulge. Even when there are consequences.”

  “You’re meant to protect children, fey,” my mother argued. “Not indulge their every whim.”

  “Is Julianne not an adult by human custom?” Fel shot back, still completely calm and confident. “Can she not be trusted to make her own decisions? If not, then allowing her to leave home was surely a grave mistake.”

  “But-”

  “Can you both shut up for a moment?” I groaned. Their arguing was making my head pound. I imagined this was what a hangover was like. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was hungover from, but I was keen to stay away from it.

  “Sorry, darling,” my mother capitulated immediately. Fel said nothing for a moment, simply watching as I stood. My balance was a bit precarious, but I managed to get to my feet long enough to sit down on an actual chair, rather than the floor.

  “Okay,” I huffed once I was properly seated. “Several questions. Most urgently, what the actual fuck was that?” I directed that solely at Fel.

  “That is… hard to explain,” Fel evaded.

  “Try me. I deserve an explanation,” I insisted.

  Fel glanced at my mother, as though wondering whether or not to ask her to leave. He eventually gave in though. “Fine. Fey are… conglomerate entities, I suppose. Much like you yourself were born of one of us and one human, who eventually merged into a single cohesive individual, the same is true of each and every fey. The difference is that this is not limited to birth, instead happening continuously as we grow,” he explained.

  “So what?” I asked, not seeing how this was related to what I’d just seen. And maybe I was a little cranky after being shown secrets to the universe, which by now had all but scrubbed themselves from my mind, leaving me with just the leftover impressions, which were as vague as they were frightening.

  “I was getting to that,” Fel responded smoothly. “The consequence of this is that we are all… unified, in a way that is rarely seen elsewhere. All that we are is one. What you would call mana, vitae and the soul are all one and the same. The ability I presume you possess to manipulate one of those three essentially gave you a glimpse into my soul, albeit a limited one. Not an advisable trip for a mortal. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Ah,” was all I had to say. That did kind of track. If I had to try and imagine the soul of a true fey, unknowable cosmic chaos was pretty close to what I would have in mind. Especially if all of that was a limited glimpse.

  “Quite,” Fel agreed drily. “Now, I assume you won’t go peeking behind the veil again any time soon, so why don’t we both settle in? I imagine we’ll be having a rather long chat, after all.”

  “Sure,” I accepted.

  “Are you sure you’re alright, Julie?” My Mum asked. “Only you’re a bit…”

  “Unstable,” Fel finished for her. “I noticed it when you first got here. We’ll cover it, don’t worry.”

  “Okay then,” my mother said as she sat down.

  “When I said we should settle in, I meant me and Julianne,” Fel told her.

  “Good for you,” my Mum answered almost immediately. “I’m staying. Anything you can say to her, you can say to me.”

  “That is patently untrue, but very well. I can see you won’t be moved, so let’s get into it, shall we?”

  I’m not getting my nap, am I?

  need defending the way the average soul does, hiding away within mortal flesh. I mean, how do you attack that?

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