My cheeks burned with the memory. A Luminate’s Confirmation was meant to bind a Luminate to a particular order, activating the gift for magic in her blood and enabling her to draw power out of the Binding for use in spells. It was supposed to be a solemn, holy day, the start of one’s magical career.
I had been eight years old, like most Confirmands. I had stood at the nave of our local church, my white dress splashed with color from the stained-glass window behind the altar. Catherine stood beside me, almost bouncing in her eagerness. The previous year, the Circle member who was to cast her Confirmation spell had fallen ill, and by the time he recovered, Mama and Papa had decided it would be easier to hold our Confirmations jointly.
The officiating Circle member had been an older man with a thinning beard. He spoke the charm first over Catherine. At the conclusion, a hush fell over the audience. Catherine screwed up her face—and executed a flawless Lumen light, a basic spell all Luminate could master. She cupped the blue glow in her hands like it was some rare sapphire.
The crowd clapped and cheered, and Catherine turned a radiant smile on them. The Circle officiator, pronouncing a benediction on her, named her Elementalist.
Then it was my turn.
I’d felt nothing of his charm-casting—no nudge, no burning, no fizzing up my spine. Just as I’d felt nothing tonight when Catherine bound her spells.
“Cast a Lumen light,” he’d instructed me when he finished. I remembered thinking his blue eyes were kind, though I was terrified.
I had lifted my hands, inscribing them through the air in a doubled circle, then cupping them before me. For weeks, Papa had drilled me in the proper form and pronunciation of the rite. I concentrated, folding my lips around the words. “Adure! Canta!”
Nothing happened.
My cheeks flaming, I had ventured a quick look behind me. The small chapel brimmed with relatives, family friends, and village well-wishers. Grandmama smiled encouragingly. Mama pressed her eyebrows together and nodded sharply at me. Get on with it.
Catherine whispered, “It is not so hard, Anna. You can do this.”
I tried again. And again. After my fourth failure, Papa had left the pew and come to stand beside me.
“I think she may be Barren,” the Circle officiator whispered to Papa.
I had not understood the word, but the look on Papa’s face frightened me. Later, Grandmama would explain it meant I was empty—not of seed, but of magic. An ugly term for a Luminate whose Confirmation did not take.
“If you will let me examine her,” the officiant had said, “I must note something for our records.”
Papa had nodded, his lips tight. “All right.” He’d set his hand on my shoulder, weighting me down.
Fear had squirmed through my belly. Alongside the fear was something darker, resentful and angry. Why should I be embarrassed before all these people? But the second wave of emotion only frightened me further: it was both familiar and foreign, mine and not mine. It originated inside me but belonged to a shadow part of me I didn’t recognize.
There in the nave of the chapel, as the Circle officiator began the gesture of a new spell, dread clawed at my heart. My shadow self burst free, fighting against the spell. When the officiant’s lips stopped moving, it was as if I’d swallowed a living flame.
“No!” I had shouted, shaking free of Papa’s hand and running down the aisle, toward Mama’s pale face.
The pain had followed me, heat erupting through me. I wanted to reach the doors, believing somehow if I could just get out, I might escape the agony and the fear and the embarrassment of failing at the only important task I’d ever been set.
Just as I’d reached Mama, I stumbled over James. I hadn’t seen him in the aisle—in the blur of heat and pain, I’d only seen the square of sunlight in the open doorway. He was so small then, barely four. Perhaps he’d thought my running a kind of game.
We’d collapsed in a heap on the ground, and the wave of invisible fire swept out of me. I remembered James screaming, and then nothing at all until morning, when I woke in my bed to find my nurse sitting by my side.
Everything had changed afterward. It was a week before I saw either of my parents, and nearly a month before I was allowed near James. Catherine blamed me for spoiling her Confirmation, as the fete afterward had been canceled. Mama, never particularly nurturing, had grown even more distant, taking my disgrace as a personal slight.
“What I should like to know,” Catherine said, pulling me back into the present, “is how Anna came to be at my ball when she was supposed to be in her rooms.”
“Yes, Anna.” My father’s voice was nearly devoid of inflection. “How did that happen?”
Freddy. I shook myself. I must not betray Freddy. If I refused to answer, I would sound suspicious. “I was curious. I hid myself behind one of the plants in the ballroom.”
“Doubtful,” Lord Orwell said. “The spell I cast revealed that a portal had been opened near your hiding place. You could not have cast it. Someone must have helped you. Who?”
“Tell him,” Mama urged.
“No one. I snuck in.”
“It is late, I am tired, and I would like to be in my bed before much longer. If you insist on lying, then I must insist on doing this my way.” Lord Orwell began weaving his fingers in front of my face in an intricate pattern that could only mean one thing.
A truth charm.
I flinched away from him and his flickering fingers. The last time Mama used a truth charm on me, it had lit the draperies on fire and I’d had blackouts for days afterward.
“Wait,” Mama said. “Don’t spell her. Truth charms have…unpredictable effects on Anna.”
“As you wish.”
My relief was momentary.
Lord Orwell grimaced. “Then we must return to the ballroom and reconstruct what happened.”
My father led the way, and I followed behind the others. I looked down the long hallway, empty now of guests and servants, and considered slipping away from everyone and running to my room. A reconstruction could not mean anything good for me.
Though Mama was a weak Coremancer, unable to read my actual thoughts (thanks be to all the Saints that Bind), she often picked up unerringly on my emotions. No sooner had the notion of flight crossed my mind than she pinched my elbow.
“Tell them the truth.” Her voice was sharp, insistent. “This charade is unseemly.”
Catherine, at Mama’s other side, said, “Anna can’t help it. She must be the center of attention. That’s all she’s doing—prolonging her moment when this night should have been mine.”
Sometimes I wished I could fold up all my unladylike qualities—my obstinacy, my temper, my wanting too much, my inability to stay still and quiet—like a handkerchief and stow it in my valise until needed. Mama and I would both be happier if I could fit the shape society prescribed for me.
But that night, the demon in my shadow self prompted me to respond, “At least no one will soon forget your debut, Catherine. If this is indeed my fault, then you have me to thank.”