Page 89 of Cerulean Truth
“For fuck’s sake, Emma, stop deflecting and just answer the damn question!”
“Fine.” I lifted my hands again, annoyed. "It’s a crystal that allows us to track magi translating in the human world."
“Very good. And why is that important?”
"Because… it doesn’t work on me."
“Exactly. And why can’t anyone know that?”
I exhaled sharply, getting tired of the drill. "Because we’re offering the prism to humans to smooth over the transition after the Great Exposure."
"Which means?"
"I’m a threat to the Great Exposure."
"And?"
I hesitated, piecing it together. "And… that’s why the Radicals attacked me and tried to steal my blood."
A darkness flickered across James’s eyes at the memory, something sharp and dangerous that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it.
“Which is exactly why you need to learn to keep your hands up,” he said, tone firm.
I rolled my eyes.
After another invigorating course of boxing, we moved to grappling on the mat, my limbs flailing like an octopus in a washing machine and I couldn’t help but giggle, which earned me one of James’s iconic scowls.
“We’re moving out to Oasis after this. Hopefully, being surrounded by all that faunacrap will get your emotions goingenough to translate and use the Skindo properly,” James announced as I dodged his punch.
This surprised me. We usually trained at the Universitas because it was the only place where translation was visible.
I groaned. “Do we really need to focus on translation today?”
He shot me an angry glare. “Don’t act like you don’t remember what we talked about these last few weeks. Or is your memory as defective as your right hook?” He snarled, blocking my punch.
Fudge, that guy is insufferable.
“I still don’t understand why it’s so important that we train,” I remarked sullenly. “The danger only arises when I do translate, so if I avoid it…”
James sighed, annoyed. “Just because you’re not translating right now doesn’t mean you won’t ever translate. Translation is a muscle like any other. If you don’t train it, you don’t control it. What happens if you need to summon energy to save your own life and you don’t have enough of it because you never trained? Or worse, you summon too much energy and kill yourself and or others in the process?”
I shrugged. “Then I’ll be dead and this whole problem is fixed.”
James’s jaw clenched. Anger flashed through his eyes and some other emotion I couldn’t quite discern.
"Why are you always so ill-tempered?” I asked slightly irritated.
“Why are you always deflecting?” he asked in the same tone.
I rolled my eyes, not feeling the need to explain I’d rather not feel like failing every day.
“We’re training you after this, and that’s final,” he ordered through gritted teeth.
“Does that mean I’m expected back on the roof?” I asked, trying to keep the dread out of my voice.
James snorted. “I think we can both agree the epic failure of last week does not need any repetition.”
Since the triplets had cancelled Scola for me after James had pestered them about it, my time with all the seven-year-olds was thankfully over. However, after six weeks of training with James, my translation was still not happening. James had to create life endangering situations before I projected, which was exhausting, but as I knew he would always “catch me” (metaphorically speaking, though sometimes literally), the results were nowhere near desirable.
