“But were we⁠—?”

“We were. Right out on the street.” Burt blew a plume of cigar smoke up toward the night sky. “Should have grabbed more bread while we could.”

Feista looked around at the other Shadowkin, each smiling down at her with sadness and worry in their eyes.

“A thousand apologies!” Mrs. Hrurk said. “I should have controlled myself. I should have⁠—”

“Remained silent?” asked Asherzu. “Set aside your feelings? You did that before, and yet what did it buy us but poor treatment from the waiter? Do not be sorry for standing up for yourself. Our fight is clearly not over.” The Orc chieftain looked up and across the street at the restaurant, marked by a square black shingle with a silver root running through it. She turned back to the Gnoll with a thin-lipped smile. “It is good to see the fight lives in you. We just must seek more productive ways to let it out.”

Feista looked at the restaurant where her heritage was currently providing ambiance for wealthy diners. Shadows of revelers danced in the amber light spilling through the Taproot’s frosted windows, and she could hear the Dwarves singing their drinking song. Her paws balled into fists. She tried taking a deep breath, but it became a low growl on the way out. “Someday I’ll make this right,” she swore to herself. “I don’t know how or when, but… someday.”

“Yes,” Asherzu said, “But for now, let us find some food.”

“Garruck’s Ham Hut,” rumbled Darak.

“Ah, a proper restaurant.” Pogrit’s tail wagged at the thought. “We will go there and demand food, and eat quickly.”

“It will be much better,” agreed Guglug.

“Though, I will miss the free bread,” said Izek.

Feista thanked them for their kindness, but excused herself and headed for the steps down to the Sixth Tier. She’d lost all taste for the city tonight, and her appetite was gone.

Chapter 17

“It isn’t snack time anyway,” said Matron Yen. “That comes after class.”

“But I want a cookie right now!” demanded the novice in front of her. His apple-cheeked features were set in a five-year-old’s best approximation of menace. “You give me my cookie, or else!”

“No, Rilard. Not until snack time,” the matron repeated, unmoved. She stared at the boy with immutable calm, even after he loosed a scream and burst into flames.

“Ah, see class?” the solamancer said to the other assembled novices. “Rilard has lost control, and he thinks magic will make it better. It won’t.” Matron Yen waved a hand, and the boy’s flame winked out, leaving him teary-eyed and pink-faced but otherwise unharmed. “But that isn’t channeling magic. What was he doing?”

“Letting anger channel,” Laruna chorused with the novices. She remembered the phrase from her own Basic Command and Control classes well over a decade ago. She reflected that her experiences with the subject were much like young Rilard’s as she watched the novice slink to the anti-magic circle in the time-out corner.

“That’s right,” said Matron Yen. A touch of silver frosted the gentle instructor’s raven hair, yet she wore robes less decorated than Laruna’s own. “Now, what are we feeling?”

“Scared!” piped up another young novice.

“Sad,” said a girl of no more than four.

“Angry!” Rilard snarled from the corner.

Laruna didn’t respond aloud. In such a rudimentary class, her answer was always going to be some form of “embarrassed,” “ashamed,” or “worried that somebody past the age of puberty might see me.” But, she noted, she also felt a hint of annoyance with Rilard. It struck her as odd, because the boy was only acting as young Laruna did all three times she took this class. She recalled what it was like, to be drowning in shame and embarrassment and fear—yes fear—that the world would reject and attack her as her father had. And she became rage itself, and then the fire came.

“Good,” said the matron. “Knowing how you feel is the first step to controlling yourself.”

Laruna nodded and took a deep breath through her nose. Her new therapist had recommended breathing exercises, just as she had suggested taking this class again. Laruna felt things were going well with Dr. Tritchwater; they’d made it three entire sessions without Laruna burning down her office. This happy thought reminded her that she needed to write an apology to Dr. Sloomp and check in on the insurance paperwork.

“It’s okay to be angry,” said Matron Yen. “We all feel angry. Or scared. Or sad. That’s not bad. What’s important is what we do with those feelings. Do we let them control us?”

“No, Matron Yen,” recited the class.

“What do we do with our feelings?”

“We feel them!”

“And?”

“We know that it is okay to feel this way.”

“… dis way,” finished a few children who had fallen out of synchronization.

“And then what?”

The last bit was hard for the smaller children to remember and pronounce, but Laruna carried the chorus. “We use them to channel and mold the energies of the universe.”

“… the unicorns.”

“Very good. It’s ‘universe,’ Matilda. Now, close your eyes. Even you, Rilard. No peeking. Good. I want you all to think of someone who has made you feel sad or angry. Somebody who has hurt your feelings.”

Laruna closed her eyes and turned her gaze inward, to the memories of her father and his rage; screaming at merchants, hollering at the Farmer Tennen, threatening Mother, and berating Laruna herself. In each scene, Laruna could now see that Jek Trullon was afraid—of being cheated, of losing respect, of being left by a woman who was his better in every way, of being bested by his daughter. The mage had come to realize that Jek wasn’t a cruel man who delighted in misery; he was the sort of violent coward who reflexively erupted at any perceived slight or threat.

“Do you see that person?” asked Matron Yen. “And it’s okay to think of me, Rilard, but there’s no need to point.”

Laruna stared at her father in her mind’s eye, and found she could no longer look on him with proud contempt. It wasn’t that he looked any less vile through this new lens, but because he looked a lot more like Laruna herself.

How many times had Laruna lashed out when frightened? How often did she use volume and violence to get her way? The idea that she had anything in common with her father, that she had inherited any trait from the man, twisted her insides around until her anger was leveled directly at herself. Usually this self-loathing was a harbinger of self-directed profanity and an outburst of flames, but now she held her anger and hatred at arm’s length. The rage was there. She felt it. It was not her.

“Now, I want you to try to forgive that person.”

Laruna’s nostrils flared. Fury rose within her like a wave, but she was as a seabird, floating atop the rage as she watched it rise, and crest, and tumble away into nothing against the shores of time. “I am not the anger,” she whispered.

“Remember, forgiving that person doesn’t mean you like them. It doesn’t mean you have to talk to them, or be their friend. Though I do hope we can be friends, Rilard.” There was a gentle smile in Matron Yen’s voice.

Laruna heard the boy mutter something and shuffle his feet.

“It means letting go of the anger, of the hurt. You still know you felt it, and you still remember it, but you won’t let it control you. Because hanging on to the pain keeps hurting you. It holds you back. Releasing it sets you free, and freedom is power.”

As the only adult in the class that wasn’t teaching it, Laruna initially surmised that the task of letting old hurts go was more challenging for herself than for children. Then again, she realized, when she was only six, she had already known what a monster her father was, and Jek Trullon had given her plenty of pain to contend with. How long had it festered in her? How different would her life have been had she let that all go when she left the old fool behind?

How different would it be from now if she released it today?

Forgiveness is an act of iron will, and it takes a strength of mind and heart that Jek Trullon had never mustered, a fortitude that had eluded Laruna Trullon for all of her years. But here and now, the fourth time learning the lessons of Basic Command and Control, with the memories of those she had scared and hurt swimming in her mind, with the distance she had rent between her and… well, everything, Laruna found the strength. And she let go.

“Did we all do it? Did we try?” asked Matron Yen.

“Yes, Matron Yen,” recited the children. Laruna could not speak.