Misha’s eyes light up. “Perfect. I can work with that.”
“What do you mean?”
He stares into the distance, as if we had all the time in the world. “I mean we’ll be using what you envision to put a wall up in the middle of your bond with your prince. You just need to think of that grimy window, as you call it. Take that window and black out the glass. Now imagine it not between you and your magic, but between you and Sebastian’s emotions.”
I shake my head. “They’re inside of me,” I say, pressing my hand to my chest. “I feel them almost as if they’re mine.”
“Close your eyes,” he says, and I reluctantly obey. “What’s he feeling now?”
It’s not that simple. His emotions blur into mine and make this muddled mess in my mind that leaves me feeling spent and exhausted.
“Shhh. Focus.”
I exhale slowly and focus on the very thing I’ve been trying to ignore since I fled the Golden Palace. What I feel. What he feels. “He’s sad, and he’s . . . worried. He’s very worried about something.” He’s also hopeful. Hopeful that the team he assembled this morning will be successful and he’ll be able to earn my trust back.
I flick my gaze up to Misha, worried that he might be reading my mind and know I visited Sebastian last night, but he seems lost in his own thoughts.
“Okay,” Misha says. “Now keep your eyes closed and follow those emotions. You feel them inside you. Trace them back to their roots, as if you’re following a thread that’s tangled up in your chest. I want you to find the end of that thread, and I want you to pull slowly. Bit by bit.”
I pull at the sadness, little by little.
“Keep pulling,” he says, “until it’s all cupped in the palm of your mind’s eye.”
The sadness detaches from me like a cat retracting its claws from my skin, and my eyes fly open.
“It worked.”
“Close your eyes,” he says. “Finish.”
I do as I’m instructed, pulling at the rest of the sadness as if I’m physically extracting it from my chest. It’s a relief, and also a reminder of how alone I really am. Feeling Sebastian was keeping my loneliness at bay, and now it’s returning like an old, unwelcome housemate. But I continue, doing the same with his worry, that gnawing torment that worry has become for him. This one’s harder, but I keep tugging until, in my mind’s eye, I’m holding the strings in my hands.
“Good,” Misha says, seeming to sense that I’ve reached the end. “Now place them on the other side of the window.” I open my eyes again, but he says, “Stay focused. This is your mind. You decide what gets in and what stays. Place them on the other side of your darkened window where they belong.”
Focusing, I crack the dark window and toss the balls of string through. The second I slam the glass back down, my body feels lighter. My eyes fly open as I smile, but at the same moment, Sebastian’s there again. All his worry and sadness back as powerfully as before.
I shake my head. “It’s not working.”
“You’re not focusing, ” Misha says. “Try again.”
I close my eyes and repeat the steps, visualizing the balls of string and the darkened window. This time when we’re disconnected, I focus on keeping my guard up, but when I open my eyes, Sebastian’s emotions snap back into place with mine.
“You’re trying to make this easy,” Misha says. “Stop thinking of the connection as something malleable and start thinking of it as something unmovable. The bond is there, whether you like it or not. You’re simply pulling a heavy curtain to make it harder to see in and out. Try again.”
I try. Again. And again. I envision a blackened window and it turns to air. Other times the glass cracks under the intensity of my focus.
“What are you darkening your window with?” Misha asks, pacing in front of me. From the look of him, he thought this little training session would be easier than it has been.
I shrug. “I’m painting it black.”
He stops pacing and turns to me, smiling. “Not paint. Night. Place your shadows—the deepest, darkest you have—between you and your prince.”
I’m exhausted, practically shaking from the mental energy required to do this again, but I try. This time when I open my eyes the shield holds. Sebastian’s emotions are still there, but they’re muted.
Distant. I could lift the darkness, open the window, and retrieve them, or I could choose to leave them on the other side.