I know that from experience. I count on it actually.

“What if it’s more serious?” I ask quietly.

“You could damage their thread. Maim them. Kill them. That’s why it’s imperative you learn to focus on time. Grabbing matter uncontrolled is too risky. You know how delicate we are. One wrong move and you could rip someone in half.”

“What I really want to know is how to alter,” I admit.

Dante stops and gives me a heavy look. “I assumed so. It’s not as glamorous as it looks.”

“I saw what they did to Deniel,” I say. “I’m aware of how glamorous it is.”

“You saw the worst thing that Tailors do,” he says.

The worst? Yes, what happened to Deniel was horrible, but what about removing people’s souls or altering their memories? What about the other ways Tailors and the Guild take away people’s lives? Take away the very essence of who they are?

“Tailors can help people, too, Adelice. A trained Tailor can patch a thread and heal someone,” Dante says.

“I’ve only seen them do that to people they hurt in the first place,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. It’s true. My only experience with renewal patches is seeing them misused by men like Cormac and Kincaid.

“I need to know what I’m doing,” I say. “You’ve been teaching me this so that I don’t hurt anyone, but what I did to Deniel when he attacked me—that could have been worse. I need to understand how alteration works.”

“Fine. I’ll give you an hour, but then I have to check on that array.” But the look on Dante’s face says it’s anything but. He doesn’t want me to see this or understand this or do this. But why? “Maybe your friend will volunteer.”

I’m not imagining the way Erik swallows before he nods. “Sure.”

“Maybe we could start with something smaller and less prone to bleeding?” I suggest.

Dante’s jaw tenses but he bobs his head in agreement, gesturing to the fern he’d been fiddling with. It’s only a plant, but I don’t like the idea.

“I can unwind this,” he says, “or I can change the shape it grows in, make the leaves longer. I can steal strands from another plant and wind them through it, and create a hybrid.”

“Could you make it look like another plant?”

“Sure,” he says with a shrug, and as we watch he tugs apart the fern and then carefully adds its strands into a small bush. The plants blur and shift, growing, changing in front of our eyes until the stubby little bush is a baby fern.

“You are possibly the best gardener ever,” Erik says, clearly impressed. “Don’t tell my brother I said that.”

Dante grins despite his earlier foul mood.

“Make it grow,” I say.

He runs his hands over a leaf and it blurs, stretching into a long green leaf.

He turns to me. “You try.”

My hands tremble a little as I reach for the leaf. I try to focus and see the composition of it, where to slip my fingers, what pieces to manipulate, but I can’t.

“Relax,” Dante says. He moves behind me and places his hands on my shoulders. It’s a strange gesture, but having him there makes me calm.

The plant’s composition comes into focus and I concentrate harder until I’m reading it like a code. Each strand woven neatly through, certain threads knit tightly while others are loose. But when I pull on the strands, the plant crumbles into dust.

“Does that make me the worst gardener?” I ask Erik.

“Let’s say you don’t have a green thumb,” he says.

“Try again,” Dante urges. “You got the time with it.”

“I killed it,” I say in a bleak voice.

“Don’t look at it that way.”

“Is there another way to look at it?”

After a few more tries, I manage to get a leaf to stretch. It’s only a quarter of an inch, but it boosts my confidence. “I want to see how you alter a human.”

“You already saw that,” Dante reminds me softly.

“I saw a human unwound,” I say. “What good is my alteration ability if I don’t know how to use it?”

“I think being able to rip someone’s flesh apart is a pretty good way to use it,” Erik offers.

I shoot him a look. “The more I see outside of a stressful moment, the more I’ll be able to control my alterations when there’s a crisis.”

“So you want to practice on me?” Erik asks.

“Spoken like a true volunteer,” I say, giving him a sweet smile.

“Don’t try to charm me, Adelice Lewys,” he warns, but I already know I’ve won.

“Why don’t you watch for now?” Dante suggests. He reaches for Erik’s arm, but Erik doesn’t extend it.

“Wait, that seems like you’re going to touch me,” he says.

“You aren’t being terribly open-minded,” I tell him.

“Forgive me,” Erik says sarcastically. “I’m attached to my skin. Literally.”

“Never mind, we’ll do it on Ad,” Dante says. “You’ll be able to see as well.”

I don’t hesitate in thrusting my arm out to him. I sink back into my head, trying to clear my mind of distractions, waiting for my own composition to come to life but Erik pushes my hand down.

“Do me,” he commands.