Esmeralda had gone to Silvia’s office to discuss that week’s assignments, but almost immediately she’d been grabbed and pinned against the wall.

Silvia, the rare person who could match Esmeralda’s size, loomed over her; her heart jumped as Silvia’s breath tickled her ear.

“Come over tonight, pet,” she whispered. “I want you to spend it with me.”

Esmeralda felt herself overtaken by a forbidden excitement as she promised to go home with Silvia that day. For the next several hours she went about her business feeling poisonous, like anyone in her vicinity could be tainted by her terrible secret. Her focus wandered in her classes as she sat close to the walls, silent, hyper attuned to the space around her lest anyone get too close.

As the sun began its slow descent behind the city walls and the air grew hazy, Esmeralda made her way back to Silvia’s building. Silvia met her outside, and with a lithe hand gently wiped the sweat off her forehead. Esmeraldablushed.

Silvia led her by the hand off the academy campus, striding amongst the low brick buildings of the city center. When they reached her home Silvia unlocked the door and beckoned Esmeralda inside; she followed, her heart fluttering, sweat trickling down her back from the sticky heat of dusk.

As soon as she entered Silvia seized her, having her more fully than she could in her office that morning. Esmeralda, already overheated from the walk over, felt her mind draw blank as Silvia kissed her, like she were asleep.

The older woman whispered in her ears once again. “What would you do for me, pet?”

Esmeralda, trembling, responded in a low hiss. “Anything.”

Silvia stroked her face. “I have another one for you tonight.” She spoke in sweet purrs that made Esmeralda’s knees quake. “I need you to take care of it.” She drew back a bit and kissed Esmeralda again, still speaking in a come-hither tone. “It needs your deft touch...You’re so much quieter than I am.” She smiled, and it made Esmeralda shiver.

She looked, dazed, into Silvia’s eyes. They reminded her of a predator’s fangs, razor sharp and gleaming. “I’ll take care of it.”

Still smiling Silvia touched her lips with her fingers; as she withdrew them thin, silvery wisps of light swirled around her hand, coiling down towards her wrist. It always reminded Esmeralda of snakes. The light sparkled, softly illuminating Silvia’s fair cream-white skin in the dim room.

With care Silvia pressed her fingers against Esmeralda’s lips. The wisps of light slithered into her mouth, and she grimaced as the magic wormed its way through her. Inside herself she felt the dawning of new information, an instantaneous deluge of information, all about the person she was going to kill. Silvia had used her spell to bestow upon Esmeralda, all at once, the knowledge that she possessed about Esmeralda’s target that night.

The way Silvia wielded such sensitive magic - the manipulation of the mind, the modification of one’s own knowledge and memory - so casually frightened and enthralled Esmeralda; every time she witnessed it she felt terrified and jealous. She felt now that she wanted Silvia’s inventiveness, courage, and talent; what she saw as allowing Silvia to cook up such wicked spells and wield them with aplomb.

Whenever Esmeralda’s own beliefs wavered, Silvia would remind her that what they did helped keep them safe; and Esmeralda would be overcome with envy for her teacher’s self-assuredness, her easy confidence, her belief in herself. Esmeralda wanted that power, too, but she hadn’t yet proven herself Silvia’s equal; nowhere close. A deep frown stretched across her face.

Silvia wrapped her arms around Esmeralda and she was pulled out of her own thoughts. “Take care of it tonight, pet,” she cooed. They kissed again, deep and slow, and Esmeralda savoured the taste of it, her doubts and concerns swiftly wiped away.

Silvia offered another wicked smile. “Stay with me a while first.”

By the time Esmeralda was out the door thick clouds had settled in, shrouding the moon and smothering the city in darkness. She stalked through the night now, moving in silence, scarcely able to see much at all. Occasionally she lit the empty streets and alleys with a small conjured flare to gather her bearings, slicing through the humid night with a mild yellow flame that danced to her whims. Each block was empty; sometimes there were rodents.

She yawned. Whenever she went on errands for Silvia she felt gripped by exhaustion; only when it was time to act did Esmeralda’s heart start to pound, did her hands start to shake with adrenaline and fear. Until she was looking her target in the eyes, she mostly just felt bored, haunting lonely streets as she hunted, bathed in darkness, the summer nights drawing longer and longer as she stalked.

When she reached the rift, that great chasm that split the town in two, she gazed over the side of the flimsy wooden bridge as she crossed it. The lack of anything within the rift, like darkness without itself, reminded her of Silvia’s magic, that unnatural light that now lived inside her, too, always itching at the tips of her fingers like an urge she couldn’t resist. Growing uneasy she quickened her pace across the bridge and hurried into the high, narrow streets of the northern district.

Sweat slicked her arms as she ran, murmurs of conversations brushing just past her ears as she skulked beneath windows and past closed doors. When she reached a small, crooked cabin at the top of a small hill she crept up to the side of it, where slits of light were visible through gaps in the wood. Esmeralda pressed her ear close to the wall; she heard someone moving around, but otherwise it was silent. Excitement surging, confident the person was alone, and sure of her own abilities, Esmeralda walked right up to the front door and kicked it open. With a sharp crack it swung into the long, flickering shadows of the cabin.

Esmeralda, at Silvia’s behest, had done many of these jobs before, relying on superior skill and instincts to accomplish them. But as Esmeralda’s eyes found her target lurking in a dark corner of the small hut, it was this woman - the subject of Silvia’s wrath - who hurled an enormous column of flame towards the entrance of her own home.

Esmeralda had no time to dodge; acting mostly on instinct she raised her hands, which were cloaked in light, and absorbed the shock of the blast with her own magic. It was a move of pure desperation, and as her own spell reacted with the woman’s it exploded, throwing Esmeralda hard against the ground as savage fire shot forth into the cabin. Narrowly avoiding incineration, the woman came streaking out of the house, a blur in the night.

Staggering to her feet Esmeralda found the woman coming towards her and, with eerie speed and preternatural calm, conjured a small pillar of light between her hands. Wielding it like a spear she heaved it through the air in one furious motion; the woman, unprepared for such a deft attack, raised her arms helplessly as Esmeralda’s magic pierced through her chest, taking with it fragmented parts of her midsection that trailed behind her as she stumbled, limp, onto the ground in front of her house. The spear itself dissipated on impact.

Where the spear had thrust through the air, glimmering particles of silver were visible, a residual trail left by the magic’s power; they sparkled for a moment in the raging flames that consumed the woman’s house, and briefly Esmeralda saw the light dance before her, roaring reds and oranges swallowing the silver particles of Esmeralda’s attack, magic reacting with magic, violent beauty raging in the night.

As the fire and light dissipated, the magical energies having run their course, Esmeralda collapsed to her knees, burying sobs of pain against the dusty soil beneath her.

Agony radiated out from her hands through the rest of her body; it felt like her soul was burning. The woman she’d erased from existence, whose corpse now rested barely a meter away, had disappeared also from her mind; all she could think of now was fire, an impossible burning lighting her up like a scarecrow. Hot tears fell from her eyes and sweat slicked her lips as she panted against the ground.

For a long time she lay there; it was all she could do to remain conscious. Eventually she was able to bear the pain enough to stumble back through the humid night, soaked in sweat and stained with dirt, collapsing into Silvia’s arms on her doorstep.

Silvia got her into bed and, observing the jagged red scars running from her palms to her elbows, made her sip a foul concoction that she said treated burns. It was thick like mud on Esmeralda’s tongue, and tasted worse, but she had nothing left inside her to protest with. Quietly, fighting not to wretch, she drank what Silvia gave her and gradually felt her pain subside.

When she’d recovered enough to talk she murmured her way through what happened, dead-eyed, as Silvia sat with her, stroking her hair. Afterwards they were both silent a long time; when Silvia finally spoke her voice was quiet, but severe.

“You were overconfident and you failed. It nearly cost you your life.”

The older woman leaned in close to Esmeralda, her voice barely audible even in the silent bedroom.

“You disappointed me, pet. And you almost let yourself be taken from me.”

Esmeralda felt that with each of Silvia’s words another stake was driven into her heart. Tears began to form in her vermilion eyes, dull with exhaustion, as Silvia stood and began to leave the room. When she reached the doorway she cast a glance back at Esmeralda and spoke sternly.

“Never let that happen again, pet.”

Esmeralda watched her go and then, left by herself, began to weep hard into her pillow, muffling her anguish in the dim candlelight of Silvia’s bedroom.

Esmeralda’s eyes shot open, and almost immediately she turned to her left, where Astrid lay. She watched the young woman’s chest rise and fall, gently, as she breathed; like this, the phantom light of the moon illuminating her face, Esmeralda passed the rest of the night, too anxious to sink fully into sleep again and too tired to fully dwell in the silence of the waking world. Her vision blurred off-and-on as she dozed until sunrise.