Tegan McCoy's heart did a strange, violent stutter in her chest.
The look in Alina's eyes wasn't fear. It wasn't even anger. It was the look a butcher gives a piece of meat before bringing down the cleaver.
Tegan felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck. She hated the feeling. She hated this girl for making her feel it.
Tegan puffed out her chest, raising her voice to a shrill scream. "You think you can stare me down? Your orientation is canceled. Your dinner rations are canceled."
Tegan spun around and pointed a stubby finger toward the far corner of the courtyard.
"That is your room," Tegan spat.
It was a dilapidated wooden shed. The door was hanging off its hinges. Inside, it was piled high with rotting hay and visibly crawling with rats.
Several workers gasped. That shed was used for storing diseased animal corpses before incineration. It was a death sentence of infection.
Tegan crossed her arms, a triumphant smirk returning to her face. "Go on. Get comfortable."
She waited for Alina to break. To scream about her rights. To beg for a real bed.
Alina looked at the shed. Then she looked at the center of the courtyard.
Right in the middle of the mud and filth was a massive, flat slab of blue stone. It was exposed to the freezing wind dropping down from the open ceiling grate above.
Alina walked past Tegan. She didn't say a single word.
She walked to the center of the courtyard. She dropped her canvas bag onto the freezing blue stone.
Then, in front of fifty staring people, Alina lay down on the stone.
She used her bag as a pillow. She crossed her hands over her stomach. She closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed to a steady, rhythmic pace.
The courtyard went dead silent. The only sound was the wind howling through the grate.
Tegan's face turned a violent shade of purple. This was worse than a tantrum. This was absolute, blatant defiance. Alina was treating Tegan like she didn't even exist.
"Get up!" Tegan shrieked, marching toward the stone. "Stop playing dead for sympathy, you little bitch!"
Alina didn't move a muscle. Her chest rose and fell evenly.
A desperate-looking worker, eager to earn Tegan's favor, grabbed a wooden broom. He ran forward and thrust the handle toward Alina's shoulder to jab her awake.
The wood never touched her clothes.
A fraction of a second before impact, an invisible wave of repulsion rippled outward from her body. The force wasn't a spell she cast, but rather an unconscious, violent leakage of the chaotic arcane energy she had just swallowed in the Gauntlet of Will, which had yet to be fully digested. The broom handle slammed into this kinetic barrier and instantly shattered into a hundred jagged splinters with a deafening crack.
The worker screamed. He dropped the broken stick, clutching his hands. His palms were covered in severe frostbite burns. He scrambled backward, looking at Alina like she was a demon.
Tegan froze in her tracks. She stared at the shattered ice on the ground. She didn't dare take another step.
"Get back to work!" Tegan screamed at the crowd, her voice cracking with panic. "Leave her! Let her freeze to death!"
The sun set. The temperature plummeted below freezing.
The workers huddled in their cramped, warm barracks, peering out the dirty windows into the dark courtyard.
Alina remained on the stone. Frost began to form on her black jacket and her eyelashes.
But inside her body, the Primordial Conduit was running a perfect internal loop. The freezing external pressure forced her mana to circulate faster, generating a deep, core heat that protected her organs while simultaneously refining her newly expanded magic reserves.
She wasn't suffering. She was training.
High up in the central tower, Gallagher Vargas stood by his window, holding a spyglass spell over his eye.
His hand slowly lowered. The amused smile was gone from his face.
He had expected her to fight. He had expected her to blow up the shed or break Tegan's arm.
Instead, she chose the most agonizing, silent form of psychological warfare. She was using her own body to call his bluff, proving she had a level of discipline that bordered on psychotic.
"She's a soldier," Gallagher whispered to the empty room.
Down in the courtyard, midnight passed.
Tegan tossed and turned in her bed, her stomach tied in knots. She couldn't shake the feeling that she had just locked herself in a cage with a predator.
On the stone, Alina opened her eyes. The twin purple moons of Aethelgard reflected in her dark pupils.
The corners of her mouth twitched up into a microscopic smile.
The trap was set. Now, she just had to wait for it to snap shut.
