A Deadly Education

Orion helps a distraught and traumatized El back to her room, carrying her for great portions of the journey. He figures out that something happened and that El had not fled the mals in the library, but El doesn’t tell him anything. She knows he would believe her, and then word would get out and others would believe her, but she can’t bring herself to talk about it. He stays with her while she falls asleep. They go to dinner, where Orion stands guard and worries about El’s state. When Aadhya suggests she may have drained her magic, Orion thinks to check the power crystal El wears. He sees it’s empty, dark, and cracked and thinks she must be drained. He gathers mana by shaking loose and killing some mals, then transfers the power to El with his hand on her chest. It overloads El’s system, and she disperses it by casting one of her mother’s positive energy meditation spells. The spell hits everyone in the vicinity, making them gasp and look “uneasily happy, their faces brighter, except Liu on the other side of the table, who was shaking violently, staring at her own hands: her fingernails had gone back to normal” (138).