"So, Tallulah. Tell me about the progress you've made."

Electra looks as out of place as I thought she would in a normal, respectable office with walls not painted black. She greeted my dad and Tara when we met outside, but now she's talking directly to me, leaning forwards across the table that separates us.

"I've found a case." My dad had two copies of the file made; I have one in front of me now, and I slide it towards her. As soon as it's within her reach, she snatches it off the table and tucks it into her bag. I'm not used to her carrying a large handbag, either, though I must have seen it before at some point. It's black, naturally, though I can't quite identify the material it's made out of.

"Good. I'll review it when I next have time. And you've found your lawyers, too, I presume?"

"Well. Actually. About that." I force myself not to glance to my dad for support. Electra won't approve of that. "I – we – decided that – perhaps it's best if I'm not the one to file the case."

Electra smiles slowly. That's a danger sign, from her. "Oh? Why is that?"

"Well, my name has a lot associated with it. The publicity that's going to bring..." I grimace at the thought. "It'll look as if it's the Blackthorns doing this. It could get dangerous."

"You were aware of those risks when we last spoke, and still determined to take them. And I struggle to think Lord Blackthorn's personal lawyers would seem less associated with him than the girl who faced him down in the middle of a riot."

"I – "

Electra saves me from having to find the words to explain. "It wasn't your idea, was it?"

"No," my dad says softly. "It was mine."

"Then perhaps you can explain why you feel this is an improvement over Tallulah filing the case?"

My dad is silent for a long moment. "Why does it have to be her?" he asks. "Hasn't she been through enough recently? I don't want her to end up in even more trouble because of this."

"And you're willing to take on this trouble yourself?"

"Yes, if that's what it comes to."

"Protectiveness of your daughter," Electra muses. "An admirable instinct."

I realise she's about to do something a second too late. She flicks her wrist, and one of her throwing-knives appears from nowhere and soars across the room. By the time I've realised what's happening, it's too late to dodge; the blade comes to rest, hovering in the air a hair's breadth from my throat.

I freeze. Charles First-King. Edwin the Just.

"Tell me," says Electra. "What use is that instinct in practice?"

She's doing this to make a point, I tell myself. I'm not in any real danger. No more danger than I'm in merely by being in the same room as Electra, anyway.

"Get away from her," my dad hisses, voice shaking with rage.

Electra shrugs. "Make me."

He can't, of course. He's not a magician or a trained fighter; he doesn't stand a chance against Electra, who's both. I watch him resort to what he does know. "I'll have you sued for assault – "

"It won't work," says Tara. "Tallulah's Malaina. Electra is allowed to do things like this in the service of determining her stability."

It's not the point Electra is trying to prove, but she's doing an excellent job of demonstrating why the project is so necessary. "You've made your point," I say, my words contorted so that my throat moves as little as possible.

"So I have," agrees Electra. The knife flies back across the room, almost reversing its original path, until it disappears into the folds of her sleeves once more.

I take a deep breath. "You should not have done that." I'm angry with her too, I realise, surprisingly so. Simon the Drunkard. Thomas the Defender. Eleanor the Bold.

"If your father wants to remain a part of your life, he'll have to learn this lesson sooner or later. Better it be done under controlled circumstances than when you're in real danger."

"Real danger?" my dad spits. "You're saying that wasn't real danger? What if – what if you'd messed up the enchantments and the blade slipped? What if she'd panicked and moved too suddenly?"

"I assure you, I am a competent enough magician to prevent such accidents, and I would not do these things if I were otherwise."

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"She's right," I admit grudgingly. "I was never going to get hurt there." Much as I hate to give Electra credit at a time like this, it's far better than letting my dad believe she took any kind of risk with my life.

"You can't just go around almost stabbing people, even if no-one gets hurt!"

"I can," says Electra calmly. "Unless you intend to stop me."

"Tara? What legal recourse do we have?"

"Not much," Tara replies grimly. "We could file assault charges, but as I said earlier Electra can just claim it's to make sure Tallulah isn't becoming mala sia and we wouldn't be able to prove otherwise. I suppose we could look into the Academy's complaints procedure, argue that she shouldn't be permitted to teach, but I doubt that would get anywhere. Or… you're not going to like this, but we could ask Lord Blackthorn for help."

Electra laughs. "I've been teaching his son for months, and I've done things at least that bad to him in that time. If Lord Blackthorn had a problem with behaviour like this, I would know about it."

I think he would have a problem with how she treated Edward if he knew about the incident from the end of term. When he somehow found a flow state, and she genuinely tried to kill him. But that's beside the point.

"Tallulah? Has she – "

"Yes. She did this once before, but that was right at the beginning, and it was genuinely to test my stability. And she's put Edward and me through some pretty brutal combat drilling, but we needed the self-defence training."

"You can't seriously be okay with this, Tallulah." My dad is staring at me incredulously.

"I'm not," I reply. "But this isn't a battle worth fighting."

I doubt we could make Electra face the consequences of her actions without Lord Blackthorn's help. And even if we could… I can see a lot of ways in which that would make things worse. If she lost her job she'd lose her ability to help the Academy's Malaina students, and I have no way of knowing whether her replacement would be good or whether they'd just make things worse. Not to mention that she'd be turned loose with a grudge against me and some very dangerous secrets.

"Well, what I can do – and what I'm going to do – is refuse to work with someone who could do that to my daughter."

He can do that. And if he does, the project is as good as dead. "But Dad – "

"Now get out of my office."

I half-expect Electra to reply make me again. Instead she does nothing for a moment, and then gets to her feet with a slowness that makes it very clear that she's choosing to obey him because it suits her and he has no real power over her. She stalks out of the room without speaking a word to any of us.

I dart across the room to catch the door before it swings shut, and after a moment of hesitation decide to follow her. If she doesn't want to talk to me then there's nothing I can do about it, but I have a feeling she's not done here.

And I'm right: she continues through the corridor and the reception area without even a glance at Jamie – who for once I feel a shred of sympathy for – but once she's outside the office she stops and casually leans against the wall beside its door.

I step outside and close the door behind me. "I hope you're satisfied," I say, my voice filled with cold anger.

She turns to face me and raises an eyebrow as if to say why shouldn't I be?

"You've convinced my dad I'm being taught by a sadistic murderer – which isn't even wrong – and ruined any chances I have of making this project work just when I thought it was going to."

She shrugs. "He's a smart man. Once he's had some time to cool down, he'll realise the point I was trying to make." I note that she doesn't dispute the accusation of murder.

"He's going to be angry at me now just for tolerating your power plays."

"Maybe."

"What you did was wrong." The force behind those words scares me a little, but it doesn't feel the way Malaina does. This anger and its power are mine.

"Right and wrong are subjective notions." Electra's hands are moving in the pattern of a spell, I realise, and those words are spoken with the rhythm to make them an incantation –

"They are not," I spit without conscious thought, and that's also an incantation. My General Counterspell swallows whatever Electra was trying to cast.

"Now that is interesting."

"What is?" I snap.

"That is not a conversation it is wise to have on a public street. I'll teleport you back to my office – "

"No." I'm not going anywhere with her right now. Especially not when my dad would completely panic at my disappearance.

"As you wish. I'm sure you can work it out on your own."

She must have meant that my reaction to her attempted spell was interesting. But of course I'd see her cast a spell and my first reaction would be to try and counter it – so what's interesting must be the fact it succeeded. It was… anomalous.

I need to be very careful what I do next if I don't want to give the anomaly undue influence over me.

And what do I do next?

I need to persuade my dad that Electra isn't going to stab me in my sleep when I'm back at the Academy, and that trying to get her fired or arrested isn't going to end well in any circumstances. And ideally that she is someone he can and should work with.

It hurts that I'm the one having to mend the bridge Electra just casually burnt, and that my dad is the one who's having to accept that what Electra just did isn't something he can do anything about.

"I want you to apologise to my dad."

"Do you? Why should I do that?"

Because, as I said, what you did was wrong. "Because things are a lot easier for all of us if he doesn't think you're prepared to kill me."

"You mean if he continues to live in ignorance. Backing down would defeat what I'm trying to achieve here. You should know by now that I have no problem with being the villain."

"But we're the ones getting hurt by this."

"More than you would if it had been real?"

It's all I can do not to scream in frustration. It shouldn't be this difficult to explain to someone that nearly stabbing me is not acceptable. But I have to play by her rules or not at all. "I don't see that that makes as much of a difference as you think it does. If a real situation happened, then he'd know he was unable to do anything, and that would change… what, exactly?"

"Knowing a problem exists is the first step towards solving it."

Oh. That's her game now. She wants to turn my dad into someone who can cope with danger and high-stakes political games. Stars help us both. "Did you ever stop to consider whether he wants to solve this problem?"

She says nothing. Because she knows I won't like what she has to say. Why should that matter?

Maybe her intentions are good. But how much does that matter when her methods involve nearly stabbing people and manipulating them like this?

"I want you to apologise to him," I repeat. Then, without hesitation, I turn and enter the office building.

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