If this room has been opened, then either the locks have failed or someone has finally learned what the locks were meant to protect.

I did not hide these quarters because I feared the Uunders. I hid them because I feared what would happen if hope were discovered before it could defend itself.

The weapons beyond the inner wall were never meant to begin a war. They were preserved because a people denied every means of protection eventually become dependent on the mercy of those who denied it.

The communication devices matter more. If even one can be restored, scattered settlements may speak to one another again. Isolation has always been the Barrens’ strongest prison.

Whoever finds this place must decide whether secrecy has finished serving us. I cannot make that choice for those who come after me.

—Faron Dalyon

The boy watches every doorway before he enters a room. He counts exits without appearing to count them. He assumes kindness carries a price and distrusts anyone who offers safety too quickly.

None of this makes him dangerous. It makes him a child who survived conditions most of the Aurorium prefers not to imagine.

His abilities require attention, but his instinct is restraint. That distinction may become more important than the number of powers he carries.

He is not the danger.

What people decide to do with him may be.

—Atticus Litzgad

I have tried to decide when it began.

The obvious answer is the mayor incident.

Gideon pushed the thought into my mind, and for a few ridiculous minutes I believed Karthune was mine to organize. I remember the certainty of it. I also remember something else.

Him.

Not his words. Not exactly. It was closer to standing beside a door that had opened somewhere inside him. I could feel the strain behind the joke, the fear beneath the confidence, and how badly he wanted us to laugh so none of us would notice either one.

I assumed it was part of the mind-bending.

It should have ended when the effect ended.

It did not.

Since then, there are moments when Gideon says he is fine and I know he is not. Sometimes I know before he speaks. Sometimes I feel the change in him before he has decided what the change means.

The connection is faint. I cannot summon it, and I cannot always separate it from knowing him too well.

But it is there.

I have not told him. I have not told Fitzlin either.

Until I understand whether this belongs to Gideon, to me, or to whatever passed between us that day, I would rather not give anyone else a name for it.

—Thea

I have been asked why I did not tell the boy what the Magnet was meant to do.

The answer is not that I doubted him.

It is because I did not.

Gideon Irondell will search for the purpose of the Magnet as others have searched for the purpose of power. He will expect it to strike, command, protect, or destroy. Those expectations must fall away by his own choosing.

If I tell him what the Magnet is for, then every decision he makes afterward will bend toward fulfilling my answer. He will no longer listen for what the world asks of him. He will listen for me.

That would ruin everything.

The Magnet was never given to make Gideon stronger than Kull Kalijan. It was given so that, when strength failed, Gideon might recognize another path.

He must reach that understanding without instruction.

Fitzlin cannot be told either.

He would guard the truth faithfully. He would bury it beneath locks, memory, and stone. But no lock remains hidden once an enemy learns that something worth finding has been concealed.

Kull searches minds as he searches battlefields. Fitzlin knows too much already. To give him the final truth would not protect it. It would give Kull a place to look.

The Magnet must remain, in Gideon’s eyes, an unanswered question.

Only then can he discover that its final purpose was never to answer him.

It was to teach him how to listen.

—The Seer of Marjon

Everyone remembers the noise.

The stone breaking. Kull shouting. The air tightening around us until it felt as though the whole summit had forgotten how to breathe.

I remember Gideon looking everywhere except where he needed to look.

He was trying to defeat Kull with the powers Kull understood. Every answer made the fight larger. Every force met another force.

Then I saw the Magnet.

It was not doing what a weapon should do. It was responding.

There was no time to explain any of that, and Gideon would not have heard a speech. So I gave him the only word that might turn his attention toward the right question.

Marjon.

He heard me.

—Toma