Flashback ( PDFDrive )

“Fitz?” Linh called. “Sophie?” Her face broke into an enormous
grin as she raced toward them. “I can’t believe you guys are here!”
“Me neither,” Tam said, dropping his arms and releasing whatever
hold he’d had on the threads of darkness.
Lady Zillah shook her head as the shadowflux curled back into the
night. “Every time you let it win,” she told Tam, “you’ll have to fight
that much harder to earn its respect.”
“I didn’t let it win,” Tam argued. “I sent it away, so it couldn’t hurt
anyone.”
“It can’t hurt anyone unless you tell it to,” Lady Zillah corrected.
“I don’t know,” Linh said, her eyes darting from Fitz to Sophie and
back again, taking in his crutches and her sling before studying each
of their faces. “You guys look a little pale. Is it the echoes?”
Fitz nodded.
“But we’re fine,” Sophie promised when Tam backed farther away,
as if he was afraid that standing too close would make them worse.
“We’re both getting pretty good at stopping the attacks.”
“The echoes shouldn’t have been affected by anything we were
doing,” Lady Zillah insisted as she strode over to them, her white cape
billowing behind her like a ghost.
She waved her palm over Fitz’s chest, then over Sophie’s hand and
head, and her lips pulled into a deep frown. “Well . . . I suppose seeing
the shadowflux could’ve triggered flashbacks of the attack, and those
might’ve stirred the echoes.”
Tam turned away, tugging hard on his bangs. “If I’d known you’d
be in the halls, I would’ve warned you we’d be training.”
“It’s fine,” Fitz told him. “We didn’t know we’d be in the halls
either until about an hour ago. This is our first time out of bed since