Map of Ember and Moonlight

Chapter 18

"Friends are also there to take minds off of things they'd rather wish they didn't know."

Amory lifted a brow as something she tried to ignore flashed in his eyes. "And how would they do that?"

She smiled sweetly. "By going on with training."

"Seriously?" he sighed. "I would have thought after today you'd want to go straight to bed."

"I'm suddenly not as tired as I thought I was."

"And what, Lyv, do you want to do in continuation of your training?"

Letting go of his hand, she clasped hers together in her lap and grinned. "I want you to start teaching me how to use a glamour."

"Oh, really?" Amory laughed. "Any particular reason as to why?"

"Nope. It's just always intrigued me, to have the ability to change your features enough to not have anyone you know recognize you or even change into a different person completely. You have the ability, don't you? How far can you push yourself? Show me!"

She had been lying, though. She mostly wanted him to start teaching her just to get her mind off of what they had previously talked about.

But then Amory's eyes changed from dark brown to sapphire blue. Then honey-colored like Gideon's. And emerald like her own.

"I'll teach you the theory of glamouring, but you probably won't be able to do much at the moment. It takes practice."

Lyv didn't care. She was already intrigued at the prospect of watching him and couldn't wait to try it herself.

"The eyes are the easiest. The shifting of colors to match those of another being, though you will never be able to get it exact. The eyes are the one thing unique to a person. The next is height." Amory stood and turned toward her...and shrunk a few inches down to her level.

She burst out laughing. "Okay, none of that, please. I need you at normal height just so I can take you seriously with this when you still look like yourself."

He grinned and shifted back to normal.

"It's all in the mind. And it's easier if you have a clear picture of what they look like in order to change your appearance. The way I see it is having a veil being lifted from your own body and someone else being underneath."

Amory stood still, closing his eyes for a moment in concentration before the air around him shifted...and Gideon stood in his place. When he opened his honey-colored eyes, he looked down at himself and then grinned up at her.

"See," Gideon's voice said from Gideon's mouth. "When you first learn, it takes some concentration to keep up the glamour, but you get the hang of it pretty easily."

Lyv stood from the couch and walked up to him, reaching up to poke at his cheek. A cheek...and a face and body...that shifted again.

And she was looking at herself.

"Not creepy at all," she said quietly, looking at the beautiful face staring back at her with emerald eyes. "Do I really look like that?"

The other Lyv smiled, reaching forward to pull her braid over her shoulder. "Yes, you do."

The real Lyv took a step back to survey everything about her doppelgänger. "Serious question. When glamouring yourself into the opposite gender, does everything change?"

"What do you...?"

She pointed down below her own waist.

A grin lit up her face. "Yes, actually. Not the insides, though."