“That’s why I think soul-drain doesn’t happen in every novice magic wielder. Maybe a hundred years ago, some people were succeeding. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I’m sure now that it’s about power. The Collector didn’t want Quad Brilliant to bond. You know he didn’t. And now we’re their worst nightmare. They’ll have to kill at least one of us—maybe more, like Quad Moonlight—in the Test of Separation. They need to break our bond because it makes us ten times as strong together as we are alone. Gods, it’s even in the name! The Test of Separation. They’re mocking us.”
“The Test is designed to kill us...” he murmured.
“At least one of us, to break the Quad. A Quad is a threat to their power, and they prune us before we leave the school. You see how strong we are now. That’s just one year of practice. How strong are we going to be in two years? Maybe as strong as The Four themselves.”
He struggled to choose one of his many questions, but they just spun around in his head.
“Their green flame spell is about control.”
“The whole school is about control. They’ve got us trapped inside this little sheep’s pen,” she continued, “to do with as they want.” She waved a hand. “And who knows what that gods-be-damned spell you discovered is, who knows what they’ve been doing to us from the moment we set foot inside these walls. Which brings me back to my point: I think there were other users in the two kingdoms before The Four, ones who figured out how to divide their Soulblocks without this place. And what’s more...” She paused for effect. “I bet there are Quads who’ve formed outside the academy even now. And those Quads would be a threat to The Four.”
A chill ran up his back. “Gods,” he breathed.
“All this time, I wondered why The Collector would bother to come to Torlioch and get me. I could never quite swallow that it was compassion. Why would they care about me? Why send a Quadron to test me, then The Collector to bring me here? But if I’m right about all this, it all makes sense. They need to make sure we come here, everyone who has magic. To them, we’re a big problem,” she said. “And they created the Champion’s Academy to solve it.”
“The academy is a trap.”
“Question is, what do we do?” she asked. “Run?”
He glanced at her. She sat cross-legged on the bed now. The woman was as naked as the day she was born, which usually made a person look vulnerable, but she looked deadly. The rage in her eyes reminded him of that first day she’d stabbed Royal. She didn’t look like she wanted to run.
Brom’s foreboding permeated him. Vale was right. This school was an alluring, deadly trap meant to draw in callow youths. He’d never imagined the entire Champion’s Academy could be a spider’s web to catch magic users. Brom thought maybe The Four were up to something, but he hadn’t believed they were intentionally trying to destroy him. But Vale was saying Brom was a sheep, brought here to be shorn or slaughtered, then pushed back into the lands once he’d been rendered harmless.
“They’re siphoning magic,” he said, suddenly guessing what the spell must be.
“What?”
“The spell. The green wisps were being pulled out of everyone, all the time. I bet they’re taking magic from us. Just a little bit, every time we open a Soulblock. Or maybe even when we don’t. It’s so little we’d never notice, but multiply that times three hundred students and staff and it’s...huge.”
“And how would we ever know the difference?” Vale murmured. “We’ve never known anything different.”
“They’re parasites,” he murmured.
She brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Brom shivered, feeling like every inch of his skin was being sucked by tiny invisible leeches. His heart beat faster.
“We can’t... We can’t stay here,” he whispered.
“So we run,” she said.
But running only meant that he and Vale would be hunted down and killed, like the Quadrons in the old entries she’d found. And once they left the school, they’d be as helpless as babes, with no magic and no Quad.
“No,” he said.
“No?”
If they stayed at the academy and stayed hidden, they could learn more, expand their magic, become more powerful. It was the only way they could fight The Four. They needed to know more.
“We stay,” he said. “Out of sight. We have to find a way to fight them.” Fight The Four. The idea was ludicrous. A thrill of fear went through him, but Vale grinned and jumped off the bed. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.
“Gods, you’re delicious,” she said. “We stay. We fight.”
“We’re going to get destroyed,” he said.
“But let’s spit in their faces first.”
“By the gods, we have a lot of work to do.”
“Yeah,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”
“Fun? You’re insane,” he said.
“I so am.”
CHAPTER NINE
Brom
Brom clung to the shadows as The Collector strode past him, black robes rustling. The setting sun made the alcove a pool of inky blackness, and Brom kept silent.
He could now see the flaming green bonfire above the tower of The Four every time he connected to the Soul of the World. The Soul seemed to want him to fly up, out of his body, and become part of the green fire spell again, but he resisted. The eyes had never reappeared to look for him, and Brom suspected it was because he hadn’t touched that vile spell again.
The first breath of winter had come to the Champion’s Academy a month ago, and it brought long days of falling snow. As the semester had worn on, snow drifts as deep as Brom’s knees had swept over Quadron Garden, making it look like a sea of white, with frozen waves cresting but never falling. Straight trenches cut across the pristine, sparkling waves where academy staff had shoveled the cobblestone walkways. The Collector’s boots made slight thumps as he walked the path. Two students hurried past the master, and Brom felt the touch of the master’s magic on them, reading them, seeing their souls. Neither student looked at the cloaked and cowled master, but he knew everything about them. The Collector was the academy’s Anima master, and he could see through both students like they were panes of glass.
But he didn’t see Brom.
Brom had plunged so deep into the Soul of the World that he couldn’t be seen by magic. His body could still be seen by anyone who could pierce the shadows in the alcove, but not with magic. To the questing mind of a Mentis, there would only be a thoughtless stone wall. To a Motus, just a wisp of winter wind. To an Anima, only the soul of the shadows would be apparent.
This was the last piece. This was why The Four hadn’t been able to detect him that night at the wall, and this would be his and Vale’s key to get into the tower of The Four.
Unwittingly, Brom had fallen deep into the Soul of the World that night at the wall. He had become one with the lands, and The Four hadn’t had any physical eyes to locate his body, so his soul had been invisible to them.
With this same method, he’d been able to hide himself from Royal the other day, testing the Impetu’s magically enhanced senses. The big man had never known Brom was trailing him. Next, he’d tried following Oriana on the way to the bath house.
She’d never caught a wisp of his thoughts.
Finally, he had experimented with Vale. It had been just as easy as the others. Impetu, Mentis, Motus. He’d almost considered the matter closed, that his ability to hide from magic was complete.
Then he’d spotted Caila and followed her. And she’d caught him. Surprised, he’d made small talk. He hadn’t told her specifically what he’d been doing, just that he was practicing magic. She’d congratulated him on the success of Quad Brilliant, said that it was good to see him, and they’d talked for a while before she went about her day.
Brom had redoubled his efforts and tried trailing her the next day. That time, he’d managed to pursue her without detection.
He’d thought hiding himself from an Ani
ma would be the easiest of all the paths. He knew the nature of Anima magic better than any of the others, after all, but it turned out that hiding from an Anima had been the most difficult by far. Perhaps an Anima looked deeper into a person. Perhaps it was harder to hide a soul than thoughts or emotions, but whatever the case, Brom stayed wary and he practiced. After trying to hide from students, he’d moved on to more difficult quarry: the masters.
At night, he’d placed himself in hidden alcoves near masters of the other paths, and he’d fooled them all. Master Saewyne. Master Tohn Gelu. Even the suspicious Master Jhaleen. They’d all walked past Brom without knowing he was lurking nearby.
Tonight, it was time to test himself against The Collector. And the master was actively using his Soulblock, reaching out and touching students. To fool him while he was actively using magic was a true test.
But he hadn’t seen Brom.
Of course The Collector didn’t know he was part of Brom’s practice any more than the other masters had known, but he’d served his purpose.
The Collector rounded the corner of the library and vanished from view. Giddy thrills rippled up Brom’s spine, and he almost laughed. Finally, after weeks, they were ready.
He thought of Vale and his thrill expanded. Vale...
Their secret project had turned into a secret society of two, a pair of lovers without boundaries. They worked on understanding The Four. They exercised together, running through the campus until they were sweaty, smiling and laughing. They delved into the secrets of the library, learning about the academy’s history, and they practiced their magic over and over.
He loved her sharp mind and how she always seemed excited to see him. He loved her fierce focus, her mischievousness, and the playful swing of her hips when she knew he was watching. Gods, he loved the very sound of her name: Vale...
He had never trusted anyone like he trusted her. She was dedicated to him and to their mission. She pushed him, challenged his thinking, made him better. She waited on his vision, hungry to follow. Her confidence in him filled his soul. Everything was possible when Vale was around. She was the wind and he was the ship.
Oriana and Royal knew nothing about any of it, of course, which was a source of unease for Brom. What he and Vale were doing was vitally important, but his guilt grew in the back of his mind like a fungus. If Oriana and Royal ever found out, he feared it would pull the Quad apart. They were making fools of Royal and Oriana, and that couldn’t end well unless it ended in exactly the right way.
However, though Oriana and Royal remained in blissful ignorance, the Quad had flourished more than ever. These secret activities burned brightly inside of Vale, and she shared that fire—if not the reason for it—with all of them, bolstering their optimism and driving them. For Royal, she still played the vulnerable and teasing little sister, and he glowed with protective instinct. No doubt he imagined his demand to follow the rules had created this next golden era of Quad Brilliant.
For Oriana, Vale continued to play the invaluable research assistant as the princess hungrily devoured tome after tome in the library, expanding the Quad’s collective education daily. Her eyes glinted with pride whenever she and Vale returned from the library with new information. And when they applied that knowledge in the practice room, Oriana looked on in approval like her leadership had created this next golden era of Quad Brilliant.
But while Brom felt guilty, Vale seemed to thrive on the deception. She saw that it was working, and that was all that mattered to her. She was comfortable with lies and manipulation. Vale seemed to have the ability to be comfortable with whatever was needed.
When Brom was sure The Collector was gone, he drew a deep breath of the frigid air. It was pure. Clean. He wanted to be pure and clean again. He didn’t want his soul cluttered with deception anymore. The sooner he and Vale found the needed proof that The Four were preying on the students, the sooner they could reveal almost all of their secrets to Royal and Oriana. What they currently had wasn’t enough. A few passages in an ancient text and Vale’s speculation simply wasn’t going to sway Oriana. And Royal wouldn’t see The Four as foes until stark evidence was shoved under his nose.
Gaining that evidence was going to be dangerous because there was only one way to do it. He and Vale were going to have to visit the tower of The Four and find the proof.
He felt a thrill at the thought, at the challenge. Who knew what else they’d see behind that wall that circled the tower? What wonders might be revealed?
The sun, nearly vanished, bled orange along a split in the clouds. At last, Brom emerged from the shadows, turned, and hiked up the path to Quadron Garden like he was any other student. He stepped high through the snow toward Westfall Dormitory, cutting through the drifts, uncaring of who saw him now.
He entered the marble building, shook off his cloak, and stamped his boots before heading to his room. Other students packed the hall, sitting and reading or talking with each other. Brom kept his head down and walked through them, though almost all gazes turned toward him.
Quad Brilliant had surpassed every other second-year Quad long ago. They’d been approved to work on third-year magic and, secretly, Vale and Brom were working on aspects of fourth-year magic. No second-year Quads challenged their dominance now. Brom had turned aside half a dozen requests for tutoring just this semester. He was sure Vale, Oriana, and Royal had received similar requests.
He climbed the steps and, once he was out of sight of the crowd below, began to grin again. Vale, having taken her studies as far as they could go, had been patiently waiting for him to master the Soul of the World. And he’d just performed his final test. She’d be excited to get started, and Brom felt a giddy optimism. Between her experience as a thief and his magic, The Four would never see them coming.
He entered his room, his eyes went wide, and he quickly shut the door behind himself.
Vale sat on his bed, wearing one of his own tunics and nothing else. One shoulder peeked out through the wide neck, and the bottom of the tunic rode high up her bronze legs to mid-thigh. Her dark wavy hair framed her mischievous face, and her eyes glinted.
Her actual clothes were neatly folded at the foot of his bed.
“There are students in the hall,” he whispered urgently, hands on the door as though someone was going to try to shove it open. “Right outside on the balcony. Someone could have seen you.”
She crinkled her nose. “Exciting, isn’t it? I was naked for a while, but I’ve been waiting for an hour. I got cold.”
“Gods...” he breathed, letting go of the door. He almost said I love you, but he held the words back. “You are...radiant.”
His overlarge tunic created a loose, plunging neckline on her, revealing the shadowed curve of her small breasts. Her smooth thigh and hip were on full display through the slit in the side, and he couldn’t look away. Desire and excitement rushed through him. He wanted to tell her about his success with The Collector, but he also wanted to pounce on her.
“We are taking tonight off,” she announced. “You’ve been bound up trying to master the Soul of the World for weeks. Weeks!” She rose to hands and knees and stretched like a cat. “You soul-mongers have this need to feel...fluid,” she purred. “Well, I’m here to help. We are going to relax you.”
Languidly, she put one foot on the floor, and then the other, then moved to him. He felt the warmth of her small body as she pressed against him, felt the liveliness of her soul through his magic. She ran a finger up his chest, his neck, then flicked it off the end of his chin playfully. She always did that before they made love, like it was some kind of signature. She might as well have pointed at the bed and said, “Lie down.”
It made him smile. She slid her arms around his neck and pulled his head down. Her lips were hot against his ear. “Get these clothes off.” She tugged at his tunic.
Brom plunged his fingers into her wild hair and pushed it back from her face while she worked at his belt. He let the Soul of the World flow in
to her, and she sighed as she felt it.
“I can’t fight you,” he murmured.
“You really can’t.” She pushed him onto the bed, and he surrendered.
And she was right. By the time they had finished, he was relaxed. Day had turned to night. Kelto had risen. That thin crescent of indigo sent glimmers across the snow-covered trees outside. She snuggled into him, her leg across his, her head in the crook of his shoulder. She brushed her fingers across the stubble on his chin, back and forth, making a rhythmic scratching noise.
“This must be what happiness feels like,” she murmured.
“Happiness feels like a stubbly cheek?”
She stuck a knuckle into his ribs, tickling him. “You know what I mean,” she said.
He chuckled, flinching away from her for a moment, then settling easily back into her arms.
“When I was young,” she said, “I thought I knew what people meant when they said they were happy. I thought it meant having a full belly. I thought it meant those moments when I wasn’t afraid. But that’s not happiness. Real happiness is...” she said, “it’s this. It’s nice.”
“I love you,” he said softly, stroking her hair.
Her hand stopped moving against his cheek. Her neck became an iron bar against his shoulder, and her thigh tensed where it touched him, like she was about to jump up.
“Oh,” she said after a long silence. Oh was such a small word—barely even a word at all—but it said volumes.
He craned his neck to look at her. “I didn’t mean to spook you. I’ve just... I’ve been feeling it for a while. I thought I should say it out loud.”
She laughed, and that wasn’t what he’d expected. She tried to make the laugh relaxed and easy, but it sounded forced. Her whole body was knotted up like a rope.
“I didn’t think that you...” she began but trailed off. “Perhaps that was naive of me,” she said, more to herself than to him.
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