by Keary Taylor
Rise of the Mage
Resurrecting Magic - Book One
Keary Taylor
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Don’t Miss The Next Book
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About the Author
Copyright © 2020 Keary Taylor
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
First Edition: March 2020
Cover art by Orina Kafe
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Taylor, Keary, 1987-
Rise of the Mage (Resurrecting Magic): a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
Also by Keary Taylor
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Garden of Thorns Trilogy
Crown of Death Saga
THE FALL OF ANGELS TRILOGY
THE NERON RISING SAGA
THE EDEN TRILOGY
THE McCAIN SAGA
WHAT I DIDN’T SAY
Also by T.L. Keary (thriller/suspense pen name)
THREE HEART ECHO
OUR LAST CONFESSION
SKIN AND BONE
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Chapter One
As I stood in front of the main doors, I wondered if, somehow, I was missing something in this whole experience. I watched dozens of others racing through the doors or across the perfectly manicured lawns, their eyes wide, maybe a little panicked. Some looked exceptionally ambitious. Most were excited.
I wasn’t feeling the same things they were.
I wasn’t feeling nervous. I didn’t feel lost. I wasn’t excited to be in a new place.
I just felt comfortable.
Maybe even a tiny bit bored.
My eyes studied the façade of Alderidge University. I’d heard it described as a cross between a castle and a Southern plantation. Something that had been born of both Scottish and Mississippi parents. A mix of rock and brick climbed up its face. Great pillars held up the overhang of the main doors. There were four main spires along the front of the building. Over the years, more buildings had been added, all grouped together in 150 square acres along the edge of the water here in Harrington, Massachusetts.
It was all beautiful, except for the north wing, which had been damaged by a storm and then a fire twenty years ago, and no one had ever bothered to fix it.
I knew I was lucky to attend. Alderidge was a prestigious university. I was grateful to be here.
But here was where I’d been every day for my entire life.
“Margot.” The most familiar voice in my whole world startled me. I turned, my bag slung over my shoulder, and found my father walking up, coming from the direction I’d just come. “Not going to give me a bad reputation on your first day, are you? Can’t have the daughter of a professor not showing up on time.”
A little smile pulled on my lips. “Have I ever done anything to embarrass you?” I asked, giving him a look.
“Well, you are eighteen,” he said, a controlled smile pulling on his face. “I hear this is the usual time for young people to begin rebelling.” Except he knew me, and the look on his face told me he never wondered if I’d go off the deep end.
I gave him a smile. “Come on,” I said, inclining my head to the doors. “You can walk me to my first class.”
His eyes shone with appreciation, but he held it together well, and just gave a nod. Side-by-side, we stepped forward, down the cobbled pathway to the front doors.
With the weather still perfect at the end of August, the others around me wore skirts and long stockings, thin button-ups, and linen trousers. The skin would soon disappear, and we would all be wearing thick coats, scarves, hats, and gloves. Anything to combat the chill of New England winters.
But for now, every one of us was enjoying the fair weather.
“Morning,” I greeted Professor Garrett, my father’s closest friend. He rushed down the hall, but offered a quick smile and a dramatic, overwhelmed expression to draw a laugh from both of us. And right behind him was Professor Rogers, who gave me a quick hug and a wish for good luck.
None of these other students knew anything about their professors, yet I considered half of them friends, and the other half had known me since I was just a little girl following my parents around campus.
I knew exactly where I was going when I turned left down a hallway and aimed for the second door on the left. I stopped in the doorway, adjusted the bag slung over my shoulder and looked up at my dad.
Professor Arthur Bell had my same sandy blonde hair and the same ever-so-slight dip in his chin. But while my eyes were blue, his were green. My nose was button shaped, and his was long. The crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes were getting longer by the night. I told him it was because of his habit of reading by candlelight, despite it being the twentieth century. The squinting was making him age.
“I’d say good luck, but I know you’re already going to embarrass every other student in there,” Dad said, his eyes roving over my face. “I’m still angry with Laurence that he wouldn’t advance you.”
“She’s still a freshman,” Laurence called from within the classroom.
“Who’s known Latin since she was twelve,” my dad called back to his friend. There was real irritation in his voice.
“Freshman!” Laurence called back.
I just chuckled and shook my head, in almost exactly the same way my father did. “It’s okay. Since when is having an easy semester a bad thing?”
My dad shook his head and pulled me into a hug. Yes, my face flushed a little at that, and my eyes darted around, noting all the other students witnessing this father-daughter moment.
I didn’t care that much. But I did care a little.
“Well, you’ve already got an honorary degree, in my opinion,” my dad said, squeezing me just once more before he released me. With a firm grip on my upper arms, he looked me in the eyes. “I’m proud of you, Margot. You’re going to destroy them all.”
I huffed a little laugh, shaking my head at him. But I smiled in appreciation, then watched as he walked away, down the hall, his leather briefcase, the same one he’d had since I was a toddler, clutched in his left hand.
I watched four other students walk into the classroom. All freshman, all similar eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, ready to start the next four years of their lives.
I let out one deep breath and stepped into the class to join my peers.
Latin, Writing, and Social Studies comprised my classes for the day. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were my heavier days. Tuesdays and Thursdays were for my elective classes, World Geography and Physical Education.
By my first Friday evening as a college student, I had four homework assignments to work on.
I’d made zero friends yet.
Not that I’d ever been very good at that.
My parents always said I had an old soul. I wondered if that was true or if it was simply because I’d grown up as the only child of two university professors. I’d never been given the chance to be around other kids, so that had made it difficult to make friends with people my own age.
Middle school was horrific. High school had gotten slightly easier. I made a few good friends, my circle small, but tight.
But then we all graduated school. We all headed in different directions. And I was the only one who stayed here and went to Alderidge.
I was back at square one, feeling like an outsider in my own age group.
So, while others around me talked about going to parties and their weekend plans to go to the beach, I gathered my homework, put it in my bag, and headed to the library.
It was located at the back of the University. Right in the middle of the main building, to me, it was the heart and soul of the school that had been around since 1723, nearly two and a half centuries old. As I stepped through the central set of doors, I stopped for just a moment, taking it in.
The study space was set centrally. Three lines of tables, eight rows deep. Huge chandeliers hung over the outside rows of tables. Once upon a time, they held candles. I wondered how they ever lit them, they were so exceptionally high. But now they’d been converted for electricity and used lightbulbs.
Wood beams stretched throughout the vaulted space. Toward the back was the circulation desk, where the librarians helped students find what was needed. The desk was old, a huge thing made of oak. Just behind it, was a massive stained-glass window that looked out at the Atlantic Ocean and cast streaks of light throughout the entire space.
Stacks of bookshelves branched off from the study area. At first in neat rows, dozens deep. But there had been wings added over the years. Entire rooms just for poetry or history books. Offices that once housed some of the world’s most renowned scholars were now converted to individual libraries or reservable study rooms. There were spiral staircases rising up to the second floor, where there were even more books, all stacked on wooden shelves far older than even Professor Campbell.
Goosebumps rose on my arms as I took it all in.
This was my world.
This was where I found myself. Where I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I could spend an entire day lost in a book and it would be a day well spent. I’d gotten lost in new worlds and old fairy tales. I knew every myth and legend of the Greeks and Egyptians.
I loved stories. Old and new.
I smiled as I stepped inside and made my way through the study tables, back to the section I knew would hold the volume I looked for.
There were others here. I wasn’t the only student studying instead of playing. This was Alderidge, after all. You didn’t get in unless you had exceptional study habits and a sharp mind. So I wasn’t surprised to find a dozen others spread throughout the tables, another dozen or so visible as they wandered through the stacks of books.
While other schools had fraternities and sororities, we had the Society Boys.
You couldn’t join the Society Boys. You couldn’t be hazed into it. There was no rush week. You had to be born into the exclusive circle.
The members came from old families, old money, and old power. They were the descendants of the Royalty our country had fought to free ourselves from. The grandsons of the tycoons of New York. The heirs of land barons of the west.
I’d known about the Society Boys my whole life. I’d watched the rotation of new and older boys coming and going. I’d seen the terrible things they did to each other, to those outside their circle. The competition and the undercutting. I’d seen the hazing they’d put gullible outsiders through, making them think they could one day join their exclusive Society.
They all lived in one house just outside of campus. It was massive, a mansion you had to buy into. The Boys threw parties that were unbelievable, because they had endless amounts of money. Their second largest one was this week, when they established their place at this school as the top dogs.
That was a part of the reason why it was so quiet in here tonight.
We’d never looked in each other’s direction twice. I was the daughter of professors, and we would never be rich or powerful. I wasn’t a stuck-up asshole, so they would never be my friends.
Maybe I was done with friends.
Do adults continue to make friends, unless it’s at work?
I ignored the other students as I headed toward the far back reaches of the library, where the Latin volumes were. I was well familiar with the book we’d been assigned. I’d read it twice my sophomore year of high school. But it had been enough years that I didn’t mind a refresher.
A set of double glass doors was pushed open in this room. It smelled of old paper—yellowed and aged—and smoke, even though fires were never permitted in that old fireplace anymore. Only two of the study rooms in the whole library still allowed them.
My eyes roved over the titles, well worn, some had entirely disappeared from the spines. I hadn’t read them all, but I’d gone through at least a quarter of them. I had a goal to make it through them all by the time I took my own professorship here.
I stepped across the room and my eyes trailed down the shelf, searching for the assigned title. But they skipped from one to the next.
It wasn’t here. Not a single copy.
I huffed a noise of annoyance.
I turned on my heel and walked out the doors. I weaved my way through the aisles, the few students, and cut down the farthest row, my eyes fixed on the desk.
I slowed as I approached it. I’d known the head librarian, Mrs. Walker, my entire life. She’d been a close friend of my mother’s and they were close to the same age. She’d had assistants, changing every single year, students, working in exchange for scholarships.
But they were always, always women.
There was no one at the desk, except for one man, sorting through books in a way that told me he was in fact, working.
He wore slacks and a button up shirt. Most of the male students wore suits—Alderidge men certainly abided by the saying “dress to impress.” The Society Boys made it a point to flaunt how much they had spent on their suits and ties and shoes.
I could tell this man wasn’t wealthy. The clothes were basic. But they were exceptionally well cared for.
His hair was somewhere between blond and brown, depending on how the light hit it. It was neatly parted and combed.
I studied his face as he looked down at the books and continued his work. There was something slightly hollow, maybe even gaunt about it. His eyes looked tired, his cheekbones told me he didn’t eat enough. He was tall and lean, and as I watched him sort through the tomes, I noted his long fingers.
There was something elegant about him, but also a little bit savage and feral. His hands were covered in scars.
I realized suddenly that those long fingers had stopped moving.
My eyes slid up, and his were locked on me.
He’d caught me staring.
“May I help you?” he asked.
His voice was lower than I expected. His words were also quiet. His voice was the kind that sent vibrations right down into the center of your chest and left you wondering how it ever had the power to make it all the way there.
“You work here.” I said it more as a statement than a question, because I knew the answer, but the words slipped out before I could reason with my brain and my lips.
The look in his green eyes darkened slightly. “And here the world claims to be so progress
ive,” he says. “Civil Rights are moving forward by leaps and bounds, women are going to get NASA to the moon, yet the whole of Alderidge gapes at the male librarian assistant.”
“No,” I said, my words jumping out too loud and quick. “It’s not like that, I think it’s actually great. I just…I’ve lived here my whole life, recognize a pretty good chunk of the students, but you don’t look familiar. I didn’t realize Mrs. Walker was taking freshman assistants.”
He closed the book that had been lying open, his eyes and hands returning to the books. “This is my third year at Alderidge. I’m a junior.”
“Oh,” I said, my lips closing in surprise. “I…I’m sorry. I don’t know how I’ve missed you.”
“You’re not the only one,” he said, looking back at me briefly. His gaze very quickly shifted up and down. “But you’re not wrong. I prefer to stay in the background.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of his statement. Now that I’d seen him, I wasn’t sure how I could have ever missed him. One, for his height. He was lean, which made him seem taller than he really was. And two, in just the way he looked. There was something a little…dangerous about his appearance. Like he had nothing to prove, but everything to lose, from his pressed slacks to his hair.
“I’m Margot Bell,” I said, extending my hand. I watched as his eyes looked at it. Two seconds passed, and I felt my heartbeat quicken, though I didn’t know why.