Reluctantly Coralie let me go. Saffron gave me a warm smile and, to my surprise, Finnian gave me a quick hug.
“I’ll admit, you almost had us worried there,” he said. “For a brief second.”
“You wouldn’t believe the commotion.” Coralie tugged me toward the dining hall. “A trainee kidnapped during the exams! No one has ever heard of such a thing.”
“We’d only just finished the written part of the exam when chaos broke loose. There seemed to be smoke everywhere, and Lorcan was running around bellowing, assembling a team to go after you.” Finnian grinned at me. “Naturally I volunteered, but he almost bit my head off and ordered me back to the examination room.”
Coralie rolled her eyes. “Show off. You were just snooping around, trying to find out what all the fuss was about.”
“At your instigation, if I remember correctly,” he said, without heat.
“Of course, we were dying to know what happened,” said Coralie. “But Redmond came in and said the exams must continue, with or without Lorcan.”
“The pompous—”
“Finnian!” Saffron cut off her cousin’s muttered insult.
He just turned his grin on her. “What? He is, and you know it.”
Coralie ignored them both. “So Walden had to take the head’s place. It’s a wonder we all passed given all the distractions.”
A horrible thought washed over me. Exams. Passing.
“Except me.” I swallowed. “I didn’t get to finish mine. And Redmond was just waiting to fail me, too.”
“Well, no one will give us any details, of course…” Finnian looked at me hopefully, but I just shook my head at him, having no intention of revealing Lucas’s involvement if they didn’t already know of it.
Finnian sighed. “But Lorcan managed to find and rescue you, it seems. And he said you did most of the saving yourself using all sorts of advanced compositions, so he declared your exam a pass.”
I almost collapsed in relief, Coralie steadying me.
“Are you sure you’re ready to be let out of Acacia’s rooms?” she asked.
I shook her off with a smile.
“Of course. She said I’ve been out two days!”
Finnian clapped a hand to his heart. “The longest two days of my life.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Saffron. “He’s spent the two days in utter bliss, lazing around doing nothing but eating and teasing us all.”
“A man needs some pleasures in life.”
Coralie shoved him.
“So we did it.” I tried to take the thought in. “We all passed.”
“Yes, yes we did.” Coralie glanced at me sideways. “Although a certain prince disappeared just as the beginnings of the commotion broke out. He only got back in time to take his exam with the fourth years.”
“The advantages of being royal,” said Finnian. “Not a single instructor even questioned him, while I was soundly reprimanded for simply setting foot outside the examination room.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t fail you on the spot,” said Saffron darkly.
I felt my cheeks flush again at the mention of Lucas, the memory of our kiss searing across my mind. I quickly changed the subject.
“So I guess that means we’ll all be back together for second year soon enough. Have most of the students already left?”
“I think at least half of them are hanging around to get a glimpse of you, to be honest,” said Finnian.
I bit my lip. So I was once again to be the spectacle of the Academy.
Then I remembered my epiphany in the midst of my kidnapping. My back straightened. Let them stare. I was done trying to hide from it.
I entered the dining hall with my head held high and paid no attention to the whispering hiss that swept through the room. But one thing hadn’t changed. My eyes still sought out a certain dark head.
He sat at his normal table, with the twins beside him, although there was no sign of Weston or Lavinia. He looked up at the commotion, his eyes moving to our group as we walked toward the first year tables. But his eyes didn’t stop, traveling over me as lightly as he did my friends. Something in me deflated.
Coralie chattered on, glaring down Finnian’s attempts to press me for details of my kidnapping and talking of her plans for the remainder of the summer instead. I barely heard either of them.
The smell of food hit me hard, and my painfully empty stomach made itself felt. I filled a plate and began to eat, despite my distracted mind.
“Acacia said no questions. She’s supposed to have a chance to rest.” Coralie glared at Finnian.
My eyes strayed down the line of tables of their own volition. Lucas listened to something Calix was saying with a bored expression. He didn’t look my way.
Any desire to answer my friends’ questions fled, and I was grateful for Acacia’s orders. Apparently even I didn’t know what had happened in that alley. Had I just dreamed it all? Because now that I was back in the Academy, nothing seemed to have changed.
“Natalya!” The voice from the doorway rang across the dining hall, and Natalya leaped to her feet and rushed over to embrace Lavinia.
“You’ll come to visit me, of course,” Lavinia said with obnoxious volume.
Natalya smiled and linked her arm with her friend’s. “Only if you promise to visit me first.”
I watched them stroll out into the entrance hall, leaving both doors wide open. No doubt so we could all observe the important looking retinue that had come to collect the Stantorns. I could see Weston, hanging to one side and looking bored by his cousin’s theatrics.
But just as I was turning back to my food, something caught my eye.
I leaped to my feet, ignoring my friends’ curious questions, and hurried across the hall toward the doors. Bursting out into the corridor, I strode the few steps to the entrance hall, but the Stantorn group had already swept from the building, carrying Natalya with them.
I hurried after them just as another group entered the Academy, filling the great doorway. Impatiently I shouldered my way through the crowd, ignoring their protests, and emerged at the top of the stairs.
“What do you want?” asked Natalya.
Two carriages were already rumbling toward the open gates.
“Who was that? With Lavinia?”
Natalya eyed me with displeasure. We didn’t normally attempt any sort of conversation.
I turned to glare at her. “Well?”
She flicked her hair over her shoulder, having for once left it free of its usual practical style. “That was Lavinia’s family, of course.”
“Stantorns then? All of them?”
She frowned at me. “What is wrong with you? Don’t tell me you’ve lived with us for a year, and you still don’t know what families we all come from. Of course they were Stantorns.” She turned on her heel and disappeared inside, leaving me grinding my teeth, alone on the top step.
But I wasn’t alone for long. And I didn’t need to turn to see who had come up beside me. I could sense his presence, although I wished I wasn’t so attuned to it.
“Have you spoken to Lorcan?”
“Excuse me?” Now I did turn to face him. That was all the greeting I was to get?
His eyes held a warmth I hadn’t expected given his earlier dismissal, but his words remained calmly practical.
“Have you spoken to Lorcan since you woke up?”
“No,” I said stiffly, looking back out across the courtyard.
“They conducted an investigation while you were unconscious. The two men who kidnapped you died in custody before they could talk.” He shifted. “Like the criminals who attacked you in the city.”
“What? They died? No one ever said—”
He kept talking. “Lorcan has concluded the two attacks were connected. Perhaps the first one was a test, as you suspected. But I don’t think these two were meant to be expandable like the previous lot. They left behind a bread trail to follow.”
He paus
ed.
“Well?” I asked, my mind still on the long-disappeared carriages. “Where did it lead?”
“Kallorway.” His voice was grim.
“Kallorway?” I turned to stare at him. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “It can’t be.”
“On the contrary.” He shook his head. “I wish we were impervious to their incursion, but I am afraid that is far from true. It seems they heard we had discovered something new—a new way to wield power—and they thought to steal our secret weapon.”
I wasn’t really listening, my head shaking. “I don’t think it was Kallorway.”
He raised both eyebrows. “Oh? You doubt Lorcan’s investigation? I suppose the two men confessed their whole plan to you before you knocked them both out?”
“You just said they died. The men who attacked me.”
Lucas regarded me with narrow eyes, not bothering to confirm his earlier words.
“Well, that’s impossible because I just saw one.”
“Excuse me?”
“I just saw one.”
“Is that why you leaped up and rushed out here like a maniac? Where is he then?” The prince looked around as if he expected the man to jump out from behind the fountain or something.
I ignored his condescending tone.
“I saw him through the door. He was with the group who had come to collect Lavinia and Weston.” I looked at him significantly. “The Stantorns. He was a Stantorn, or one of their servants, I suppose. I rushed straight out, but they’d all made it into their carriages before I could get here. But if you sent someone after them, I bet you could still catch—”
“You saw him through the doorway, standing in the middle of a large group?” Lucas shook his head. “You’ve just woken up after two days of unconsciousness, Elena. No one’s going to blame you if you’re a bit wobbly at first. But they would certainly blame me if I pursued a set of Stantorn carriages and started making wild accusations. It sounds to me like you could have seen anyone.”
I glared at him, tears springing to my eyes which only made me angrier.
“How can you say that? You weren’t there in my exam. You didn’t see the way Annika and Casimir looked at me. But you were there at that council meeting when they voted for my execution. Is it really so unbelievable that members of Stantorn and Devoras might have decided that I was going to pass my exam, and therefore they needed to take action of their own to be rid of me?”
Lucas hissed in a breath. If there had been warmth in his eyes earlier, it was gone now. “That’s Duchess Annika and Duke Casimir you’re talking about, remember. The council voted. They lost. Which means you just accused two of the most powerful families in the kingdom of treason. You need to watch your words, Elena of Kingslee.”
I stiffened. “I know what I saw.”
He shook his head. “You know what you think you saw.” He looked at me for a moment, and something in his face softened.
“I know them,” he said. “I’m half a Stantorn myself, so it’s my relatives you’re talking about. You don’t need any special insight to realize that most of the Devoras family are hot-headed and that to be a Stantorn is to be intractable.” His eyes lingered on my face. “Kind of like someone else I know.”
I frowned and looked away.
“But for all their hot-headedness and intractability, both families are loyal. They would never work against the council.”
Tears still stung at my eyes, so I kept my face averted. Maybe I had dreamed everything that had happened in that alley because clearly the prince had no great fondness for me.
Silence stretched between us before Lucas gave an exasperated sigh.
“Believe what you want, but I strongly suggest you refrain from any more accusations. We’ll be back here for second year soon enough, and you have enough trouble on your head as it is. We all do.” He paused, but I neither spoke nor looked at him. He sighed again, before whispering his final words. “You are infuriating, Elena of Kingslee.”
And then he was gone.
For a long moment, I couldn’t move. So I hadn’t imagined it then.
Hurt and anger fought for dominance, but neither could suppress the other. All those significant looks, all those words with their hidden meanings. The times he had seemed to step in to defend me. Even our silent study in the library. Somehow, when I hadn’t been paying attention, I had allowed myself to believe he was on my side. That in his own strange and arrogant way, the prince of Ardann was trying to protect me.
And then I had let him kiss me, had spent my last energy to protect him. And even though he had subsequently ignored me in the public setting of the dining hall, he had sought me out the moment I was alone—and I hadn’t been able to prevent the spark of hope and warmth I felt at the sound of his voice.
But I had been a fool. Whatever interest he had in me, it was the same interest that consumed Lorcan and Jessamine. Interest in the Spoken Mage, not in Elena the person. When it came down to it, I was just a commonborn girl to him. Someone to be dismissed rather than consulted. Naive and foolish in the ways of mages and of court. Someone who couldn’t be trusted, who imagined enemies where there were none. Who insulted his family.
And now danger hung over my head, but there was nothing I could do about it. Because if the prince himself told me to let it go, if Lorcan had investigated and found some enemy far away in another kingdom, who did I have left to turn to? No one. My only friends here were as powerless as me.
I tried to remind myself that the existence of my friends was something of a miracle in itself, even if they could do nothing to help me now. Somehow, despite everything, I had made friends here at the Academy. I just had to remember that Lucas wasn’t one of them. And he certainly wasn’t more than a friend.
As if conjured by my thoughts, Coralie appeared beside me. She leaned her head on my shoulder and gazed out over the courtyard.
“I’m going to miss you over the summer,” she said. “I would never have guessed that when I first heard about your arrival at the beginning of the year.”
I shook my head, trying to shake away the memory of Lucas and hold on to the bright moments of my year. “And I never guessed at the beginning of the year that I’d still be alive at this point.”
“Cheery,” said Finnian, strolling out to join us. “You are—as always—our ray of sunshine.”
I grinned at him. “I definitely never imagined I’d be friends with the son of a duke.”
“Well, you can’t hold that against me. None of us get to choose our family.”
“Family!” I straightened. Somehow in all the chaos I had forgotten. “I get to go home now and see my family!”
Finnian slung an arm over Coralie’s shoulders. “See how quickly we are forgotten, Fair Coralie.”
She shoved him off. “Speak for yourself.”
Sudden concern filled me. “That’s assuming I’m even allowed to go home now.”
“I’m sure you will be,” said Finnian. “Lorcan was looking for you earlier and mentioned something about conditions you needed to agree to. So it sounds like you’ll be allowed to leave, although no doubt these conditions will be ridiculous and over the top.”
I wrapped them both into a group embrace. “Never mind that, you two. I don’t care what they are. I’m going home!” I pulled back and gave them a broad smile. “But, come autumn, I’ll be back. So don’t go forgetting me.”
Coralie shook her head, smiling back at me. “As if anyone could do that.”
Finnian, however, didn’t smile, his face unusually serious. “You’re the change that is going to turn our kingdom upside down. No one will ever forget you, Spoken Mage. You mark my words.”
Note from the Author
Read Voice of Command, The Spoken Mage Book 2 to find out what happens to Elena and Lucas in their second year at the Academy.
To be kept informed of the release of books 3 and 4, Voice of Dominion and Voice of Life, and of bonus shorts in the Spoken Mage world, plea
se sign up to my mailing list at www.melaniecellier.com.
Want more fantasy, romance, adventure, and intrigue? Try A Dance of Silver and Shadow, the first book in my Beyond the Four Kingdoms series in which twelve princesses must do a lot more than just dance when they get caught up in a dangerous and magical competition.
Thank you for taking the time to read my book. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please spread the word! You could start by leaving a review on Amazon (or Goodreads or Facebook or any other social media site). Your review would be very much appreciated and would make a big difference!
ROYAL FAMILY OF ARDANN
King Stellan
Queen Verena
Crown Princess Lucienne
Prince Lucas
MAGE COUNCIL
Academy Head (black robe) - Duke Lorcan of Callinos
University Head (black robe) - Duchess Jessamine of Callinos
Head of Law Enforcement (red robe) - Duke Lennox of Ellington
Head of the Seekers (gray robe) - Duchess Phyllida of Callinos
Head of the Healers (purple robe) - Duke Dashiell of Callinos
Head of the Growers (green robe) - Duchess Annika of Devoras
Head of the Wind Workers (blue robe) - Duke Magnus of Ellington
Head of the Creators (orange robe) - Duke Casimir of Stantorn
Head of the Armed Forces (silver robe) - General Griffith of Devoras
Head of the Royal Guard (gold robe) - General Thaddeus of Stantorn
Acknowledgments
It was a long time ago now that my imagination was first captured by the statement that the tongue has the power of life and death. I’m excited to have finished my first book in a new fantasy world where that idea is true in its most literal sense, as well as my first non-fairy tale retelling. Although of course there are fairy tale elements there for anyone looking to find them—from the requirement of one soldier per family which is such an important element of the ancient tale of Hua Mulan to the handsome prince whose hair somehow manages to always look better than anyone else’s. Given my love of happily ever afters, I can’t imagine I’ll ever entirely stray away from my fairy tale roots, but I’ve enjoyed the chance to explore a whole new fictional world.
Voice of Power (The Spoken Mage Book 1) Page 27