Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  I swallowed and spoke calmly. “My one and only aim was to save Ivria. I submit to any process required for you to be certain you’ve obtained the truth from me. I’ve brought the diadem holding Callista’s retired elicrin stone, which allows the possessor to see the tru—”

  “That won’t be necessary.” King Tiernan, sitting two seats to the right of the throne, beckoned the Neutralizer. The guard circled me and pried the box from my fingers. I opened my mouth to argue but instead clenched my teeth and let him take the gift without resistance.

  “We cannot have someone on trial in possession of an elicrin stone, even a retired one with limited power,” the king explained.

  “Furthermore, your good intentions are not under scrutiny.” Professor Strather, my instructor in Curses and Forbidden Rituals, raised her crackling voice. “Nor are the events of the night in question.”

  “Rather, we are here to determine the consequences for defying the Conclave’s tenets,” Neswick added. “All your life, you have been taught to revere and respect the Water. You were told time and time again that there is only one circumstance under which you may touch it: with the permission of the Conclave, once we’ve established that you possess both the magical capacity to survive and the moral fiber to be a leader in this realm.”

  Feeling off-balance, I raked in a deep breath. I could prove good intentions, but I couldn’t argue against the result of my actions.

  “In that case,” I began, turning the word pliable over and over, “I will say that I have always respected the tenets. I never had any intention of breaking them, and would only do so in dire need. While my cousin fought to escape the Water…” I cleared my throat, blinking away traitorous tears. “I was not thinking of rules and consequences.”

  The despair of that night slammed against my chest, nearly evicting a stray sob. But I swallowed it like caustic medicine. Emotion, however appropriate to the occasion, suggested instability.

  “I plan to comply with the tenets the Conclave has erected,” I went on. “To continue my training so that I can learn to be an elicromancer above reproach, for as long as I hold—” I stopped short, realizing I couldn’t swear on an elicrin stone I did not possess. “For as long as I live.”

  Professor Strather nodded her approval. She was one of my strictest instructors. I felt a trace of tension leave my shoulders.

  An elicromancer with angular features and cutting blue eyes spoke up. “When one manages to peel away the emotional layers of what happened to you and Ivria—a difficult task on the day of her funeral, but a necessary one—the fact remains that you touched the Water. You disrupted the process of an approved pupil becoming an elicromancer, leaving great destruction in your wake.”

  The man did not speak the accusation that Ander had—perhaps decorum would not allow for such a conjecture—but I heard it all the same. And I began to wonder if it was true. What if my heedless decision, rather than any inherent unworthiness on her part, had caused Ivria’s death?

  Again, the record keeper dipped his quill and wrote on despite the silence.

  “I must agree that her actions demonstrate not only a disregard for foundational tenets, but also a lack of trust in the Conclave’s decisions,” Neswick added. “We had already approved Ivria for her ceremony.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, we would confiscate your elicrin stone,” said the sharp-eyed elicromancer. “But as you mysteriously do not possess one, we will have to look into other options.”

  “She is only a pupil,” Professor Strather said, drumming her fingertips on her knee. “She is permitted a strike on her record before facing punitive measures.”

  “A pupil is a child who has not yet entered the Water,” said the other elicromancer. “She is eighteen years old—”

  “Seventeen,” I corrected.

  “—and as her instructor, you have attested to her intellectual acumen as well as her grasp of the tenets. We must treat her as an adult and hold her accountable for her carelessness. She caused an innocent girl to die. Moreover, she demolished the source of all elicrin power, the consequences of which could very well plunge this realm into chaos.”

  Each word felt like a spit to the face. So much for decorum tying tongues and sparing me outright accusations.

  A man with heavy-lidded eyes spoke up. “As a mortal, I’m concerned by the thought of letting a young woman with destructive magic and a disregard for rules leave this chamber with nothing but a slap on the wrist. The only answer is to imprison her, isolate her in a solitary cell, and forbid her to practice magic. At least until we know more about this power of hers.”

  I stared at him, mouth agape. By his tone, I might have thought he was suggesting sending me to the kitchens to scour pots. The idea of the palace dungeons had always disturbed me, ever since I was young and witnessed a crippled old thief being hauled off by guards. Ivria had comforted me by telling me that prisoners ate the same meals as us, and that the cells were no worse than the academy dormitories. Whether she believed it herself, I couldn’t say.

  “Forgive me, but this is absurd,” Professor Strather said. “We must base her consequences on what she has done, not what she might do. Which one of us wouldn’t break a tenet to save a loved one?”

  “That is not how tenets work,” the keen-eyed elicromancer said. “They are to be obeyed regardless of emotion or intuition directed by base instincts.”

  “Base instincts?” I cried. The Neutralizer who had escorted me here shifted his stance. I cooled my combative tone. “Please. I admit that I acted carelessly, but I’m not dangerous.” The creaking of withering trees and snapping chair legs shot through my mind—the sounds of accidental destruction resulting from my anger. “To hold me prisoner, to forbid an elicromancer to practice magic—”

  “The problem is that we can’t be certain that’s what you are,” Neswick interjected, as somber as a royal portrait.

  I was short a reply, but Professor Strather rushed to my defense again. “Inasmuch as she touched the Water, survived, and emerged with new magical abilities, she is.”

  “You must decide, Professor Strather, whether she is a fledgling pupil or an elicromancer, not whichever is convenient to your argument,” Neswick replied. “Regardless, I think we can agree that decisive action is crucial to maintaining public trust in the Conclave. Punishment for breaking a tenet is harsh for that reason, and if we cannot confiscate her elicrin stone we must do something to guarantee public safety.” Neswick turned to his peers. “I would like to bring the matter to a vote.”

  “Aren’t we being a bit hasty?” Victor asked. He snapped his knuckles in the silence while I worried that he would fail to embroider his statement. But he continued, “Perhaps we should learn more about her power and how we might control it before going to such extreme measures.”

  “And do what with her in the meantime?” asked the mortal who had suggested imprisonment.

  “Let us vote,” Neswick said. “We can continue investigating, but we cannot simply let a tenet-breaker walk free.”

  “Especially one who has shown great propensity for destruction,” the sharp-featured elicromancer added.

  “Those in favor of the aforementioned penalties?” Neswick asked.

  Five hands rose. The immense room seemed to shrink the way the palace had shrunk after the three of us children had probed every secret corner. Victor, Professor Strather, two mortals, and King Tiernan did not move.

  The vote was split evenly.

  “If you’ll indulge me but a moment,” King Tiernan said, leaning forward. “Ivria Ermetarius—may light surround her—picked locks to reach the portal and snuck in under cover of night. She did not set a date for her ceremony, and therefore the Conclave could not supervise the ritual or prevent a family member like Valory from indulging her protective instincts. Ivria may not be here to assume some responsibility for the night’s events, but that should not leave Valory to take it all upon herself.”

  “What penalty do you de
em appropriate, Your Majesty?” Neswick asked in a moderate tone that disguised impatience.

  “She is a grieving girl overwhelmed by her magic. Locking her up, alone in the dark, angry and frightened, will hardly help her learn to tame her power. I propose that Valory remain confined to her rooms, with Brandar here acting as her personal escort, ensuring everyone’s safety.” He gestured at the Neutralizer.

  “Nonsense, Your Majesty,” Neswick said. “Lending her your Neutralizer would leave you unnecessarily vulnerable and exposed.”

  “I have plenty of talented elicromancers in my personal guard, Lord Neswick.”

  The outspoken mortal sighed but did not argue further. My heart leapt with renewed hope. I’d hoped Tiernan would champion my total freedom, but he could only shield me from so much before his defense reeked of familial partiality.

  “Those terms are sufficient for me, barring any further incidents,” said the keen-eyed elicromancer.

  The Conclave took another vote. Only Neswick, the mortal itching to lock me up, and an elicromancer who hadn’t spoken voted against King Tiernan’s suggestion. And just like that, the colloquy ended.

  Relief flooded over me, but on its heels came yawning emptiness. I’d walked into the Conclave chamber thinking I had only to convince them of decent intentions. Now I had to convince them I wasn’t dangerous, when I was far from sure of that myself.

  King Tiernan took the diadem box from his Neutralizer, whispering in his ear. After my great-uncle had defended me and kept me out of the dungeons, I dared not speak out. My freedom, my life, a second chance—these were all more precious than jewelry, even a magical heirloom given to me by Ivria.

  Despite my lightened sentence, I began to feel like a prisoner as Brandar accompanied me to my rooms. I wondered blankly whether he would permit me any privacy, or if he would neutralize me at the first sign of a temper.

  When we turned down the long corridor Ivria and I had shared with a few other female relatives and ladies’ maids, I saw my door open. But it wasn’t Ellen or one of the others. It was Melkior leading Calanthe away on a leash.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. Calanthe bounded forward a few steps and stood on her impressive hind legs to drape her front paws on my shoulders in greeting.

  But Melkior yanked the leash and hissed a wordless rebuke. He swept back a lock of his near-black hair. “Ivria told me I could breed her. I have the ideal sire in mind.”

  “On the day of her funeral? Breeding her dog?” I tried to snatch the leather leash, but he jerked it out of my reach.

  “I’m going to give Ander one of the whelps. To remind him of his sister.”

  A noise between a scoff and a feral growl ripped out of me. Even when Melkior managed to locate his decency, his methods of displaying it bordered on cruel. “Why not just give him Calanthe?”

  “She’s not mine to give. Ivria only gave me permission to breed her.”

  I gritted my teeth. Melkior treated dogs and horses with more compassion and respect than he spared for other creatures, as breeding and training them demonstrated status. His grandfather Vesper, younger brother to King Tiernan and Grandmother Odessa, had given him his own kennels and stables when he realized Melkior was capable of seeing these creatures as more than playthings to torment. But still, I couldn’t let him take Calanthe away, for her sake and mine.

  “Ivria would have wanted me to have her,” I said, barely maintaining my calm. “If not me, then Ander. She didn’t want to breed her. She probably forgot she ever said you could. She was just trying to show you kindness, and now you can show it to me for the first time in your life.”

  He pursed his lips, considering, but soon shook his head. “Deerhounds need to run. She shouldn’t be cooped up in the palace. Besides, I can’t give Ander anything short of the best pup from the best litter with the best brood bitch.” He paused and cocked his head at me, his features carved of arrogance. “But I’ll let you have second best. That is, if you promise not to rip it to shreds with your new pow—”

  My fingernails bit into my palm. Twin cracks crept up the walls on either side of us. At first, Melkior stumbled away from me, pulling Calanthe with him. But I remembered the Neutralizer who stood a few steps behind me and cut a nervous glance in his direction. I released my fists and the cracks halted in their tracks.

  Melkior arched a brow at me, then at Brandar, no doubt finding my limitations intriguing.

  With a hint of a smirk, he brushed past me, taking Calanthe with him.

  I stormed into the common room, startling the maids. Without a word, I hurried to my private chamber and pressed the door closed behind me, waiting a few beats to make sure Brandar wouldn’t follow.

  Rushing to the farthest corner of the room, I slammed my back against the wall and sank to the floor. My anger made the chandelier above me clank and rattle, but the burst was neither violent nor deafening. The metal quietly became flecks of ash that swirled high above me.

  As they drifted over my head and shoulders like gray snow, I wept without restraint.

  ALORY?” My mother knocked on my door, stirring me from sleep. When I opened my eyes, I found swirls of gray ash amid the moonbeams slicing through my chamber.

  “Would you please step back?” I heard her say. “She’s not going to fly out like a bird.”

  She opened the door and squeezed through, admitting Ellen behind her. I could see Brandar silhouetted by the fire in the common room just before she shut him out.

  “It is not appropriate for a grown man to shadow a seventeen-year-old girl,” my mother muttered, turning her light enchantment in my direction. Her elicrin stone held a steady, subdued glow. “I don’t know why the Conclave couldn’t have found—” She stopped abruptly and gasped, lifting her eyes to the cloud of gray and the black marks on the ceiling.

  Ellen stared for a moment before setting a tray of food on the table and moving toward the hearth to start a fire.

  “There’s dinner for you,” my mother said, stepping nimbly over the piles on the floor. She attempted to wipe clean a portion of my bed, to no avail, and settled for barely perching on the edge. “And your grandmother has arrived.”

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  “From Darmeska.”

  “Grandmum?” I asked with a trace of hope.

  She nodded. “Should Ellen let her in?”

  “Yes.” I straightened up as Ellen bustled to the door.

  Few people in my life had wrinkled faces or fading hair. But my father’s mother did, and she was more beautiful than the youthful elicromancers, like a crisp autumn dawn of auburn and silver. She took no notice of the sooty powder on the floor as she crossed to me and knelt at my side, folding my hands inside hers.

  “Dear heart,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  I extracted my hands to link them around her neck and shed tears into her gray-streaked red hair.

  “I’m here,” she said. Her lilting accent called to mind memories of the western mountains, the vast halls within the fortress of Darmeska, the wistful aroma of wood and dust. Her dignity went deeper than adornments and titles, than sparkling otherworldly jewels.

  “Did I kill Ivria?”

  “No, no, no. Hush.” Grandmum sat beside me and pulled my head to her shoulder. “As much as the Conclave fancies they have the final say in who lives and who dies, there’s no bending the Water to one’s will. It has a will of its own. They can’t force an ancient power to serve their purposes like a domesticated beast.”

  “How come Melkior survived and she didn’t? That wretch.”

  “There’s no knowing why Ivria failed the test. But as for Melkior—”

  “The gift of healing is sacred, I know.”

  “I was going to say: that wicked boy needs more years to become a good man than most, so maybe fate thought to give them to him.” She smiled and squeezed my forearm, but the smile faded too soon. “The expectations that haunt this place are what killed Ivria. And they’re what drove
your father away, though he loved you dearly.”

  A familiar ache returned. Like the royals of Arna, the people of Darmeska could trace their lineage to ancient elicromancers. Though magic ran thick in their blood, Darmeskans tended to keep their distance from the Water. And my father, a native Darmeskan, had felt no urge to become an elicromancer until he met my mother. He moved to Arna to attend the academy and marry her. His talent for fire-wielding won him approval from the Conclave, but he stalled his ceremony for years, humiliating my mother, who had begged King Tiernan to let her marry Leonar Braiosa without losing her bid for the throne. Tiernan had conceded on the grounds that my father could be considered “noble” as the son of two prominent Darmeskan elders.

  But even with the family’s blessing, the love between my mother and father soured. Not a week passed that she didn’t beg him to touch the Water and realize his magical potential. They could barely share a word without arguing by the time my father decided to leave in the night when I was eight years old, taking me with him. He hoped to spare me from the constraints that accompanied the surname Ermetarius, from the inevitable choice to risk my very life just to gain magic.

  We adventured in the Brazor Mountains for months, mapping out places where others had not yet dared go. My memories of that time lingered like a strange dream: the towering peaks, the crude shelters, the blood of fur-covered creatures staining my hands. Father and I stayed in the wilds until I caught wind fever and he brought me to Darmeska. Grandmum then convinced him to let me return to Arna.

  As we said farewell, he told me I would always be a Braiosa, even if my mother succeeded in molding me in her immortal likeness.

  For years after, he sent us a letter each time he stopped in Darmeska. Eventually, following months of silence, Grandmum wrote to tell us he had died of wounds from a bear mauling. He had survived just long enough to return once more to the mountain fortress, but was too delirious to write any farewells.

  The next time I saw him, he was a corpse.

  “There’s a reason elicromancers surrendered their stones after defeating the traitors in the past,” Grandmum said, yanking me out of my reverie. “Limitless power corrupts. This is the first time elicromancers have sustained peace as a ruling class. I fear what will become of the system now that confidence in their future has been ripped away.”