Crown of Danger (The Hidden Mage Book 2)

by Melanie Cellier

  “In that case, I shall find her during the rest day tomorrow,” I said. “You may tell her so.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” The girl hurried away, leaving me alone in the entrance hall of the Academy, except for Jareth.

  As soon as I noticed him, he dropped his gaze, moving for the dining hall. I frowned and followed more slowly. I didn’t like seeing Jareth lurking around listening to my conversations, but I could think of no particular harm in the message.

  By the time the evening meal arrived, I was regretting saying I would seek Zora out the next day. My curiosity had risen as the hours wore on, and Bryony and I had run through every possible speculation as to what she might want.

  “Perhaps she’s the leader of a secret rebellion of commonborns,” Bryony whispered as we left the dining hall that evening. “And she means to mobilize them in support of Darius.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think you should say things like that aloud, Bree. What if someone overheard you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t a serious suggestion.”

  I snorted. “I picked that up.”

  “And besides,” she added, “we were talking so long, I think we were the last ones in there. Who’s going to overhear me?”

  We said goodbye at the bottom of the stairs, Bryony leaping ahead of me. She had set herself the challenge of running up the many flights of stairs to her room each evening, defying any exhaustion she felt from the day’s classes. I still preferred to ascend at a more sedate pace, however.

  I moved even more slowly than usual, my mind still taken up with my plans to meet Zora the next day. I had resolved to seek her out straight after breakfast, an easier task since I had now discovered where her office lay in the labyrinth of back hallways.

  I wasn’t thinking about my feet at all as I reached for the next step, and I missed it entirely. I had time only for a moment of horror as I tried to catch myself and failed. Off balance, my other foot also slipped, and I went down hard.

  Panic overwhelmed me as I struggled to breathe, the wind knocked out of me even as I continued to slide back down the stairs I had already climbed. Stones flashed all around me as my terrified mind struggled to orient myself. I tensed, waiting for an even harder contact with the stone floor at the bottom of the stairs, but it never came.

  Instead I continued to slide, scraping along the flat floor of the entrance hall toward the great doors, one of which now stood open. A new kind of fear hit me. How had I not felt the power tugging at me and dragging me along? I hadn’t slipped at all.

  My hands scrabbled uselessly at the slick floor. My body moved faster and faster as I struggled to gain enough breath to speak. A moment later and I burst out into the evening air.

  The light had almost entirely faded, but I could still see the shadowy figure I now sped toward across the ground. He wore a cloak pulled low over his face and carried a naked sword.

  I gasped in a desperate breath just as I heard a tearing sound and felt a new sensation hit me. My body bucked and writhed, still caught in the grip of the pulling power but now also leaking energy.

  A second shadowy figure stood on my peripheral vision, holding a composition instead of a sword. Two attackers. How had they made it into the Academy grounds?

  But my chest had recovered from the initial blow, and I had no time for such ponderings. Sucking in a breath, I choked out, “Take control.”

  In my desperation and fear, I hadn’t formed the composition in my mind with my usual precision, but my instincts kicked in, directing it toward the working that sucked away my energy.

  I had grown enough in my ability over the past months that I could recognize it as a working from the same mage who had attacked me on my way to the Academy, although both of the shadowy figures looked male. Perhaps both attackers had been supplied with compositions by someone else then.

  Last time, I had merely thrown the working back blindly at my attacker, but now I took proper control, sending it after both of them. Doing so meant dividing the energy of the working in half, so it was unlikely to put them at risk of being completely drained, but I hoped it would slow them both enough to give me a chance.

  Both figures shuddered as the energy hit them, responding by each pulling out a new composition. I braced myself, but though they both ripped them, nothing came for me. Too late, I realized they had been ready for my move and had refreshed their own energy. And in my moment of confusion, I had missed the chance to intercept either of the workings.

  Still I slid over the hard ground, moving toward the figure with the drawn sword. There was no way I could draw my own weapon while in such a position. I needed to stop my forward momentum and get my feet under me.

  “Take control,” I gasped a second time and connected with the power that dragged me along.

  It felt different from any power composition I had controlled before. While the power had shape, it didn’t have the same limits as a normal working—it wasn’t confined in the same way. As quick as thought, my mind raced along the shape of it, moving closer toward the waiting attacker.

  With a ripple of shock, I realized what was different about this working. It was an open composition. Rather than confining a finite amount of power into the parchment of the composition, forever separating it from the mage who wrote it, this mage had unleashed a composition that connected back with him once it was worked, continuing to draw on his energy to give the working more and more power. But it didn’t have unlimited power because every mage had their limits—which was what made open compositions so dangerous.

  This particular composition didn’t need that much power, though. So why had he composed it to be open? Unless someone who didn’t properly understand how my ability worked had thought to try it as a way to circumvent me.

  “Pull that stone,” I wheezed out, pointing toward a large chunk of stone which seemed to have broken off one of the outbuildings and now lay pushed to the side of the courtyard.

  The power immediately let go of me, and I rolled through the dirt several times before coming to a stop as it seized on the stone instead and sent it hurtling toward my attacker. But the composition remained open, and my mind followed in the wake of the power, reaching instinctively for the mage at the end of the tether.

  I came tantalizingly close before another tearing sound cut off the sensation of power altogether, severing the connection between us. The stone’s momentum carried it the final short distance, but it didn’t have the force I’d envisioned when it collided with the cloaked figure’s chest. He still gave a loud grunt, his own breath now gone.

  I pushed my bruised body up onto all fours, scrambling to get to my feet so I could draw my sword and meet my attackers on more equal footing. But pounding steps sounded, and when I pulled my head up, the cloaked figure was already fleeing. I stared after him for a moment, wondering if I had enough breath to pursue, when I remembered the second man.

  Spinning, I scanned the moonlit grounds only to see a familiar face hurrying toward me.

  Jareth.

  Chapter 19

  “You!” I drew back as he reached for me.

  “Verene! What happened? Are you hurt?”

  I frowned, trying to make sense of the unexpected words. I looked back over my shoulder, but the cloaked figure had already disappeared into the darkness. Jareth frowned in the same direction.

  “I thought I saw someone running…Should I go after them?” He looked at me, concern filling his face. “But I can’t leave you alone. You’re hurt. I need to get you to Raelynn.”

  I shook my head. “No. No healing. Leave me be.”

  After the tumultuous last few minutes, I couldn’t seem to make sense of his presence. Jareth had been the second attacker, just as I always feared!

  And yet…he wasn’t fleeing like the other man, and he wasn’t talking as if he had just attacked me. I glanced at him doubtfully. He wasn’t wearing a cloak.

  “It’s a good thing I was so close,” he was sayi
ng. “I think my arrival frightened them off, whoever they were.”

  I furrowed my brow. Had he exited the Academy at the end of the fight? I hadn’t seen him do so, but I hadn’t seen him discard a cloak, either. My attention had been on the other attacker.

  “I’m going back to my rooms.” I pushed away his helping hand when he tried to steady me.

  “I’ll walk you there,” he said quickly. “Although I really think you should go to Raelynn.”

  “No, I’m going to my room.” I wanted to be out of his company and somewhere I felt safe as fast as possible.

  “If you’re sure…” He easily fell into step beside me, although I was going at the fastest pace I could manage. My chest still protested the abuse it had just received, and my breaths came shallow and fast.

  I took each stair slowly and warily, but none of them betrayed me, slipping from under my feet as they had done under the influence of the composition. When I reached the door of my suite, Jareth made one last half-hearted attempt to convince me to see Raelynn. I cut him off unceremoniously by closing the door in his face.

  Inside the room, I stood with my back against the door, my eyes closed as I struggled to control my breathing. With so many months since the last attack, I had let down my guard. And this time my attackers had been prepared for me to turn their compositions against them. They knew at least something of my ability. But not everything. It was as if they had been testing me, trying a range of different compositions to see how I would respond, ready to cut them off or replenish themselves when I reversed them.

  In the calm of my room I considered what had happened. Two attackers had managed to access the Academy. They had known just when to find me alone and how to get me out of sight. And they had hit me with an attack that robbed me of breath, preventing me from immediately responding. Whoever had planned this had known some of my ability but not all. And perhaps the biggest coincidence of all—one of the very short list of people who had been told of my ability had been there. It all came back to Jareth.

  I stormed across to the tapestry, wrenching open the door without knocking. Darius, who had been sitting at the desk in his sitting room, took one look at me and sprang to his feet.

  “Verene!” He rushed over and gripped my shoulders, examining me carefully from head to toe. “What happened? Where are you hurt? We need to send for Raelynn.”

  I glanced down, taking in the utter mess that had started the day as my white robe. I must look terrible. But I pushed the thought aside.

  “I was attacked. Here in the Academy.”

  “Again!” His whole face blazed, and he reached for his sword as if my attacker might be following behind me.

  “It was Jareth,” I blurted out, still suffering from too much shock to think of a softer way to frame it.

  Darius’s hands fell, and his face contorted with bewilderment. “My brother attacked you?”

  I hesitated, truthfulness compelling me to clarify. “I didn’t see either of my attackers’ faces during the actual attack. But he was there straight after. One of them ran away, and when I turned around, he was there.”

  Darius frowned. “That sounds like he came along just in time to save you.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I saved myself.”

  I swayed, and he caught me beneath my elbow.

  “Come in and sit down if you won’t go to a healer. Explain it all to me from the beginning. I don’t understand.”

  “I barely understand it myself,” I admitted, following him to the sofa he indicated and sinking onto it with a sigh of relief. “But I’ll try.”

  I outlined what had happened in the attack, mentioning the way I had turned back the drain on my energy since he already knew of that part of my ability, and focusing on how my attackers had been prepared for it. I glossed over how I had escaped from the power composition, making it sound as if I had thrown the rock rather than reattached my attacker’s power to it.

  “And just as I was getting ready to draw my sword, he ran,” I finished. “It was almost like he wasn’t fully committed to the fight. Not like the previous assassins.”

  “Almost like he was testing your abilities,” Darius said thoughtfully, coming to the same conclusion I had just done.

  I nodded. “And then Jareth was there. Right there. I haven’t even told my own family about my ability, but you told him, and there he was.”

  “You haven’t told your family?” Darius asked, diverted. “After all this time?”

  I looked away. “I thought they might stop me from returning,” I whispered.

  Silence fell for a moment before Darius stood and strode once up the room before returning to stand in front of me.

  “This is obviously a completely unacceptable situation, even if it wasn’t a true attack on your life,” he said. “And I can understand why it unnerved you to find Jareth there, right on hand at such a moment. But I’m afraid that’s my fault, not his.”

  “Your fault?” I frowned at him.

  “You must have noticed Jareth hanging around you,” he said, “but it’s not because he’s plotting against you. I asked him to help me watch over you, to help keep you safe. And it sounds like tonight he did just that.”

  “You asked Jareth to watch me?” I cried, incensed. “You know how I feel about him.”

  He sat beside me, guilt twisting his face. “I’m sorry, Verene, but I care more about your safety than anything else. And while you’re here in my kingdom, your safety is my responsibility, but—”

  He broke off to rake a hand through his hair before more words burst out of him, pouring out like water from a breaking dam.

  “I wish I could watch over you every moment myself, but I can’t. Not when I’m the reason you’re in danger in the first place. You don’t know how it’s been tearing me up all year. All I want is to stay near you and make sure you’re safe, and yet if I did so, I would only place you in more danger.”

  “What are you talking about?” I stared at him, bewildered. “You’re not the one endangering me.”

  He groaned. “But I am, Verene. It’s been my fault since the beginning. I told you that I lose control sometimes, but no one has ever made me lose control like you do. I can’t afford to ever let my true emotions show, but around you it’s too hard to contain them. I admitted at the beginning of the year that I was scared, and I was—I have been all year. I’m terrified of something happening to you, and I’m terrified of the way I can’t trust myself around you. Just being near you makes it harder for me to keep my true self under control, but every time I make a mistake and let my feelings show, you end up hurt.”

  He reached for my hand before changing his mind and snatching his own back. “Ever since I broke my own rule and danced with you at the Midwinter Ball last year, you’ve been in danger. Nothing could so infuriate my father and whip up unreasoning anger and hatred than seeing his heir dancing and smiling with the daughter of the couple he blames for every one of his problems. My father would rather see the both of us dead than let you gain any hold over me.”

  He laughed, a raspy sound of more desperation than humor. “I can’t imagine what he would do if he ever guessed the truth—if he even suspected how important you are to me and how I have entrusted you with everything. All year I’ve forced myself to be cold and rude in the hope that it would calm his anger toward you. I thought it was working, but…”

  I gaped at him. “You said you needed to be seen to be neutral.”

  He nodded quickly. “That’s also true, it just wasn’t the whole truth. I was too cowardly to admit to you that I was to blame for all of those attacks.”

  I frowned. “Stop saying that. You’re not to blame. Your father carries the full blame.”

  “But none of this would have happened if I hadn’t lost control and let down my guard.”

  I reached out and grasped his hand myself, holding it in a firm grip when he tried to pull away.

  “You can’t see how much he’s distorted your thinking. O
ccasionally letting others see your emotions isn’t the same as lashing out violently against your own son or seeking to assassinate someone because you hate their parents. It isn’t a fault to let down your guard every now and then or to let your true feelings show.”

  His lips twisted. “I thought if I could just keep away from you for this year—just long enough to rip the crown from his head—then it would all be over. I needed my control now more than ever and that meant staying away from you as much as I could. I’d already proven I couldn’t trust myself around you. And so I asked Jareth to step in when he could and help keep you safe.”

  “But if Jareth isn’t involved, how did my attackers know about my ability?” I asked, wishing I could explain more fully about how they had seemed to know only half the picture—just like Jareth himself.

  “You did defend yourself during the attack in the village,” he said. “Maybe the energy mage worked out what had happened.”

  I bit my lip. It was a stretch to suppose they had guessed something so impossible…but then my family was known for the impossible. I had thought for once I had real proof against Jareth, but again Darius had turned my suspicions aside.

  I sighed and stood, surveying the mess of my robes again.

  “I need to clean up.”

  Darius also rose. “Of course. Are you sure you’re unharmed, though? I could work a healing composition myself.”

  I shook my head. “I need rest more than anything. I’m sure I’ll bruise, but bruises will heal on their own. I just want my bed.”

  He shadowed me back to the door to my room.

  “Verene, I wish…you don’t know how I wish things were different.”

  “I understand,” I whispered. “I do too. And perhaps one day they will be.”

  I slipped through the door and closed it firmly behind me.

  The next morning I woke regretting my refusal of a healing composition. Everything ached, and a spectacular bruise was already spreading across most of my chest and one side. At least it was a rest day.