When Lucas called for his archers to take up position out of sight in the treetops, I erected a simple wooden wall around my troops. I hadn’t done any studies in the creator discipline, however, and in the time it took me to come up with the words and then speak them, one of my archers was killed.
We went back and forth in a slow battle of attrition as we each tried different tricks. Finally, with only two soldiers remaining on either side, Lucas yelled a sudden order for his to charge. I called for my own two remaining men to defend, but the yellow-garbed attackers had been moving closer and closer throughout the bout and had almost no distance to cover.
Fire had already destroyed the wall protecting my men, and one of them was cut down before my defensive orders had been received. Together Lucas’s remaining men took my lone survivor prisoner, proudly lifting the green crown above their heads.
The scene froze for a moment, and then the figures, their weapons, and the crown faded away. Thornton stood and ripped a short parchment. Power raced around the arena, removing the other debris from our extended battle.
Thornton nodded at Lucas, the victor, and then turned to our seated year mates.
“At the front lines a mage does not work alone. Each mage officer commands a squad of commonborn soldiers. Each of you must learn to command your own forces, must learn the most efficient use of your compositions to enhance their effectiveness. Each of you will have a turn across the coming weeks to complete a bout. In future, your commands may be whispered so as not to give away the element of surprise. Afterward, we will discuss the various strategies used and where they could be improved.”
Without thinking, I looked over at Lucas, exhilaration gripping me. In an instant, combat class had gone from the most dreaded part of my week to the most anticipated. He had commanded his troops well, and I was already going over it in my mind, thinking through what I could have done differently and how I might have effected a different outcome.
I could only imagine he was analyzing his performance the same way, despite his win, and for a moment I forgot everything else and grinned at him. His face still held its usual detached expression, but his eyes gleamed with the same elation. When our eyes latched, something heated and intense passed between us, locking them together.
With enormous effort, I tore my gaze free and forced my legs to climb the stairs back to my friends. Between the mental intensity of the bout, the energy I had expended on my compositions, and the shared moment with Lucas, my whole body trembled. But at least I didn’t need Acacia, the Academy healer, as I had after my first arena bout the previous year.
And as my nerves settled, Thornton’s words washing over me as he continued to discuss our bout, I realized he had done me a favor, after all. Caught up in the bout, I had forgotten my history with Lucas and had remembered only the many hours we had trained together. I had proven to myself such detachment was possible. Somehow I would regain my equanimity around him and make it through the next two years.
As soon as Thornton dismissed us, I rounded on my friends.
“Did I miss something? Did we know that was coming?”
They all shook their heads and protested their lack of foreknowledge.
“We don’t normally do command bouts until fourth year,” Finnian added. “I’m guessing they’ve moved it forward due to our upcoming trip to the front lines.”
It made sense and explained why Lucas hadn’t been caught unawares. Once again I lacked the general knowledge of their world that my friends so effortlessly shared. And yet the cool look that Dariela gave me as we passed each other on our way back to the main building reminded me that somehow I was succeeding without it.
Because that hadn’t been a punishment from Thornton. He had merely called his top two students to demonstrate the upcoming exercise to the class. And those two positions no longer belonged to Lucas and Dariela.
Something in the Ellington girl’s eyes told me she wasn’t going to forget it.
It amazed me how quickly we fell back into the routine of classes. Many of the third year composition classes were taught by junior instructors while Redmond focused on the newer students since they were the most dangerous ones, their control still being established. The instructors worked in small teams to allow more opportunity to provide personalized instruction, working through the more complex problems that arose.
And unlike Redmond, who had always left me to my own devices, the other instructors actively sought opportunities to assist me as I adapted the day’s exercise to my spoken limitations. They asked me more questions than I asked them, their curiosity and thirst for knowledge reminding me of the University mages who had sat in on classes in order to study me in first year.
Lucas remained in the same seat he had always occupied, and if he didn’t feel the need to move, I wasn’t going to concede defeat by being the one to do so. And so we remained a short aisle apart, as we had always done, and over time I grew more accustomed to his presence.
We studied a more varied range of compositions than we had done in previous years, although the classroom setting limited us somewhat. At least the others could sit in class and compose a composition to bring rain, waiting to test it until later. I had to leave such experiments to my own time when I could escape into the garden.
But oftentimes the instructors picked smaller versions of the compositions we studied, wanting the other trainees to tear their creations on the spot to demonstrate whether or not they had successfully completed the working.
I struggled more on days when I had been one of the trainees chosen to direct an attack in the arena, my energy already vastly depleted. My strength at compositions allowed me to exercise far more power than a standard mage my age, but even I had my limits. As a spoken mage, I had to expend my energy in much more concentrated bursts than my year mates, and the workings required of me now as a third year far exceeded those in my first year. On days when I was particularly tired, I even thought longingly of first year when we spent every combat class beating each other with sticks.
On one such afternoon I stared at the example working handed out by the composition instructors in dejection. It was a creator composition, since we were focusing on manipulating physical mass, and it looked exhausting.
I had once seen a creator reshape an entire room of the library that had been blown to pieces by my uncontrolled power. Compared to that, building a tiny structure from stone should be simple. It didn’t even have to be structurally sound—that sort of expertise was left to those who studied the creator discipline. We just needed to demonstrate that we could lift the stones supplied by the Academy into place, fusing them into a solid mass without the aid of the mortar employed by commonborns when building their homes.
But even that much felt beyond me.
Coralie had already succeeded, writing one of the longest compositions I had yet seen. After she released it, she admitted to me in a whisper that the resulting creation looked more like an unstable hovel than the elegant doll’s house she had been picturing.
Dariela and Lucas had both produced structures that Clemmy would have loved to claim for her dolls. Lucas’s creation looked like a simple replica of the palace, made miniature, while Dariela had recreated the block-like Academy. I tried not to glare at either of them, directing my ire toward the pile of stones in front of me instead. They looked only slightly heavier than my head felt.
“It’s not all about brute force, remember,” said Lucas’s quiet voice to my right. He sounded cool and detached. “Consider it an exercise in finesse. You’ve mastered speed, but you’re still limited by energy. Working out how to achieve the same result with less energy and force will serve you well.”
His familiar voice jolted through me, piercing my mental fog. He had always been a good teacher. I bit down on my bottom lip, chewing it as I considered the problem before me.
Picking up several small blocks of stone, I stacked them on top of each other, building a rudimentary structure. Coralie watc
hed me with two raised eyebrows, but I ignored her. Once all the pieces were in place, I ordered them to fuse together, power rushing through them and sealing them against each other. It required a great deal less energy than would have been required to shape the structure with power.
“Uh, I think that might be cheating,” said Coralie.
I grinned at her. “They told us to produce a small structure. Voila. Here is a small structure, formed via composition.”
“Was it, though?” she muttered.
A small sound, almost like a choking laugh, drew my attention to Lucas. Amusement glimmered in the depths of his eyes, although his face remained impassive.
“That’s not quite what I had in mind,” he said.
“Wasn’t it? I thought it was an excellent suggestion.”
He shook his head. “You’ve always thought differently, Elena. It’s one of your strengths.”
An instructor moved between our desks, and Lucas fell silent while she examined my and Coralie’s creations. She offered only minor suggestions for improvements before moving on, although the tilt of her lips suggested she had witnessed my shortcut.
Lucas spoke again when she moved out of earshot, his voice much quieter this time.
“You could make a difference, you know. To the war. Your power is more flexible, and you learn more quickly than any mage I’ve ever heard of. If you bent all your energies on the war, who knows what breakthroughs we might achieve?”
My stomach dropped, the traces of light-hearted humor from my small cheat dissipating instantly. For a moment I had forgotten why Lucas and I no longer trained together. Although he had made no effort to renew any romantic interest in me, I should have known he wouldn’t abandon his efforts to convince me about the war.
“What would have happened in Abalene last year if everyone was putting all their effort into winning the war?” I whispered back at him.
His mouth twitched again, this time into a slight frown, but one of our instructors called our attention to the front of the room, so I didn’t get an answer. My mind kept circling back to his advice, though. For all my joking in class, he was right that I could benefit from learning finesse in my compositions.
In the days that followed, I made myself pause before every composition, considering first if there was a more efficient way I could achieve the same result. And whenever I had particular success, I caught myself looking reflexively toward Lucas, wanting to share the victory.
The stab of pain always came a moment later when I remembered the barrier that stood between us. He had chosen the war, and I had chosen change. I needed to forget the connection we had shared. But while I lived and studied beside him at the Academy, it was proving far too difficult to do.
Sometimes I caught him listening to my conversations with the instructors, and on those occasions, he usually had some helpful suggestion to make for whatever task I was attempting. But all too often we remained in close proximity without speaking, his attention taken by Natalya and Lavinia—who seemed to lurk closer to him than ever before—or by Calix and Weston. And I could only be glad Lucas and I refrained from speaking—I had nothing I wanted to say to him within ear shot of the four of them.
Natalya and Lavinia continued to look down on me, despite my position at the top of the year, although their manner had mellowed somewhat. Due, perhaps, to the obvious tension between Lucas and me. Weston’s hatred, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have abated a jot. I only had to look at him to remember everything I most disliked about the Stantorns.
But somehow I still preferred seeing the three of them to observing the change in Calix, Natalya’s twin. Occasionally I caught flashes of his old contempt, but those glimpses were slowly decreasing, replaced with a calculation that edged over into greed. General Griffith’s younger son was far too much like his father for my comfort.
Coralie had done a better job of masking her emotions than me, and I rarely saw any sign of her discomfort after the first day. But I caught her gazing at Finnian when she thought no one was looking just often enough to tell me she hadn’t truly forgotten their romantic encounter.
Finnian himself paid her even more extravagant compliments than was his previous wont, but it was hard to take it seriously since he did the same to me.
“Your mere presence delights me,” he assured me, slinging an arm over my shoulder and pulling me tight against his side. “You cannot possibly think of leaving me in this cruel manner.”
I snorted while Saffron gave an impatient huff.
“It’s our rest day, and you heard Damon, Finnian. There’s a package from home waiting for us. Come on!” She smiled apologetically at me. “There might be cookies in there. Finnian’s family chef makes the most divine cookies.”
“You mustn’t delay then,” I said, attempting to extract myself from under Finnian’s arm. “Just save me one, if there are some, will you? It can be my reward for making it through this assignment.”
Coralie grimaced at me in sympathy. My friends had continued to study the armed forces discipline with me, the specter of the front lines providing ample motivation. But they had all chosen new disciplines to replace healing this year, placing them back at beginner level and leaving me the only one struggling through the current advanced essay on healing.
Finnian just gripped me more tightly, bemoaning that the three of them couldn’t possibly sacrifice me to study. Someone passing by bumped him roughly as he hurried down the corridor, making solid contact with his shoulder.
Finnian narrowed his eyes at the retreating back, and I took the opportunity to slip away from him. But while Finnian’s attention returned to our friends, mine remained on the disappearing figure. Lucas.
He had been moving toward the stairs. Away from the library. Which meant now was my perfect opportunity.
Next to me, Finnian put his arm over Coralie’s shoulder and began entreating her to convince me.
“I really must get to the library.” I sent a mock stern look in Coralie’s direction. “Don’t let them eat all those cookies, Coralie. I’m relying on you.”
“I will not betray your trust,” she said with the utmost seriousness.
I nodded. Cookies were serious business.
“Come on!” repeated Saffron with even more insistence, and the three of them moved toward the stairs while I hurried off in the opposite direction.
Stepping through the double doors of the library, I paused to breathe deeply the smell of parchment. I had missed this place for more than just my evenings studying with Lucas. This was where I had learned to read, opening a whole new world for myself. Walden’s office in the back was where I unlocked my power, and I had spent more hours than I cared to remember browsing the untold wealth of knowledge weighing down the many shelves.
But entwined with all of that was the prince. Always the prince. From the beginning of our first year, Lucas had made the library his domain. And if I was honest, that was why I found myself behind on the assignment now. I had been avoiding the library as much as possible.
I raced between the shelves, hurrying for the section on healing, but a voice pulled me up short.
“Elena!”
I turned and smiled at the library head, Walden.
“We’ve missed seeing you around this year,” he said. “I used to like it when a few of you studied in here in the evenings. I know I wasn’t officially supposed to let trainees remain here at that hour, but how could I say no to anyone so eager to delve deep into this realm of knowledge?” He gestured around him at the shelves, then dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Plus, it always made me feel like a bit of a rebel.”
He chuckled, and I had to smile at a librarian’s idea of rebellion. But my mind had snagged on his earlier comment. Had Lucas stopped frequenting the library at night as well? Was he trying to avoid me?
“I’m sorry,” I said, dragging my mind back to the present. “It isn’t the library, I promise.”
“Oh, I quite underst
and,” he said. “From what I hear you’re outshining all of us these days. And while I sometimes miss the challenge and the mystery of your first year when we were trying to unlock your power, I wouldn’t have it any other way. We must always be moving forward, you know. No point in standing still.”
“Well perhaps you could help me again now,” I said.
He brightened visibly. “Nothing I would like more, I promise you. As long as it’s within the confines of my library, of course.” He shook his head with an amused smile. “You won’t find me of much use to you out on the combat field.”
“Oh no. It’s this healing assignment.” I grimaced guiltily. “I’m afraid I’ve left it a little late, and the other students have most likely stripped the relevant shelves clean. I don’t suppose you could point me to any remaining texts?”
“Now there is a request I can fully support.” Walden smiled. “I’ll even pretend I didn’t hear you say you were running late with it.”
He led me down the row of shelves and across to another one, muttering to himself as we got closer. Running a hand along a shelf just below eye-level, he stopped with a satisfied exclamation.
“Ah huh! Just what I was looking for. There are some older texts tucked away here that don’t tend to be as popular. They’re focused more on the history of healing. But the secret is our methods really haven’t changed all that much. You can still get most of what you need from these.”
“Thank you!” I stepped forward to peer at the section he indicated.
“I won’t give you the books themselves, you’ll have to look through and choose those for yourself. I have to keep it a challenge somehow, hey?”
He turned to leave and then glanced back. “You wouldn’t go amiss starting with that one, though.” And with a wink he pointed at a large tome on the end of the shelf.
I murmured further thanks and began to look through the titles, eager to be done and back to the safety of my suite. But as I continued to browse, I slowed, losing myself in the familiarity of the exercise. I found the book I was looking for, but two more caught my eye. And at the back of one of the shelves I found an ancient looking scroll.
Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3) Page 6