It felt brittle in my hands, and I didn’t trust myself to take it back to my rooms, so I carried all my findings to one of the desks which ringed the rows of shelves. Sitting down I began to read it, comparing its pronouncements against my stack of more modern books.
Unlike my year mates, I had to deliver my essays to Jocasta or Walden verbally, and I couldn’t take notes as I read. Between our new command and strategy exercises in combat class, the increasing complexity of the compositions I had to memorize for composition class, and the advanced level of my healing and armed forces studies, sometimes lately it felt as if my mind was so stuffed with information, I couldn’t fit a single new word inside.
But reading about some of the more ancient approaches to healing fascinated me, and the core argument for my assignment soon took root. I noted the names of each of the books so I could reference them, but it was the scroll that fascinated me most. After a lengthy discussion of various antiquated methods for first surveying the damage to internal organs and then healing them, the scroll veered off topic.
The author noted that some of the more complex healings needed to be completed in a single working, and that only the strongest and most skilled healers had the capacity to compose them. The matter of energy limits, and the effect these had on mages’ ability to compose, had obviously been a subject of interest to the author, and she diverted into a description of various experiments she had conducted to see if it was possible for one mage to replenish the energy of another.
If such a thing were possible, she posited, then two weaker mages working together could manage the more draining compositions required for the healings she had just outlined. I already knew she had failed—energy was one thing the use of power could not supply to mages—but her process still interested me. I struggled more than most mages with the dangers of burn out since I couldn’t prepare my compositions in advance. I would never have the opportunity to build up the arsenal that some mages possessed.
When I got to the end of the scroll, I became aware that time had passed more quickly than I realized. The small number of other trainees using their rest day afternoon to study had disappeared, leaving me alone in the library. I hurried to replace the scroll, wondering if the dinner bell would soon be sounding.
But as I turned back around, I started, stepping backward and colliding with the shelf. I wasn’t alone after all.
Chapter 7
“I haven’t seen you in here much this year,” said Lucas, his eyes pinning me in place.
I swallowed and shrugged. “I’ve been studying in my suite. I have a suite of my own this year, too.” Lucas had been given the largest suite on the fourth-year floor from the moment of his arrival in first year.
Lucas ignored the irrelevant jibe, stepping forward, his eyes not leaving mine.
“It’s been lonely studying on my own.” There was no one around us, but he still spoke in quiet tones, his husky voice sending shivers racing up and down my spine.
I tried to regain my earlier calm, but it only slipped further away when he stepped closer again. I could think of no answer to give him.
“I’ve missed you, Elena,” he said, so close now I could feel the heat radiating from his broad chest and smell his unique scent. It brought back memories not only of evenings studying in the library but of late nights secretly training in the arena, the moonlight our only illumination.
I swallowed again and licked my lips, and his gaze immediately dropped to them.
I knew I should say something discouraging, but his nearness wiped my mind of everything but the unvarnished truth.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
He took the final step forward at that, resting one hand on the shelf behind me. Always the gentleman, he left the other hanging at his side, leaving me a way out if I chose to take it. But I had never been as good at walking away from Lucas as I should have been.
I didn’t move.
“How is it that you grow more beautiful every year?” he whispered, our faces a mere breath apart. “And more brilliant. Sometimes I think you must do it on purpose to torment me.”
I squeezed my eyes closed to escape the fire in his. I told myself this exquisite pain wasn’t worth it, and I should take the opportunity to escape.
Still I didn’t move.
He gave a soft sigh. “And then I remember that you never did any of this for me. Or any of us. You did it for yourself, and your family, and the other commonborn.” His voice dropped again. “It’s one of the many reasons I love you.”
My eyes flew open again. He had never used that word before. It wasn’t something I would have forgotten. If Prince Lucas spoke that word to me while I lay unconscious, I would sense it even in my comatose state. I was sure of it.
But opening my eyes had been a mistake. The intensity of his expression robbed me of breath.
“This is torture, Elena. To be so near you constantly, and yet so distant.”
I shook my head slightly. That was my line, wasn’t it? He had given no sign that he struggled as I did. A lifetime of training at court had stood him in good stead, it seemed.
Just the thought of court acted like a dousing of cold water. I found the strength to raise both hands and push him away from me.
“I know you hate me for the choices I’ve made,” he said, his words fast and low, his face pleading, “but I keep hoping you’ll see I’m right. That I would change things if I could. That I will. When we’re not trapped in this war.”
I froze, both hands still flat against his chest, fire racing from his bunched muscles through into me. How I longed to nod, to fall into his arms.
But he was waiting for a day that would never come. The war with Kallorway was never-ending, and while Lucas was worth waiting for, I couldn’t wait forever. Not when more commonborns suffered and died every year for the heedless ways of the mages. Not when there was so much good that could be done even while the war continued to drain us. The epidemic in Abalene had proven that.
When I was a child, I used to live in constant hope that the war would end before I grew old enough to need to enlist. I would wait eagerly for news of changes at the front. And yet every fortunate soldier who made it through his term and returned told the same tale. Nothing had changed.
Eventually I grew old enough to give up childish dreams.
Lucas had grown up knowing that he would spend two years at the front. But he had also grown up surrounded by royal guards whose sole job was to protect him. His line had been carefully bred for strength and power; he himself had been trained from the youngest possible age. His future conscription had not been a millstone around his neck as it had been around mine. He still had hope that the war would end, that victory could be imminent, because it had yet to be beaten out of him.
But I knew better. And without change—the change he would not fight for while the war raged on—Lucas could never openly acknowledge his love for me. A prince was not permitted to love a commonborn girl, no matter her unique status. I refused to embark on a relationship that could have no future outside of the impossible dreams of a prince.
“The commonborns need change now,” I managed to say in a voice that shook. “Not in a future that may never come. And if it’s this hard to walk away from you now, how impossible might it become years from now?”
He traced one finger lightly down the side of my face, and I could feel the same tremor in his hand.
“But you’re not walking away.”
He swayed toward me, and I somehow forced myself to step away from him.
“No, but I should be.”
“You underestimate yourself, Elena. You always have. With you on our side—if you dedicated yourself to the effort with single-minded focus—we could win this war.” His voice turned rough. “I know you want me to fight for us—but perhaps you’re the one who needs to fight.”
I drew in a sharp breath. As a private in the Armed Forces, I was already at a disadvantage in my struggle not to become a min
dless weapon in the hands of the Ardannian army. He might not mean that he wished me to become an instrument of death and darkness, but surely he could see that’s where such a path would eventually lead.
And had he really deluded himself enough to think that I could do alone what a whole kingdom of skilled mages had been failing to do for thirty years?
His words gave me the strength to turn and walk away, but his voice pulled me up short.
“Elena!”
Reluctantly I glanced back at him. For a moment I saw his passion blaze hot, but then it flickered and died, his expression forming back into his usual detached mask.
“We’ll be at the front lines ourselves soon enough.” His words were quiet, but they pierced me just the same. “And you’ll see that I’m right. You’ll see that this war needs everything we can give it, or it will bleed us all dry.”
I turned and almost ran from the library, his voice echoing after me.
“You’ll see that I’m right, Elena.”
My hurrying feet took me straight to my suite where I locked myself inside and stood with my back to the door, ignoring the sound of the dinner bell.
Was it possible? Could he be right? Would seeing the death first hand open my eyes? Would it unleash a darkness in me strong enough to turn me into a killing machine?
And if I did come to think Lucas right, would it be too late for his love? The disappointment in his voice as I fled from him haunted my sleep and told me it would.
I woke in the morning unrested and immediately made a new goal for the year. I must ensure I never found myself alone with Lucas again. I had many conflicted feelings for the prince, and the one thing they had in common was that they were far stronger than they ought to be.
I halted briefly in the doorway of our composition classroom the next afternoon before forcing myself to continue to my usual seat. It seemed I would no longer have to struggle with Lucas’s daily proximity in this class, at least. He had taken up a position on the far side of the room, a new desk mate acting as a wall between us.
I turned my back on the prince and Natalya and tried to focus on our assigned composition, but my mind felt sluggish and slow. It had been my turn to bout in combat, and I had overextended myself, failing to allow for my lack of sleep. The resulting exhaustion was an entirely valid cause for my distraction which had nothing whatsoever to do with the fake giggles Natalya kept projecting around the room.
One of the instructors asked me to temporarily swap places with Araminta so that Dariela and I could complete the composition in tandem while they looked for any differences in the result. Reluctantly I moved forward, not receiving so much as a nod from my new desk mate. With my foggy mind, I worked at half speed, struggling to complete the working at the Ellington girl’s level.
She continued to ignore me, neither taunting nor encouraging. But I thought I detected a faint smugness to her expression when my second attempt at the working produced much weaker results than her own torn composition had done a moment before. Of course, she had not spent the morning composing as I had done. A surge of resentment made me want to lash out at her, but I restrained the impulse, knowing she wasn’t the true target of my frustration.
Someone—Finnian or Coralie most likely—had once told me that although the Ellingtons currently held the balance of power on the Mage Council, thanks to Duke Lennox of Law Enforcement and Duke Magnus of the Wind Workers, they had always been the least powerful of the great families. Politically powerful, at any rate.
But since I had also learned that most of them were enormously wealthy, I hadn’t exactly wasted any pity on them. I had been here long enough to understand more of how these mage families worked now, however. Long enough to understand the value they placed on position and power and prestige. And while most of the Ellingtons I had met, like Walden and Acacia, had been friendlier than the majority of their mage counterparts, Beatrice—the most empathetic healer I had met, despite being a Stantorn—had taught me that every family held a range of attitudes.
So, while Acacia longed for greater strength so she could do good on the front lines where healers were most needed, Dariela had never displayed much interest in anyone else at all. From the first day I met her, she had always been cold and detached. Alone, even among her true peers. And watching her now, I thought I could understand why. She had a drive the other Ellingtons seemed to lack. And she had the potential to shoot straight to the top—not just among the Ellingtons but among all the mages.
She had no friends because she had no time for them. She didn’t allow herself time. Already brilliant, talented, and powerful, she had always worked with single-minded focus to ensure she remained top of the year. She even managed to provide true competition for Lucas, despite his extra year, royal tutors, and natural strength.
And then I had come along. Appearing from nowhere, I had risen from the very bottom of the class to overtake them all. Armed with a mysterious power none of them could match, I had taken everything she worked for away from her.
Somehow I couldn’t find it in me to resent her coldness now. And since I couldn’t imagine she would want my pity, I had been sticking to keeping my distance. Now I just had to make it through this one class, and I could go back to that approach.
If only the irritating sound of Natalya’s giggle didn’t keep piercing the room.
I wasn’t the only one to have noticed the change in seating arrangements, and one of the instructors was watching the prince and the general’s daughter with a curious eye as he approached Clarence at one of the front desks.
“Here, let me check it over for you,” he said, reaching down to take Clarence’s parchment with only half his attention.
Clarence, a scholar with only middling strength, had a tendency to go long on his compositions, using twice as many words as the rest of us. But this instructor had been working with the fourth years and was new to our class.
“No, I’m not finished,” said Clarence sharply, grabbing at the parchment as the instructor tried to pull it away.
The instructor focused on him, realizing his mistake too late, and time seemed to slow. Everyone in the room turned toward them as the ominous sound of tearing parchment cut through the usual noise of the room.
“No!” called one of our regular instructors, one hand diving inside his robe.
But there was no time. He had no hope of finding and identifying the right composition, even if he had one on his person.
I leaped to my feet, my chair clattering loudly to the floor behind me, as three words blazed across my internal vision.
“Shield us all,” I screamed across the room, my hands pushing out as if to assist the dregs of my strength as it rushed out to envelop the fifteen people present.
Almost instantaneously the ripping sound finished, and unconfined power burst through the room, released prematurely from the incomplete composition. Desks and chairs exploded, ragged spears of wood shooting in all directions. Chunks of stone from the ceiling shattered and crashed downward.
The initial fiery force sent me reeling as it battered against the shields I maintained around Clarence, his desk mate Calix, and the new instructor. My faltering strength had cocooned each person barely inches from their skin in tight balls that protected the smallest possible area. Yet as each shard of stone and sliver of wood collided with my working, I felt more and more of my faltering energy drain away.
I swayed, my vision going blurry and then darkening from the edges inward. I couldn’t hear any more crashes, but a ringing had started in my ears, so it was hard to tell.
“Easy,” said a familiar voice.
Strong arms circled me just as my knees gave way. I searched for Lucas’s face, but I could no longer see clearly enough to make out his features.
“Sorry I couldn’t save the room as well,” I murmured, and then the darkness enfolded me.
Chapter 8
“Sorry I couldn’t save the room? Really?” Coralie’s exasperated voice greeted
me as soon as my eyes opened.
“Personally, I thought they were inspired final words,” said Finnian beside her. But his words held a hidden bite. “If final words were truly necessary, of course.”
“What he’s trying to say is that he’d prefer you didn’t kill yourself—even if you’re going to do it in style,” Saffron interpreted.
I tried to sit up.
“Whoa!”
“Whoa, whoa!” All three of their voices overlapped as they all lunged forward to try to push me back down onto the pillows.
Faced with such united opposition I sank back down onto the bed.
“Goodness, there’s no need to get excited.” I surveyed the room, recognizing the small alcove in Acacia’s healing rooms. I’d woken up here before.
“Actually, there is at least a little need,” said Acacia in a flat voice.
She appeared behind my friends, pushing through to stand beside my bed and gripping my wrist between her fingers. We all remained silent as her eyes fastened on the blank wall for a moment.
“Your heart is beating strongly at least. Now.” She gave me a stern look which melted into a long-suffering sigh. “None of the other students give me as much trouble as you, Elena. It’s always you.”
I grinned weakly at her. “You’re welcome. I wouldn’t want your life to get boring.”
She chuckled before turning serious again.
“You’re fortunate to wake up at all. You came very close to draining yourself completely. This isn’t the sort of thing you can recover from all in a moment. I have already issued strict instructions to all staff that you are not to attend classes, study, or attempt even the smallest composition for at least two days.”
Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3) Page 7