Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3)

by Melanie Cellier

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said in a loaded voice, and he hurried to assure me that they had merely been quizzing each other. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes as he said it.

  I showed great sisterly restraint and refrained from asking why two geniuses with perfect recall needed to quiz each other. I liked Clara, having spent some time with her in Abalene the year before, and I was perfectly ready to accept her as a sister-in-law. And I hoped my family would feel the same, especially now that Clemmy had been healed.

  Our immediate need for a vast sum of money had disappeared. Hopefully any serious dreams they might have held that Jasper would marry into a rich commonborn merchant family had died with it.

  “You’re lucky to find us here,” Jasper said, rushing to change the topic. “We have a free period before lunch. But what are you doing out of the Academy? It’s not a rest day.”

  I glanced at Clara.

  “Don’t hold back on her account,” he said. “I’ve told her all about our family, including you and your powers.”

  I smiled at the other girl, but it felt tight on my face. He had told her everything about me? For all I liked her, I didn’t know quite how I felt about that. I glanced around the room, trying to regain my balance.

  A crumb-filled plate and a half-full cup of tea sat on the desk, and a hat and cloak had been crumpled heedlessly on the single storage trunk. The bed covers looked rumpled as if someone had been sitting there recently, and the shutters on the window were thrown open, letting in a cool breeze. Someone had sprinkled more crumbs across the windowsill, and a tiny brown bird pecked at them.

  The whole thing had a homey feel. It should, since it had been Jasper’s small home for almost four years now. And the truth was that Clara looked far more at home here than I did. Time had passed, our lives had changed, and Jasper had found a family in her when his true one was out of reach.

  I nodded once, to myself rather than to them. If Jasper said I could speak freely in front of her, then I would trust that. I briefly explained what had happened, and my current enforced rest.

  “But as you can see, I’m fine,” I said, holding out my arms to display my intact body.

  To my surprise Jasper refrained from lecturing me, or even exclaiming. Instead he merely sighed.

  “Is it a bad sign that I’ve gotten used to you having near death experiences?”

  “Um, maybe?” I grimaced. “But you try mastering an unheard-of new power while surrounded all day by extremely important people. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  Clara laughed. “It doesn’t sound easy at all.”

  “Thank you!” I said with a dramatic hand gesture. “You should listen to her, Jasper.”

  A strangely guilty expression passed over Clara’s face, and Jasper gave her a weighted look instead of replying to me. Something in my joking words had crashed the mood of the room, but I couldn’t read whatever his face was conveying.

  Clara apparently could, though. She bit her lip and turned away, her shoulders slumping as she crossed over to the window, causing the little bird to abandon its perch and take off into the sky.

  Another small wave of jealousy washed over me that she could read my brother when I could not. But I pushed the unfair thought aside. Jasper had left Kingslee for the sake of our family. He had never asked for any of this.

  Clara didn’t turn back to us, but I saw her give the tiniest nod of her head. I tried to decide if I should say something, but Jasper placed his hands on my shoulders, distracting me.

  “Easy or not, you’re my little sister. I just want you to be safe. Promise me you’ll at least try.”

  I slipped my arms around his waist and gave him a squeeze.

  “You know I do. Every day. For all of us.”

  He nodded. “That’s what family does.”

  The words were no more than I would expect from Jasper, no more than he had always displayed in his actions. But something about them stayed with me as I strolled back to the Academy after my visit. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been a second conversation going on in Jasper’s room. One that I had missed entirely.

  Chapter 9

  When I entered the dining hall that night, my usual table companions crowded around me to congratulate me on my recovery. Clarence and Araminta, the other trainees from minor mage families, hadn’t seen me since I collapsed, and they both thanked me profusely for my actions. Clarence, in particular, apologized and thanked me so many times that I began to lose patience with him.

  “Redmond was furious with our instructors,” said Saffron. “Finnian and I heard him railing at Lorcan about it in the corridor the other day.”

  “I heard he wouldn’t let them bring in a creator to fix the classroom,” said Araminta.

  “No, he insisted on doing it himself.” Finnian rolled his eyes. “Foolish if you ask me. Better to leave such things to the experts.”

  “Don’t let Redmond catch you suggesting he’s not an expert at any type of composition.” I rolled my eyes while ladling soup into my bowl as quickly as I could. I had missed eating in the dining hall. Room service didn’t seem to be conducive to hot food.

  “It was very romantic, though,” said Araminta with a hesitant smile. “The way the prince caught you just as you collapsed and carried you out of the room.”

  I tensed at the casual mention of me, Lucas, and romance. “Was it? I wouldn’t know.” My words came out caustic, and Araminta almost visibly shrank into herself.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly, rubbing at the side of my head. “I’m still a bit tired.” I tried to inject as much sincerity into my smile as I could. “Just don’t let Natalya hear you making comments like that, or I’ll really be in for it.”

  “Oh, goodness, no.” Araminta’s eyes widened. “But then I generally try to avoid Natalya hearing me say anything at all.”

  I blinked at her. Had that been a joke? Belatedly I smiled, and she smiled back which only made me feel worse about snapping at her.

  “Next time I’ll make an effort to be conscious so I can enjoy the experience.” I looked across the table at Finnian. “Perhaps you can be my knight in shining armor on the next occasion.”

  “While I am always willing to assist a damsel in distress,” Finnian said, cheerfully buttering his roll, “if there’s a next time, I will kill you myself. Although I might have to settle for killing one of your less important body parts because I imagine there would be a few people in line before me. Friends don’t let friends burn out, you know.”

  “That makes literally no sense at all,” said Saffron.

  “Don’t bother me with the details,” said Finnian, “I’m trying to make a point.”

  “Point received,” I said. “I love you all too.”

  “And now I’m blushing,” said Finnian, calmly starting on his roll. “Are we all proclaiming our love now? Because I’m perfectly willing to get involved.”

  “I love you, Elena, oh most troublesome of friends.” He turned slightly to face Coralie who sat beside me. “I love you, Coralie—”

  “Oh hush, you idiot,” she said, cutting him off. She kept her voice level, the only detectable emotion exasperation, but I noticed a faint pink tinge in her cheeks, and beneath the tablecloth, one of her hands trembled slightly.

  “No one appreciates me, Saffron,” said Finnian. “It’s a sad, sad world.”

  “It could be sadder,” said Saffron. “Elena could have been absent from class two days ago, and you could have been the one to die.”

  Finnian paused, an arrested expression on his face, his first spoonful of soup half way to his mouth.

  “Now there is a truly terrifying thought. Imagine! An Academy without me. How would you all survive? I’m going to write to my aunt and tell her you’re giving me nightmares.”

  “Please do,” said Saffron, calmly slurping her own soup. “Maybe Mother will send us more cookies.”

  “But would they be to console Finnian or congratulate you?” I asked.<
br />
  She looked up at me and grinned. “Does it matter?”

  But her smile fell away, replaced by a look of mild confusion as she gazed at something over my shoulder. Frowning, I turned to look and found Calix paused behind me. Weston stood several steps further on toward their usual table, looking back at his friend with the same confusion as Saffron.

  “My father sends his thanks, private. Apparently he wasn’t too keen on the idea of his children ending up speared by their own classroom.”

  I tried to weigh up his meaning, but his humorous tone threw me. When Natalya called me private, the mocking disdain was clear, but Calix almost sounded as if he were attempting to laugh with me rather than at me, however poor a job he was doing at it.

  “Um…thank you?”

  He nodded, apparently satisfied with my lackluster response, and continued on to Weston. The Stantorn gave his friend a confused look, but Calix merely shrugged, as if there was nothing particularly noteworthy in his thanking me.

  I turned slowly back to my own table.

  “Someone please tell me that was as odd as I thought it was?”

  “Odder.” Coralie nodded vigorously and stared across at where the fair-haired Calix was taking his seat across from his dark-haired twin.

  “I don’t know,” said Finnian, also eyeing General Griffith’s son. “Maybe not so odd.”

  I raised both eyebrows at him. “Have you met the twins before?”

  “I grew up with them, remember? And they’re dissimilar in more ways than just their looks. Natalya can hold a grudge like no one I’ve ever met.” He shook his head. “None of us children would cross her if we could avoid it. At the end of the day she’s not thinking about anyone but herself. But Calix? Calix is a much more dutiful son. Rivalry with his talented older brother, Julian, probably.”

  I frowned down into my soup. It might have been two years ago, but I could still feel Calix’s foot connecting with my ribs. He had felt nothing but contempt, disdain, and anger toward me then.

  But I also remembered what Coralie had told me when I first arrived. How the other students—the ones from the great families—were waiting to see what position their families took regarding my presence at the Academy. And the winds of opinion among the members of Devoras had shifted. I had gone from dangerous risk to powerful potential tool.

  “Ugh.” I glowered at my poor unoffending bowl. “I almost prefer Natalya. At least she has dedication.”

  “Watch your tongue, Elena,” Coralie scolded me. “You have quite enough enemies without going begging for more.”

  “Thank you, Coralie,” I said, a smile returning to my face. “You are, as always, a source of comfort and inspiration.”

  She just rolled her eyes and pushed aside her empty bowl, reaching for a platter of meat.

  “I speak nothing but the truth. What else are friends for?”

  Finnian stared across at her with widened eyes. “Definitely not for that! My fragile ego might not survive.”

  “What a horrible blow that would be for us all,” Saffron murmured into her soup, and Coralie and I both broke into giggles.

  Two days banished to my room had been quite enough. It was good to be back with my friends.

  My good humor lasted all through the next day, and the day after. But Lucas returned from the palace the day after that, and my mood plummeted, along with the rest of the Academy’s.

  He had been away for an unusually long time, and along with his return came rumors from the front lines. The Kallorwegians had become ghosts, impossible to catch, their raids increasing in frequency. And there had been another young mage death. Only one this time, and no one who had been close to any of my friends, but Coralie seemed unusually upset about it.

  “Hardly the furor there was last time, is there?” she whispered angrily to me as we passed a group of trainees discussing it in the corridor.

  “Well, there were five deaths last year,” I pointed out tentatively, unsure what had raised her ire. I had already checked twice, and she had only ever met the mage in question once since he had been three years above us at the Academy, serving his second year at the front.

  “And you don’t think they’d be equally devastated this time if a Devoras or a Callinos had died?” She gave me a pointed look. “Instead of some poor member of a minor family.”

  Ah. I hadn’t known which family the casualty belonged to. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask, and my friends must have already known.

  The year before I had been in her shoes—the only one mourning the commonborn who had died alongside the mages. But I didn’t comment on that now. We all had our people—and could we really be blamed for that?

  “I’m sorry, Coralie,” I said instead, unsure what else I could say.

  “Mage deaths do happen, you know,” she said. “From time to time. Not like last year. I’ll admit that was a lot all at once. But when they do happen, they’re more often from the minor families. It makes sense because we lack the strength of the others. We’re less able to defend ourselves.”

  “Coralie.” I gripped her arm. “I’m sure the officers—those who’ve actually chosen the armed forces discipline—take everyone’s strength into account when assigning duties.”

  “I suppose.” Her hands balled into fists before slowly relaxing as she looked up at me. “Listen to me! As if you, out of all of us, need reminding that the world’s not fair.”

  I pressed my lips together and looked away. I hated seeing my usually bubbly friend so depressed, and I wished I could reassure her that I would keep her safe when our time at the front came. But I knew I couldn’t make promises like that. Because members of the army didn’t belong to themselves. They had officers and orders in place of their own decisions.

  Coralie had no more outbursts, but she remained subdued over the following days, and her mood infected me. When I tried to study in the library during discipline studies, I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t shake the thought that those from minor families—like Coralie and Araminta—were more at risk at the front.

  “That’s it. Out. Get out.” Jocasta’s irritated voice snapped me back into the present.

  She glared at my fingers, and I realized I had been tapping my pen against the table.

  “Sorry, I’ll—”

  “Out. Go study in your suite. You’ve been up and down twenty times and I, for one, could do without your presence here.”

  I sighed and gathered up my things. Jocasta had never been my biggest supporter or the most cheerful of people, even without the current tone of the Academy.

  But my feet didn’t take me back to my rooms. Instead I somehow found myself in the waiting room outside Lorcan’s office.

  I didn’t remember deciding to come here, or even what I intended to say, but somehow I needed reassurance. I needed to remember that there were still months before we would be visiting the front, and even then, only as observers. Our own terms wouldn’t come until after fourth year.

  But the Academy Head wasn’t alone. Heated voices from inside his office made me pause just outside his door. Whoever was visiting him must have been too angry to close the door properly behind them, because it stood the slightest bit ajar, making it even easier to hear the slightly raised voices inside.

  “You pulled a neat trick with the girl, Lorcan, and you know it,” said the other voice. It only took me a moment to place it as General Griffith.

  An unpleasant creeping feeling spread from my scalp down my body. I hadn’t known the Head of the Armed Forces—a Devoras with far too much control over my life, thanks to my enlistment—was in Corrin.

  “I had the support of the royal family,” said Lorcan, sounding considerably calmer than the general.

  “Ha!” barked Griffith. “As if I didn’t know that. You always land on your feet, Lorcan.”

  “I endeavor to do so, certainly.”

  The general muttered something I couldn’t hear.

  “Do not tell me there has been another major
offensive like the surprise attack last year,” said Lorcan. “I have heard no reports of one.”

  “Not a major offensive as such.” The general’s voice had dropped slightly, and I leaned forward closer to the crack in the door. He sounded almost weary now, and I somehow grew even more afraid.

  “It’s more of a constant pressure. There’s no doubt they’ve increased their numbers. Despite the losses we gave them when we drove them back last year.” He sighed. “But then we took some losses of our own then.”

  “Yes, that was most unfortunate,” said Lorcan.

  “We need this, Lorcan. Ardann needs this. We need something new at the front line.”

  “I am not bringing untrained children to fight.” Lorcan sounded sharp for the first time.

  “They’re hardly children, are they? Eighteen-year-olds the lot of them.”

  Lorcan made an outraged sound, and the general rushed on.

  “I’m not planning to set them to fighting. My own children are among them, may I remind you! But the girl. You should hear how the soldiers speak of her.” He paused, and a chair creaked as if he had just sat down. “They need hope, Lorcan. They need to see that Ardann has strength. And if you will not release her from the Academy, then you must bring the Academy to us. It will do your trainees good, too. Let them see the reality of what they’ll be coming to after they graduate. They’ll only train all the harder when you get them back here.”

  A moment of silence sounded, and then he heaved himself back to his feet with a groan. “You know the Stantorns agree with me about where she belongs. They understand the importance of the war efforts. And if things turn bad at the front again, as they did twenty years ago, we might end up having to recall a great many mages to active service. Such an exercise isn’t cheap, as you must know.”

  He gave a dry chuckle. “And if the crown is forced to look to the Ellingtons for finances, you know the only ones who will hate that more than the king are the Ellingtons themselves. A messy eventuality when we have a much less disruptive option within our reach.”