“As the realm has only one prince, I would say that didn’t work out for her.”
Reina tapped her pen against her palm, staring hard at me for a moment. “Did you know that before the prince was born, I was the kingdom’s heir?”
“I’m sure you’re not bitter about that at all.”
“Yes, after three failed pregnancies by the queen, Father met with my adoptive parents and signed documents naming me his heir. I received a queen’s education, attended council meetings, studied foreign relations. There was even talk of an engagement.” Her eyes grew distant a moment. “Did you know Mother was supposed to be the queen?”
“Did you know male sea stars give birth?”
“Father wanted to put—No.” Reina’s eyes snapped into focus, fixing me with a glare as good as any of Kestral’s. I laughed, infuriating her more. “No, that is absolutely, unassailably incorrect.” She stood, pushing past me to stand before a bookcase, trailing her hand almost lovingly along a few spines before removing the desired tome. “Sea stars disperse genetic material into . . .” She trailed off, eyes snapping up from the page to meet mine, catching on to my diversionary tactic. “Hm. You may not be smart, but you might be clever.”
“Thanks?” I gave her half a smile. “If I might interrupt what sounds like a really fascinating lecture, which I didn’t even have to pay tuition for, so I’m sure it’s a real steal—I’m not really here to learn a history lesson.”
“No. You’re here to ask my assistance in your fight against our brothers Raleagan and Navelynstra.” Reina crossed the room to another bookshelf, selecting a book seemingly at random. She leafed through it before continuing, “I have no interest in helping you.”
“First, that’s a completely acceptable answer.” I held my hands out, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. “I would point out, however, that the last time one of us didn’t want to fight, he got roasted before he could finish screaming. I feel like maybe we could be a help to each other until—”
“No.” Reina set her book back and selected a different one.
I stuttered to a stop, trying to think of what to say next.
“Jereshin—”
“Reshi.”
“It’s not that I can’t defend myself, unlike poor Telakishin. I simply have no interest in what is currently an all-out brawl between siblings. Once one of you emerges with the powers of the others, then I will go and take what is rightfully mine. The power, and the throne.” Without looking up from her book, Reina walked over to an unlit candle sconce. She pinched a wick between two fingers and when she pulled her hand away, the candle was lit. I gulped. Was she another fire-user like Eagan? No, that was something different. I backed up a step.
“You see, Jereshin.” She glanced up over her book, those plain eyes somehow wildly disconcerting. “Not only am I the eldest, born with more magic than any of the rest of you, but I am also the only one of us to receive a formal magical education.”
“So, you learned magic from books? That’s the advantage that’ll keep you alive against the fire noble and the lightning lunatic?”
“No.” Reina smiled for the first time. She set the book down on the edge of a shelf. As she met my eyes, she slowly removed her spectacles. I gaped in horror as her veil dropped, smoothing her fly-away brown hair into a smooth, precise knot at the back of her head. Her eyes gleamed with violet light. She even seemed to stand several inches taller. “You may even be familiar with this magic, dear Jereshin. I am fae-trained.”
I took another step back, stumbling into the desk where Reina had been writing when I entered. When had she put herself between me and the door? There were three tall windows in front of the desk, but they were shut tight. Maybe I could push past her? Or turn into something small and dart around her? When had I missed my opportunity run, as both Kila and Kestral had suggested?
“Well, I can see that there’s nothing I can say to change your mind.” I shrugged, smiling congenially. “It seems like you’ve got a pretty solid plan, so . . .” I took a step forward, hoping to pass by her. “Good luck, I guess, when you face the ultimate sibling and—” I grunted as a solid wall of air pressed me back against the desk.
“Now, Jereshin.” Reina smiled as she shook her head. “I have no intention, whatsoever, of leaving my tower and hunting down our brothers and sisters, as some have. But I also can’t ignore it when one shows up, uninvited, essentially offering himself up to me. I’d be a fool to let you go. You understand, don’t you?”
“I don’t. Not really.” I struggled against the heavy air pinning me to the desk. “What magic is this? This isn’t fae.”
“I am, what you might call, a mystic,” Reina explained, appearing ready to begin another lecture. “I may be fae-trained, but my magic is human in nature.”
My arms and legs were pinned, my chest could barely move to breath. Pressing against the invisible weight was impossible, so I tried throwing my weight sideways. Objects on the desk rattled, something fell and rolled. Reina shrieked, cutting off her lecture and the magic holding me down. She lifted her wide trouser leg and stomped on a lit candle, sent rolling by my struggle against the desk. Parchment beneath the candle barely smoldered before Reina doused the flame, looking more relieved than rational. I smirked as she looked up to glare at me.
“Do you have any idea what a flame could do in here, you ignorant—”
I leaned back against the desk and used both legs to kick her chair across the room. Reina’s form shimmered and reappeared, out of the chair’s path, but it struck my true target: a standing brazier of tiered candles. The brazier wobbled for one breath-holding moment before toppling forward, sending candles rolling over stacks of parchment and bundled scrolls. Reina’s hands balled into fists, her face contorting with fury, before she raised one hand to the fire and one towards me. I felt, more than saw, an invisible force slam down on the toppled candles, smothering the flames. At the same time, a force slammed into me hard enough to flip me over the desk and through the window beyond.
Not exactly my best plan. Glass and iron shredded my clothes and skin as I fell from a height I had previously thought unachievable by human construction. But at least I had escaped. I shifted to my crow form, wincing as blood drenched my feathers. I set my wings straight out, content to glide to the ground without causing further harm to myself.
“Kestral, I’m landing to the south—” My thought was cut off as an invisible force slammed into me from above. I fell before catching myself, spiraling into an awkward dive. Since I had no night vision in this form, I couldn’t tell how quickly the ground was coming up beneath me. Attempting to avoid more solid walls of air, I swerved left and right, trying to trace an unpredictable pattern to the ground.
I cawed a scream as a wall of air slammed into my right wing. I felt the bone snap like a piece of dried straw. My left wing fluttered frantically, trying to control my descent. Air burst from my lungs as I hit the ground, luckily not far below me. My shattered wing flopped uselessly alongside my body, my beak open, panting in pain. I tried reaching out for Kestral, but pain was a white searing heat not only in my body, but in my mind as well. For a moment, all I could do was stand and pant.
There was a faint shimmer in the air ahead of me and then a pure, white light. It took long moments for me to understand what I was seeing—my sister Reina held a ball of witchlight in one hand while the other reached back to the sticks in her hair. She touched one, twisted it, and out popped a long, metal needle. She held the light aloft, walking towards me on slippered feet.
I flapped my good wing and cawed loudly, but I was going nowhere fast. Reina seemed to know it too, the way she stalked slowly forward. Struggling was only making me bleed out faster. I stopped and cowered against the dark grass. Reina smiled down at me, the needle glinting in her hand.
A shadow fell over me. For a moment, I thought I had fallen through the Canvas, meeting the star that burned only for me. Didn’t the Order define death as eternal darkne
ss? Had they ever mentioned the ground rolling and rumbling, though? My mind caught up slowly, like walking through ankle-deep muck beneath thigh-high water. The ground rippled and pulsed. Kila stood between Reina and me, a black shadow baring cold steel.
“Out of my way, Tekilashan.”
“Go through me.” Kila’s voice echoed off the tower. “If you can.”
Kila charged and was suddenly swept sideways with a grunt. Before Reina could take a step, the ground opened beneath her and she tumbled down. Orbs of witchlight blossomed against the night sky, throwing the grassy field outside the tower into relief. The ground continued to shudder and ripple, each new tremor a fresh wave of pain. I hunkered down in the grass, panting, as Kila and Reina moved against each other.
I cawed in alarm as a hand scooped me up. I pecked, bit, twisted flesh beneath my beak, unseeing in pure panic.
“Reshi, stop!” Kestral’s voice, slightly breathless but otherwise calm. “It’s me. Calm down.”
I resumed panting, turning my head to stare up at him. Kestral grimaced.
“Broken, isn’t it? You can’t shift?”
More panicked panting.
“Don’t worry.” Kestral dropped to one knee, glancing up briefly at the fight between Kila and Reina. He pulled a strip of bandages out of a belt pouch and carefully wrapped my body from breast bone to tail feathers, setting the broken wing out straight. The bandages quickly turned bloody, and I had to shove down the panic that accompanied my inability to move. “That will have to do for now. When we get back, you can heal up.”
Yet more frantic panting.
“Stay calm, stay down.” Kestral lifted me so I could see into his eyes. “Can you tell me anything about her? Her powers? Anything?”
I tried to push past the pain. I think I got one thought out, “Mystic.”
Kestral nodded and set me down gently. He removed his heavy dagger from his belt and drove the tip deeply into the earth beside me. “Stay near this so I can find you afterwards.” His head snapped up as one of my sisters screamed. “Reshi, whatever happens after this, draw as deeply as you have to, to heal. Understood?”
I watched him stand up, wishing he didn’t have to go help Kila. What could he do against such a powerful mage? Reina was right. The rest of us were just muddling through our magic, learning as we went. To me, she appeared every inch the master sorceress. Kestral strode away from me. I cawed after him once. He glanced back with a small smile before pressing forward, snapping leather-and-steel gauntlets over his wrists.
Balls of light hovered above what was rapidly becoming a battlefield. Kila’s swords had been knocked from her hands and she was charging Reina bare-handed. Reina threw a hand forward, but the earth rose before Kila and she leapt over whatever invisible wall Reina created. Reina shimmered and faded from sight and Kila missed her attack. Just as Reina reappeared, Kestral erupted out of the shadows, sword flashing for her neck. Reina shimmered again, disappearing. Kestral and Kila pivoted in the same instant, turning their backs to each other and keeping their eyes out for Reina.
“Above!” I screamed the word mentally. Reina hovered, impossibly, just over Kestral and Kila, holding her hands palm down. Kestral grabbed Kila’s scarf, tossing her forward before rolling out of the path of the attack. Solid air impacted the ground where the two of them had been standing moments before. Reina gritted her teeth and turned her head, searching the dark grass. The hovering witchlights glided through the air, searching for my hiding place. I hunkered down lower in the grass.
Kestral stood, firing a bolt from his small crossbow. Kila swung her arm in a wide arch, throwing her tiny daggers. Reina shimmered and faded. Kestral loaded another bolt, turning a circle with his eyes up. Kila waited a breath then slammed her foot down against the ground, hard. Rocky spears drove up through the earth all over the grassy field, seemingly at random. Someone screamed far too close to my hiding place in the grass. With a bone-jarring hop, I turned to look behind me.
Witchlight illuminated my hiding place, as well as my sister standing behind me. One of Kila’s rock-spears pierced Reina just below her collarbone and protruded from her back. Before relief could wash over me, Reina reached up and grabbed the rock-spear, turning it to dust. As I watched, she placed her hand to the wound and it healed beneath her touch. Icy terror gripped my heart as Reina’s violet eyes flashed with rage.
Kila and Kestral were too far, I realized. She would kill me. She could stomp me to death or break my neck or . . .
I heard cries from behind me, Kestral and Kila’s shouts. I had an idea, but I knew I didn’t have the time or the wits to explain it to Kestral. As Reina stalked towards me, I tried showing Kestral Reina’s reaction when I nearly burned the papers and books in her tower room. Even if they couldn’t set it on fire to save me, it would keep Kestral and Kila safe.
Reina towered over me, lifting her slippered foot above my head. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes; couldn’t even get stomped to death by a pair of proper boots. What had happened to her steel needle? At least that would have hurt less.
A resounding crack echoed across the field, followed by the groan of stone on stone. Reina stopped, foot still raised, as she stared across the field. Slowly, she set her foot down, backing up a step.
“You wouldn’t,” Reina called.
“Wouldn’t I?” Kila’s voice, but I could hear the strain in it. Another painful hop and I half-turned, peering over the grass to see what had stopped Reina’s moment of triumph. In the distant tower, only one set of windows had light behind them. One of those windows had been broken when I was thrown through it. The stones making up the outer wall between the windows had cracked. And the crack was growing.
“That’s a bluff. You may slaughter indiscriminately on the battlefield, but you’ve never harmed innocents.”
“I don’t have to harm any innocents.” Kila grinned, lit by the floating orbs of witchlight. “All stones are mine. I can weaken the stones around your floor and strengthen the ones above and below. The upper floors will drop and settle, as if your floor never existed.”
Reina’s eyes widened, for the first time, she looked worried. “You have no idea—you can’t possibly understand—all my years of study and research! You would set that work back decades!”
Kila shrugged. “I’m just an ignorant soldier. None of that means a thing to me.”
“Step away from him,” Kestral commanded, his crossbow raised as he stepped forward.
Reina bit her lower lip, eyes flicking to me, then up to her tower. A second crack formed at the far end of the wall from the first. As we watched, the two cracks strained towards each other, like lovers reaching for each other across a void.
“Stop!” Reina shouted. She shimmered, reappearing far across the field, between Kila and the tower. “You cretinous blood-spiller, you do not know what you’re doing!”
Kila responded with a vulgar suggestion.
Kestral turned, keeping his crossbow on Reina as he continued backing towards me. As he passed, he nudged Kila with his elbow, drawing her back as well.
“We’re taking Reshi and we’re leaving,” Kestral called. “We want no fight with you, Laureinaqin.”
Reina narrowed her eyes at him. Perhaps she was wondering if his use of her name was respectful or mocking. She watched the pair of them back right up to me.
Kila removed the dagger from the ground.
Kestral clipped his crossbow to his belt and gently picked me up.
“Fix my tower, you termagant mountain ape!” Reina shouted.
“I will,” Kila called. Sweat beaded on her brow, her skin pale and her hands shaking. “After we’re safely away. Don’t follow us, or it all goes up in dust!”
Kestral cradled me against his chest, one hand holding the broken wing as steady as possible.
“We need to run,” Kila hissed softly.
“We can’t. He’s already bleeding out.”
“Kestral, I can’t stop the tower from collapsing,” Kila whisp
ered, face close to his. “I’m using everything I have to delay it, but those walls are coming down. If she comes after us . . .”
Kestral swore, shifting his grip on me to hold the wing steady. “Double-time, then. We’ll disappear into the city.”
That first jarring step drew a screaming caw from my throat. Half-closed wounds re-opened. By the second step, I sank into blackness.
I woke up alone in a strange bed, in my human form. I stretched out my right arm, popping my shoulder, elbow and wrist, but the bones all seemed to have healed, which left me wondering. How long had I been here? And where was here? My cloak had been draped over the blankets and I clutched it to me as I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. The window across the room was partially open, showing me a midnight sky.
“There’s a pitcher of water next to the bed.”
I jumped like a cat at the unexpected voice, reaching for my magic to shift quickly. A deep ache filled my chest, like a pulled muscle, as I found I didn’t have even enough magic for a single shift. Once my heart climbed back down out of my throat, I looked around for the source of the voice.
In the shadows off to the left of the bed, Kestral’s friend from the bar lounged against the wall. The tall man’s arms were crossed and he wore a sword on his belt. I felt his eyes on me beneath those long, dark curls.
I cleared what felt like a week’s worth of road dust from my throat. “Where’s Kestral?”
“He left a few hours ago with your sister. I find it odd that you asked about him before you asked about her.”
“She can take care of herself,” I argued, dragging my cloak around my shoulders. Every muscle in my body felt stiff. Moving, even slowly, was difficult. “How long have I been here? And where is here?”
“You’re in my sister’s house in the craftsman district of Emlenton. Kestral showed up here late last night with your sister, holding a nearly dead bird in one hand and a sleeping draught in the other. He asked to stay the night.” The dark man tilted his head, still watching me carefully. “In all the years I’ve known him, Kestral has never once asked a favor.”
Sorcerous Rivalry (The Mage-Born Chronicles Book 1) Page 32