“I should be going.” Lucas stood reluctantly. “There are still those among our year mates who would gladly report back if they got wind of my being in here alone with you. Not to mention the servants. I don’t know how we can work together, but somehow we’ll figure out a way to end this war before I’m bound to the Sekali princess.”
I leaped up and wrapped my arms around his middle, squeezing as tightly as I could. If this was our last chance to be real with each other, I needed longer with him.
But the moment was all too quickly gone. For one brief instant his strong arms were wrapped so tightly around me they lifted me off the floor, and then he was slipping back out the door.
None of us pushed ourselves as we strolled out of the dining hall and through the gardens the next morning. Thornton always spent the first week, at least, with the first years, and the junior instructors were notoriously less strict on punctuality. I felt no desire to hurry toward combat class. Even if the first lesson would be little more than a warm up and refresher on our sword skills.
After Lucas left the afternoon before, I had pushed myself too close to exhaustion working on a series of complex compositions. I told myself I truly believed I could get a covert working all the way to the Kallorwegian border from here, but if I was honest, I had been certain it would prove impossible. Deep down I knew I had used more energy than I should purely to push out the unhappy thoughts circling my mind.
My eyes lingered on Lucas’s back as we walked. We might be forced to keep our distance, just like in the past, but at least one thing had changed. I no longer had to pretend disinterest. After our kiss in the Academy entrance hall at the end of last year, everyone at the Academy knew of our connection, and they must all know the reasons for our current distance. As long as we didn’t act on our feelings, the Sekali delegation couldn’t complain.
But the unimpressed face of the instructor waiting in the training yard drew my attention back to the class.
“You’re all late, and Thornton isn’t going to be pleased,” she snapped.
“Thornton?” Weston frowned. “He’s never with the fourth years on the first day.”
“Never is a strong word, trainee.” She looked down her nose at him. “You might be a fourth year, but don’t start thinking you know everything there is to know about the Academy.”
I exchanged a worried look with Coralie. The last thing I needed was more surprises in combat. My classes were supposed to be the one easy thing about this year.
“You’re all to report to the arena for your first class,” she said.
“The arena?” Natalya asked.
The instructor narrowed her eyes at her. “That’s what I said. And you’re already late, so I suggest you all get moving without any more talk.”
Finnian raised an eyebrow but kept his mouth shut, breaking into a light jog that we all followed. I kept up with the group easily until I noticed Saffron hanging at the rear. Dropping back, I kept pace with her.
She hardly seemed to notice me, her eyes—large in her gray face—focused on the arena in the distance.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I keep remembering it,” she said. “The attack in the gully, and then the battle. I see them all the time in my sleep.” She swallowed and finally looked at me. “I never asked you. Was he in pain? Clarence, I mean.”
My pulse throbbed in my ears, although my breath came easily at our fast walk.
“No,” I whispered. “It happened so fast. There wasn’t anything I could do to help him.”
“Oh.” Saffron placed a hand on my arm. “No, I didn’t mean…” She took a breath. “I guess I’m just afraid that I’ll freeze up if I face battle again. Even battle in the arena, where I know it isn’t real.”
“I think you’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s the sounds and the smells that get you, and the illusions from the compositions that we command in the arena don’t have those.” I glanced at her sideways, hesitating. I suspected her real fear wasn’t about what might happen in the arena.
“And beyond that,” I said, “I think you’ll find that when the time comes, you’ll do what you have to.”
Saffron gave me a tentative smile. “I hope you’re right.”
The rest of our year mates had already disappeared inside the arena, but we maintained our slower pace as we approached the entrance. Neither of us was in a hurry for what awaited us inside.
Saffron was half a step behind me when my feet hit the arena floor. I registered no more than a rush of movement before a force hit me from the side. As I was lifted into the air, I managed to thrust blindly at Saffron, pushing her stumbling back out into the Academy grounds.
I hit the dirt with enough force to rob me of air. I struggled to take a breath, my mind and body panicking at my double incapacitation. Without breath, my power was as useless as my body. My attacker, a man in rough leather clothing, aimed a kick in my direction. I rolled, narrowly avoiding his foot as my lungs continued to scream at me.
My world narrowed, other sounds falling away, as I focused on the man. Just as I finally drew breath to speak a composition and shield myself, a second set of arms grabbed at me. They hauled me from the ground as I struggled to form the mental picture I needed to complete a working.
The second man made no effort to beat me, instead attempting to sling me over his shoulder. I had no idea how this could be happening here and now, but I recognized the situation. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to abduct me.
My body responded before my mind could catch up, twisting away from him as I drove my elbow back into his stomach. He grunted but didn’t let go, his companion approaching me from the other side.
I pushed off against the man holding me, trying to get enough momentum to bring my feet back in a crippling kick. But the first man grabbed me around the knees instead, hauling my legs higher into the air. I took a deep breath, but the second man tightened his grip around my lungs painfully, pushing the air back out again. Black dots began to dance across my vision.
The man holding me jerked, his grip loosening as a weight pulled at him from behind. Smaller arms appeared, hanging from around his neck, dragging him backward and down. Now he was the one struggling to breathe.
I sucked in air, but I couldn’t seem to get enough. I wouldn’t manage a long composition, so I needed to make it a powerful one. But what if it wasn’t enough? I never should have exhausted myself so foolishly.
Without thinking, I gasped out, “Drain.” My power instinctively latched onto the familiar feeling of Saffron, hanging off my captor’s neck, and a rush of energy filled me. I renewed my struggles, flailing wildly with new strength. One of my feet collided with the first man’s face just as I managed to shout, “Separate!”
The four of us sprang apart, our bodies sailing through the air in different directions, hurled by the force of my power. The shock made me cut off the river of energy flowing into me, but I had already received more than my fill.
As the ground rushed toward me, I whispered, “Shield,” overlapping a sense of both Saffron and me.
Invisible cushioning sprang into life around me just in time to soften my collision with the arena floor. I lay there for a moment, panting for breath, before I rolled onto all fours and then scrambled to my feet.
Both of my attackers still lay prone, moaning. Nothing had broken their fall.
Saffron sat, one hand pressed to the side of her head. She appeared to have bounced off a section of arena seating but looked unharmed. Her eyes were fixed on something deeper inside the arena, however, and I swung around, alert for further threats.
Instead I saw my nine remaining year mates and Thornton watching us. The other trainees all wore some level of shock and confusion on their faces. But our instructor looked impassive.
“Your reactions were a little slow,” he said. “Especially yours, Saffron. And you should carry defensive compositions on you at all times, even if you aren’t expecting any arena bouts.
That’s something to work on for next time.”
He looked at me. “Elena, you need to develop better strategies against an opponent who succeeds in catching you by surprise and winding you. You would have been in trouble without your friend’s assistance.”
I stared at him for a moment before Saffron and I exchanged a disbelieving look.
“Are you telling me that was part of combat class?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “How else could two commonborn attackers get to you here, inside the arena? And with all of us watching?”
He was right that it had made no sense. After my abduction in first year, Lorcan had improved the protections on the Academy. Access was now only possible through the main gates, and the head himself monitored everyone who passed through them. But I had barely been able to draw a breath the entire time. I hadn’t had extra brain space to give the matter much consideration. My gaze fell on the two men still twitching on the ground, and then crossed over to Saffron. She was only just shakily rising to her feet, her face pale.
A sick feeling filled me as the low pulse of her energy stabbed at me like an accusation. I had reacted on instinct and fear, and I had taken too much of her energy. I hadn’t set the proper limitations, and if it hadn’t been for my second composition severing the connection, I could have bled her dry.
And all, it turned out, for a training exercise. A swell of anger threatened to overpower me.
“A training exercise? But I could have—” I bit off my next words. I couldn’t say anything about what I had nearly done to Saffron.
Instead I turned my attention to the injured men at my feet. Ignoring both my instructor and my year mates, I dropped onto one knee beside the man with blood all over his face. I winced at the sight of his broken nose and began murmuring the binding words.
“That is unnecessary,” said Thornton behind me. “Naturally they will be healed. Acacia awaits them in her rooms.”
I turned to glare at him, but even as I did so, I modified my composition, reducing it to mere pain relief. The man sighed as my power washed over him and moved toward his companion. They both fell still and took several deep breaths.
I would have preferred to heal them completely, but I knew Thornton would reprimand me for wasting the energy. And he would be right. It was an unnecessary drain if healing compositions had already been set aside for the task.
“Sorry about the nose,” I said to the man, offering him a hand.
He slowly heaved himself to his feet without using it, shaking his head as he did so.
“They didn’t tell us we would be attacking the Spoken Mage,” the other one muttered.
“Never mind my face, My Lady,” the one with the broken nose said, ignoring his companion. “You put up a good fight which is what you was supposed to do.”
The two lurched out of the arena, disappearing toward the Academy. I turned back to Thornton.
“What if I had killed one of them!” What if I had killed Saffron?
“You’re not the killing type,” he said calmly. His eyes surveyed the whole group of trainees. “You have all seen first-hand that in true combat you cannot predict the moment or method of an attack. Real life doesn’t look like our pretty exercises in the arena. This year I will be changing things. Expect the unexpected. When you graduate, you will be as prepared as humanly possible for the outside world.”
An intense light filled his eyes, and I swallowed. This was about Clarence.
In Thornton’s mind, the worst had happened—one of the trainees in his care had been killed in combat. Not a graduate released into the world, but one still under his tutelage. And apparently he had decided to take our training to new levels as a result.
I took a step toward the rest of the group and winced, my hand flying to my side. Now that the rush from the attack was fading, I could feel the throbbing pain from where I had landed after the first attack.
Lucas stepped forward, his hand catching my elbow and holding me up. When I sucked in a sharp breath, he cursed quietly and let me go. Withdrawing a parchment from his sleeve, he ripped it before I could protest, flicking his fingers toward me.
Sweet, healing power poured over me, and I couldn’t help the soft sigh that slipped from my lips. I closed my eyes and took one long breath before opening them again to glare at him.
“That was a lot of power. More than I needed. You shouldn’t have wasted it on me.”
He frowned. “Who knows what internal injuries you might have had.” He glanced toward our instructor. “I tried to intervene. So did Finnian and Coralie. But it happened before any of us realized, and Thornton threw up a shield to hold us all back and incapacitate any compositions we might send your way.”
I smiled, the gesture easy now that my pain had disappeared, every ache wiped away by his working.
“It’s not your fault. And honestly, I’ve had worse beatings in this class.”
Lucas’s face twitched, and I belatedly remembered one of my more severe injuries had come from him.
“Thank goodness for healing compositions, hey,” I said, trying to cheer him up.
“Did your power connect you to Saffron?” he asked in a low voice. “It was hard to tell with the way she was hanging off your attacker. But I thought…” He glanced once at her. “And she looks awfully tired now.”
I turned away from the questions in his eyes, unable to admit to what I had done.
“Elena…” His voice trailed off as he glanced across to where Natalya and Lavinia watched us.
“I’m glad you’re both all right,” he said, watching as Saffron approached Finnian.
Finnian looked nearly as black as Lucas had done when he first approached me—the angry glares he was directing at Thornton out of character for him—so I headed in their direction as soon as Lucas stepped away. Sickness pooled in my stomach, fueled by guilt and fear for what could have been. I needed to apologize to Saffron, but I couldn’t do it here. And in the meantime, I needed to distract Finnian before he punched someone.
“So,” I said, making my voice as bright as I could, “looks like it’s going to be a fun year.”
Saffron chortled weakly, and Finnian’s face lightened.
“It actually was sort of fun,” she said. “In a weird way. Did you see the way I bounced off that railing? Thank goodness you’re quick with your compositions, Elena.”
Another stab of guilt at her words morphed into confusion as she gave me a significant look I couldn’t read. Thornton called for our attention, and as the trainees around us moved, she leaned close to me.
“You were right. When it came to it, I could act, after all.”
“And I’m very grateful you did. I was in trouble until you arrived.”
Her face brightened. “I didn’t do much.”
“But it was just enough,” I said. “And I repaid you by—”
“Hush!” she said. “Don’t speak of it. You did what you needed to, thinking we were both under threat. I understand.”
“Saffron, I’m sorry. Really.”
“You have no need to be. It’s nothing a good sleep won’t fix.”
I bit my lip, but Thornton sent a quelling stare in our direction, and we both fell silent. Saffron might be willing to let me off the hook, but that didn’t mean I was going to let myself off so easily.
I had been right not to risk using this new power since the battle. And obviously I needed to keep it that way. Some things were too dangerous to be played with.
Chapter 4
To my relief, Redmond had no surprises for us in our first composition class of the year and blathered the whole time on theory, so Saffron wasn’t called on to compose. I watched her closely, and she had regained some color by the time we were all making our way to the library to sign up for our chosen discipline studies for the year.
All of my friends, even Saffron, intended to sign up for armed forces studies again, and I could understand why. But I had reached my fill of destruction. I lon
ged to try my hand at creation for once.
I didn’t intend to sign up for actual creator studies, however. Building design didn’t strike me as particularly alluring. But Saffron planned to try grower studies as her second discipline, and I had decided to join her.
“You know, it’s not too late,” Coralie said, as we approached the library doors. “You could still decide to join Finnian and me in healing studies with your other choice.”
She had tried creator studies in third year but was returning to healing. I had accused her of doing it to impress Finnian’s family, given his father was Head of the Healers, and she had acknowledged it without shame.
“I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t interested, though,” she had said. “We saw so many interesting advanced healings at the front. And I’m not going back to creating. I’d much rather rebuild a leg than a house.”
Finnian I suspected of having no such interest in healing. He was merely following Coralie and attempting to please his father. He and Coralie had decided to wait to introduce each other to their families until graduation, and he no doubt wanted his family in as good a mood as possible when that day came.
“No, I’ve made up my mind about my second discipline,” I told her, as we entered the library. “All of Saffron’s stories about wind working last year were interesting. I want to give it a try, even if she’s not continuing with it. Plus, Araminta’s going to join me.”
Araminta nodded before sighing. “My only hope of passing is to keep trying new things so I can stay a beginner the whole way through.”
I nudged her with my shoulder.
“Don’t say that! You’ve improved enormously since first year.”
She shrugged but managed a smile. It was true she had improved, but I still understood her fear. Araminta remained the weakest trainee in our year, and the final year exams were the only ones rumored to be truly difficult. The consequence of failure, of course, was incarceration. No one who could write but was unable to safely control power could be allowed to roam through the kingdom freely. Even mages were not exempt from that.
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