House of Shadows: Royal Houses Book Two

by K. A. Linde

  “I don’t know. Roake looked like he’d seen a ghost, coming out of the air test.”

  Fordham nodded. “It’s brutal, but you’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks. What do you have left?”

  “Fire.”

  Kerrigan nudged his shoulder. “Lucky.”

  She swept a lock of her plaited hair out of her face and stared up at him. They were both in the black training clothes, black robes thrown over top. His hair falling messily forward over his eyes. Those stormy-gray eyes turning to smoke at the sight of her.

  He didn’t move toward her. He wasn’t going to change what he’d broken, but the want was still there. Blatant, even.

  Luckily, Audria stumbled out of the room at that moment. She dropped to her knees, putting her hands to the floor, and looked near to crying.

  Kerrigan rushed toward her. “Are you okay?”

  “I hate that element,” she snarled, the lady gone from her voice.

  “Did you pass?”

  Audria fell onto her back and let her hands hang out from her sides. She stared up at the ceiling. “I passed.”

  Kerrigan breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Do you have another?”

  “No, that was my last one. Thank the gods.”

  She looked like she had no intention of moving from the spot. Kerrigan didn’t blame her. Each one tested them to their limits, and they had all four finals today. And Kerrigan still had the hardest magical test yet—air.

  It was fifteen minutes before the doors to the testing rooms opened once more. Kerrigan gulped, nodding at Fordham, and then stepped inside to find Zina absent.

  “Zina?” she called.

  “Up here, dear,” Zina said.

  Kerrigan looked up, up, up. And there was Mistress Zahina… sitting on the ceiling.

  Zina did any number of odd things during class, including many strange games that she’d apparently made up herself. But usually, she did all of these things on the ground. Occasionally, she’d float around with her legs crossed, like she was meditating, but generally, she hovered a few feet off of the ground. Not sitting on the ceiling.

  “Hello,” she said cautiously.

  “Hello, dear. Are you ready for your first test with me?”

  Kerrigan looked at her skeptically. “Yes?”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “You’re on the ceiling.”

  “Am I?” she asked in confusion. She looked around. “Are you sure you’re not on the ceiling?”

  “Yes, I am definitely on the floor.”

  “That’s a matter of perspective. Don’t you think?”

  Kerrigan blinked at her and then slowly nodded. “Yes, I could see how that would be a matter of perspective. Considering, to you, the floor must look like the ceiling.”

  “That is the ceiling. You’re the one who is disoriented.”

  Kerrigan frowned. Of course it made sense in its own way. She had never considered it before. Did up always have to be up and down always down? If she was on a dragon upside down, could she also be right side up?

  That was at the heart of all of Zina’s teachings. Everything they had been told and thought that they knew were building blocks for failure. They needed to close their eyes, forget everything, and relearn their magic.

  “Do you plan to join me, or are you going to stand there, agog all day?”

  Kerrigan gulped and took a deep breath. Zina had been working with them on floating and hovering in class, but she hadn’t had them fly to the ceiling. This wasn’t something she could have ever prepared for. Yet the other three had passed this exam, which meant she had the building blocks for how to do this.

  “I plan to join you,” she said finally.

  “Excellent. The tea is getting cold.”

  “Tea?” Kerrigan whispered in confusion.

  She closed her eyes and focused on what was important. The elements of Zina’s teaching were that energy was all around them. Air was in everything. They were built on air. The world was built on air. They didn’t need to feel for it because the magic was already there, all around them.

  Kerrigan pulled the energy into her, letting herself hover slightly off of the ground. This was where they’d all struggled, trusting the magic to hold them for more than a few inches. But if everyone else could do it, then she could too. Unless they’d all had different exams. It would be the only way to ensure they didn’t tell each other what was coming next. They hadn’t shared, but the masters didn’t know that.

  She dropped back down onto the ground. Her eyes flew open. “Did everyone have to complete this final?”

  Zina smiled. “Why do you ask?”

  “We were only hovering,” Kerrigan said. “The others were able to sit on the ceiling?”

  She shrugged one of her shoulders. “This is the exam that you are getting. Whether the others had the same one is none of your concern.”

  Right. She still had to pass. Even if this one for her was absurd.

  The point of this wasn’t to fly. They weren’t going to suddenly be on Zina’s level. There must be another point to the teachings. This wasn’t hovering. It was changing her perspective. That was what Zina had said, and she wouldn’t have said anything unless it was important.

  So, Kerrigan let herself go to that place within her magic that was reserved for worst-case scenarios—her spirit magic. She hadn’t been there since trying to take the barrier down. And blessedly, she hadn’t had another vision either. She didn’t have time to even think about finding a spiritcaster teacher. When would she train for that with everything else going on?

  She pushed those thoughts aside and focused inside herself. Then, she drew her air magic to her and righted her perspective. She felt as if she were outside of her body when it flipped upside down. The last thing she needed was to think about it. She needed to let her instincts take over.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she was on the ceiling, and the floor to the room was far below. Kerrigan gulped and closed her eyes again, feeling dizzy and disoriented.

  “Breathe,” Zina said, something like a smile in her words. “You’re the right way up. The other way was wrong. You know this in your gut. You are sitting on the floor. Everything above you is the ceiling.”

  Kerrigan heard her soothing words wash over her, and slowly, she peeled her eyes back open. And Zina was right. She was sitting on the floor. The ceiling was suspended above her.

  “How am I doing this?” she gasped.

  “A change of perspective.” Zina gestured at a teapot. “Now, pour us tea. And remember, we are on the floor.”

  Kerrigan nodded blankly, staring at the teapot in front of them and the two little cups and saucers. If they were the other way around, the tea would be falling out of the pot. But this was the floor. She had to keep reminding herself of that fact. This was the floor.

  She reached for the teapot and used her magic to leverage everything in place. With a slight hesitation, she poured tea into Zina’s glass. It didn’t move. Kerrigan gulped, straining to use her magic to keep everything, including herself, in place.

  “Relax. Breathe,” Zina repeated. She reached for a sugar cube and dropped it into her tea. “This isn’t difficult. This is as easy as breathing, as easy as speaking. There is no strain.”

  Tension released from her shoulders. She’d never thought of magic as easy. She’d always been taught it was a lot of hard work, and the years of training with it had proven that to be true. But the more she didn’t try, the easier it became to do what she needed to do.

  She poured the tea, adding a sugar cube of her own.

  “Now, drink,” Zina said. She raised her glass with a wink.

  Kerrigan took the teacup in her hand and took a sip. “How am I doing this?”

  Zina smiled. “Spirit magic.”

  Kerrigan startled, a drop of her tea leaving her cup and falling onto the floor. She closed her eyes. This was the floor. That was the ceiling. Tea fell on the ceiling.

  �
��Relax through it,” Zina said. “It’ll pass.”

  “How do you know I have spirit magic?”

  “Gelryn and Helly came to me and asked me to be the air master for your training program. I refused until they told me that you were a spiritcaster.”

  Kerrigan’s heart soared with hope. “Are you a spiritcaster?”

  Zina scoffed. “No. I have some spirit magic of my own in these old veins, and based on what the others have told me, you have much more than that.”

  Kerrigan stiffened. “They told you?”

  “Indeed. You can fear nothing from me, dear. I’m sure it’s as much a curse as a gift.”

  Understatement.

  “I have agreed to train you on your spirit magic even though I am not an adequate enough teacher for the job. I cannot access the castings that you can. There has not been one of your kind in a thousand years. But I’m as close to an expert as they could scrounge up. So, I’m what you get.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “May I ask why you waited until now to tell me?”

  “Couldn’t exactly ask you to work spirit magic in front of your classmates, could I?”

  “Well, no, but we had Friday training.”

  “You were always running off with your dragon, for one,” Zina said, arching her eyebrow. “And I wanted to see how you’d do under pressure. It’s usually when spirit magic is the most effective, I’ve discovered.”

  Another understatement. Spirit magic continued to save her life.

  “When do we begin?” Kerrigan asked eagerly.

  “My dear, we’ve already begun.”

  21

  The Course

  Alura’s obstacle course was a nightmare. She must have been working on it all month. The entire thing was set up inside the arena with various apparatuses along the course. They each had to run it together, working as one timed unit to make it to the end. Slowest time counted for everyone. So, there was no incentive to leave anyone behind. This wasn’t a competition, but a building block of the Society. In battle, they’d need to work together. Ingraining it in them now would help when it was necessary later. Waiting at the end of the brutal course was Lorian’s final. So, they’d have to walk into the sword fight, exhausted, just as they would in battle. Wonderful.

  And worse, they had spectators. Kerrigan could see Lorian standing taut at the end of the line, but there were a dozen other people with him. Kerrigan recognized Bastian and Helly as well as a few other high-profile council members—Kress, Lockney, and Alsia. She gulped.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Alura said.

  The five of them lined up on the white chalk line. Kerrigan looked to Fordham on her right and Audria on her left. They both nodded. They were in this together.

  Alura blew a whistle, and they all sprinted forward. Over the last month, they’d all gotten faster. The daily runs had sure helped with that, but now, they were running together as if their lives depended on it.

  The flat-out sprint was the first quarter of the race, leading directly to some kind of pond, complete with plant life. Going around would take too long. All five of them dived into the craggy water. It was deeper than Kerrigan had expected, quickly coming up to her waist and then her neck. She swam forward, glad she’d had lessons in the House of Dragons. No one stumbled at this part despite the training program not having a swimming component. But as they all finally cleared the water, they came up to a deep well of mud and no way across but through.

  “Gross,” Audria grumbled next to Kerrigan.

  Kerrigan had to agree. She tramped through the mud, getting the goop up to her waist. When suddenly, she stepped down, and there was no ground. She screamed as she dropped under the mud.

  “Kerrigan!”

  She fought to reach the surface. Just as her oxygen was depleting, a hand clamped around her wrist. Fordham’s face came into view as he and Audria hauled her out of the mud pit. Noda was helping Roake out of similar circumstances. Fordham rushed to help her, towing the lot of them back to the land.

  Kerrigan choked and spat up mud, trying to blink it out of her eyes. Fordham gave her a part of his shirt to wipe her eyes. Roake looked worse for wear as well but just as determined.

  “That was disgusting,” she said as they hurtled forward. She was coated in slick mud from top to bottom. Even the vibrancy of her red hair didn’t peek through.

  They reached a set of wooden pillars that were roughly fifteen feet high. A fence was placed between each of the poles to keep them from running straight through the pillars.

  Fordham got it first. “Scales, we have to climb.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned. There weren’t any handholds. They wouldn’t just climb; they would have to scale the pole and then jump from one to the other. “Gods.”

  “Let me through,” Noda said. “I’m a good climber. I’ll go first.”

  She shimmied up the pole as if it did have handholds. Kerrigan memorized the way she moved and watched as Noda easily jumped from one pole to the next. There were eight poles in total, and she vaulted from one to the other like a dancer twirling on a ballroom floor.

  Fordham went next and then Audria, both making it look easy.

  Roake nodded at her. A camaraderie had formed between them. They weren’t exactly friends, but they were teammates. “You first. I’ll boost you.”

  “Thanks,” she said in relief.

  He hoisted her up in his arms, and she was halfway up the pole in a matter of seconds. They weren’t allowed to use magic on the obstacle course, so she had to rely on sheer strength to claw her way up.

  When she reached the top, she lay on her stomach, panting. How had they made that look so easy? Her vision was dizzy as she looked to the other seven poles. With a grunt, she unsteadily rose to her feet, praying to whichever gods would listen that she had the balance for this. As soon as she jumped to the second pole, Roake climbed up the first pole. Kerrigan jumped from one pole to the next. She was to the last pole when she landed wrong and she slipped on the mud still caked on her boot. She cried out as her foot fell out from under her. Her hands pinwheeled she threw out her hand, her fingernails digging into the wood, ripping and bleeding, but she held on. Barely.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to haul herself up. But she was so slippery; she couldn’t make it work.

  “I got you,” Roake called. “Just hold on!”

  He jumped, landing on her pole. She gritted her teeth and dug her fingers in deeper to keep from slipping. Roake grabbed her wrist and hauled her up onto the pole. It wasn’t quite big enough for two.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, holding her bleeding left hand. She didn’t dare look at it and wonder if it would be a hindrance.

  They jumped to the next pole and out of that obstacle, before racing toward the rest of their team. A set of swinging monkey bars was over another mud pit, leading to a separate platform that had steep metal sheeting to slide down on the other side. Audria had already landed after completing the swings and was waiting for the rest of them.

  “Go,” Kerrigan yelled.

  And they went.

  Noda dropped into the mud with a scream when her hand slipped on one of the swings. She half-swam, half-flopped out of the mud as it tried to suck her back into the pit. Audria rushed over and dragged her out of the mess. Meanwhile, Fordham was already rushing across the swings, and Kerrigan was next. She ignored the pain in her left hand and swung across the mud pit. Thankfully she made it across with no difficulty.

  The metal slide burned straight through her black uniform as she jumped down onto it. She hissed as she landed into loose rocks at the bottom. Roake landed next to her, and they hustled around the bend to a series of climbing walls. The first two had ropes that they scaled, which Kerrigan managed just fine until she reached the third one. A rope was suspended in front of her but far enough away from the wall that she couldn’t brace her feet for support.

  “I’ll go first and grab you,” Fordham said.

  He moved up the
rope as if he’d been made for it. Kerrigan had been working out, but her upper body strength would never be his. She’d let him have this one. As soon as he was off the rope, she hefted herself up one armful at a time.

  “Swing to me,” Fordham called.

  She breathed out once and then swung the rope toward him. Back and forth. Back and forth. There was a moment of weightlessness, and in that moment, she released her hand. Fordham was there, latching onto her and towing her onto the wall. She stumbled into his body, wrapping her arms around him. Their eyes met for a brief moment. Then, she gulped and stepped back.

  “Thanks.”

  He grinned at her, forgetting where they were for a minute.

  Then, they both looked down and froze. Between this wall and the next were a series of pikes, facing up toward them and no rope or swing or pole to jump from one to the other. Just open air.

  “What in the gods’ names?” she breathed.

  Audria landed next to them. Gratefully grabbing Fordham’s arm. “What are you …” She broke off as she saw the pit of death between them and the finish. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  Roake and Noda landed safely on the wall beside them. All of them stared down at their failure. There was no way to finish this without impaling themselves.

  Kerrigan shook out her arms. There had to be a solution to this problem. Alura couldn’t get away with giving them an impossible feat. She didn’t want to fail all of them. She just wanted to test them. Which meant there was a way to get across this. She just had to find it.

  She ran back through everything that Alura had ingrained in them the last month. She was a vicious and unforgiving teacher, but she got it done. They were better because she’d been a hard-ass. And she always said that there were no impossible problems. Anything could be achieved together. The program had been designed to test them together. Not apart.

  Kerrigan turned away from the pit as her friends tried to reason this out. Her eyes slid to the rope they’d used to get here. Then, she jumped back out onto it.

  “What are you doing?” Audria asked.

  “Trust me,” Kerrigan said. Her arms ached, and she was still mostly covered in mud, but she managed to reach the top of the platform that knotted the rope. She swung upward, wrapping her legs around the platform and working the rope knot loose.