Mage's Apprentice (Mages of New York Book 1)

by Sean Fletcher

  She was going to fight him for it.

  “That’s fine,” Aspen said.

  “Fine?” Nina scoffed.

  “You have no idea what you’re saying,” Isak said. “If you lose—when you lose—that’s it. No more second chances.”

  “I’m aware of how death works, thanks,” Aspen snapped, pushing aside the small voice in her head that said maybe what she was agreeing to wasn’t such a good idea. “I’m sure your experience with it is so much more superior to mine.”

  “More than most. I don’t…You’re my opponent. Don’t you understand that? Either I kill you or you kill me. That’s it.”

  Lucien straightened in his chair, still looking as impassive as ever. “I formally withdraw Aspen from the assessment. I misjudged my selection of apprentice and see now she is woefully underprepared for the task ahead. I’ll make a full apology to the Council and accept my punishment.”

  “Too late, Lucien,” Gurk said, almost cheerfully. “The vote’s been cast. The girl’s accepted.”

  Aspen met Xavier’s eyes. His bore back into hers, taunting. Just wait, she thought, I’ll be the last one standing.

  “We must create the Bond,” Simshar said.

  Nina threw up her hands, disgusted, and stomped away through the crowd behind them. Lucien hadn’t moved in his seat except to tilt his face away, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.

  “Apprentices, clasp your hands together,” Simshar said.

  Isak’s stony expression was impossible to read as Aspen faced him and shook. His palm was warm, his fingertips calloused. She squeezed his bones together hard enough to make most people grimace, but he didn’t even wince.

  Simshar approached and ran his hands over theirs, muttering ancient words under his breath. A glowing thread of red magic unraveled from the tips of his fingers and wound around their wrists, trailing down to their fingers. The thread hovered in mid-air for a breath before settling on their skin. Aspen nearly gasped with the sudden burning pain, but bit her tongue as the thread finished and faded away. Where it’d been was a small, dark mark in the pattern the thread had wound.

  “The Bond is complete. Should one of you break it, either by forfeiting the assessment, trying to escape, or attempting to remove it by magical means, you will die. At the end of the assessment, once the winner is determined, the spell will kill the loser.”

  He glanced at Aspen, as if he knew exactly who that would be. “Good luck.”

  Lucien managed to make it back into his private courtyard before exploding.

  “Curse Xavier!” He made a violent thrust with his arm and a blast of magic ripped apart a section of the wall nearby. Aspen stayed back, waiting for him to calm down. “The whole time he was just waiting to do that! Waiting to rub my failure in my face!”

  Another spell followed and another section of the wall went down. Tendrils of fire-white magic surrounded him now, curling around his body, lifting his hair in airy wisps. “And you,” he snarled at Aspen. “Why did you accept the Bonding? Why did you agree?”

  “Only Mages can challenge other Mages,” Aspen said calmly.

  Lucien let out another roar of anger and rocketed a final spell into the sky where it exploded with the force of a firework. Aspen continued staring at him, trying to act unphased. Lucien stayed turned away, his shoulders heaving with the effort of his outbursts. After a moment, he straightened up, tugging his robes into place. His magic faded away.

  “This is on you,” he said, facing her. “I never agreed to the Bonding, or to your death.”

  “Just to putting me in harm’s way,” Aspen said drily.

  “You would have been fine if you’d just listened to me and kept your mouth shut!”

  “You mean like you did?”

  Lucien swore and turned away again.

  “Xavier knows,” Aspen said after a beat. “He knows I survived the fire. That’s why he’s doing this. He thinks I’ll lose and then he’ll be rid of me for good.”

  “He can’t possibly remember you,” Lucien said. “He’s doing this because he’s sadistic and wants to hurt me through you.”

  “How would hurting me hurt you?”

  Lucien ignored her. “Now you have to win.”

  “That was already the plan.”

  “You can’t. There’s no way you can. Xavier will make sure of it.”

  Anger swelled within Aspen. Isak seeing her as a complete joke was one thing, but Lucien had seen what she could do. “I’m not an idiot, and I’m not helpless. I can win this, even if he’s against me.”

  Lucien gave her the kind of look that he might a poor, doomed cow about to be sent off to slaughter. He went to kneel beside the pond and splashed water on his face. Out of the corner of her eye, Aspen saw Tana peek through the doors and give her an apprehensive look.

  “You okay?” she mouthed.

  Though she wasn’t entirely sure, Aspen gave her a thumbs up and Tana slowly retreated.

  Aspen pushed off the pillar she’d leaned against and walked over to Lucien. His head was hung over the water, hair dripping and creating ripples. He splashed more water on his face. If Aspen didn’t know any better, she’d say he almost appeared…concerned.

  “You’re…taking this harder than me,” she said.

  “Because you don’t know any better. This is just a game to you.”

  “No, this was your game,” Aspen corrected. “I’m just the one who has to finish it.”

  “You’re right,” Lucien said. “But not alone you won’t.”

  “The Mages will know if you help me.”

  “No they won’t. And I won’t, not directly. You can be sure Xavier will be doing the same. They expect it. It’s almost tradition,” he added, irony thick in his voice.

  “I can win this, Lucien. Xavier’s mine. I’m going to pay him back for what he did to me. Alone.”

  “No, you won’t. And you’re too stupid to be scared.”

  In truth, she was terrified. The feeling had started the moment they’d left the chamber and began their journey back; the moment she had a chance to step back and really think about what she’d agreed to.

  But now terror was sharpening her resolve into a finely-honed weapon. It brought about a glorious sense of purpose, a goal she’d been sorely lacking these last ten years. Beat Isak. Become a Mage. Challenge Xavier. Kill him. With that goal in mind, nothing scared her, because nothing was scarier than having nothing to live for.

  “What if you lose?” Lucien said.

  “Then I’ll take one last shot at Xavier before I go.”

  “Spoken like a true teenager. No understanding of the weight of your consequences.”

  Aspen ignored that jab. “And you’ll make sure Brune is taken care of.”

  Lucien grunted.

  “You called me a Null,” Aspen said, drawing their conversation away from the high potential for her imminent death. “What is that? Why aren’t they allowed in the boroughs anymore?”

  Lucien sighed. He rolled over to a sitting position, elegantly sweeping his hand through his hair so that it came out as golden and dry as before.

  “Technically a Null’s not a magical being, it’s a magical ability, which means that either Norms or magical beings can have it. It allows your body to break down any magic used against it. Like I said before, a high magical metabolism.”

  Aspen thought back to the few times before meeting Lucien that she’d been affected by magic. Jobs that had gone awry, attack spells and wild hexes that had managed to hit her. More than once during those instances she’d been with others. The spells had never affected her as much as it had them, though she’d never really thought about it before now.

  “Okay…that’s great. I’m immune to magic.”

  “You’re not immune, just less susceptible. Any magic can still affect you, and certain spells can still kill you. If your body can’t handle the amount of magic, or it can’t break it down fast enough. Then it’s lights out.”

  “That still
doesn’t explain why they aren’t allowed in the boroughs.”

  “There aren’t a lot of Nulls in existence, period. Even if there were, most go undiscovered. Or into hiding.”

  “And that’s because…”

  Lucien gave her a serious look. “Two reasons, primarily. One, Nulls are a level playing field. As much as supernatural beings try to hide, we all know who’d win in a one-on-one with a Norm. The Supe, every time. But a Norm who also happens to be a Null? Suddenly magic and spells don’t matter since the Null can just absorb them. You’re back to the basics. The Supes, understandably, aren’t comfortable with that.

  “The second reason is because breaking down magic isn’t the only thing a Null can do. A Null has no magic of their own, but if trained properly, if they survive long enough, a Null can absorb magic. Absorb it, and maybe even use it. See a problem with that?”

  She did. The boroughs could pretend they were at peace all they wanted—and for the most part they were; peace, as in not waging all-out war against one another—but each race was always trying to gain the upper hand over the other, trying to expand their territory within New York, trying to exert their dominance through any means possible.

  “They think I’m a weapon,” Aspen said. “Or at least they’ll try to use me like one.”

  “Yes,” Lucien said, tone grim, “So essentially, when word gets out about what you are, and word always gets out, you’re going to be the number one target in New York City.”

  Aspen’s trap awakened her at midnight.

  The second she heard the faint click of her stun powder trap springing on the intruder, she rolled off the other side of the bed. She retrieved the knife she’d kept beneath her pillow and peered into the darkness, hoping her thumping heart couldn’t be heard in the silence.

  After speaking with Lucien, she’d moved to a more secluded part of the house, into one of the few second story lofts that almost made her feel like she was back at Brune’s. Lucien’s earlier warning about the boroughs wanting her had left her understandably shaken. She’d set her normal proximity traps in case Vamps or shifters decided to pay a visit, or Xavier didn’t want to waste time waiting for her to get herself killed.

  Aspen continued staring into the darkness, ignoring her pounding headache. A side effect, Lucien had told her, of absorbing too much magic.

  When nothing moved for a full minute, she stood. She carefully approached the window, knife ready. Often her traps consisted of wires attached to some sort of neutralizing powder. The metal twine on this one had been snapped. The paralyzing powder was cast across the shingles below. There wasn’t any sign that someone had been there.

  Aspen felt the presence behind her a moment too late. A strong arm pulled her against a hard chest. A hand clamped over her mouth.

  “I thought you were better than this,” Isak whispered in her ear.

  Aspen threw her head back, feeling it connect with his still-tender nose. She whirled out of his grasp and put the bed between them, aiming the knife at his heart. “Don’t worry, I am.”

  Isak grimaced and gingerly touched his face. He seemed to be warring between anger and grudging acceptance of her ability to outmaneuver him. “I’ve been in more pain since meeting you than I have been in the last year.”

  “It’s about to continue. What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “Do all your talks start with assaulting a girl in her bedroom?”

  “Only when said girl could stick a knife between my eyes, yeah.” Isak held up his hands to show they were empty. “I just want to talk.”

  “How did you get past Lucien’s safeguards?”

  “Lucien’s grown lazy. He hasn’t put any new ones up. They were easy enough to slip through.”

  Aspen made a mental note to remind Lucien of that later. If she survived this.

  Isak continued holding his hands up. “We good?”

  “Just because your hands are empty doesn’t mean you can’t cast magic.”

  “Yet I haven’t. And I won’t. Trust me now?”

  Aspen kept the knife leveled at him. “Not a bit. How’d you get around my trap?”

  Isak rolled his eyes. “I was expecting it. Anybody who’s been around you longer than a minute can tell you’re paranoid.”

  “Cautious.”

  “That’s just semantics.”

  “Caution tends to come with what I do, or I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “I didn’t say it as an insult.”

  “Funny, it came out that way.”

  Isak sighed. “Can you put that adorable knife down and listen? I’m sure we both know I could just cast a spell and take it from you anyway.”

  The air stirred at his feet, the faintest crackling wisps of magic beginning to trail from the floorboards up his body toward his hands. Aspen tried to remember all she knew about druid magic. It was earth based. That meant the higher away from the ground he was, the less powerful his spells were.

  Not that he needed to know that she knew that. Surprise was her biggest weapon.

  Aspen slowly lowered the knife, and Isak dropped his hands, dispelling the magic. “Just so you know,” she said, “there are other traps in here I can spring on your sorry butt if you try anything else.”

  He smiled. Not a smirk this time, but an actual smile. “I’m sure there are. So far you haven’t ceased to surprise me.”

  There was a faint flutter in Aspen’s chest. What did he mean by that?

  “Say what you need to and get out.”

  Isak leaned casually against her dresser, getting annoyingly comfortable. He seemed to mull over how best to begin. “You need to drop out of the assessment.”

  Aspen let out a harsh laugh. “I guess you weren’t at the same Council meeting I was. They bound us to finish it, remember?” She held up her hand with the now-dim line wrapping around her wrist. “Does ‘the loser dies’ ring any bells?”

  “I can have them break the Bond.”

  Aspen blinked. She hadn’t known that was possible, not without getting herself killed. For a brief moment, a flicker of desire surged within her—she could leave, slip back into the cracks of the city, start over and try to forget about the Mages and this entire mess. Things had been bad before, but they were a predictable sort of bad. She could handle that.

  Then Xavier’s sneering face rushed back into her vision and her resolve hardened once more.

  “Hate to disappoint, but no.”

  Isak let out a frustrated breath. “You’re being stupid—”

  “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve said to me—”

  “You’ll die!” Isak said. He was standing now, filling her tiny space with his presence. “Look at you, a nobody, a Null. You think you have any chance of beating me? I could have ended you a minute ago. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “You would have tried,” Aspen said, fingering her knife again. “You wouldn’t have made it very far. And my answer’s still no, pretty boy.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you even care? I’m nobody to you. You should be glad Lucien picked someone so weak. It’ll make beating me so much easier for you, right?”

  “If that’s what you think then you don’t know me at all.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. Let’s keep it that way.”

  The two of them stood there, in the darkness, glaring daggers at each other.

  “Why are you really doing this?” Isak said. “You probably could care less about the law or the Mages, not to mention becoming one yourself.”

  “Why don’t you ask your master?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Ask him what he’s done.”

  “All I know is what he’s done for me.”

  “And that’s enough, is it?”

  Isak hesitated. “That’s all I can ask for. Xavier is ten times the Mage Lucien will ever be.”

  “Oh whoop de freakin’ do. Those two can go flex their magical muscles all they want. I j
ust want my spot on the Council.”

  Isak ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Aspen hated how her eyes lingered on it longer than necessary. “But why?” he demanded.

  “I said, ask your master.”

  That only made Isak scowl deeper. “I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t want you to die,” he said, his voice almost pleading. “Whatever it is between you and Lucien, whatever reason you’re doing this, I can help.”

  He took a step closer. In the slant of moonlight streaming through her window, his face was mired by concern. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Yep, she almost believed he cared about her. He was a good actor. She could respect that.

  He took another step. The space between them was heating up, causing the tips of Aspen’s fingers to tingle. “Please?”

  “No. It’s too late,” Aspen said, finally finding her voice.

  “Just. Drop. Out.”

  He was a foot away from her now.

  “No,” Aspen said.

  Isak stood tense a moment longer before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Your choice, then. I’m not responsible for whatever happens.”

  “How sweet of you.”

  There it was again, that almost-smile that softened his entire face before flickering away. The two of them stood in silence a moment longer, Aspen feeling the heat and buzz of magic emanating off his skin, almost wanting to reach out and run her fingers across his chest—

  “I’m still waiting for you to spring those traps on me,” Isak said.

  “Out. Get out.”

  In two strides, Isak was at the window. He paused with one foot on the sill. “Sleep well. Tomorrow, the contest begins. Tomorrow, we’re enemies.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t forget.”

  Then he was gone. She glanced out the window in time to see him gently slide down to the cobblestone. He glanced one last time up to her window, the moon lighting up his smirk, then slipped into the night.