by Elise Kova
“Don’t underestimate Lightspinning,” Taavin fired back. “After all, if it were easy, you wouldn’t be asking me for help.”
Vi chewed the insides of her cheeks. He had a point. She’d spent hours with Sehra today and hadn’t made much progress. But those had been hours working in the wrong direction; now she had a headway.
“All right,” she started with renewed determination. “I’ll begin really committing them to memory.”
“With what?” His question reminded her that he couldn’t see the book she was looking at.
“My teacher has a tome with a great number of these glyphs.”
“Interesting…” Taavin’s voice went low. “You know that’s contraband to have on the Dark Isle. The person who delivered it could be put to death under the Queen’s law.”
“I’m the Crown Princess. All knowledge in Solaris is open to me.” Vi wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. The map of the world—the true map—had been kept from her until recently. What other falsehoods of her world did she unquestioningly accept as fact?
“And that distinction means so very little to the rest of the world.” The statement stilled her. His words weren’t harsh or cruel. It was simple, factual. He wasn’t trying to tear her down, merely state truth.
“Regardless, it is what it is. I have it, and I will make progress,” she vowed.
“And while you make that progress, you shall seek out the next apex—a tomb marked by Yargen.”
“Yes, I remember our deal.” As if she could’ve forgotten so quickly. “Until next time.”
Before he could get another word in, Vi released the magic and took a moment to breathe. That had gone well. She’d accomplished her goal, at the very least.
Leaning forward, Vi began to pour over the glyphs and symbols in the book before her. Memorize them. She’d look over every line and circle, feel the words they invoked, until she dreamt about them.
She’d prove to Sehra and to him that this wasn’t something she was going to be daunted by. But, more importantly, she’d master the only thing standing between her and going home. Vi flipped the page and took a breath.
“Durroe,” she repeated, time and again. Vi didn’t have her hand outstretched—she wasn’t even trying to conjure the orb of light. She merely said the word and allowed her ears to become accustomed to the syllables as her eyes ran over the glyph that came to life on the page before her.
She said the word fast, slow, soft, and as loudly as she dared. With every utterance, Vi seemed to notice something new about the symbol in the book. There was a line she hadn’t understood before or a juncture she’d overlooked.
Snatching up paper from the side of her desk, Vi began drawing on it as she repeated the word. Just like after her first vision, her hand seemed possessed. It moved flawlessly over the page and crafted lines that were at first clumsy and smudged, but became flawless with practice and cemented in her memory.
By the time Vi finally leaned back in her chair, papers scattered the floor, durroe drawn across them. Her voice was horse from countless repetitions, her eyes bleary. Dawn streaked the sky, competing with the fading candlelight that now burned low. She needed to go to bed—if she was up much longer, she’d risk running into a servant coming to attend her and arouse suspicion.
“But first…” Vi lifted her hand tiredly, palm flat. The open air was now her parchment, her words the ink; her mind and will together formed her pen. With a word, she combined them all, and willed the illusion to take shape. “Durroe.”
The tiniest of threads lifted off her hand, coalescing into lines that Vi knew inside and out. For one brief second, the symbol flickered faintly above her hand, an orb like Sehra’s atop. As quickly as it came, it disappeared.
A small blurt of sheer joy rolled into laugher as Vi’s hand went limp at her side. She stared at the ceiling, the back of her head against her chair. Slowly, Vi turned her head, looking at the sketch of the rose garden Romulin had sent her.
“One word closer to mastery… only a dozen more to go,” she whispered to the blueprint tacked up against her shelves. “I’ll get this, I promise. Then, I’m coming home to all of you.”
Chapter Fifteen
She was going to summon him again tonight, Vi decided.
It had been two days since her first lesson with Sehra. Two days, two more lessons later, and Vi’s progress had been minimal—but it had been there. Her glyph was becoming stronger, slightly more stable, but it seemed to unravel all too quickly as if there was some knot she needed to tie in the light that she couldn’t find.
Summoning balls of light was still proving difficult, but she knew she could summon a voice in her head. So that was where she’d return to. As mysterious as that man was, he knew about the magic and his help last time had been invaluable. This time she’d insist he tell her some way to expedite—
A shadow blocked out the sun as Martis’s back-lit silhouette moved in front of her line of sight. Vi sat straighter, called to attention. But before she could mutter an apology for the distraction, he started in on her.
“Princess, please pay attention.” Martis tapped the desk in front of her with the pointed end of the long stick he favored. She wondered if it made him feel authoritative to hold a mini scepter before the Crown Princess. In a way, he had more command over her life than she did.
The scratching of a pen from behind her brought Vi’s mind fully back to the present. She glanced over her shoulder at Andru, who sat in the corner. He glanced back at her, as if sensing her attention. Vi swept her hair over her shoulder as she turned forward, fussing with the ends of her braids.
She couldn’t be as relaxed as she used to be anymore. Whatever rapport, however small, she had built with her tutors was gone now. She was under the watchful eyes of the Senate. After her magic got out of hand, she shouldn’t take any more risks. Especially not before she had her new powers sorted.
Vi could imagine what the Senate and Southern nobility would say if she was discovered to have a rare magic only passed down in Sehra’s bloodline. They would make her out to be so Northern that even the magic had worn off on her. Claim that Sehra had adopted her outright and she was no longer heir to her birthright. No, on second thought, they’d likely invent far worse lies than that.
“Yes, Martis. I am sorry. While it is no excuse, this past week merely has my mind preoccupied.” She made an effort to enunciate her words properly, draw them out even though she was so tired from days of double lessons. “I shall endeavor to be a better student.”
“You had four days off from your tutelage. You have six months—at most, likely less—until the parade arrives for you, and you are expected to return South with full and proper knowledge of your station. Now is not the time to add delays by daydreaming, however tempting it is to preoccupy your mind with all that has yet to pass.”
“I understand.” Vi folded her fingers, avoiding doing anything that could land her in further trouble.
“And you are by no stretch a bad student,” he mumbled softly. “In any case, perhaps a change of topic would refresh your energy for what remaining time we have.”
Martis crossed over to the desk opposite Vi’s. He shuffled through his papers, selecting a letter.
“Ah, yes, let us discuss the War in the North.”
“Did we not cover that last year?” Vi hoped she came off as curious rather than obstinate.
“Every year you can learn something more, because you are older, wiser, and more mature.”
“Right, of course.” Vi picked up her quill and promptly put it down. If she was holding any kind of writing utensil, she’d be at risk of scribbling cartography lines or magic circles on her page, either of which Martis certainly wouldn’t appreciate. “So what are we going to begin covering this year about the War in the North?”
“How the War in the North was a precursor to the rise of the Mad King Victor. So we are, in effect, drawing new connections between the two topics we have previously discuss
ed.”
Vi tilted her head to the side. “The connection is plain, is it not? The War in the North directly preceded the uprising. It was the last war of Emperor Tiberius Solaris.”
“More than that. For it was an article collected by your mother during the War of the North that enabled Mad King Victor’s rise to power.”
“What?” He had her attention now. “But, the Mad King… he tried to slay my mother and father. My mother would not have helped him.”
Vi had seen the raised and angry scar that ran from her mother’s shoulder to the center of her breast. Vhalla had let her run her fingers over it as a curious child, and said a wicked man had given it to her, but never elaborated further. When Vi finally had a name for the “wicked man,” she never asked again.
The scar was not unlike the one on Taavin’s face, Vi realized. Then instantly shook it from her thoughts. She had to remain focused or Martis’s limited patience for her would run out.
“He did. But how he did it is of great import, for it was the start of the end of the Crystal Caverns.”
“So, how did he do it?”
“Do you remember the lore of the crystal weapons?”
Vi nodded. Long ago there were said to be four crystal weapons, one in possession of each of the unique geographical regions of the Main Continent. They seemed to be things relegated only to tall tales… yet two of those crystal weapons surfaced, marking the rise of the Mad King. But that was all Vi knew. As she conveyed the fact to Martis, it suddenly seemed a glaring deficit in her education.
“Just so,” he affirmed. “One of those weapons the Mad King Victor used was a crown that had been in your family’s possession for centuries.” Vi wasn’t sure how a crown could be a weapon, but she did know that crystals were strange, powerful, and extremely dangerous. “The other was an axe that was retrieved from the North.”
“An axe?” Vi repeated, her mind spinning, trying to recall every fireside story she’d been privy to and every mention of lore from Ellene. “Like the axe Dia, the fallen star, used to carve civilization from the boughs of the Mother Tree?”
“If you believe these Northern stories.” Martis’s sniff clearly conveyed that he didn’t.
Vi bit back a retort asking why it was so unreasonable to believe Southern histories of crystal weapons and a power that could turn men into monsters… but similar Northern oral histories were mere “stories” to be dismissed. Even if she felt in the right, arguing with Martis would get her nowhere. Vi had long since learned that some minds, once made up, could not be changed.
“I think, perhaps, it is more than just coincidence that an axe shows up in their stories and our history.”
“Yes, well, I am not here to speak about that. I am here to speak about what your mother has passed on to me in her letters.” Martis tapped a series of papers on the desk. What Vi wouldn’t give to leaf through it. But her parents’ correspondence with her tutors was as private as their correspondence with her. “She would have me tell you of when she retrieved this weapon with the intent to benefit the South, and protect it from falling into the wrong hands. But all she did was foolishly—her words, and I think them far too harsh—think that she could make the axe safer than its own people had by placing it in a Northern tomb.
Tomb. Vi sat a little straighter. She’d heard the word before, and recently. Perhaps too recently to be a mere coincidence.
“She was here during the encampment, and on the edge of the city…”
Ellene and Jayme were waiting when Vi finished with Martis. Seeing people occupying her sitting room was truly a welcome anomaly.
Jayme had made the long table in Vi’s sitting area her weapon smithy. She currently had a whetstone atop layers of rags; the sound of the metal sliding over stone made a soft yet sharp shhing noise that had the hair on Vi’s arms standing near immediately.
The young heir to the Northern throne was lounging on a sofa, clearly much less bothered by the noise as she hummed to herself a tune that was scribbled out on a sheet of paper. Vi vaguely recognized it as something she’d heard being sung recently among the city commoners. But she didn’t recognize the words.
Both perked up immediately on seeing her.
“You’re done for the day now, right?” Ellene asked eagerly.
“Not quite.” Vi hated to see her friend deflate, but there was nothing she could do. “I promised your mother I would work with her on something.”
“On what?”
What, indeed… Vi had been half hoping Sehra would’ve told her daughter something to explain their new tutoring arrangement, and spare Vi the lie she’d now be forced to think up on the spot. “Going over details for when my family comes to collect me.”
“That sounds tiring.” Ellene flopped back onto the cushions.
“But necessary,” Martis interjected from the doorway, pausing briefly to give Vi a bow. “Thank you for your work today, princess.”
“Yours as well.”
“I look forward to continuing our discussions. Hopefully, next time, they will not be so one-sided.” He gave a thin smile, and left.
“Rude,” Ellene muttered. “Is he allowed to talk to you like that?”
“Given all that I’ve put Martis through over the years, I’m going to say yes.” Vi ran a hand through her hair, sorting the carefully plaited braids.
“Careful, you give that kind of leeway to the Southern court and they’ll walk all over you,” Jayme said without looking up from her work. It sounded like something Romulin would say.
“I’ll deal with the Southern Court when I have to.” Romulin’s letters had painted the court as a garden of roses—fresh smelling, beautiful at a glance, but with thorns attached and filled with vipers at the root.
“An apt advisement, I’m certain Prince Romulin would say much the same,” Andru interjected, as though he could read her mind. Vi nearly jumped out of her skin. The man had an innate and unnerving quality to go unnoticed—which was unusual for a man as equal parts handsome and awkward as he was. “They can be quite brutal.”
“More or less brutal than the Senate?” The question left Vi’s lips before she had time to even think.
“That depends on who you ask.” Andru did not look at her when he spoke. He was so transfixed on the other corner of the room that it drew Vi’s attention as well. But there was nothing there, and when her eyes swung back, his attention was solely on her.
“Senates and courts, boring and far away.” Ellene shifted to the edge of her seat. “Can you go over things with my mother later, Vi? The Winter Solstice market is beginning to set up and we’re going to see this year’s layout.”
“Given our incident in the jungle, I’m not going to push my luck.” Plus, the sooner she got these lessons out of the way, the better. Vi needed to master her magic and be done with all of this Yargen business.
“I could go with you,” Andru said suddenly. All three sets of eyes were on him. “I would be happy to see the market.”
Vi stared at him. Just what was he trying to do? She didn’t think for a moment he was genuinely interested in the market.
“It’s a girls-only trip.” Ellene spared Jayme and Vi having to turn him down.
“Any particular reason?” Andru was back to looking in the other corner of the room. But he quickly brought his eyes back to Ellene.
“You don’t ask girls what they’re doing during girls-only time.” Ellene laughed.
“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Vi asked, trying to give Andru a graceful out.
Luckily, he took it. “No, I shall be off.”
With that, he all but bolted for the door, head held high. The momentary discomfort Vi had observed was gone entirely.
“Goodness, he’s strange…” Ellene murmured. “Did they send him to try to make you so uncomfortable you’ll heed the Senate’s every word just to get rid of him?”
“You could be nicer,” Jayme chided.
“You said yourself he was unbearable
on the road,” Vi pointed out. Jayme merely shrugged.
“Anyway! Back to the market.” Ellene was like a dog with a bone. It was times like this that Vi recognized she was just toeing the line between girl and woman, not decidedly one or the other. “Jayme is going to meet Darrus for the first time.”
“I met Darrus in the spring.” Jayme stole the words from Vi’s mouth.
“Briefly. And he’s changed so much since then. He’s grown,” Ellene said with a somewhat dreamy look, clutching the sheet music to her chest. That motion alone made Vi suspect that the song had something to do with the young man.
He hasn’t, Vi mouthed to Jayme while Ellene wasn’t looking.
Jayme hid a snort of laughter with a particularly swift movement of her blade over the stone. “It’s hardly been seven months.”
“Practically a year.”
“Seven months is more like half a year.” Jayme rolled her eyes and began to pack up her things. She paused, looking to Vi. “Should I go with you?”
“Go with me? Why?”
“I am your sworn guard.” Jayme had a small smile, one Vi hoped was from pride at the fact.
“I’m staying in the fortress. You go make sure this one’s feet stay on the ground so she doesn’t fly away with that boy.” Vi pointed to Ellene.
“Hey!”
“Understood.” Jayme gave a mock-serious salute.
“I’ll catch up with you two later.”
“Don’t be too long!” Ellene was off the couch, pulling Vi in for a quick squeeze. “If you’re quick, you can join us. But we’ll be happy to go again later, too.”
They were out the door in a blink. Vi wasn’t long behind them. One more set of lessons with Sehra… and then the real work would begin when she summoned Taavin.
Chapter Sixteen
Vi tapped her fingers along her drafting table, debating with herself. Martis’s words about the tomb still lingered in her mind from the morning. Compounding with that was some genuine progress made with Sehra, assuring her that another night of Taavin’s tutelage wasn’t essential for her at this moment.
