by Megan Crewe
“I could only feel the effect for sure in the arena, because of how contained the magic was with us,” I went on. “But it must be happening everywhere else in the world too, even if the damage isn’t as obvious. We have to find ways of dealing with our enemies that don’t harm the magic, or else...”
I hadn’t let myself think that far before. What would happen to the world if we were using more magic to kill than to create? Was the planet’s magic already fading? Could it die?
I felt more responsibility to it than to any of the mages in front of me.
“We caught part of your conversation with your fellow examinees on that matter,” Lancaster said. “And we were able to register some of that effect for ourselves. It certainly is a concern—one you showed yourself to be impressively able to adapt to. In fact, we anticipate that as Champion, your skills will enable us to find more effective methods with which to approach our national defense.”
For a second time in the conversation, I was struck dumb. I stopped myself just short of blurting out, Really?
“I—I’m glad to hear that,” I managed.
How much did they really care? I couldn’t tell whether they believed me or were just humoring me. But they had listened… They had accepted without arguing and opened a door, if only a crack.
And now they were waiting—to hear whether I would accept their offer. I wet my lips.
I didn’t trust the examiners or their version of Champions, but I wasn’t going to help anyone or anything if they burned me out. I’d helped keep nine people alive despite the Exam’s best efforts. How many more could I protect with the Confed’s backing behind me?
The hum of magic sang around me and through me: the power they wanted to use and that I’d tried to hold back. The power that did make me dangerous.
I didn’t want them taking it and aiming it at others the way Lacey had used my knife. If I wielded that power myself, held it firm with my convictions, and didn’t let myself be pushed, maybe I could break the shroud of secrecy that allowed the Exam committee to carry out their awful trials like I’d broken the shield over their arena. Maybe I could stop the Confed from using the soldiers those trials produced and from approving the castings that weakened the magic.
Let them think they’d tamed this dragon. Let them think there was no threat to fear here. I could play the role they wanted me to if it meant I had a chance to make a difference, to make up for Mark and Judith and Javi—and for everyone else who’d ever fallen. For all the wrongs the Confed had done here and elsewhere, now and for so long before.
For Javi. There was one answer I couldn’t leave here without.
“I have to ask,” I said. “My brother, Javier Lopez—we were told he died in the Exam three years ago. He appeared in one of my tests…” Did I want to admit how much that trick had managed to affect me—if it had been a trick? “I’d just like to know for sure what happened to him.”
Welch exhaled with a dismissive sound, but Khalil looked at Lancaster, raising her eyebrows in question. Lancaster nodded. The younger examiner turned back to me.
“Your brother was lost on the second day of his Exam, during the final challenge. I’m sorry.”
Lost. As if he could still be found. They couldn’t bring themselves to say they’d killed him?
My whole body went hot, but the wash of grief faded as quickly as it’d swept over me. I’d already done plenty of mourning in the last three years. At least Javi hadn’t been forced into the brutality of that final arena. I could take a little comfort in that and in knowing for sure that the agony of the boy I’d met in the shadows had been completely conjured.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
I’d made it, like he’d always wanted. And he’d have wanted me to keep fighting.
I could do it. I could be a champion for what the magic was meant to be, like I’d always wanted, except on an even larger scale.
All I had to do was pretend I’d chosen from the paths the Confed had offered me—accept or be burned out—and then find my own to follow. Oh, I was a threat all right. They could thank themselves for showing me that. A threat to their lies, a threat to their awful secrets. I’d be their Champion and follow their rules… until I didn’t need to anymore.
“Have you made your decision?” Lancaster asked.
“Yes,” I said, offering a smile that was only partly forced. “I’d be honored to be named Champion.”
“Excellent.” Lancaster held out her hand. “We’ll assign you a mentor and a spot at the college as expected, though naturally you won’t spend much time there. I believe this will be a productive partnership for both of us.”
Her hand was firm and dry when I shook it.
The three of them stood up, and Welch cleared his throat. “We’ll conduct a final debriefing shortly. In the meantime, you’ll find a meal at the end of the hall.”
“You’ll be able to see your parents tonight, before you take your new position,” Khalil added.
I pushed myself to my feet, a little dizzy. That was it? The conversation was over? Lancaster motioned me out of the room, and I went.
My thoughts were buzzing as I walked down the hall, but they stilled when I stepped into the dining room and saw Finn by the food-laden table.
He was just straightening up; he’d heard me coming. He looked at me with those bright green eyes as if I was exactly who he’d wanted to see walking through that doorway. The last of my lingering grief fell away under a giddy rush of joy.
“So we made it, Dragon-Tamer,” he said in a wry tone that didn’t quite fit the intensity of his gaze.
“Looks that way,” I replied automatically. I didn’t know what else to say. A few hours ago, I’d spilled the contents of my heart into his head. My own gaze skittered away.
His left hand was healed, the thumb reconstructed as neatly as my little finger had been. So we still matched, in our opposite ways.
“They couldn’t send me home in pieces,” he said, noticing me noticing. He clasped his hands together in front of him, the old right thumb rubbing over the new left. “It looks the same as ever, doesn’t it? But there’s a bit of a twinge if I bend it too quickly. It didn’t come out of the Exam quite right, for all the magimedic tried to fix it. Funny how well I relate to that notion in general right now. As the great Horace once said, ‘I am not such as I was.’”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. Then I dared to meet his eyes again. “What did they decide for you?”
He smiled crookedly. “What do you think? Apparently while my strategy ‘demonstrated a certain creativity,’ it also showed ‘a concerning disregard for the security of the Confed and its institutions.’ I’ll be burned out before I leave. That’s all right. I knew what I was doing.”
“It’s not fair,” I had to say.
“Actually?” he said. “Just this once, I think it is. They told me you made Champion. Prisha and Desmond too. That’s fair enough for me.”
My heart tugged at me to go to him, to wrap my arms around him, as if I could hold him away from his fate. But here in the stark white room, healed and freshly clothed, already halfway back to the life that had been so distant from mine, he looked almost like a stranger.
“Rocío,” he said, “I— It was—” He paused and let out a noise of frustration. His throat worked. Then he lifted his head and spread his hands. “Come here? I want to show you something.”
My legs balked before I walked forward. But as soon as I stood right in front of him, as soon as his arms came around me and the warm, sweet smell of him filled my nose, my hesitation fell away. I leaned my head against his shoulder, hugging him back. My eyes welled up.
Finn pressed a kiss to my forehead. Then, with his breath tickling over my bangs, he murmured a lilting verse.
Magic washed through his embrace and into me with a cool tingle. I closed my eyes, and images sprang up behind them.
A glimpse of my conjured dragon from over the rooftops of stately brownstones, along
with a pang of startled awe. An irresistible draw pulling his gaze back to me around the circle of cubicles during one of our first tests. The spark of conviction provoked by my little smile as I leaned over the scarf I’d cast my defensive ’chantment into.
More memories, and more, flooded me with admiration and desire, until my mind spun with it.
Finn dipped his head, and I raised mine instinctively, still caught up in the feeling of him from the inside out. He kissed me hard. Even as my own delight shivered through me, his joy and wonder in that moment—that I was here at all, that I wanted him—reverberated through me alongside it.
A different kind of tremor ran through his shoulders beneath my palms. What he was offering me was carried by a casting. He must be tired still; he’d only had a few hours to recover. This might be the last magic he ever cast in his life.
And he was casting it for me, to give me what I’d given him.
I eased back, opening my eyes, and looped my hands behind his neck as the images fell away. “You can stop,” I said, gently so he’d know it wasn’t a rejection. “That— Thank you.”
“I don’t care where I end up or what Dull job they stick me in or any of the rest,” Finn said. “I’ll want you with me, whenever you can be, however you can be. As long as you want to be with me too.”
I nodded, my throat tight.
He lowered his voice, pulling me closer again. “None of this is over,” he said beside my ear. “The Exam, the Damperings, the way the Circle cuts down new magic... I’m not done. There has to be something I can do to start setting things right, and I’m going to find it.”
I pressed my cheek to his. “Good,” I said, “because so am I, and I still think we’re a good team. Whatever we end up having to do.”
He let out a rough chuckle. “I suspect there’s going to be a lot of ‘whatever’ in our future, then. But we’ve made it this far.”
“We have,” I said. The path ahead of me looked as uncertain as ever, but my dread loosened just slightly.
I wasn’t alone.
For the first time since the examiners had transported us out of the arena, a real smile crossed my face. “Just let them try to stop us now.”
* * *
What awaits Rocío and Finn after the Exam? Their story continues in Wounded Magic, coming in November 2018. To hear news about the Conspiracy of Magic series and be notified when Wounded Magic is available for sale, sign up here!
Want a glimpse inside the pivotal events that shaped the world of Ruthless Magic? Step back 40 years in time to when Finn’s father was a teen, eager to merge the magical and nonmagical communities and falling in love for the first time, in Magic Unmasked, the Conspiracy of Magic prequel novella. Click here to get it FREE now!
Next in the Conspiracy of Magic series
Wounded Magic (Conspiracy of Magic #2)
Rocío and Finn made it through the Mages’ Exam alive, but even more perilous trials await them in the world outside. In the Confed’s special ops military program, Rocío must walk a fine line between complicity and resistance or risk everyone she loves. Stripped of his magic, Finn searches for other ways to fight the lies and secrets of the magical government—and to find his way back to the girl he’s fallen for. A revolution is brewing, but who will be caught in the crossfire?
Wounded Magic will be released in November 2918.
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A Mortal Song excerpt
If you love stories with strong heroines and magical conflicts, you might enjoy my YA fantasy, A Mortal Song. When Sora, the heir to a spirit kingdom, discovers she is a human changeling raised as a decoy, she must adapt to her sudden loss of power and fight against horrific odds to save her home…
A MORTAL SONG
1
On the afternoon of my seventeenth birthday, I came down the mountain to visit a dying man.
The affliction had revealed itself slowly. I’d first noticed the tremor of discord in Mr. Nagamoto’s ki—the life energy that glowed inside him—three months ago. Over the weeks, that tremor had swollen into a cloud, dimming the ki at the side of his abdomen. Today I arrived to find the cloud twisting and churning while he typed at his computer in the living room. It was draining his already inconceivably short human life away, but neither he nor his wife knew it was there.
They didn’t know I was there either. I kept myself invisible as I watched from beside the narrow sofa, as I always did when I visited the households in the town at Mt. Fuji’s foot. The people living in those homes looked much like myself and many of the other kami, but it was their differences that fascinated me. They shifted from one mood to another in patterns too complex to predict, and their bodies changed quickly too, for better or for ill. As I’d drifted through the beige walls of this house over the years, Mr. and Mrs. Nagamoto had grown plumper and their hair grayer. I’d joined their children’s games unseen and silently shared their laughter before the son and then the daughter had transformed into adults leaving for college. And now this sickness had come.
I stepped closer to Mr. Nagamoto. Seeing how his disease had spread made me feel sick myself, but that was why I’d come. My resolve solidified inside me, overshadowing the worries that had driven me from the palace. If I really wanted to consider myself a part of this family’s lives, I should help them—help him.
I’d have healed him if I could, but the cloud of decay was so large and fierce I doubted even the most practiced healers of my kind would have been able to defeat it. We kami had other skills, though. I knew a few in the palace whose focus was tending to the dying. When a worthy person or creature passed away, they let it hold on to life a little longer by transferring its spirit into something it had loved. I thought Mr. Nagamoto might like to linger in the cypress tree in the yard or one of the koi in the pond beneath it, where he could continue watching over his family.
Any kami was capable of doing that. Any kami but me. Mother and Father hadn’t let me learn the sacred practices yet.
I had so much more power than anyone in this town—more ki in my little toe than Mr. Nagamoto had in his whole fragile human body. It wasn’t right for me to stand by and let his life slip away unrecognized. My parents would just have to accept that it was time I started serving the purpose I was meant to.
I bowed my farewell to Mr. Nagamoto and slipped outside. The summer sun was dipping low in the stark blue sky. Midori, my dragonfly kami friend who always accompanied me on my ventures off the mountain, flitted around me with a mischievous tickle of ki that dared me to try to reach the palace faster than her.
I took off down the street. Midori darted past me, but in a moment I’d matched her pace, sending ki to my feet to speed them on. The houses streaked by, clay walls and red-and-gray tiled roofs standing behind low fences of concrete or metal. It was strange to think most of these people barely believed my kind existed, spoke and prayed to us only out of habit, with no more faith than they had in the characters they watched on their TVs. But as long as kami lived on Mt. Fuji and elsewhere, we’d continue to act as guardians of the natural world, doing all we could to keep the crops growing, to fend off the worst storms, and to calm the fire that lurked deep inside the mountain.
Or, at least, the others did, and I hoped soon I’d find my focus too.
Midori pulled a little ahead of me, and I pushed my feet faster. I was the only one to have been born in the palace in as long as my honorary auntie Ayame could remember. She loved sharing tales of my birth even more than she did those of heroes and sages. “It was a blessing for our chosen rulers,” she’d told me. “When your mother and father announced they were expecting, the celebrations lasted for weeks.” The parties commemorating my birthday weren’t anywhere near as extensive, but kami still traveled from far abroad to pay their respects. Surely while my parents were thinking of how much I meant to them, they’d recognize how much this request meant to me?
In a few minutes, Midori and I had left the town
behind and started up the forested slope. An odd quiet filled the pine woods we dashed through. No animals stirred, except for a couple of squirrels that rushed this way and that as if in alarm before scurrying away. I slowed, forgetting the race as I peered amid the branches for the owl kami who normally maintained the harmony in this part of the forest. “Daichi?” I called. There was no sign of him.
He must have already headed up to join the party. I’d mention my observations when I saw him in the palace.
I directed a fresh rush of ki through my legs. As I ran on, my feet hardly touched the ground. Farther up the mountain, the rustling of moving bodies and the lilt of birdsong reached my ears. Nothing was terribly wrong, then.
“Sora!”
The voice brought me to a halt. Midori settled on my hair. A tall figure was striding toward us through the trees. My heart skipped a beat.
“Takeo,” I said, trying not to sound as breathless as I felt after that run.
Takeo stopped a few paces away and dipped into a low bow. He was wearing his fancier uniform with the silver embroidery along the jacket’s billowing sleeves. In contrast with the deep green of the fabric, his mahogany-brown eyes gleamed as brightly as if they were made of polished wood. With his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a formal knot, the lacquered sheath of his sword at his hip, and the arc of his bow at his shoulder, he looked every inch the palace guard. But he smiled at me, warm and open, as a friend.
If I’d had a camera like the ones the tourists carried, I’d have captured the look he was giving me for keeps. Although then I’d have to explain why I wanted to, and I hadn’t worked up enough courage to confess these new feelings yet. He might see me as a friend, but before that I was the daughter of his rulers, a child he’d been assigned to watch over and teach since I was seven years old, when he’d arrived at the mountain barely out of childhood himself, seeking to serve.
