The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Marsgrove grabbed my arm, this time around the bicep, and gave me a shake. “Attacked when?”

  Olivia gave me a tight look as she pried his hand away, then steered her thirty-something-year-old cousin to the side of the room. She drew a clear curtain of magic from one wall to the other, and they began to argue behind the privacy ward.

  Their argument meant Olivia hadn't mentioned the First Layer attack or our presence during the Library of Alexandria onslaught to anyone in her family.

  I numbly unpacked in the strangely silent room while they argued.

  As I was putting my last shirt away, the edges of the privacy spell lifted. Marsgrove turned to leave.

  “Are you going to take the paint spell off of me?” I demanded as he grabbed the knob. I needed to learn how to control these abilities. Olivia...my parents...the earth opening... I shuddered involuntarily and stared at Marsgrove. He needed to free me so that I could do better.

  “No. God, no. Be very thankful that I can say nothing about you to anyone, or else you'd be on a dissection table already.” He barely spared me a look as he slammed the door forcefully behind him.

  I started shaking as adrenaline rocketed through me.

  Olivia whisked items from her suitcase. Her movements were tight and controlled, but her fingers, too, shook as she placed a pouch on her desk.

  Watching her shake caused my magic to thrust upward with unconscious intention, but the new cuff immediately dispersed the force—controlling my uncontrollable urges since I could not.

  I shakily touched the flexible metal, momentarily thankful for it. It hadn't stopped the Department spell, however. I needed to figure out if that override had been due to power or Raphael.

  “Liv—”

  “Phillip said he only found us because he recognized what was happening when a similar type of magic was used in Sassraf,” she said, drowning out my question, and calling Marsgrove by his first name.

  I nodded slowly. “I felt an echo of my magic being used somewhere far away. It was...strange.”

  It hadn't been the same as the magic Raphael had used in Ganymede that made the world slow down around me, but rather like an echo of it. The world had slowed for me when the other town—Jauvine—had also been destroyed last term.

  Something tickled the edges of my consciousness.

  Olivia ripped a coat from her bag. “Phillip also said your house is a dead zone in a community mind-controlled by a terrorist,” she said. “Who knows what got sapped from you by us being there. Despite my detector giving off alerts, nothing reported on the grid during our stay. Nothing, Ren. Phillip silently checked on our way here.”

  My heart never seemed to do anything but pound anymore. “Wha—?”

  “Can you feel the connection to the wards on your house?” Olivia asked, her gaze intent and demanding—nearly anxious. “To your parents?”

  I felt around my magic, which had been reactivated like a plug stuck into a socket upon entry to the Second Layer. The feeling attached to the house wards was intact and strong. “Yes.”

  Relief crossed Olivia's face so swiftly that her expression crumpled. “Good. That's g...” Olivia froze, her last word trailing off.

  “Olivia?” I moved toward her automatically.

  “That crasseetar,” Olivia whispered, standing straight, her entire body tightening, her gaze turned inward, betrayed.

  “What? Who?” I asked, alarmed, both by her posture, her translated swear word, and my sudden inability to complete more than a one-word sentence.

  Her gaze was vicious as she focused on me. “Leave the building. Now. Don't return for at least two hours.”

  The magic that connected us together shot the severity of her demand straight through my nerve endings. Despite Marsgrove's demand that I do the exact opposite, I scrambled and grabbed my messenger bag—thankfully still packed with my notebooks and reader—then shot out the door.

  As I quickly descended the dorm's steps, I passed a statuesque woman calmly ascending. My feet nearly entangled themselves in recognition. I had seen the woman before, featured in the news feed after the Ganymede attack—the woman who had made the comment that anyone displaying talent for Origin Magic would be “dealt with.” The posh, icy woman I had thought—at the time—that Olivia would love. My brain sorted features quickly, superimposing posture, features, and regard in overlaid images.

  My subconscious had obviously recognized the similarities while watching the news feed, but I had been far too focused on other things at the time to make the conscious connection.

  I froze, gripping the rail, as Helen Price turned the corner.

  Due to the contract magic he had signed, Marsgrove wasn't able to say anything about me.

  He had sold out Olivia instead.

  Chapter Seven: Chaos

  Olivia's mother never once looked my way. Whatever enchantment Raphael had forced on me seemed to work, at least temporarily, on everyone Department related.

  Olivia's expression had clearly indicated I was unwanted in whatever was about to happen, but my heart thumped wildly, and I stayed rooted to my spot until the people behind me forced me into motion. A steady stream of Dorm Twenty-five mages filed down the stairs and exited through the heavy wooden door at the uphill side of the building, with me in tow.

  Outside, I stopped and let the streams cut around me. I felt unnaturally anxious. Olivia's mom was obviously not the warm, caring figure that mine was, but, she wouldn't hurt her own daughter. Mothers didn't do that.

  To the right and left, as far as my eyes could see, masses of students were exiting the Magiaduct through the doors that delineated each dorm section.

  My unnatural anxiety won out. I turned to head back into the building and upstairs. Olivia had told me to leave the building, but I could slip into one of the open study areas and wait for Helen Price to leave. I could stay nearby. Just in case.

  “All students, again, please make your way to Top Circle,” a soft, lilting voice said on the air. The sound curled around the crowds, and those students not already heading uphill, began the trek. I didn't realize I was trekking up with them, until I was halfway up the stairs that lead from the Fifth Circle to the Fourth.

  Go back! my mind screamed.

  But the lilting voice in the air reiterated its command, and I continued climbing. The unaffected portion of my brain said that I shouldn't be ascending the mountain, away from my roommate and back to the madness of Top Circle where Marsgrove was. Magical suggestion was obviously laced through the words drifting on the air, though, because I kept moving forward. I gripped the strap of my bag, focusing on the positive. All students. That meant Olivia would be somewhere behind me. We'd meet up top. Everything would be fine.

  I was sweating by the time I reached Second Circle. I hadn't climbed the mountain since my first week at school. I looked around me. Thousands of students were climbing the multitudes of staircases that dotted the steep hillsides between circles. It was an extremely strange sight. All of the on-campus ports must have been closed. Either that, or the administrative enchantment gripping all of us had embedded a sudden will for exercise.

  Bottlenecks to the next set of staircases formed with so many of us trying to reach the heart of campus.

  A sudden, loud cheer erupted from students on either side of me, startling me. Most of the expressions in the slowly moving crowd turned ecstatic and fierce. But a few displayed annoyance—or even anger—before composing into neutral lines.

  “That's right. Don't scarp with us, or this is what you will get!” A boy lifted a fist in victory.

  Unlike most of the students around me, I didn't have a magical frequency to deliver news mentally, so I shakily grabbed my news reader from my bag. The holographic faces of two men and one woman popped up, rotating above the screen. There were red “X's” over their faces. Three Third Layer politicians had just been assassinated by vigilantes.

  Retaliation. Retaliation in a war I was ignorant of and embroiled within.r />
  A video of the retaliation replaced the still images—masked men exterminating the three Third Layer politicians with horrible, explosive magic. I covered my mouth, trying to keep my breakfast down.

  Frequency users saw this mentally? Projected directly in their thoughts? No way was I getting one.

  As I fumbled to close my reader, my world turned to sludge. Each movement became painfully, horrifyingly slow—the movements of a nightmare.

  No. No.

  “Campus lockdown! Repeat, lock any campus portals still open!” thundered a strident adult voice.

  People around me screamed. My molasses-slow fingers fumbled over my reader's shut-off switch, missed it, and a second video popped up. Everyone and everything around me continued at normal speed, while I existed outside normal time and space. Black-and-white patterns scrolled over everything in view for one suspended second.

  The world cracked and snarled back to real time and my body unfroze as quickly as it had frozen, causing me to stumble uncontrollably. I fell forward with the momentum, taking down three other mages. My limbs splayed out on the grass and my bag and reader flew forward. People were yelling at me, but I couldn't process their words. Gasping deep breaths, I watched the hologram continue to scroll images of absolute devastation and despair.

  The Second Layer town of Cadmiat, population five hundred, had just been destroyed.

  Like Ganymede. Like Jauvine. The thoughts that had been tickling at my consciousness discharged, fully blown into active awareness as everything connected. The feeling, the magic, the patterns, the pull, Constantine's leech, Raphael...

  The box.

  My God, the box from my Awakening sketch was a leech. One that didn't require Raphael to press a device against my skin or ask for my permission. The pull was different from Constantine's button, but the horrible feeling of having my control ripped away was the same.

  But...if Raphael could pull my magic from a distance whenever he wanted, why wasn't he pulling it all the time? Did it require a visit? A touch? Some sort of actual permission cunningly taken?

  My fingers curled painfully around a rock in the grass, as I dragged myself forward toward the reader and its horrible image feed. At the edge of the scorched, cratered vision, holographic men and women in buckled collars shoved two men to the ground and clamped blindingly white cuffs on them. But no smirking, golden-eyed man was caught. I watched the captured men. There was deep fervor in their expressions. Even in hologram form, the light of their magic dimmed under the power of the cuffs, but the fervor in their eyes remained.

  I vaguely registered the students yelling and shoving at each other above me.

  “She pushed me! What is wrong with her?”

  “Maybe she knows someone in Cadmiat. Have some empathy!”

  “Ren!”

  At the familiar call, I looked up to see Will pushing his way through the crowd.

  “Ship those responsible to the labs!” someone hollered behind me—hate and anguish permeating their voice.

  “Human rights must be maintained!” someone else shouted, though their voice sounded irritated by the fact.

  “They aren't human! I hope they dissect them, drain them, and use their magic to blast the rest of the cockroaches!”

  I crawled the last few inches to my reader. A bitter cold feeling spread through me. My magic had been used for this. Raphael had taken that box from the sketch I had created months ago during my Awakening.

  Familiar hands lifted my reader, then me, and I rested against Will for a moment.

  Administration Magic swirled and morphed around us, locking campus down.

  Will shut down the image feed on my reader as the tactics of the Second Layer's enforcement unit turned brutal on the telecast. I numbly shoved the device into my bag, guilt and horror pulsing wildly inside me. People around me continued yelling. I heard Raphael's name mentioned more than once, along with others on the most wanted lists, including the sharp-eyed man who'd been featured in the Sassraf hologram—Vincent Godfrey.

  The crowd moved and I stuck to Will's side as we climbed the last staircase, negotiated an alley between the buildings that formed a perimeter around the top level of campus, and stepped onto the crowded grassy field at the center of Top Circle.

  Department mages stood in strategic positions around the perimeter and on the cafeteria steps, scanning people in the crowd, rapidly and systematically. Little bits of magic flew from their finger scanners into the crowd, then back—tagging the bleating human sheep in our circular pen.

  Will was looking at a device in his hand. “Mike and Neph are almost here.”

  “How—”

  “How did I find you? I stuck a tracker on your bag that activates on campus,” he said matter-of-factly, without looking away from the device in his hand. “An arrow shows up in the right corner of my glasses and leads me to you. We should try inserting the tracker in a piece of jewelry, though—something you don't take off. Maybe a ring with a holographic display? Add some extras. Do you think with some paint we could—?”

  I stopped listening as I looked frantically at my bag, freaked out that I’d been tracked, even if it was by Will.

  No, I'd freak out about it later, I thought, as one of the Department mages aimed his finger our way. Cerulean magic blinked around us, encompassing the twenty people surrounding me.

  Little blue dots appeared on each mage's shoulder.

  A student with pretty emerald eyes stood straight and tall on the cafeteria steps beside the three Department mages. She smiled at us with a politician's smile, then suddenly narrowed her eyes, her smile dropping as her gaze swept my shoulder. Alarm spiked. I looked down at my shoulder. No dot.

  I was terrible with names, but I had sketched the girl's face into my mind months ago—the girl with the lilting voice who I had attempted to sit with on my first visit to the cafeteria. She wore three rings, indicative of a magic user proud of her Second Layer lineage.

  She was a student, not a Department employee, and like with Dare, Raphael's spell apparently didn't extend to her, because she looked at my face, then leaned over to read the scan held by a Department mage. I had no idea if I would show up on the scan or not, but the probability was high that something about me would not match up to whatever showed up on that scanner.

  I poked Will's sticker, causing him to look at me, then I hurriedly magicked a duplicate on my shoulder. Will's eyes bugged out and he immediately erected a silencing spell around us, and tried, vainly, to hide me. “Dear Magic, take it off!” he hissed, and looked frantically in all directions. “The stickers have tagged magic in them and anyone from the Department who sees you will know you haven't been properly scanned and they—”

  “It doesn't matter,” I said tightly, thankful for the small space of privacy he had given us. We'd only be able to use it reliably for a minute. More time than that would invite someone in the crowd to break the enchantment. Silencing spells, unlike silencing runes, were notoriously weak, and a favorite target of the members of the delinquent's club. “I'll explain later.”

  He nodded slowly and I moved so that we were standing shoulder to shoulder again. The girl's green gaze honed in on me immediately and switched between my shoulder and face. I shifted on my feet, but tried to project a calm, law-abiding facade.

  She looked at the scanner again. However the magic worked, it must have shown our small quadrant as all tagged. Her gaze reluctantly moved to the next target and I allowed myself a small breath of relief.

  Will tapped under his ear, indicating incoming news on his frequency. “They are warding out anyone from the mountain who is not a registered student, faculty member, resident, or in the administration. Residents who live in the lower levels will have to stay below the Eighteenth Circle. All students will be locked into the levels above that. Secured.”

  Or trapped. Depending on one's definition.

  “Excelsine was declared a safe zone,” Will whispered. “It always is. My parents pushed me th
rough a port as soon as we could reach one. There was a weird earthquake in the First Layer and a decimating flood in the Fourth around the same time as the Sassraf attack. Muses were told to return to their posts across the layers, so Neph should be here soon.”

  Top Circle was standing room only already.

  “Safe zone,” Will said. “That's why everyone wants their kids returning here. Though the Department being here is new. The media mages are making a big deal about it right now on the news feeds, celebrating the increased safety.”

  No sooner had the words left Will’s mouth than a flying monkey decided an untimely trip across the Top Circle skies might be a good idea. It flew overhead for a half second before a jet of black blasted it out of the sky. Immediately, three Department mages tied the monkey’s arms behind its back and stuffed it in a cage that was labeled “For Processing.”

  The magical sweeps continued. Department mages violently put down any animal that wandered near the Administration Building and returned any magic that came close.

  A rebound of a weather enchantment blasted one student, and another had to be revived from a banishment hex. Both spells—however innocently intended by the caster—had returned upon them at three times the strength.

  Under such swift and brutal repercussions, magic use died off completely around Top Circle.

  Alexander Dare stood next to a pillar at the shadowed entrance of the cafeteria, his focused gaze watching the Department mages storm around below. His expression was stony. His left hand twitched the slightest bit and five combat mages smoothly descended the stairs and disappeared into the crowd to the left. A similar gesture sent five more to the right.

  No dragons were riding the supernatural winds. No gaudily dressed mages were performing tricks. No enchantments curled and coiled among the grass. People whispered and stood far too still. Even the ever-changing clothes I had become accustomed to seeing remained flat and stagnant. My gut clenched at the completely unnatural environment.