The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “What the hell sort of third-century texts have you been reading?” He rolled over and grabbed a twig, then held it to his chest. The twig disappeared and Dare inhaled a deeper breath. His color was rapidly returning and I could see his shields quickly layering back up, one on top of the next. “That was the worst revival I've had since I was six.”

  Any other time, I would have been avidly observing the rebuilding of his shields and cataloging the magic he was pulling from the environment around us to heal his massive injuries. Instead, I put my hands over my eyes, pressing them against the lids, trying to keep my hysteria in check.

  “Hey.” His voice was gruffer. He tugged my hands away, but everything was hazy. “It's not a big deal. Got the job done.”

  “Okay. Sure. No problem. I'm going to go now.” I rose unsteadily. “Home.” My vision had tunneled completely and I blindly walked toward the pinpoint of light. I could hear swearing behind me.

  People died here all the time. Twenty Justice Squad members had died in the first hour of this unholy squad union. I had seen ten people die and get revived in the first event of the qualifier. And judging by his words, Dare had died before—probably many, many times.

  But I had never resurrected anyone. Not successfully. I had tried so, so hard with Christian. Desperately. But my brother had been long dead already, and instead of feeling panic, I had been full of steady resolve.

  But now... My hands were shaking. A cacophony of sound blended together in my mind—the sounds of Dare fighting and heavy bodies falling around me processed through some strange auto-tuned filter.

  How could I think myself capable of protecting anyone?

  Dare was swearing, his voice part of the odd filter, and I could hear his feet hitting the dirt as he caught up. “Stop walking, dammit. You aren't even looking around you. They weren't alone. Three dozen of them together, what the hell? Scouts just returned planning to eat you, and there are three more watching in the shadows. Stop moving, so I can safely—”

  Safety.

  Suddenly my vision jerked painfully clear. Okai's tile screeched into view and Guard Rock waved his stick in agitation for me to come inside.

  Dare was instantly half a step in front of me and I automatically glanced at his profile. He was staring at Okai with an unreadable expression on his features.

  Danger, danger. Protect Guard Rock and Guard Friend.

  My hands stilled and the feel of spilling paint ran along my veins. I motioned with my fingers, the echo of paint on their tips. Guard Rock stamped his stick down in protest, but the tile whisked away.

  My magic was giving me what it thought I wanted without the usual filter. I had just called Okai to me then sent it away again in the span of five seconds. I could see other images flashing around me. Things I wasn't even consciously aware of desiring.

  But our safety was still uncertain. Dare had said three trolls were still in the shadows. The image of the layer spread out around me like paint poured over a canvas, rolling over three hulking life forms. I focused a beam of magic on each, picked at the layer covering us—at a small, vulnerable section—and shoved. Lightning split the Midlands' gray sky and the earth shifted. The hulking beasts were pushed through the earth like buttons forced through holes too small.

  The holes started to open further. Too far. The cuff on my wrist vibrated.

  Fingers circled my cuff, pressing it against my skin. Just like Marsgrove had done... Did that mean I should attack? No, these fingers didn't hurt. They were firm. Warm. Protective?

  “Look at me.”

  There were fingers on my chin.

  “Look at me.”

  I focused on ultramarine. Protection.

  “Focus.”

  Long moments of sludge and confusion and alarm mixed together, but in my vision, blue eyes never wavered.

  I focused on the color and got my breathing under control. The shaking beneath my feet ceased.

  It was another long moment before he let go of my chin. It was a longer moment until he released my wrist.

  “Thanks,” I said quietly, pulling back my scattered control—testing pyramids like a computer rebooting, checking safeguards—and I pretended that I couldn't read the calculation I saw on his face.

  He was going to ask me all kinds of questions I couldn't answer. Like, ‘So, trapping things in sketches is pretty alarming, but let's talk about how you just ejected those trolls from Second Layer existence?’ Or even more likely, ‘So, speaking of threats presenting themselves...’

  “You've never resurrected anyone before,” he said, breaking through my spiraling thoughts. It wasn't a question, and it was completely unexpected. He continued speaking. “Why didn't you go for help? Or wait for help to arrive?”

  “Wait? Leave? I would have lost you. The tile would have moved.”

  The tiles had moved. I looked around me, we were nowhere near the troll devastation. Dare would probably be dead dead by now.

  “There are only ten minutes allowed for resurrection,” I said. “What if it took me fifteen just to get out of here?”

  “It wouldn't.”

  I stared at him, numb.

  “It wouldn't,” he repeated. “Come.” He turned and headed back into the heart of the Midlands.

  Magic stretched around me, whispering information to me in streams too quick to decipher. He was right. At this moment, I could get out in less than ten minutes. Connecting to the Layer had made me hyper aware, and there was an exit back to the Thirteenth Circle just around the bend. The path wouldn't last, I could feel it already slipping away in a slide, but the ability to feel the changes in the Earth and in the magic of it was there, if I could learn to harness it.

  If I could learn to be an Origin Mage.

  “I'd like to go back to the dorms,” I said numbly.

  “We go back and get the papers first.” His tone brooked no argument.

  “Okay.” Gnawing hunger and exhaustion were overtaking me quickly, but I had become adept last term at putting a temporary hold on physical pain and suffering.

  Dare led us back to the spot easily enough and stood guard while I collected the papers. An aftershock rolled through the ground.

  “We need to release the creatures and leave,” he said, sounding tense.

  We walked out of the Midlands ten minutes later—one hydra and twenty trolls lighter. I checked the nearest mountain sign. We had emerged on the east side of the Thirteenth Circle. When I stopped abruptly, Dare put a steadying hand against my back. People were shouting and arguing on the green in front of a multi-colored building.

  “Campus shaken—”

  “Earth mages swear they didn't—”

  “Peacekeepers' Troop coming, thank Magic!”

  “Department presence—”

  “Everything will be better—”

  My use of magic in the Midlands had not gone unnoticed on campus then. And I had no idea what Dare had already put together based on his actual observation of the event and the wild speculation that was occurring around us.

  “You need to eat. Come on.” Dare nudged me into a stride and we passed the terrified gossipers and headed toward an arch that would take us to the west side of the Eighth Circle where there was a henge with an arch to the north side of the Fifth.

  “You can't lose control like that again,” he said as we walked through the first arch. He unwrapped some strange, perfectly white food from a square package and put it into my hand.

  “I know,” I said weakly, then took a bite. The white square tasted like...nothing. Rice cakes had more flavor.

  “Ever. Especially near the Troop.”

  “What would they do?”

  He looked at me without responding.

  “Okay,” I said, just as feebly.

  “We'll do some resurrections after the competition. Get you used to death.”

  I shuddered. “I don't want to get used to death.”

  “Too bad. Death and resurrection are part of this world. People
die all the time. Most of the time they only miss twenty breaths.”

  “Lucky,” I said with no small amount of bitterness.

  “Yes,” he said in a voice that was suddenly almost soothing. “But death is real. The mage who relaxes is the mage who stays dead.”

  “The papers... They knocked out one of your shields.” The magic had passed through my hand to him, but it was no less true.

  “Hard to defend against Origin Magic,” he said casually.

  My heart stopped beating.

  He didn't look down at me as he continued striding forward, propelling me along with his hand at the small of my back. “But not impossible. I've got the feel for how the energy starts to activate and will be able to compensate for it next time. Completely worth the shit I'm going to get for dying during a training session.”

  My legs felt like short, wooden stilts. I swallowed. “Origin Magic?”

  “Sergei Kinsky made those papers. Didn't I say?” He didn't look at me, and his voice was far too casual. “Cost a small fortune and they are illegal to own. Hope you have a good place to hide them.” He nudged my suddenly unmoving form toward my dorm. “See you at Pisces Rising, Crown. Make sure you eat.”

  Chapter Twenty-six: Revelatory Decisions

  At lunch, I ate more than I had ever eaten in one sitting.

  Still shaking uncontrollably from the whole death and resurrection and Origin Magic revelation thing, I ate and drank and ate some more, and everyone carefully let me do so without interruption.

  Finally, I could eat no more. At the feeling of fullness, a white square burst into my mind's eye then exploded, rushing through me and converting all the food I had just consumed into magical energy. Everywhere the white energy streamed, my magic was replenished, and I bodily shook like a dog that had been dunked into a bath.

  I stared at my hands, which were now shaking with a different force altogether. It was like a concentrated, alternate form of the energy renewal magic Dare sometimes used on me. He seriously had the best stuff.

  “You okay, Crown?” Mike was looking at me dubiously. So were a number of people near us. I hid my shaking hands under the table and tried to stop the rest of me from vibrating.

  “Way better.” Dare wouldn't have given this renewal to me if he was planning to turn me in, right?

  I took a single, eased breath, and that's when the world slowed around me.

  No.

  The world sped back up almost immediately, and I put my hand to my chest. Raphael had just done something. But it hadn't totally worked.

  “The terrorists just partially destroyed a second installation!” I could hear the whispers traveling the cafeteria. “But with far less magic. Are they running out?”

  Outrage and fear clogged the large, airy hall, but was threaded with the slightest bit of hope. It echoed my own feelings—though normal, crippling guilt rolled through me as well. Partial destruction still likely meant a loss of life.

  But, the small cord of hope remained—what had just happened was a far less incapacitating response than I had experienced in the past. We had begun piecing together the leech in the last twenty-four hours and I had been touching materials left and right. If putting leech materials together was enough to limit some of Raphael's power, it gave me hope that we were on the right track.

  I looked through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window that comprised one entire wall of the cafeteria—looking out over the mountain. Lightning storms broke in the distance.

  Mike inhaled sharply and suddenly, then looked at Olivia. Everyone else at our table looked her way a moment later, and I could feel gazes around us similarly pinning Olivia like a stuck fly.

  I grabbed my reader. Raphael had done something and everyone was staring at Olivia.

  The newest Information For The People flyer and the Threats to Public Health and Welfare bulletin had hit the metaphorical stands. They were updated with horrible information concerning Helen Price and her failings as a politician on the world stage—and her inability to keep the Department installations secret or secure. Chatter broke throughout the cafeteria, mages eager to pin the blame for the latest security breach.

  Since both publications were owned by the Baileys, and Bellacia had used some specific language with Olivia at the party, then taunted me about Olivia this morning, the source of the articles wasn't a surprise. The articles had likely been sitting on the edge of someone's magic fingers, awaiting the right time to hit “send.”

  I really wanted to push the clicker thing Constantine had given me, just to make Bellacia forget her own name for a little while. Maybe it would cure her of her vindictive streak.

  Helen's embarrassment and public ridicule meant little to me—I actually was pretty pleased by that aspect—but Olivia was going to be punished for it, and Olivia knew it, judging by her lack of conversation, clenched body language, and quick excuse to leave the cafeteria.

  I hurried after her, but waited until we were back in our room before speaking.

  “Olivia—”

  “It's fine, Ren. I knew what would happen eventually when—”

  Olivia tensed momentarily. I didn't have to ask why. The backlash from the vengeance magic whipped through me in the next moment.

  I grimaced and my stomach clenched. But, on the satisfying side, Helen Price had just gotten her backside paddled, pretty literally.

  Olivia was staring down at her intact cocoon, bewildered.

  I shifted on my feet, pretty certain that I'd be unable to sit in a chair for a good while. I wasn't in nearly the pain that putting the magic into place had caused, but even with the abundance of energy now running through me, the backlash still stung. Magic, like nature, required balance, and it was basically giving me its version of a disappointed parental head shake for misusing it. Vengeance spells, like the one I had put on Helen, weren't full of sunshine and rainbows.

  Though, hey... Maybe that would be worse to someone like Olivia's mom. My excess energy and the backlash pain were probably making my brain think thoughts that I should immediately disregard, but the absurdity of Helen Price being repeatedly forced to look at fuzzy rabbits made me smile stupidly. I'd have to consider sending her an overload of cute images in response to whatever she tried next. See if I couldn't do some psychological damage instead.

  I bet I could skirt the “vengeance” side of things entirely if I made my brain think of it as “joyful rehabilitation” instead. Food for thought.

  My grin widened and I shifted position to lessen the heat on one side of my lower body. That's when I realized that Olivia was staring at me, her eyes narrowed.

  “Er, yes?” I wiped my grin.

  “Why are you standing there, smiling strangely and shuffling back and forth from foot to foot?”

  “Uh, just trying to stretch my legs. Too much sitting lately.” I scrambled for a proper excuse. “And I'm trying to recreate some of Neph's moves. Awkwardly.”

  I tried a little hop, then stumbled into a small, shambling circle to get rid of the blazing pain and cramp.

  Olivia watched me through narrowed eyes. “My mother easily connected the Baileys' scathing articles to me. And her response to it should have resulted in far more than the light tickle I just felt.”

  Filtered through the previous magic in the cocoon, Helen's vindictive attack would have caused the cocoon to burst into a butterfly—absorbing the more anguishing aspects—but Olivia would have still felt remnants of pain.

  I pointed at Olivia and couldn't keep the hostility toward her mother out of the movement. “Her response should have contained no violence at all.”

  Olivia watched me for a long moment, then turned the cocoon over in her hands, examining it. She hadn't examined it since I had given it to her. I had done a pretty good job embedding the second spell, way better than a cursory examination would show, but Olivia was very detail oriented. I knew as soon as she found it. She went rigid.

  Her neck bent and her head dropped forward to shield her e
xpression.

  Crap. “Er, Liv?”

  A shudder ran through her and her hand twitched toward her eyes. “When?”

  “A month ago?”

  “I'd wondered,” she whispered.

  That just made me angry again—that she'd wondered why she'd gone so long without punishment. “I'm not taking it off,” I said mulishly, crossing my arms.

  She pulled the cocoon to her chest, fingers wrapped around it. “Ren—”

  “No, you'll let me do this,” I hissed. I wasn't angry at her, not in the least, but I was so angry at the situation. I took a deep breath and walked over, kneeling painfully in front of her chair. “Please. At least until it's a butterfly.”

  Light hands curled around my neck, and for long moments I had an armful of Olivia Price.

  When she pulled back her chin was steady and gaze level. “I have a few letters to the editor to write. What say you?”

  I grinned.

  ~*~

  Once Olivia had started furiously writing and focusing her sight forward, I headed to the Midlands and Okai to work off the overabundance of excess energy Dare had “squared” me with.

  Olivia was taken care of for the moment, and I had a longer term plan chugging away for her. But Dare...Dare had died this morning. And no matter what he might know or not, he was firmly in my circle of protection. He had started in it as the stranger who'd saved my life and given me one last moment with my twin, and his importance had increased exponentially since we'd begun working together.

  I stroked one of Kinsky's sheets, and set to work.

  Two hours later, I walked out of Okai buzzing with spent energy. Locking the door behind me, I stopped cold to see Dare leaning against Okai's wall, casually waiting. It was both a comforting notion and a threat. As suspected, he could find me at any time. I wondered how long it had taken him to get onto Okai's tile. It was one of the trickiest to access—it had taken me a week, a lot of magic, and a drop of paint to do so.

  “You were going to be late,” he said, a half-smile on his face as he answered one unasked question and left a million others unanswered.