The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  I looked down, already knowing what I'd see. Magic was a funny thing, and as Dare so often pointed out, it made things connect subconsciously before consciousness was made aware.

  Alexander Dare, Ren Crown, Emrys Norr. The last was highlighted purple, and when I looked up, Emrys was outlined in the same dark lilac. He was still staring at me, a small smile riding his lips.

  People were moving around me—rising from their chairs and introducing themselves, according to corresponding outlines—but neither Emrys nor I moved.

  “Crown.”

  It took another nudge and a repeat of my name for me to stop the staring contest and look up at Dare. His brows were sharply drawn and there was a hint of concern in his expression.

  “Yes?” I answered automatically.

  “Up.”

  I rose mechanically and hooked my bag over my shoulder. Dare's fingers briefly brushed my arm and I felt a small burst of invigoration as well as the echo of a ringing bell, which cleared the haze that had started to gather.

  “Thanks.”

  “Keep it together,” he said, his voice tight. “And sleep eight hours tonight, or I'll make you run laps—around the Fourth Circle.”

  One “lap” on the Fourth was about four miles in length.

  “Keep your pants on.” At one time, I would have blushed like mad after saying something like that to him, but Dare and I weren't passing acquaintances anymore. “And you are the one who made me get up today at dawn. I'm not running laps,” I muttered. “I already have a drill sergeant.”

  “I do hope I'm not interrupting?” A smooth voice said. We both turned to see our new partner approaching. His green eyes flipped to gray then flipped back to green. The purple corona that surrounded the iris remained unchanged. Whether the purple was from the identification spell or naturally occurring, I didn't know. “Mr. Dare, it is a pleasure.”

  They exchanged a business-like greeting and handshake.

  “And Miss Crown? We haven't met, but it is also a great pleasure.” There was something sharp and familiar in his gaze for a moment, and my heart rate spiked. But then a feeling of ease filled the space, making me relax.

  “Likewise,” I murmured.

  When his irises were gray, they were similar in color to Will's.

  “I look forward to working with the both of you,” Emrys said as we exited the building. His voice was easy to listen to. Masculine, philharmonic tones. Like an oceanic symphony, both crashing and soothing.

  Nothing changed on Dare's inscrutable face, but his elbow clipped me and his clear magic spiked through me, ringing me lucid again.

  Great. Emrys Norr had been using some form of auditory magic. I was going to seriously have to look into magical cotton balls.

  “Where would you like to start, sir?” Dare said, his voice militarily precise and polite, though the lingering magic from his spike made me ultra-aware of him, and there was a deep well of underlying irritation and disgust underneath his polite question.

  “Please, call me Emrys.”

  “Where would you like to start, sir?” Dare reiterated without a pause.

  The mercenary looked at me and gave a theatrical sigh. “Is he always so straight-laced? We'll have to change that.”

  I kept my expression neutral, though my heart rate surged waiting for Dare to destroy him. Dare was anything but straight-laced. He was just very careful in how he rode roughshod over rules.

  “Feel free to give it a try, sir.” Dare's smile was pleasant and oh, so utterly false. No one listening could say that he was impolite, but in the spirit of the exchange, the word “sir” might as well have been swapped for something far less civil.

  “How about we start in the Midlands?” Emrys said lightly. “Terribly interesting strips of land.”

  Still highly attuned to Dare, I could feel the tightening in his magic. I bumped him back as unobtrusively as I could, and some of the tightness dissipated.

  There was a speculative look in Emrys's eyes as he looked between the two of us, and his lips took an unpleasant downward turn, before a full smile bloomed in a manic switch of emotion. “Shall we?”

  “Actually, sir, there is nothing you need to know about the Midlands other than how to make sure the barrier magic stays intact. We'll start with the perimeter wards,” Dare said, moving in the direction of the nearest henge—a henge full of arches that would send us nowhere near the Midlands.

  “Alas,” Emrys said, giving me a smile.

  I smiled uneasily back and followed Dare.

  Dare led and narrated the path through the perimeter wards in the same order that he had when we had first gone through them, but whereas his comments were still direct and correct, they were even more of a textbook recitation than what he had given to the other members of the Justice Squad.

  It was extremely boring, but Emrys Norr was just disconcerting enough to keep me on edge. There was something very familiar, and yet strange about him.

  “You meet together each day, correct?” Emrys said to me.

  “Yes, we—”

  “The three of us will meet once a day,” Dare cut in, finishing the conversation. “In addition, I'll meet with you separately.” He addressed that to Emrys, but I knew, since we'd already discussed it, that he meant me as well.

  Emrys was very polite, but I was happy to put his strange eyes in my rearview mirror as he excused himself with a cheerful farewell and a barely visible smirk.

  “There's something off about him.” Dare's words were flat as we watched Emrys walk over to speak to a number of the Junior Department students who were always following us.

  “You would say that no matter who we got stuck with,” I pointed out. “And you just met him.”

  Seeing the charming grin Emrys displayed as the students eagerly chatted with him—while pointing at me—did nothing to make me want to defend him past reasonable argument, however.

  “I've seen him before,” Dare said. He motioned for me to walk with him to the henge north of our position. “Along with the rest of the Troop's members. The Troop is well-known, and we did our research.”

  “And?”

  Dare frowned. “It's just...off. The whole situation. We should have been assigned to someone else. He's mid-level only.”

  “Hold on, I'm not sure your head will fit through this arch. Let me go first.”

  He rolled his eyes. “There's an order to things. And you felt it too—something strange about him.”

  “A little. Yeah,” I admitted as we emerged on the other side of the Eighth Circle. I felt relief course through me almost instantly once Emrys and the Junior Department could no longer see me. “He seemed different from the rest of them. But that could just be your paranoia infecting me.”

  “It's not. And Telgent isn't right either.” At my blank expression, Dare stopped his forward movement and crossed his arms. “General Telgent, the Troop's leader who spoke for the last half hour? Observation involves listening, Ren.”

  I had halfheartedly logged the Troop leader's whole boring speech somewhere in my memory banks. I'd see about dredging up some enthusiasm to remember it later. “You aren't paying me to do that kind of observing. Let's be frank now. That whole spiel when we began working together was rousing, but you just wanted to get your hands on my sweet, feral abilities.”

  “I will make you run all over this mountain,” he said, overly enunciating the words.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I waved a hand and began walking again. “So, what, you want to put Emrys and Telgent under watch? Set up some paper animals to follow them?”

  He tapped his arm, then shook his head. “I'll deal with it. Just say as little as possible and don't do anything fancy when Norr is around, and do nothing at the group exchange they are scheduling.”

  “I'll be perfectly dull, promise.”

  The next few days with Emrys Norr and Dare, though, illustrated the futility of those words.

  Emrys tried to bait Dare (unsuccessfully), and to startle me (suc
cessfully), into showing unusual magic, as if he was testing us both for rare abilities. He had lots of success with me—I had shot all sorts of, thankfully, unidentifiable and weird magic all over the place in the past few days—and Emrys's success with me was driving Dare spare. But for some reason, I just couldn't feel Emrys approaching like Dare had taught me to feel with other people.

  Emrys stalked us in the Midlands, right alongside the Junior Department, every time we entered. Dare couldn't keep Emrys out of the Midlands—the grounds were free for any authorized student or visitor to wander. However, after the third time Emrys startled me, Dare made Emrys's visits there extremely unpleasant in a variety of untraceable ways.

  That didn't stop Emrys from trying to follow us, though, or from gathering data on me.

  He was being paid by the Department, just like the rest of the Troop. And the Department was looking for rare mages. All he really needed was a stage to showcase the magical way I responded to things, then he could wrap me up with a big red bow.

  ~*~

  After a few days of rounds, the Troop, Combat Squad, and Justice Squad convened for the group exchange meant to pull together everything we had been learning, and to facilitate sharing across the three squads. Selmarie and the Combat Squad would be showcasing the defensive lines, wards, prevention steps, and offensive strategies. Isaiah and the Justice Squad would be going through all of the campus rules and regulations, as well as performing the various maneuvers we had learned over the past weeks. And the Troop...would be doing whatever they did.

  Dare took me aside to repeat his “nothing fancy” warnings.

  “But I'm supposed to be doing things we've been practicing, right?”

  “Yes, but don't. Don't do anything I've taught you. In fact, just follow Peters.”

  I grimaced. Anyone except Peters. “Isaiah?” I asked hopefully, trying to negotiate.

  “He's coordinating the exercises with Selmarie and Telgent.” Dare gave me a sharp look. “Follow Peters.”

  “Fine,” I said grudgingly. Peters would love that I was watching him for cues.

  Dare was looking over my head. “Follow Peters, follow orders, and do nothing more.”

  Dare's gaze was tracking the movements on the field as the last members of the squads gathered, and I could feel his magic reaching out, wrapping around one person after another, cataloging them in the space. Telgent and Emrys showed last, and I waited to speak until Dare returned his gaze to me, since I knew he was vigorously keeping watch on those two.

  “What about Emrys?” I asked. “We are supposed to be working together in the demo.”

  “No. Don't even glance at him while you are demonstrating.”

  “That's going to be a little difficult,” I said.

  “He wants to be seen, and he wants you to be seen. He'll try and get you to do something showy with him in front of the crowd.” He pinned me with a heated expression. “Don't do anything showy.”

  “Okay, okay.” I held out my hands in submission.

  His lips pressed together and he stared at me.

  “I won't, I'll be good,” I said. It was what I had said a number of times over the past few days, right before something Emrys did made me blast magic everywhere.

  Dare stared hard at me for a long moment more before flicking his wrist. A strip of t-shirt like material appeared in his hand. With his back to the rest of the group, he paused, holding the strip for a long moment. A shimmer of magic caught the sunlight as it flowed from his hand over the cloth. He held the strip toward me. “Put this in your pocket,” he said, almost reluctantly.

  “Are you giving me a token? Are we in a Medieval Tournament?”

  “Ren…” But there was a smile hovering reluctantly on his lips.

  “I accept your token and will do honor in your name, good sir.” I stuffed the cloth strip deep into my back pocket, trying to extinguish the little thrill that shot through me.

  He rolled his eyes and pushed me back toward the gathering group.

  Half an hour later, I was appalled at how awful the Troop really was. Emrys's file might have him listed at mid-level according to Dare, but when Emrys was with us, he was clearly better than these jokers.

  Maybe I was just extremely spoiled from spending endless hours watching the best combat mage on a campus filled with great ones, but watching the Troop “demonstrate” was like watching the form competition in the Combat Qualifier. All of the moves were perfect and precise and lifeless as they blasted targets that only moved in precise ways, and fought enemies whose moves were already obvious.

  Wow.

  “Seriously?” I hissed at Dare, who elbowed me in response.

  These people put on a dazzling show—better than a Broadway or Cirque spectacle—but they wouldn't last a minute in the simulation rooms with Dare. Dear lord, this group was going to protect campus?

  “We are all going to die,” I whispered.

  “Yup,” Dare said, tone dark and resigned. “Set Tyrne will probably be sucked onto campus the day after we leave and destroy the whole mountain in a rage. That is your kind of luck.”

  “What? Who?” I asked, alarmed.

  Camille glared at me and I shut up. I quickly looked Set-whoever up on my bracelet. Some epic Fourth Layer berserking creature hybrid with three forms—one of them terrifying enough to make me blanch thinking about it—him—bulldozing the Magiaduct in a relentless fury with the torn limbs of his enemies surrounding him.

  We were all going to die.

  Thankfully, the Combat Squad demonstrations were next, and they were captivating enough to take my mind off our imminent demise. Even watching the combat mages teach the Troop the individual operations for security measures proved interesting.

  But two hours later, I was gritting my teeth as I went through really pedantic verbal exercises with Peters in front of the squads. Reciting all of the Justice Codes? Not my idea of fun or the way to use memory slots. Time to get out of here and do something useful.

  “And that is the procedure for taking care of an unknown item,” Peters finished, thank God. “Yes, Mr. Norr, you have a question?”

  Emrys stepped forward, his leaf-green eyes bright. “I found this amazing thing on my last trip through the Midlands. Odd and alarming.”

  My breath caught as he held up a papered dragon's wing. I managed to stop myself from looking at Dare by keeping my gaze pinned to the wing. It was from one of my map dragons, a wing burned off during our first exercise.

  “As opposed to containment,” Emrys said, “why couldn't we, say, just do this?”

  His hand flicked and the paper caught fire.

  Everything around me went abruptly static—the people around me slowing to a time-warped stillness. It was the opposite of Raphael's leeching—I was now the one moving at a faster rate than could be perceived by the others around me. Agony rolled my magic inward, then thrust out toward my dying creation. Unhindered by the control cuff that had been failing me more and more, my magic shot out in a coil to strike the one who dared to hurt it. In the distance, slowed screams shuddered in the air and the ground shook.

  Magic edged in ultramarine suddenly, and aggressively, clamped the bared teeth of my subconscious strike and jerked it back. Immediately, the jerk was followed by a sense of calm washing through me, cooling the fire. Dare's magic reached from the back pocket of my jeans—from the cloth he had given me—and took over all my systems. An outside force reining my magic in bit by bit, he took control from me and used my own magic to forcefully soothe the edge of my agony and anger.

  I took a deep breath, then another, letting my body relax as he exerted the good decision making that I presently lacked. A strange feeling released from me as he did it—like one of a series of hooks in me had been detached and set free.

  Dare's magic let go of me in a puff of air, and the world righted to a normal pace as the group looked at Emrys expectantly while the dragon's wing burned.

  Fully under control once more, I reali
zed that no one else had noticed what had just happened in their slowed landscape, and that the screaming and ground shaking had been a forewarning heard only in my own mind—and that such results would have occurred a moment later in that exact way, had Dare not taken control.

  But instead, the rest of the group was staring at Emrys, waiting. He had created a loaded silence with his words, and they were waiting for the punchline that hadn't yet been delivered.

  Peters looked around, mystified, when nothing happened. “I suppose you can just do that, Mr. Norr?”

  Emrys's expression was strange, and his smile was far too tight—almost on the edge of pained. Pained, but at the same time...satisfied?

  Emrys smiled and blew the dust from his palm. “Ah, well, then, no issue.”

  It was a big issue. Huge. I could have done something horrible. And Emrys had wanted...something to happen, though he couldn't have known what. If Dare hadn't taken control of my magic...

  I tensely spent the next few hours ignoring Emrys and woodenly emulating Peters. I caught more than one gaze of a combat mage looking at me, then at Dare, in bafflement. As if they'd expected Dare's shadow to do something noteworthy.

  When the squads were finally excused, I tripped away to our normal meeting spot to wait for Dare. I perched on a rock and watched the skiers making tracks down the Seventh Circle, going through the bottom arches and emerging from different top arches in an unending run. I pulled the cloth out of my back pocket and ran it through my fingers, shaking.

  “You okay?” Dare said when he appeared at my side a few minutes later, expression carefully blank.

  “Yes. Other than realizing we are all going to die when you leave, I'm great.”

  He didn't say anything for a long moment. “I put a lot of pressure on you,” he said finally. “But there are a lot of mages on this campus who will help, should something go really wrong. You are strong and have good instincts. You will do fine.”

  “Like with Emrys and whatever stunt that was? Hardly.” He sat next to me and I shakily handed him the ripped strip of cloth he had given to me. “Thank you. I don't know... How did you...” I shook my head. “Thank you for giving me that.”