The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “Yet.” She smiled coldly, her gaze never leaving mine. “Not yet, Phillip.”

  “You are allowing your delusions to show again, Helen.”

  “You've had your play time, and your pursuits, and look where that has gotten you.” She looked him over. “Older and more pathetic.”

  “We warm-blooded types do what we must,” Marsgrove said dismissively, though his gaze, always sharp, never lessened in intensity as he examined the room as well, studying his environment. He and Dare, both combat mages at heart, had that in common.

  “Let's get to it then.” Helen sealed the door, and with a flick of her wrist a spell circle enveloped all four occupants in the room. “Name?”

  “Ren Crown.” I had already given it to Kaine.

  “Home address?”

  Panic skyrocketed. “Pass.”

  The circle flashed yellow. I looked at it cautiously. I was far more knowledgeable about defensive and protection wards than offensive magic fields. I hadn't needed to study offensive magic yet, and had been planning on registering for Mbozi's Volatile Engineering course next term. The class would help patch that knowledge, but future course work wasn't helping my present situation.

  “You cannot 'pass' a question, Miss Crown,” Helen said, far too pleasantly.

  I looked at Marsgrove, who stared back with a blank gaze. Dare was equally unhelpful, though he tipped his head in some form of support.

  “I am between residences,” I said.

  The circle flashed white and a shock of electricity ran through me.

  “My goodness, what lies you tell, Miss Crown,” Helen said, with a sharp smile.

  I shuddered and pulled my scattering wits and exploding panic back together. I was between residences—what with Olivia gone, me being assigned a new roommate, and not being under my parents’ roof. “I am between residences,” I said again, believing it.

  The circle flashed green.

  Helen's eyes narrowed. She tapped her finger. “You will find us unforgiving of verbal recreation at the Department, Miss Crown. It is by the edges of your teeth that you hang. If you fail to answer the question again, I will be required to take you to the Department for questioning.” She looked as if she'd like nothing better. “Let's try again, shall we? Where do you call home?”

  Dare and Marsgrove were both silent and unreadable. Why weren't they helping? My parents...

  Marsgrove knew where I lived, but he couldn't tell anyone. It was part of the incredible protection set that Raphael had put into place, weaving blessed protections with far more diabolical ones. And not sending anyone after me was part of the oath that Olivia had trapped Marsgrove into agreeing to last term.

  But having me reveal my home... Anyone listening in—and I didn't know how many people were listening in—would have the address. Helen could send troops immediately to the designated location.

  Where do you call home?

  I looked down at my heart and the red connection threads leading through worlds, all the way to the First Layer.

  Where was home... No. I wouldn't tell her.

  No. Never.

  I mentally grabbed, pinched, then snapped the eighteen-year tie to my parents as home.

  Shock flashed across Dare's face, as if he'd seen what I'd done and it had been something beyond his comprehension.

  The recoil in the tie snapped back. Mental pain flooded me, then despair. Fingernails dug into my thighs, pressing so hard through my jeans that there would be crescent-shaped bruises decorated with blood left behind.

  Physical pain was a frequent companion, though, and I focused the pain downward, capturing it to deal with later.

  It had taken little magic to break the tie—only the tiny bit that the room was still trying to regenerate within me—but a great quantity of emotional strength. The kind that I desperately needed not to expend.

  Empty devastation was the only thing I could now feel—as if I had walked up to my house and found only ashes.

  “Where do you call home, Miss Crown?” Helen was leaning in, waiting to tick off the box on her mental form; to send the completed address field via frequency to a crew of black-clad operatives.

  “Ex-cel-sine,” I forced out.

  The circle paused, then flashed green.

  Victory and desolation mixed, then settled into something far more morose. I didn't let my parents images flash to mind. I allowed only the triumph of keeping them safe to focus me as I met Helen's gaze again.

  Olivia's mother looked as if she'd bitten into a sandwich of nails, but her gaze was also sharper. I remembered Olivia saying something about how there was nothing her mother liked more than worthy opponents. How she liked to reward and punish those she found useful—that she liked nothing more than to keep riveting enemies close.

  “Let's see how far you can dance, Miss Crown, before you collapse. Next question, shall we? What were you doing on the Eighteenth Circle?”

  I gave a concise, Olivia-approved recitation of the events, keeping emotions and tangents absent. It was easy enough to do when I was still feeling the emptiness from the broken tie, and my destroyed magic. When questioned about why I had felt the need to guard campus, Dare stepped in and fielded the answer.

  “We were working together with the Troop, and I encouraged Ren's commitment to campus safety.” He smiled at Helen—a charming smile that didn't reach his eyes.

  “How did you break the Origin Dome?”

  I could feel Neph and Will on the other side of the door. Could feel it when they were turned away by the Department guard stationed there. Could hear the whispered beep of my tablet indicating a message. If there was one time I wished I had a frequency, it would be now.

  “Through joint effort and a lot of luck,” Dare said.

  Grilled for the better part of half an hour on what had occurred, it wasn't until we got to questions about Constantine and Olivia that I faltered.

  “You are going on record as saying that Mr. Leandred was not working with the terrorists? There is some evidence that he helped at least one of them.”

  “He fought them. And he deliberately sabotaged their plans.” All true.

  I answered dozens of questions about Constantine, making sure to highlight his part in helping me and to think nothing of anything else.

  I never looked at Dare. I didn't want to see what his expression was.

  “The Justice Magic here is pitiful,” Helen said scathingly, “even with the field in place.” She motioned to the circle. “You need to be questioned in the Department. Such statements cannot get past our truth devices.”

  “It was determined that all students would be questioned on campus unless flags were raised,” Marsgrove said smoothly.

  “I believe there are plenty of flags here, Phillip.” She tapped her tablet, smiled, and started to rise. “In fact, I've just entered one into the system. Come, girl.”

  “The flag has been overturned.”

  Helen stopped in the middle of her rise, and folded slowly back into her seat, long legs crossing to the side. “Is that so?”

  “Check your tablet.”

  Helen tapped her finger against her thigh, but didn't even glance in the direction of her device.

  “Burning your political capital on her?” She gave a laugh. “Ridiculous. There is zero chance that she will last three months more without fully revealing what she is. Publicly. And you know it.”

  Marsgrove said nothing.

  Helen observed him for a moment more, then glanced down at the device. “And yet you waste it.” She tilted her head. “You always were an idiot.”

  Silence fell on the room as everyone reexamined the invisible chessboard—playing a game out of my reach.

  Helen dissected me with her gaze. She didn't believe a word of my “truths,” but because of whatever ace Marsgrove had spent, she was unable to do anything about it. “If we realize that Constantine Leandred was connected to the attacks and you deliberately withheld information—”


  “You will imprison me. Yeah, I got tha—”

  “Where is my daughter?”

  I faltered, expecting another question on Constantine. The truth spell took hold. “The Third Layer.”

  Helen leaned forward. “How do you know?”

  I sharply wrangled my thoughts together. “The terrorists took her. They belong to the Third Layer.”

  I didn't realize I had taken hold of and was squeezing Olivia's scarf until I saw Helen's smile of satisfaction.

  “Hand me that article.”

  “No.”

  “It is evidence. And you have zero authority to withhold it.”

  “No.”

  Helen smiled coolly. “This is not a request, Miss Crown. You will give me that scarf.”

  “I will not.”

  “She is under no obligation to give you anything, Councilwoman Price,” Dare said. “She is not being charged with anything.”

  “She will give me that scarf, or she will be charged immediately.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Send up Praetorian Kaine.” Helen touched the skin under her ear. “Tell Stavros we have found evidence from the terrorists inside the Magiaduct. He is free to begin his investigation now.”

  I saw Marsgrove do something—body strung as taut as a violin bow that was already showing flayed horse hairs—and the truth field around me was wiped away.

  The two adults faced each other suddenly and I could see the magic flying between them.

  “You wouldn't dare, Phillip.” Helen smiled.

  “Give me the scarf, Miss Crown.” Marsgrove held out his hand without looking away from her.

  “Now,” he barked, when I didn't immediately respond.

  I gripped it more tightly. This was the only way to find Olivia again. I wouldn't do it.

  Administration Magic ripped through me, forcing my hand forward toward Marsgrove. No. I put my other against the wall. I'd blast a hole through space and time. I'd—

  Magic twisted violently within me—a backlash caused by the surging magic that my body couldn't currently handle or manipulate—I bent over, senses scrambled. A light began glowing at the edges of my tunneling vision. A light that said I could accomplish what I needed with one...more...blow.

  A world-ending blow.

  I shoved away from the light. A hand landed on my back and another pried Olivia's scarf from my grip. My own scarf was pulled from my throat and I shouted and clawed.

  I physically reacted, but was easily subdued without normal magic to aid me. Not even the enormous protections Olivia and I had layered in our room would deny the Administrative Magic—wielded by a dean. We had signed over our school lives to obeying that magic.

  There was no “second chance” magic here. No “extra bit” that I could channel. No “just a little more” that I'd dug for and found a hundred times when I'd been drained before.

  I'd already used all of those extra bits and second chances on the battlefield. I'd twisted and broken already broken channels earlier. There was nothing left to try now. Nothing except the magic glinting around the dark hole. And everything in me said that was not the correct option.

  “Give them here, Phillip,” Helen ordered.

  “They are property evidence under Section 4.84.5234.62 of—”

  “I don't care if they are the property evidence of God. You will—”

  “I have three measures right now that—”

  “Are you really that stupid? You waste your precious capital on—”

  “Ren?” The voice was close to my ear and the owner was leading me over to the bed.

  I shoved Dare's hand away and sat without his help. Shaking, I looked up through my lashes to see the scarves firmly in Marsgrove's hand, and tried to calculate what chance I had.

  Hemmed in by three people who were at full strength and ability—while I had none—and with two of them combat mages most mages feared, my chance was nil.

  Coasting through high school in Christian's shadow, happy and oblivious and utterly without care for social power, it would have seemed absurd to me, then, that I would become excessively reliant on having an overabundance of power at my disposal—magic that would let me do most anything.

  And to be so scorched of such means when I needed them most was a bitter pill.

  “Ren,” Dare said.

  “Don't,” I said bitterly. He had helped Marsgrove take Olivia's scarf. I didn't care about mine, but I couldn't look away from hers. In a more rational mood, I might have responded differently, but nothing unemotional was making its way through my head.

  “You are a coddled magelet, Miss Crown,” Helen said coldly, focusing on me again. “Your protectors cosset you.”

  I gave a short laugh. Coddled? Mages had beaten, shocked, imprisoned, leashed, threatened, used, and fed me to monsters. I had forgiven that last one, but I hadn't forgotten what falling into the Blarjack Swamp had felt like my first day on campus, when I'd had few magical skills to assist me.

  It was little wonder that I had taken the enormous magic well I had access to and run with it.

  I had died twice by magic's hand, one of those times in order to save Dare and campus. And I'd been left for dead, completely physically broken, in the non-magical world by mages trying to steal my brother's magic.

  I had been living a pretty un-coddled life since discovering magic.

  I stared at Olivia's scarf in Marsgrove's hand.

  “Get out,” I said.

  “Enjoy your pampered life while it lasts,” Helen said pleasantly, her eyes hard. “For I can guarantee you, Miss Crown, that it will not.”

  A tendril of magic slithered over my skin, then pinched hard.

  Chapter Seven: Choosing a Path

  I sat a little ways off from the rest of the students in the dorm’s common room. I could feel them watching me, as I stared at the notebook in my lap, my fingers trying to grip the scarf that was no longer there.

  Helen Price had made me miss the window of time with Neph, Will, and the others. Every dorm had enacted mandatory procedures, backed by Administration Magic, which called the members of each dorm to the dorm's community area upon the designated return hour.

  All I wanted was to reunite with my friends. My emotions felt as knotted as my magic. But trapped in an Olivia-less dorm, I had instead taken up the position as freak and spectacle for the residents of Dorm Twenty-five.

  I jolted as a member of Delta and one of Epsilon took seats on either side of me. They silently met the gazes of the other students. They weren't wearing their Plan scarves either—and I wondered if theirs too had been confiscated—instead they had small blue scarves tied around their necks, symbolic reminders.

  They stared coolly around the room, and the intensity of the gazes on me lessened and became sporadic—people were forced to take quick inquiring glances in my direction instead of the blatant staring they'd been doing before. I didn't know the Delta and Epsilon members as well as I did some of the other delinquents, but they'd been involved in Plan Fifty-two, and they were providing steady support that I desperately needed.

  The dorm heads assembled in the open space in the center and began enacting spells.

  Magic shifted between and among residents of our dorm. Community Magic was using the paths that we all already possessed to recharge the group faster. It was the way Community Magic worked, building small, localized communities, then tying those to each other—most potently between two roommates, to four friends living near each other, to groups of six and ten in hallways, then onto inhabitants of larger spaces like a single dorm, then the whole Magiaduct, then to places where the entire community met—the cafeteria, the libraries, the fields and halls—until powerful magic flowed freely around the mountain.

  The Dorm Twenty-five heads gave a spiel, repeating much of what had already been shared via frequency, community, and campus communications. They reiterated that as soon as the last student was secured in the Magiaduct, we'd be locked down, and the whole Magiaduc
t would start to regenerate and focus Community Magic more swiftly.

  The words “locked down” resulted in fifteen minutes of panic for many in the room.

  The words “roommate reassignment” caused an additional fifteen.

  I tried to block both episodes by closing my eyes and doing mental calming exercises Draeger had claimed would help my magic refocus. The traumatic magic swirling around made me nauseous.

  Apparently, the crystal ball that we'd all had to pass our hands over as we'd entered the common room had coded and locked those of us without roommates into the system. Once everyone on campus was entered into the system, each of us without a roommate would be paired.

  “Okay, everyone. Calm down. That's right,” said the soothing voice of one of the dorm heads. “We are going to search and flag magic levels. We want to make sure everyone is physically well. Depletion, usage, mindset, and state of recovery all count in the color that is generated. Panic and trauma to a mage's magic levels will affect your final color as well.”

  I was going to have to look into Psychology Magic at some point, as I found that distantly fascinating.

  As an introvert and artist, and studying with Christian for sports psych, I had always practiced a lot of mind and visualization techniques, so knowing that mindset affected a person’s magic wasn't mind blowing, but it did make me think about how that reality could be used. My mental pyramid took on new dimensions.

  If ever things on campus went back to normal, Mbozi was going to have to start running away from my questions.

  It was hard to imagine normal, at the moment.

  I yanked my eyes open when I felt the spell scan me. It then moved to the Epsilon member at my right. Everyone's level was visible to the rest of the room.

  Green meant healthy in body and mind, and was represented across the spectrum in various verdant shades.

  No one showed green.

  The yellows were a mix of issues, physical, emotional, and mental. Every shade of yellow was represented across the broad spectrum of the four hundred or so people in our dorm.

  The Delta and Epsilon members next to me, who had been stuck in the Magiaduct during the attack, showed butterscotch limned in purple, but the dark outlines were easy to ignore due to the steadiness of their neutral central color.