The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “We have five minutes for this meeting,” Marsgrove said. He didn't want to be here. It was in every line of his body and face. “The Administration Magic will override the Chaos Magic for only that long, then the praetorians will be upon us.”

  Marsgrove did many things that he didn't want to do. It seemed to be his lot in life as the school administrator trying to field the chaos of the world from all sides.

  “Now what—”

  Marsgrove broke off abruptly, horror replacing distaste as he looked to the right of me. Tensing, I jerked around and followed his line of sight, certain that I would see Kaine sauntering toward us.

  But the object of horror was not human.

  The other animals might have scuppered, but our cursed vine had appeared out of nowhere and was launching itself upward into the air, then diving back into the ground. Performing lazy dolphin dives on an early Wednesday morn, devouring spells that were zipping around and heading toward the processing plant. Nothing to see here...

  Nothing except a clearly dangerous creature that I had sent off on a quest to remove all our spell trails.

  It had been, like, ten minutes. Tops. And the vine looked considerably thicker.

  That...was maybe not good.

  It opened its green mouth and smiled toothily at me, thorn fangs dripping with magic, as if it was showing me what it had done, expecting a kind word in return. I smiled painfully—lip splitting—and gave it a thumbs up before motioning it onward with a jerking hand. Its smile grew and it obediently dove into the ground, leaving behind only a displaced stone.

  Marsgrove was looking at the stone as if some nightmare was coming true. “Where...? No.”

  Realization formed on his face, and his gaze whipped to Dare. To Dare not to me. “You. Do you have any idea...?” Marsgrove looked on the verge of absolutely losing it. With Dare. Not me. The absolute unreality of this made me nearly lose track of the conversation.

  Dare tipped his covered head in acknowledgment.

  “We will be having a long talk,” Marsgrove bit out. “You do not understand the path you are walking. As stupid as your—” He swiped a hand through the air, cutting himself off. Which was good, because whatever he'd been about to say had made Julian go deadly still. “I will back the measures against you myself, Axer, do you understand?”

  Dare's gaze was calculating beneath his hood. I wondered, for a moment, if I was still the only one who could see it. “We all must do as we must.”

  Marsgrove looked ready to explode. “Is that what this is?”

  “Of course not. You said you wanted a bit of aid, Philly,” Julian said lightly, almost rakishly, stillness gone. “And here it is presented.” He waved a hand in my direction.

  I tensed, anticipation thrumming now. Dare had said... And Marsgrove was here... That could only mean...

  Marsgrove grimaced, and my stoppered magic beat heavily against its occlusions.

  “This subject isn't finished, Julian. Your entire family and I will be having words.” Marsgrove withdrew Olivia's scarf.

  I took a step toward it automatically.

  “Stay right there, Crown,” he said in a warning tone.

  It was hard to stop. I wanted nothing more than to have it in my palm.

  My head jerked toward Dare, who inclined his own at me. This is why he said we'd find the scarf in the Midlands. He had called Marsgrove to him.

  Anticipation thrummed hard now, making me shift on my feet.

  Marsgrove's mouth was set in hard lines. It was apparent that he did not want to do this, whatever this was about to be, but he was holding the scarf palm up in his hand.

  I could see the cracked magic at the edges of the threads. Marsgrove had been trying to get through to the magic. Trying and failing. I darted my gaze around the group.

  Julian looked extremely amused.

  Dare radiated boredom, like only he could—bouncing his magic between his hands and lazily watching us. Anyone fooled by that was an idiot, though. He could flick that magic at any of us before we could react. It was a reminder—like a loaded revolver carelessly twirled on a tabletop.

  He'd known. He'd known or had anticipated that Marsgrove had been trying to unlock the magic in the scarf. He'd been counting on this gambit the whole time, maybe ever since Marsgrove had taken the scarf from me.

  It was a reminder—a constant reminder—of the dangerous mind he possessed.

  And—with my gaze once more locked on the scarf as Marsgrove gripped it—I might owe Dare an extra apology. When everything returned to normal, I was making Dare an army.

  “Crown, look at me,” Marsgrove said, voice a bit harsh.

  I did.

  “Do exactly as I tell you and nothing more.”

  I nodded, eager to do anything that would put the scarf in my hand.

  He pulled out a ball that seemed alive with electrical currents flowing around it. “Touch this. It displays magic for those maintaining contact with it. And it will help you get by your...” He grimaced. “Blockage.”

  I touched the electric ball and all of the magic in me stood on point, as if it had been electrified and was awaiting command. As if I could diagnose and debug everything that was wrong with me.

  All I needed was the key.

  Information on my internal systems filed by faster than I could comprehend it. I shook my head to clear it. That wasn't the important thing here.

  I touched my other hand to Olivia's scarf. And I could feel her. Instantaneously.

  A sob ripped from me. Like a dry creek bed that had been drained of its last drop, and here, at its last moment to survive, it was being deluged with rain.

  It had been a helpless spiraling of thought in the back of my mind since I'd lost her. Trying to reconnect to her through broken magic, threats, and trying to control myself. Reaching out for what I had lost.

  And here she was again. Alive. The living thread of her thrumming through the fabric.

  Marsgrove's expression was hard to read as he watched me, but the overwhelming sense of disapproval that he usually radiated was dimmed. There was almost a measure of compassion leaking into his gaze.

  I looked down at the scarf and took a deep, shaking breath. I sent a trickle of the ball's magic through the threads.

  Information and magic burst back, forming in a cloud before my eyes. Since I wasn't using my own magic, everything was somewhat muted. The electric ball made it so that the experience of using it felt removed, like watching a scene through a clear glass shield. I could still see it, but I was almost isolated from being a true participant.

  Interconnecting threads pulled, trying to grab my attention away from my main task. All of the spells that had been put into place were laid out for me to view.

  I had watched Delia and Lifen create the scarves. I had watched them create the new comm pieces. They were masters at this craft, where I was a bystander, at best. But I had captured the link to Olivia into the scarf during the battle today. Even if it was a pure intuitive burst in the midst of an adrenaline-fueled madness, I had captured the magic myself, and that gave me the ability I needed to do this.

  Unweaving the pieces that I needed, and exposing the links of the others, I laid everything out like an engineer with a circuit board.

  “You leashed yourself to it.” Marsgrove's expression was tight, but there was also something else there, another expression I had never seen directed at me—concern?

  I lowered my gaze back to my task, carefully parting the magic. Marsgrove's electric ball made things much easier in many ways. The separation from any emotion let me bypass things that would have ordinarily made me stop to examine. That might have made me luxuriate in the interconnectivity that once more was—

  “There will be an end to these types of activities.” That sounded far more like the Marsgrove I knew. “When we are finished with—”

  “Phillip.” I had never heard Dare call Marsgrove by his first name.

  Marsgrove didn't look away from me,
but his words were directed to the side. “You will watch your tone, Axer.”

  Dare continued to bounce magic on his palm.

  “Yes, watch your tone, Ax.” Julian seemed to find all of this highly entertaining.

  Marsgrove's penetrative gaze remained firmly on me. We still weren't friends. But I had saved his life twice earlier. And he'd destroyed the golem after defeating Raphael, saving me from certain imprisonment.

  I wasn't sure what game he was playing with me now. He could have wiped his hands of me earlier today without breaking the oath Olivia had tied him to.

  “Can you decode the location?” He asked tightly.

  The connections spread out before me in a complicated series of pathways.

  “Yes.”

  Marsgrove withdrew another device, and a spherical astrolabe bloomed above his palm. Some of the rings gently whirled, while others more intensely circulated the ball in the center. The layers of the world.

  Extracting Olivia's location required me to use some of my own magic. It couldn't be helped considering how the spell was hooked into me, and it was a study in crippling pain and concentration. In the Midlands, the external chaos was feeding on the internal deep chaos inside of me. Some of it was helping, some wasn't. Thankfully, Marsgrove's electric ball was doing most of the work, requiring me to use only a limited amount of the magic that could bypass my blockages.

  I swallowed and urged one of the spells closer, then another. They zoomed forward until the feeling that I had placed within the threads of the scarf while on the battle field bloomed before me, waiting for me to parse it into another language.

  The magic swirled around me allowing me to feel its intentions and to test mine. A feeling of calm settled as the magic clicked and an intuitive path formed.

  I pulled my hand away from the electric ball and blue light hovered over my hand—long tracers of light. I extended my fingers to Marsgrove and he gingerly placed his device on top of my palm.

  I coaxed the threads to part slowly, like long beads hanging from a doorway, and put the astrolabe in the middle of the mass.

  Four of the rings on the astrolabe immediately stilled.

  I lifted a particularly vibrant Kelly green spell thread and wrapped it around my finger, then extended my finger to the astrolabe.

  Passing through the outer orbits, I touched the third ring, centered between the others. It whirled beneath my finger. There. A fiery point of magic marked a spot. Removing my finger, the other rings started rotating again. On the spherical plane of the Third Layer's ring, a dot remained, like a tiny fingerprint of grease on metal.

  That was where Olivia had been taken. That was where she was being held. .

  I held it up to Marsgrove. He carefully took it from me.

  “I know where that is,” Marsgrove said, gently collapsing the astrolabe and slipping it into his pocket.

  “It will be a trap,” Dare said, almost casually.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “I'm coming,” I said automatically

  “Not a chance.” Marsgrove sounded anything but casual.

  “You need—”

  He grabbed me by the upper arm. “Do you know what will happen to this school if you are found leaving it?”

  “Phillip,” Dare said.

  Marsgrove's gaze didn't leave mine.

  Relief in seeing that Olivia was still alive vied with impotence at being unable to go to her. The remnants of her location swirled around the whorls on my palm.

  “You will doom campus, should you step foot from it. Being found here, tonight, would be dire. Being found off campus? Everyone would suffer.”

  Olivia...

  “Do you want your friends here to suffer, Ren?”

  His use of my first name shocked me almost as much as the query regarding my friends' well-being. Marsgrove never called me by my name.

  “No.” And there was something in his expression that I could read. “But you already know that.”

  “Yes.” He tipped his head. “That was born out today. And you will help them. By letting me find her.”

  I looked at him. Olivia was his cousin, and unlike Helen, Marsgrove did care for her. I could read it on him. And although we might not like each other, Marsgrove was...beyond competent in battle. When Raphael had been toying with me earlier, he hadn't been toying with Marsgrove. And Marsgrove had won.

  And...maybe this was another instance of using teamwork. Letting others help, so I would not be making the disastrous mistake of haring off on my own.

  Like...haring off to the Midlands with Dare.

  I pushed back my hood just enough so that the spell wouldn't impede Marsgrove seeing me.

  “Okay.”

  Relief spread across his face, nearly too fast to catch. He nodded. “You didn't lose everything today, Crown. Keep your head on straight for the next few days and avoid any attention you can.”

  Didn't lose everything? No, things could have been worse, absolutely. The body count could have been far, far higher. But I couldn't be happy about losing Olivia.

  However...I looked at Marsgrove's expression through a different lens—as an ally instead of an antagonist. He was still clearly uncomfortable with a number of things about me, but he also looked...sympathetic. And like I was an actual student here who was under his protection.

  I stared at him, lips parting.

  I had always been an interloper to him before—scheming my way into student life. But today... I had protected campus. Protected it, at my own expense. And that seemed to have made a difference to Phillip Marsgrove.

  Dare still looked outwardly bored, but there was a crease at the corner of each eye that said he was amused at my realization.

  Julian, though... Julian's expression was concerning. There was amusement, yes, but also a glittering regard in his eyes as he examined me. Like someone who had found a useful tool.

  I had seen that expression on way too many faces today—on all the ones that contained neither affection nor terror. I pressed my lips together and pulled my hood back into place.

  Julian's smile grew, which didn't reassure me at all, as he couldn't possibly see me now under the hood of the cloak, yet was reacting as if he could still read me just fine.

  Julian cocked his head, listening to something in the distance. “I'm off. Phillip.” He nodded to Marsgrove. Then he looked at me and the corners of his eyes creased in some morbid amusement. “Origin Mage.”

  My breath caught. Julian stepped away and disappeared in a tile slide.

  And then there were three.

  Marsgrove looked between us. Continuing his bizarre shift in attitude, he looked furious with Dare, not me.

  “And what is your play now, Axer? This was a stupid choice for you, regardless of the outcome. You'll never make it back once the Chaos Magic reigns again. You have a single minute remaining. Kaine was playing with you on the way here. I can feel the echoes of both paths.”

  Dare didn't look concerned. Something was flashing between the two of them.

  Marsgrove shook his head, mouth tight. “You court disaster.”

  Dare said nothing audibly. Marsgrove narrowed his eyes. “You get one. You will not get another. Ever, Axer. This is it.”

  Dare dipped his head and held out his hand. Marsgrove placed a black disk in his free palm.

  Marsgrove stepped back and gave me a look filled with conflicting emotions, and issued a single statement, “I will find her,” then disappeared into a slide.

  The scarf—and Olivia's location—disappeared with him.

  I swallowed, and the empty pit in my stomach expanded. It was the right choice. The adult choice. In my present condition I was magically unable to help Olivia like I needed to in the amount of time it would take. And an option that was motivated and capable had presented himself. It would be fine.

  It would be a choice filled with regrets.

  No. It would be fi—

  “Oh, Ren,” came Dare's deep voice. “Such a lon
g face.”

  I turned to him, ready to say something equally unkind, but he was holding the same ball of ultramarine magic in his hand that he'd been tossing back and forth. But now, the center held a spark. The spark that had been in Olivia's scarf—the remnants of the magic she had used from my protection butterfly, and the magic I had channeled on the battle field to secure a living tie to her.

  My gaze jerked to his. “How—?”

  “No one watches the person who isn't arguing. Especially when performing an extraction spell on a piece of magic they no longer need. It's not the same as—”

  “I love you,” I said fervently, staring at the orb while shifting on my feet, wanting nothing more than to launch myself in his direction. “You are all-knowing and awesome and I'll never doubt you again.”

  When I looked up, the expression on his face was one that I was unfamiliar with—the ultramarine of his eyes nearly swallowed in black. Just as quickly, he recovered, and threw the ball to me. It burst upon my palm, soaking into my skin and connecting with the remnants of the spell magic still there. A small origami balloon formed, sucking the magic inside before flattening. Unassuming. A spare bit of folded paper.

  But it was nothing even close to spare.

  I could feel the spark of Olivia. The magic that had been connected to the butterfly life cycle I had made her—the one that she had used to sacrifice herself in my place—was in my palm. Marsgrove hadn't needed that bit of magic to discern her location, and even though he'd probably notice it missing soon enough, he didn't need it. Dare had taken it and given it back to me.

  I looked at him, heart clenching and unable to give voice to it.

  “Come.” He gently pushed me toward the tree line. “We have to get back to the Ninth Circle as quickly as possible. These don't work in the Midlands,” Dare said, holding up the black disk in one hand, and softly moving me forward with the other. “The Administration has been trying to get them to work in here for years.”

  “What is it?”

  “It's a—” Dare abruptly stopped speaking, and shoved me right. “Go.”