The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “Raphael has Marsgrove. And he issued an ultimatum on Olivia. He gave me three days to find them.”

  His expression sharpened and the white of the dream took on a darker cast. “There is no report that Phillip Marsgrove was captured. He didn't report in, but that isn't necessarily unusual given the circumstances. Julian said he registers as alive. Are you certain it wasn't just a dream?”

  “I'm certain of very little. But...it felt real.” The feel of Axer's mental scape had the same feel of my nightmare. It made me more certain that what I had experienced had been a reality. “It felt a lot like this. Kaine was there, too, on the outside, trying to get in.”

  “I'll find out. Stay put.”

  “Three days.”

  “I know.

  We talked of the competition and what was happening at school. And I calmed down enough, finally, to fall back into strangely dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-three: Planning for Fire

  I woke up and checked my magic levels. 75%. Not bad. I figured I had spent much of fall term at 75%, so, all things considered, I was doing okay. I touched the cocktail of wards on the walls. Two sets from Room Twenty-five, Bellacia's, Axer's and Constantine's, the combat competition boost, and Medical, which, strangely, hadn't been switched off yet.

  I rolled out of bed and blinked to find Constantine gone. I would never have taken him for an early riser.

  He had left me a note, though, with the word “vault” underlined twice.

  Excellent.

  It was Friday. I had today and tomorrow to find Olivia, and get the plan together.

  I walked into Constantine's workroom to prepare.

  The bag that he carried all our supplies in when going to the vault was hanging on its normal hook. All of our supplies were safely stored here between our normal thrice weekly sessions. I rifled through the bag until I found a tube of paint. It was one of our better mixes—a gorgeous foamy turquoise that conjured smells of the sea and surf and that imbued everything created with it with a sort of seaside quality.

  I even had a very slim vial of Awakening paint that we had been modeling our mixes after. That was what I needed to find Olivia. The problem, as always, though, was using it. Under the Administration Magic, I still couldn't paint outside of the vault and the Midlands.

  The Midlands were even more out of reach, at this point, and that left the vault. I thrummed with the knowledge that we'd locate Olivia today, as soon as we gained access to the building.

  I touched Constantine's work desk where empty paint tubes littered a corner of the workspace. A drawing of our dodecaplex was beneath it.

  I could hear Constantine entering through the suite's front door, and I stopped and took a good look at his workroom through clearer eyes. My things...were everywhere—interspersed in all of his. For every magical beaker of his, there was a stack of quality paper or a modified charcoal pencil of mine.

  “I'm sorry,” I blurted out as he entered the room.

  He raised a brow and peeled off his long, expensive full-length coat. “I expect favors for my forgiveness. The more creative or diverting, the better.”

  I chewed on my lip and continued looking around.

  He sighed, deep and full of ennui, though our connection told me he was amused, and feeling far better than yesterday. “And what are you languishing on about, Crown?”

  “My stuff is everywhere.”

  “Your vision is keen. I now have this very positive feeling that we are going to win the day.” He raised a sign of victory and stretched out in his work chair.

  I replaced my lip with my thumb as my nervous chewing object. “I've taken over your workspace. Your hours. Your life.”

  “You've taken over the very heart of me. Blah, blah. What do you want to do about it?” He tilted his head and drew his ribbon through his fingers. “No, I'll tell you what I want. I wa—”

  “I'm sorry!”

  “Did you hear me complaining, Crown? Do you actually know me to do anything I don't want to do?”

  “You room with Alexander Dare.”

  “Yes, okay, keenly spotted. Anything normal that I do not want to do?”

  I already knew exactly what I was going to make him when we got back to campus.

  “If you didn't solve it already, I think we could get Stevens to open the vault for us,” I said, my brain switching to the next bullet point on its massive list now that I had a future apology labeled and sorted.

  His ribbon paused. “You are terrible for my ego. Or tremendous. I assume which depends upon who is having the laugh.”

  “You are hot and brilliant and devious,” I immediately ticked off on his asset list. “You are like a really pettable, but shitty cat.” I motioned with my hand to go back to the other track of conversation. “Do you think Stevens would say yes?”

  “I'll have you know that I've only bitten half the people who try, and most of those because they have no idea how to str—”

  “Professor Stevens was friends with Raphael. I know it's a risk to even entertain her help.”

  That stopped him. He dropped his world-weary guise completely, and the air in the room grew charged as he leaned forward. “You didn't know that before. When?”

  “Tuesday was...quite an eventful day. I pieced a lot of things together, some with help. Things I should have realized before.”

  He tapped a knuckle against the table. He didn't look surprised.

  “You knew?” I asked.

  “Of course I knew,” he said. “Why do you think I'm one of her students?”

  “Because you...” My voice stuttered off. When one actually delved beneath his facade, it was impossible not to realize that Constantine was the best student at Excelsine in his field. Anyone would rightly think that was because it was his forte. “But you love materials.”

  “Yes. I learned to love them very much.”

  “What...?” I shook my head. “You became a materials student—the best materials student—to have access to Stevens because you thought you might get access to Raphael?”

  He smiled at me like he thought my astonishment was cute.

  “Constantine.”

  He quirked a brow. “What reason does anyone have for following a path? Mine is better than most.”

  “What did you want to be?”

  “A volcano grower. A plesiosaur handler. A mercenary.” He counted off on his fingers, then tapped his chin. “There was that time with the harem thing too, but it sounded like so much work.” He shuddered. “And I was right.”

  I swore and threw up my hands.

  He smiled.

  “Fine.” I pointed at him. “I'm glad that you ended up in materials, even if it was for dodgy reasons. You would have been wasted handling plesiosaurs.”

  “Some of them can fly in the Fourth Layer.”

  That made me pause for a moment. “No, you are not distracting me. Stevens.”

  He played with his ribbon, leaning back to look at the ceiling. “She doesn't have contact with Verisetti. Not a single letter that I've ever found. And I'm...somewhat persistent.”

  I frowned and drummed my fingers. “I'll bet every munit I've acquired that she used to make him his supplies.” I dug out the first pencil that she'd given me. I had advanced in my abilities, but hers was still a work of art.

  I twirled it slowly in the air. It glistened, opalescent. She had made that cryptic comment about it—how she had had a lot of practice making them years ago. Combined with all her staring at my shields... There was no way I was wrong about this.

  Constantine plucked it from my grip and examined it much in the same way. “She could have made this here. While they were at school. Or even later. Nostalgically.”

  I frowned. “Maybe. Probably, even.”

  He looked at me, eyes hooded and emotion edged. There was anticipation in it. “If you did your research... You do know who she is? Or was?”

  My frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

  He examined
me for a long moment, teetering on some knife's edge decision, then waved a hand. A tablet flew into his palm. He set it down in front of me. A book popped up on top, dynamically produced from the electronic contents within.

  The cover said it was an old Excelsine yearbook—or what passed for a copy of a magical yearbook, because it said in the footnote that you could find original copies in the library that would give the recorded feelings from hundreds of points of view at different times throughout the seasons in a calendar year. An entire, immersive experience—100% guaranteed nostalgia—from just opening the magical book of your desired year.

  A flick of Constantine's wrist caused the pages to flip. As soon as the pages settled, magic filtered into the page, populating it dynamically. Olivia usually eschewed such magic for her tomes, but I loved this about Second Layer books—they could be both electronic and paper at the same time.

  Constantine tapped a picture. A young Professor Stevens coolly stared at me from the page. She was as beautiful then as she was now, age doing nothing to dim her beauty in either direction.

  But her face wasn't the thing Constantine wanted me to see.

  Lucille Stevens wasn't the name listed under her picture. Lucille Stavros, however, was.

  Chapter Thirty-four: Daughter of the Enemy

  We decided to break into the vault after all.

  Professor Stevens being friends with Raphael back when he was sane? Acceptable. Being Enton Stavros' daughter? Not so much. The combination of the two? Terrifying.

  I had broken into the vault before. Of course, that had led to me burning down the entire complex surrounding it. But, the breaking in had still been accomplished.

  It had taken me a few minutes to do it last time. Together with Constantine, though, we accomplished it in less than thirty seconds.

  Constantine smirked at me as the large garage-styled door started to slide shut. “And now to the real villainy of the day. We'll find your friend, then we'll see what we can make to obliterate—”

  The closing of the door halted, and Lucille Stevens smoothly ducked under and entered the room.

  “That will be unnecessary, Mr. Leandred,” she said coldly, heels clicking.

  The wicked piece of magic that Constantine was forming smoothed out on the worktable with a tapped finger. Whatever he had created, it was still active and waiting.

  She looked between the two of us, cool eyes taking us in. “Many things are explained by this,” she said.

  “Are you going to turn us in?” I asked, voice tight, magic tightening in my own fists. With seventy-five percent magic levels, I wasn't going to roll over.

  “To whom? Provost Johnson? So he could assign you another two thousand hours?”

  “To the...Department?” To your father.

  Her head tilted to the side and cold eyes examined my face. “You are so intelligent, and at the same time so stupid, Miss Crown.”

  My lips pressed together. “I deal with the lack of information that I have in the only way that I can.”

  “The answer to your question is no.”

  “Why?” I asked bitingly.

  “You wonder why I won't turn you over to Enton Stavros?”

  “He's your father.”

  “He supplied the genetic material required for my birth, correct,” she said briskly.

  That...was a far better answer than I had hoped for.

  I relaxed a measure. “You saw Raphael's magic on me, and didn't report me. To anyone?”

  “I don't get involved when I see his magic,” she said, voice clipped.

  Like Greyskull.

  I relaxed a little more, in contrast to Constantine, who was growing tenser.

  “But you saw his magic, and you took me on as a student anyway.”

  She hadn't wanted to give me that first tutoring session. She'd only done so because she'd wanted to quiz me to see if I was Raphael's minion—not that I'd understood that at the time. But she'd taken me on after that first session. Mentored me ever since.

  She took me in, her gaze cool. “I saw more than just his magic.”

  “Was it for Raphael? All that talk about the schedule that I had to maintain and the path that I had to travel?”

  “No. Nothing is for Rafi anymore.” She smiled thinly. “I have long since resigned myself to being unable to help him. He does not want the aid.” She looked at the top of my head, a brooding, unhappy quality to her gaze.

  I cast a quick look at Constantine, who wasn't bothering to hide his emotions for once. His eyes were narrowed, our connections pulsing with strong, conflicting feelings.

  I turned back to Stevens. “Did you try to help Raphael?” I was more curious than anything.

  “Long, long ago. Before Salietrex.” She cast her own glance at Constantine, who had turned into a living statue at that statement—stone still and silent. Salietrex was the town Raphael had destroyed years ago—his first big strike. Constantine's mother had been a casualty.

  “I did everything I knew how to do,” Stevens continued, gaze turning inward on distant memory. “But he couldn't trust me. That was stripped from him. Ripped away from me.” She tightened her fingers into a fist.

  “You didn't do enough,” Constantine said, voice absent of all emotion.

  “Do you know,” she said, voice falsely amused. “How many times Phillip has castigated me for not snapping Rafi's neck in that singular moment in time when it was within my reach? For not giving him the peace he once deserved?”

  “You should have,” Constantine bit out.

  “So easy, it is, to say what should or should not have been done. Would you have snapped your mother's neck while she tucked you into bed, had you known she might become a mass-murderer? What about your father's? If you had known what was to come—what he would do—if you had known that intellectually while you were still a happy family, what would you have done?”

  Constantine pivoted on his heel and ducked under the vault's door.

  “All that can be changed is what will occur,” Stevens said, as he disappeared from view.

  “That wasn't kind,” I said, woodenly.

  Rooted in place, I stared at the place where Constantine had stood and sent a rush of comfort through our threads. He tried to slam the connection closed, but couldn't. I could feel his fury at that. Viscerally.

  I shivered.

  “He will betray you,” Stevens said, almost idly.

  “I've been informed,” was all I could say to that.

  “Leandred has one of the most brilliant minds I've come across. And it's tainted in a way that might be impossible to overcome.”

  I smiled tightly. “All that can be changed is what will occur, yes?”

  She moved over to a cylinder where we'd once cooked up an enchantment that could lace paper. She gave the stir stick in it a whirl. It made a tinkling sound as it rounded the glass in an uneven motion.

  “There are things I owe,” she said. “Debts that I will pay. And then I can be done. I can forget.”

  I swallowed, hearing the pain she felt beneath the statement. “You feel guilty,” I said, finally understanding. Conversations from the past fit together into a new pattern. “You brought Raphael to your fath—to Stavros's attention.”

  She drew herself up. “I'm like a magnet for all of you,” she said mirthlessly. “Destined to have every interesting specimen of a mage cross my path. And you all die because of it. Or worse.” Her lips twisted, gaze far away, taken by unpleasant memory. “It is a curse to be noticed by me. I spent years pushing anyone interesting away, and never taking on students outside of my field where such things would be noticed.”

  “Why did you decide to train me?”

  “Because your potential outshines my caution.” Her heels clicked closer, in a staccato march. “Because I'm as drawn to brilliance as it is to me.”

  She slammed her hands on top of the worktable. “Because I took one look at Rafi's magic on you and knew. I knew you would be the end game. The piece
that saves or destroys us all.”

  She reached forward and gripped my chin. “And because if you don't destroy everything, you will be great. Greatness is within you.” She let go abruptly, fingers bruising my chin. “And I won't accept any less from you.”

  I stared at her, heart hammering in my chest.

  “The Third Layer must be fixed,” she said. “Fixed or destroyed. These dangling, ruined pieces serve nothing but giving people a point on which to fixate, argue, and war. And it just gives Rafi something to use as a playing board in his war on my father.”

  She stabbed a finger onto the worktable. “And you are the one who will fix or destroy it.”

  I tried to form words, and couldn't.

  She watched my mouth move soundlessly, and spoke in a detached voice when I didn't, couldn't, answer. “You do not get to have a normal life. You have a service and responsibility to your talents.”

  “I want a normal life,” I whispered, voice finally free.

  “Then carve one for yourself. Be extraordinary.”

  Chapter Thirty-five: Apologies

  I found Constantine back in our room.

  “Is it still?” I asked, taking a careful step inside. “Our room?”

  He was lying back against a pile of pillows on his bed, ribbon pulling repeatedly through his fingers while broodingly staring out the window. It was my first room at Excelsine where I didn't have the window view.

  “I'm very angry.”

  “I know.”

  “With you.”

  “I know that too.”

  I could feel it—the sharp edges of his emotions and the ragged edges of whatever magic he had done between the vault and the room. He had ended something or someone on the way here.

  Since no Justice Squad member was in sight, he must have at least appropriately let loose the damaging magic.

  I sat carefully on the edge of his bed.

  “Did you paint with her?” His voice sounded too dull for the low thrum of anger that accompanied it.

  “No. She said she can't be involved.” We'd had a short discussion where Stevens had made that very clear, and, frankly, I was the happier for it. “She said she can't, and doesn't want, to know what we are doing. But she is letting us use the facilities. She'll open them for us at four, if you still want to do it?” I asked tentatively.