by Izzy Shows
“I could see that. When he was teaching me how to cast a shield, I complained that I’d rather be reading some magical textbook. He asked me how I was going to use a textbook to save myself from a necromancer, and that was the end of that conversation,” I said.
We both laughed at that, Diego shaking his head.
“That sounds just like him. He never saw the benefit of it, but it hindered him as a Wizard. There’s only so far you can get with brute strength, but that’s what he excelled at. He never learned the benefits of finesse.”
A companionable silence settled between us as we both took a moment to remember Aidan. I wondered what memory he was recalling, and wished that I had more to remember him by.
“I’m surprised he was teaching you,” Diego said at last. “He always swore he would never take an apprentice.”
“Oh, well, I wasn’t really an apprentice. He was just teaching me the fundamentals—how to form a shield and throw a fireball, you know. So I wouldn’t die in a fight.”
“Mm-hm, that’s exactly the type of teaching he would give. The fact that he didn’t immediately turn you over to the Order…”
“But we were dealing with a necromancer. He didn’t have the time,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. I didn’t like that the conversation had turned back to me.
“Blair,” he said, settling me with a disappointed look. “It would have taken him a spare minute to notify the Order of your existence. The First Hand could have come to collect you, and they would even have waited for your hearing until Aidan was there to testify for you, if he’d asked them to. If he didn’t report you, it’s because he wanted you around.”
I looked down at my plate, letting that new information set in. Aidan had wanted me around? That wasn’t how he’d made it sound, but maybe that was just his way. It warmed me just the slightest bit to think I hadn’t been a burden to him. To think he’d felt the same bond I had. I smiled, unable to help myself.
“What else was he like?” I asked, my voice soft and quiet.
“Aside from a disaster?” I looked up in time to see Diego grin. “He hated dealing with the Order, probably because of his aura reading. He was an absolute wreck the day before that trial, and the way the Order handled it—well, it didn’t leave a good impression on him.” And then, for some reason, Diego winked at me. “Well, I’d best be getting back to things. Enjoy your lunch.” He stood up and walked away.
The blood drained out of my face as I sat there, staring down at my food.
An aura reading?
Oh, Gods, they were going to find out about the mark.
Twenty Three
Focus, Blair! I reprimanded myself, clenching my shaking hands into fists. I had another trial to get through, but I couldn’t get my mind to stick on it. I was too distracted by the thought of having my aura read.
They’re going to read me and find the taint, and then they’re going to kill me.
You don’t have time to think about this! You need to get through this day, and then you can worry about the rest.
As you can see, I was fairly split on the matter. I knew I needed to focus, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
The High Council, Diego among them, were all watching me and waiting for me to get on with it. The Chancellor cleared his throat. Impatient? Probably. It had been a full minute since he’d given me the order to levitate the ball through the series of rings hovering in the air.
Mental agility: that’s what this trial was for, if I had to guess. Well, my mind wasn’t that agile at the moment. It was like a broken record, the matter of my death playing around and around in my head. How was I supposed to focus when I knew I was going to die now?
I groaned inside my head, mentally shaking it out. There was nothing for me to do. I had no choice but to finish this trial and hope that the aura reading wouldn’t be next—hope that it wouldn’t be happening today at all, because I was going to have to figure out a way to get rid of the demon mark tonight.
Maybe Emily could help me with it, now that she knew about it.
That actually brought me some relief. Of course Emily would be able to get rid of it. Purify me or something. She was a paladin, one of the Seven, whatever that meant. She had to be able to do anything.
I took a deep breath and expelled it all in one go, allowing the thoughts to run out of my mind just as quickly.
Holding one hand in front of me, I focused on the ball on the floor. The instructions today had been that I had to do everything with my mind, including my incantations. I wasn’t allowed to speak a word, and I wasn’t allowed to interact with the object.
Maybe because I had used my strength tattoo on two different trials, and they hadn’t liked that. They hadn’t said as much, but I had a feeling that was the case.
I reached for the magic deep inside of me and visualised it curling around my hand like a whip. Levo. The thought whispered through my mind as I turned my hand so that the palm was facing up. The ball rose unsteadily in the air. I gritted my teeth and glared at it until it stabilised. I had never done magic quite like this before, and my grasp of Latin was shoddy at best. I had studied some of it with Fred, enough that I could get by in a pinch making up my own incantations.
See, the thing with incantations is, they aren’t so important on their own. It doesn’t really matter what you say so much as it matters that you believe in what you say. Me? I probably would have been more comfortable picking an easier language, and I could always change it if I wanted to, but Latin seemed like the obvious choice. Everyone uses Latin for their spells, right?
I flicked my gaze towards the rings hovering in the air, some of them staying in place and some of them moving up and down or side to side—those would be the trickier ones to get through, but at least the first ring was stationary.
Motus. Probably not the right word, but it was one I had used for movement in the past, which meant that it linked in my mind much more easily.
Sweat broke out on my forehead as I directed the ball through the first ring. It was Gods-damned hard to move the ball with my mind on its own. I wanted to talk, walk around, but I didn’t want to appear weak to the Wizards watching me. They could probably do this sort of thing in their sleep.
Hell, they put fifteen-year-olds through the trials. If a fifteen-year-old could do this, then so could I.
But did they try so hard to kill those teenagers? I had to wonder at that. Diego had said that the trials weren’t always the same for everyone who went through them. Maybe they’d picked particularly brutal ones for me to go through.
I directed the ball through a few more stationary rings before I had to face off with one of the moving ones. It was going around in a circle, rather than just in one direction, which meant it was going to be much harder to get through. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, ignoring the sweat dripping down into my eyes.
I’m going to need a shower when all is said and done. I almost laughed at the random thought. All that I had on my mind, and I was thinking about a shower? My priorities were a little ridiculous. I should really work on that.
The ball bobbed when my concentration broke. Levo! I brought it back up to where it was supposed to be and breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing more to worry about there.
Motus. I moved the ball through the ring, clenching my hand into a fist as I did so. The feeling of my nails biting into my skin provided clarity, the pain driving all other thoughts from my mind.
Pain is my friend. Pain focuses me.
The ball made it through without brushing any of the edges, and all I wanted to do was jump up and let out a satisfying Whoop, whoop! But I didn’t, because that wouldn’t be conduct befitting a Wizard of the Order, and I was trying to convince the Order that I was worthy. By acting like someone completely different from myself. Yeah, we’d see how well that would go in the long run.
Three more rings and I was facing off with another moving ring, this one much faster than the last, and it was getting har
der to keep my concentration. If I’d had a wand, this would be so much easier, but they’d made me take off the harness when they saw it. Luckily, they’d thought the rings, cuff, and wind chain were just jewellery, so I’d been allowed to keep them. I could deal with giving away the rings and chain, but the cuff was too important to lose.
I moved the ball towards the ring, but when it entered, it brushed against the side. I groaned internally, thinking I’d be disqualified for sure.
There was silence in the room.
And then a bout of fire came shooting out from the ring and headed right towards me.
I blinked as I watched death come for me, frozen for a moment before I sprang into action. I whirled around so that my back was to the fire, ducked my head and covered it with one of my hands. The other hand darted down to wrap around one thigh. Aegis! Levo, levo, levo! I called up a shield from one of the rings to cover my head and at the same time concentrated on keeping the ball in the air.
If I survived this, I didn’t want to be disqualified for dropping the ball. Harsh laughter escaped my lips as I realised the psychotic nature of my thoughts. Who the fuck cared about a bloody ball when they were about to die?
The fire reached me then. The heat blazed over me, and the force of the fire slammed into my back, dropping me to my knees. I kept my eyes tightly shut, grinding my teeth practically to dust as I withstood the pain. I wanted to scream and rage at the Wizards for putting me through this, but I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t break their precious rules.
The pain abated after several minutes, thankfully, as my head was becoming quite woozy.
Who the fuck throws fire at a mage for messing up a little levitation challenge? I lifted my head and looked over my shoulder to see that the ball was still quivering in the air. I grinned viciously—fuck them and their challenge. I could take it.
I let go of my head and thigh and moved to tug my shirt down a bit, but my fingers didn’t close around cloth. And then I realised it was a little cold in here. I looked down—tatters remained where a shirt had once been. My torso was bare for anyone to see. The only reason I had survived the attack was the tattoo on my back. I snarled for a second before I forced myself into calm composure, turning to glare defiantly at the Council.
Ashen faces looked back at me. Some of them were fidgeting uncomfortably where they stood.
I pulled one of my feet under me and stood up, proud that my legs didn’t waver at all. I stalked over to the Wizards, holding my head high, refusing to be embarrassed, and grabbed my hoodie up off the floor. I put it on and zipped it up.
They wouldn’t beat me with such intimidation tactics.
I turned back to the ball and the rings hovering in the air and completed the course in a matter of minutes, my hand directing the ball around the rings. The fury raging within me fuelled my movements, providing me with the confidence and concentration I’d been lacking before.
Though I sorely wanted to slam the ball into one of the walls, or send it flying at the Council, I directed it to the floor, where I landed it softly. Complete control.
I fucking had it.
Twenty Four
Without making eye contact with the Order, I shrugged into my leather jacket and flipped my hair out to free it from the confines of the jacket. In that moment I hated them for forcing me into baring myself in front of them. I didn’t have a problem with nudity, and I wasn’t ashamed of my body, but I couldn’t stand anyone who took the choice from me. From anyone. It was a fucking dick move, and it spoke volumes about the character of the men on the High Council. They clearly didn’t care about bodily autonomy, and it made me wonder how that was reflected in their personal lives.
Pieces of shit, the lot of them.
I was mad at Diego too right now. He hadn’t warned me this was going to happen, though he looked well and truly rattled. Maybe he hadn’t known about it. I didn’t have the heart to logic my way through that just then, though. All I wanted was to cloak myself in my rage and let it carry me through whatever would happen next.
“You have performed admirably in the trials thus far, Ms. Sheach. Well done,” the Chancellor said. If he cared about what had happened, he gave no indication of it. He wasn’t even going to acknowledge that it had happened.
“Thank you, your sliminess,” I said, curtsying with an imaginary dress.
The entire group of them balked as one, except for the Chancellor. He just narrowed his eyes at me. He wasn’t amused by my antics, but then again, neither was I with his.
“I can assure you, the side effects of the last trial were unintended.”
“Exactly how did you think a fireball was going to affect me?” I lifted my chin defiantly, locked eyes with him and refused to look away.
I was not going to be intimidated by a piece of shit like him.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could see that I was trying his patience, and maybe that was something I should be worried about, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. About him, about any of them.
“You are dismissed,” he said.
I barely stopped myself from gaping at him. It was midday—there had to be at least three or four more trials for me to go through. We had only just come back from lunch. It was highly unusual, from what I had seen thus far, for him to dismiss me like that.
Instead, I turned on my heel and headed for the door, my anger clear in every step I took. I wasn’t stomping, but I wasn’t walking calmly, either.
“I’ll take her home,” I heard Diego say. I shrugged. He could do what he wanted.
“Careful, Diego.”
“I’m always careful.” He had the indecency to sound amused. I wanted to walk back over there and smack him, but I kept going towards the door.
I heard his footsteps following me, not rushing to catch up, but he had long legs, and he would be close behind me any moment now.
I made it through the doors before I felt his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him off, not looking over my shoulder at him, and kept on going. His hand closed around my forearm, a vise of steel, and he yanked me around to look at him.
“Hey,” he said. “Come back down from whatever high horse you’re riding.”
I glared daggers at him. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re walking a dangerous rope with the way you just spoke to the Chancellor.”
“Were you not just in there when you fuckers burned my shirt off? I barely avoided full nudity, so, no, thank you, I’m not going to calm down.” I wrenched my arm away from him—fuck, that hurt—and pivoted so I could keep walking out.
He hurried to keep up, coming up beside me so I could see him in my peripheral vision. I clenched my jaw. I wasn’t going to engage with him.
“We didn’t know that was going to happen,” he said.
I didn’t respond; I kept right on walking. A flight of stairs appeared as I rounded a corner, and I raced up them, leaving him behind for a moment before we came out on the next landing and he was beside me again. I kept going. The entryway was in sight.
“Blair, are you listening?”
I was, but I gave no indication of it. I sped up, exiting the building a moment later. Blessed air rushed over me, and for a moment, the panicky feeling of being caged up escaped me. I wasn’t trapped inside, unable to go anywhere, unable to see anything.
“Blair, you’re going to get into trouble if you don’t let me put your fucking blindfold on!”
“Yeah, well, fuck you too,” I said at last.
“Turn around, please,” he said.
I did, crossing my arms over my chest as I turned, and glared at him. “I’m getting really sick of all these stupid rules.”
“I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. You’re not allowed to know the way here, and if I let you get away with it, we’d both be in trouble. Please, put the blindfold on. We can talk in the car.” He held out the blindfold like some sort of offering.
I glared down at it for a long moment before I snatched it out of his hand and tied it around my head.
“Here,” he said, taking my hand. “I’ll guide you.”
The rebellious side of me told me to wrench my hand away from him and open my Sight so I could see where I was going, and screw the lot of them. It would be their own fault—they’d taught me that my Sight would work through the blindfold.
Instead, I let him guide me, knowing deep down that it would go better for me if I didn’t put up too much of a fight. I could rage about everything when I was on my own later on, safely inside my house, where they couldn’t touch me. A minute later, he had helped me into the car. Then he got in on his own side, and we were driving away.
“I’m sorry,” he said after we’d travelled in silence for a little while.
“Save your sorrys,” I said. “They don’t interest me.”
I heard him sigh, but I didn’t care. I turned my head to the left, where the window was, and gazed in that direction as if I could see anything passing by. I hated this, being blindfolded, going through the trials when I didn’t care about them, feeling like a trick pony that was being made to go through a bunch of jumps for a crowd’s enjoyment. I hated all of it. All I wanted to do was go back home and return to my semi-normal life.
