Chapter I. Domenic #2
Domenic paced wildly, stricken by the guard’s appearance, at his own lack of hesitation.
“Shit,” he gasped. Gravely, he took in the guard’s wand fallen at his side.
Its elm shaft was contorted and grayed like a sliver of driftwood, striped with saltwater stains.
That was no training wand. “I just attacked an Order magician.”
Hanna cursed as well, clutching Syarthis against her heart. “Sorry, I didn’t think we’d run into … It’s fine. It’ll all be fine. I’ll take care of him.”
As she started forward, this time, it was Domenic who seized her wrist. “‘Take care of him’? Are you serious?”
“You got a better idea?”
He didn’t.
Muttering under her breath, she shrugged him away and strode toward the guard’s body.
She crouched, cupping his jaw and resting Syarthis at the corner of his eye.
A lone teardrop spilled out, shimmering like a bead of glass—his memory of this encounter.
The wand’s curved tip unraveled and snatched it faster than a serpent’s tongue.
When the guard woke, he’d have a new memory of the night entirely.
Though Living Wands could perform all classes of magic, each bore a specialty.
Syarthis was the most powerful corporeal wand, famous for its ability to devour and alter even a person’s most precious memories.
According to Hanna, Syarthis possessed an archive of a thousand years’ worth of recollections.
And so, while other newly fledged members of the Order maintained the nation’s infrastructure or joined the unceasing war against Alderland’s deadly winters, Hanna worked as a uniquely specialized historian, exploring Syarthis’s hoard the way archeologists might excavate ruins that had gone centuries without human touch.
However, she did so under intense supervision.
Many of her predecessors had broken their own minds under the immensity of Syarthis’s power.
Domenic never doubted that Hanna was brilliant, that she knew her limits.
But she wasn’t the only one who worried.
Hanna kicked at the air. “I had it all figured out, I swear. I made arrangements with the guards and everything—the guards who were supposed to be here tonight. They promised me they’d—”
“I don’t care about them, Hanna. I care about you. My skipping class is one thing, but you—sneaking into the Citadel? Bribing guards? Wiping someone’s memory like it’s nothing? You’re so … You’re so…”
“So what, Dom?” Hanna glared up at him. Their shared fame aside, they’d always made a distinctive pair: Domenic measuring far above six feet even when he slouched, Hanna not close to gracing five even in her bulky boots.
Domenic so slender his suspenders were never optional, Hanna soft everywhere but the razored points of her smile.
Yet they did have one trait in common—that same fierce, haunted stare.
A stare that had seen each other through the worst but refused to see the worst in each other.
“So…” His voice caught in his throat.
“No, I want to hear you say it. So what?”
He swallowed, wondering if he could finally bring himself to say all the things he buried deep.
“Look,” he spoke instead, “I don’t care what happens to me. If the Order had the balls to expel me, they would’ve done it years ago. But if we get caught, what happens to you? What happens to Iseul?”
“We won’t get caught,” she answered, so cavalierly, so infuriatingly matter-of-fact. But she was probably right. Hanna was a stronger magician than anyone relegated to the Citadel’s night shift. And even without a Living Wand, Domenic probably was too. “And Iseul wanted me to talk to you. She—”
“I doubt this is what Iseul had in mind.”
“All right. Coming here was my idea. But we’re both worried about you. Sometimes we wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
Hanna’s tone went hushed and careful. “Wonder if you even want to be a magician.”
Domenic flinched. Magic might’ve nearly killed him once, but he loved magic. He’d always loved magic.
“What? Of course I do,” he choked. “How could you think that?”
“Because you’re eighteen, Dom. You still have time, but if you keep waiting for whatever you deem the perfect wand, you’ll miss your window entirely. Is that what you want? To never join the Order? To be a hedge magician for the rest of your life?”
“No, obviously. But I’m not like you. I don’t want a powerful wand.”
“All Living Wands are powerful.”
“You know what I mean. I want a Living Wand. I just don’t want one like…”
He stared at Syarthis.
And, so it always seemed, even clutched in Hanna’s hand, Syarthis stared back.
A reel of emotions flickered across Hanna’s face.
She reluctantly slid her wand into the sheath clipped to her trousers, and the radiating, humid heat of its power diminished.
“I get it. Really, I do. But can’t you see you’re lying to yourself?
You’re one of the most extraordinary students in your class, even if you’ve convinced everyone otherwise.
You can barely cast a single spell without obliterating your training wands. Look.”
In the shock of the guard’s appearance, Domenic hadn’t noticed that his training wand had snapped clean in half, its tip on the ground beside Hanna’s boots. He hastily scooped it up and stowed the broken scraps in his pocket. His fingers grazed flowers, still fresh.
“Stop and listen to me,” Hanna pleaded, making him still.
“Winter keeps getting worse year after year. All your classmates, they might be—I don’t know—clinging to some delusional sense of security, but I’m there in the Council meetings.
I’ve seen history firsthand in Syarthis’s Archives. And I know what’s coming.”
There was nothing Alderland feared more than Winter.
Though Summer reigned most of the year, for six brutal weeks, Winter raged, razing towns and claiming hundreds of lives. Even after it ended, to open a window at night was to invite its monsters. To shiver was a sign of bad luck.
It was the duty of magicians to protect the nation.
But every century or so, the Winters worsened beyond the capabilities of the Order, triggering a singular existential disaster—a cataclysm.
And thus the greatest of the Living Wands would thaw from its icy slumber to Choose a champion to subdue Winter once more.
“Valmordion,” Domenic croaked. “You really … You really think it’ll wake soon?”
A faraway look shrouded Hanna’s eyes. She was here and yet she wasn’t, reliving some memory that had never been hers.
“Given every cataclysm Syarthis and I have seen,” she murmured, “I’m surprised Valmordion hasn’t awoken already.”
Chills swept down Domenic’s spine. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“With the power of a Living Wand, you’d be safe—as safe as any of us can hope to be, at least. But Iseul and I, we also want you to be happy.
Because the boy I knew in Danmere? He never shut up about all the amazing things he was going to do.
He wanted to be a great magician. He wanted to be a hero. ”
That was a long time ago, Domenic wanted to say, but couldn’t. That was before.
“I’ll admit coming here was drastic,” she continued, “but I’m not just doing this for you.
The two of us—we promised to join the Order together.
And yeah, I bonded with Syarthis young, but it’s been five years.
I didn’t think I’d have to wait for you this long.
I thought if you saw the wands … If you really let yourself imagine what you could have …
Maybe I wouldn’t have to do this all alone.
” Tears shone in her eyes as she nodded down the hallway.
Domenic couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her cry.
“The Vault is right around the corner. So will you go with me? Please?”
Domenic grappled with the impossible decision: to disappoint her now, or later. Because even if Hanna’s words were true, deep down, he knew nothing would come of tonight. He was broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
“Sure,” he said weakly. “I’ll go.”
This way, when she realized he’d failed her again, he wouldn’t have to see it.
They stepped over the incapacitated guard and rounded the corner, where an archway opened into a silent, vast chamber.
Even peering in, Domenic sensed something ancient about this place, so different from the flashing lights and bustle of the outside world.
Sinewy branches had wheedled between the grooves of the stone walls.
What few buds sprouted from them, so distant from the surface, reached toward the wands like paupers’ hands.
Warmth seeped across Domenic’s skin as though cast by sunlight. Living Wands were regarded as instruments of Summer, yet in all his years at the Citadel, never had he felt as much magic as he did in this room.
Hanna held out her hand. An invitation. A plea.
He grasped it.
Together, they wove through the aisles, each labeled with a golden plaque and sheathed in glass.
Every Living Wand in Alderland had a place here.
And though, as Hanna said, no Living Wand was truly weak, the lesser wands were kept to the front.
Domenic’s gaze skimmed across empty shelves and locked on a candle several paces ahead, marking an occupied case.
Etheralis, a wand of enchantment, the most common class of magic.
Its previous wielder had died only a few months back, so it had yet to develop any signs of neglect.
Among the Order, it was considered a personable wand with a flair for whimsy and wonder; its poplar shaft even coiled like a corkscrew.
With a pang, Domenic wondered if Etheralis might’ve once suited him. It certainly didn’t now.