Chapter 24 #3
Audra closed her eyes, urging her fingers to loosen around the charcoal stick, lest it snap in two.
She blocked out the rustling of parchment, the sooty, charred smell that permeated the oppressively hot classroom, ignored the bead of sweat dripping down her back, the elated chatter from her peers.
She focused on her will, tried to find her spirit (despite the fact that this didn’t seem a thing one could find), and calmed her mind, quieting her doubts with a forceful shove, smothering them with blankets and pillows, until she could no longer hear the cruel thoughts.
With a slow exhaled breath, she attempted the incra once more, the charcoal stylus trailing desperate hope across the parchment.
Finally, a spark. A flicker of conjure. Relief washed over her, so potent it was almost dizzying.
But the relief was short-lived—instead of the expected warmth, a bone-chilling cold emanated from the glowing incra.
Frost spread like a plague across the parchment, streaking toward her hand.
She stifled a cry, jerking her hand back, but it was too late.
Crystalline frost climbed up the stylus, clung to her fingers, stabbing them with unnatural cold that seeped into her bones, chilling her to the core.
Luckily, her concentration had been broken the moment the incra went wrong, and the glyph faded into the training parchment almost immediately, taking the frost with it.
Audra shook her aching fingers, clenching her teeth against the pins and needles shooting through her hand and up through her wrist. She glanced around, trying not to draw attention to herself, hoping nobody had seen her failure.
Her heart dropped into her stomach because, of course, Noel’s gaze was locked on her, a smug expression plastered on his face.
Audra shifted her own gaze away quickly, ducking down to locate the charcoal pencil, which she had flung away.
By the time she sat up, stylus retrieved, Noel had shifted his focus back to his desk, finally managing to mind his own business for once.
Audra’s grimace deepened. Noel’s incra had never ceased, twin blue and orange flames spinning, spinning, spinning around each other, two trails of hot light.
Not even when his focus had been on her, watching as she fucked up her own casting, had his faltered.
She made to draw the incra again, but her pencil hovered unmoving over the page.
That cast had gone terribly wrong, and it had hurt.
Her fingers still stung, red and aching, where they gripped the charcoal pencil gingerly. She moved the nib closer to the paper, the charcoal hovering a hairsbreadth above it, waiting a beat. Another. She couldn’t bring herself to try again just yet.
Thankfully, alarms tinkled throughout the room; initiates, all at once, relinquished their incras, their concentration broken by the chimes.
Excited chatter erupted as everyone packed their satchels and supplies and filed in line to return their practice parchment to Scholar Khari’s desk on their way out the door.
Audra, however, slipped her parchment into her notebook, closing it quickly before shoving it into her bag.
Scholar Khari had been very clear that they were only permitted to practice incramancy within his lecture hall, under his direct administration.
But Scholar Khari shouldn’t notice that one training parchment was missing from the haphazard pile on his desk.
It should be fine; the number of initiates within each guild varied, and Sabre, the largest guild, had had its lesson that morning.
Maybe he would think one of them had taken it. If he noticed at all.
He’d also been adamant that beginners practice with training parchment, and … at least she would be following half the rules.
That had to count for something.
Audra’s teeth chattered with cold. The fingers on her injured hand trembled with cold and pain, and she was forced to use her noninjured hand to clasp both buckles on her satchel.
Wilder waited for Audra in the corridor, satchel clutched to her chest as she shifted from one foot to the other, her expression carefully composed to display nothing.
Wilder was observant, naturally kind. Of course, she noticed Audra hadn’t managed to inscribe Ignis, and of course, she would suppress any glee she felt at her own success, where Audra had none.
She was furious with herself for failing.
She should be celebrating with the rest of the Arcane initiates.
Mastering every incra assigned—every lesson—was imperative if she were to survive long enough to make it home.
Any joy of performing her first spell was overshadowed by the fact that she’d done it wrong; the cost was painful, literally.
Audra wanted more than anything to celebrate with her friend. Wilder seemed to be a natural incramancer. And it wasn’t fair that Audra’s failing should dim Wilder’s success.
But Audra would have to celebrate with her later; she desperately needed to inspect her fingers—they burned as if still licked by that cold fire—to ensure she hadn’t damaged them permanently.
Or she would be forced to visit the mediscribe wing, forced to explain.
The last thing Audra desired was admitting to anyone at Holyvere that her incra had been a deviation, an aberrant rendering of what it was supposed to be.
So, she uttered a quick congratulations to Wilder, made an excuse, and fled.