Chapter 9 #2
“Yesterday determined whether bringing you through our gates posed an immediate danger to the Sanctum. Today determines whether you pose one to yourself.”
The bell rang once and every candidate moved without being told.
Some paired off. Others crossed toward different sections of the Circle.
I remained where I was because no one had told me otherwise, and I was beginning to suspect standing around looking lost was going to become a significant part of my life here.
Calis stepped closer. “Hold out your hands.”
I did.
She took one of my wrists and turned my palm upward. Gold light gathered between her fingers. I braced myself for the same cold probing sensation I had felt yesterday, but this was different. Warmth spread over my palm and traveled slowly along my arm. “Do you feel that?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“My hand.” She didn’t so much as blink. I frowned. “Was there a better answer?”
“Follow it.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes.” I did not. Calis waited. I sighed and closed them. “Follow the Light.”
Easy for her to say.
I concentrated on the warmth in my palm. At first there was only the pressure of Calis’s fingers around my wrist, the sun on my face, someone shouting across another court. Then the warmth moved. Slowly. Up my arm. I followed it because I had no idea what else she meant.
It reached my shoulder. My chest. Then stopped. The rune beneath my ribs tightened.
I sucked in a breath.
“Again,” Calis said.
The warmth came stronger. It moved through me until it reached the rune. Then vanished.
My eyes opened as Calis released me. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You felt something.”
“The rune.”
Her gaze flicked toward my side. “And?”
“And nothing.”
“Nothing is not an answer.” A few candidates nearby were watching now. I could feel it without turning. Heat crawled up my neck.
Calis lifted her hand again. “We will repeat it.”
We did and by the fourth attempt, frustration had replaced embarrassment. “Again.”
“I’m doing it anymore.”
“No. You’re waiting for something to happen to you.”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“Then learn.” I stared at her. She moved several paces away and raised one hand. Light gathered above her palm, brighter this time, until I had to narrow my eyes. “Call it.”
I looked at the light. “How?”
“That is what we are determining.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Magic rarely does before it does.”
I almost asked whether every instructor here answered questions like Coren. Instead I looked down at my hands.
Call it.
As though my magic were a dog wandering somewhere nearby. I remembered Edenlo.
Bad idea.
The square appeared before I could stop it. Blood on stone. Fire. Irelia beneath that thing. Maia falling. Light ripping through me so violently I had thought my bones were breaking.
My stomach turned.
No.
I pushed the memory away. Nothing happened. Calis waited. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I just tried.”
“You stood there.”
Anger flared. “Do you think I’m choosing this?”
“No.” That stopped me. Calis lowered her hand and the Light disappeared. “I think your body remembers what happened the last time you accessed your power, and I think it has decided preventing you from reaching it is safer than allowing you to experience that again.”
My mouth went dry.
She said it clinically. No softness. No pity. Somehow that made it easier to hear.
“So what do I do?”
“We teach your body that it is wrong.”
Before I could ask what that meant, a man called from the edge of the Circle. Calis turned toward him. Deep red training leathers. Burn scars climbed one side of his throat and disappeared beneath his collar.
His gaze moved to me. “This the dormant one?” I hated him immediately too.
Calis’s mouth tightened. “Her name is Lyra Alerain.”
“That is not what I asked.” The man looked toward the Crucible.
My stomach sank. “No.”
Both instructors looked at me. I pointed between them. “Whatever that look was. No.”
The fire instructor stepped toward me. “Pressure response.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means we find out whether your magic responds when you stop thinking about it.”
“How?”
He looked toward the Pyra Enclave.
Oh.
Absolutely not.
“No.”
Calis folded her arms. “Alerain.”
“I was burned four days ago.”
“Five,” she corrected.
“That improves nothing.”
“The pressure match is controlled.”
I stared at the fire instructor’s scars. “Your definition of controlled concerns me.”
The Crucible was larger from inside.
Candidates gathered along the outer rim as word spread. Not everyone. Enough. More than enough. Apparently watching the strange Hollowlands girl fail to produce the magic that had announced itself across the Veil was worth interrupting morning training.
I stood near one edge of the circular floor while Calis spoke quietly with the fire instructor.
Vareena appeared at the barrier.
“What are they doing?”
“Trying to kill me.”
“They’re not trying to kill you.”
“You sound very confident for someone standing safely over there.”
Her mouth tightened. “Lyra.”
A woman entered from the opposite side.
Red hair cut just above her shoulders. Strong build. Black training leathers stitched with deep red at the seams. She looked a few years older than me, or maybe she simply carried herself like someone who had stopped asking permission to exist. Fire rolled briefly over her knuckles.
I swallowed. She noticed.
The fire vanished. “You’ve never sparred.”
It wasn’t a question.
“No, I haven’t sparred. It’s literally my first day.”
Her gaze went to Calis. “You’re putting her against me?”
“Controlled strikes, Inserra,” Calis said. “We’re testing response, not endurance.”
Inserra looked back at me. I couldn’t decide whether she looked irritated or concerned. “Try not to run directly into anything,” she said.
“That was the plan.”
The fire instructor stepped to the edge of the ring. “Begin.”
Inserra moved.
I didn’t.
That was my first mistake. She crossed the distance between us faster than I expected and sent a short burst of flame toward my left side. I stumbled backward so quickly my heel nearly caught on the stone.
The flame passed several inches from my arm. Heat slapped my skin but it did not burn me. My heart lurched.
Inserra circled.
I turned with her. “Hands up.”
“What?”
“Your hands.” She demonstrated. “Unless you want your face broken before your magic decides to join us.”
I raised them. Someone laughed from the rim. I ignored it. Inserra came again. No magic this time. Her fist stopped just short of my jaw when I flinched too late.
She stepped back. “You’re watching my hands.”
“What am I supposed to watch?”
“My body.”
The fire instructor’s voice cut across the ring. “Enough. Inserra. Pressure.”
Her jaw tightened. She looked at me once. Then fire appeared. Real fire. It wrapped around her hand and climbed toward her elbow, bright enough that instinct screamed at me to move before she did.
She struck. I dodged the first. Barely. The second came from the other side. Heat caught my shoulder. Pain exploded through me.
I screamed.
There was no dignity in it. No brave silence. Fire touched skin and my body reacted exactly as bodies were supposed to react when they burned.
I staggered backward, clutching my shoulder.
The smell hit next. Scorched fabric. Smoke. Edenlo. For one horrible second, I wasn’t standing in the Crucible anymore.
Irelia was screaming.
Maia was bleeding.
Blackness crawled across the square.
My breath stopped.
“Lyra.” Vareena. She was too far away.
“Again,” the fire instructor ordered. Inserra hesitated. “Again.” She moved.
I tried to. Gods, I tried.
I reached for whatever had torn through me in Edenlo. Reached beneath the fear and pain and memory until my chest hurt with the effort. Fire cracked past my face. I stumbled as a murmur went through the crowd.
My rune burned beneath my skin and I reached harder. Nothing answered.
Inserra swept low. Flame followed her movement across the floor. I jumped backward. My boot caught something. I hit the stone hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.
Laughter came from somewhere above me. It was not everyone but it was enough.
I stayed there for half a second with my palms against the rune-carved floor.
Blood appeared beneath one hand. My shoulder burned. My knees burned. Everything burned. And there was still no Light.
I looked up.
That was when I found Kieran. He stood at the far side of the Crucible, one shoulder against an obsidian pillar. Simple watching.
His arms were folded. It was like he found this boring. I pushed myself upright.
Inserra’s fire dimmed.
“Stop holding back,” the instructor snapped.
Her gaze cut toward him. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“She has no guard.”
“She’ll develop one.”
“After I burn half her skin off?”
“Do it.” Silence moved through the Crucible. Inserra looked at me and I saw the apology before she buried it. Then she attacked again.
Fire snapped across my forearm. Pain went white. My teeth closed around the scream before it escaped, and the taste of blood filled my mouth where I bit my tongue.
Still nothing.
Not a spark.
Not a flicker.
Nothing.
I hated it. I hated Edenlo for fearing it. I hated the Sanctum for expecting it. I hated my own body for giving me enough power to destroy wraiths and then abandoning me the moment everyone demanded proof. Inserra came toward me again.
“Enough.”
The word wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Every shadow around the Crucible moved. Fire disappeared from Inserra’s hands.
I turned to it.
Kieran had left the pillar.
He stood at the edge of the ring now, one hand hanging loosely at his side while darkness pooled around his boots.
The fire instructor’s face hardened. “This is not your quadrant, Nyxara.”
“No.” Kieran’s eyes stayed on me. “But even I’m getting bored watching you beat a powerless woman and call it assessment.”
My humiliation sharpened into anger.
Powerless.
I hated the word immediately.
The fire instructor stepped forward. “Her manifestation registered across the Veil.”