Chapter 15
LYRA
By the time Mistress Calis asked me to summon light, I had already decided I hated her.
It was unfair. She had done nothing except stand at the center of the Aurora Circle in immaculate white training robes, her silver-streaked hair twisted into a severe knot, and look at me as though yesterday had not happened.
As though I had not torn open the Crucible with enough power to force the Overseers to drop a second ward.
As if half the Light Quadrant had not spent the morning whispering my name.
As though the shadows had not risen with the light.
“Again,” she said. I stared at my empty palm.
The Aurora Circle stretched around us in a broad sweep of white stone, open to the morning sky.
Sunlight poured through the high arches surrounding the training floor, catching in the gold veins threaded beneath our feet.
Dozens of initiates stood at evenly spaced marks around the ring, each holding some small manifestation of light.
Or attempting to.
Vareena’s floated above her hand in a perfect golden sphere.
The girl beside her had shaped hers into a wavering ribbon.
Three Candidates down, someone had produced a flickering spark that kept snapping against his fingers, earning a sharp correction from one of the assistants.
And then there was me. Nothing. No spark.
No shimmer. Not even the faint warmth I had felt before my first assessment.
Mistress Calis remained unreadable. “You heard me, Alerain.”
Every eye in the circle pressed against my skin.
I lifted my hand higher. Reached inward and again, nothing answered. My rune sat cold beneath my training tunic. I searched for the place the light had come from yesterday. The bright, vicious well of grief and fury that had split open when Neseryn spoke of Edenlo.
But the memory resisted me.
Or I resisted it.
The village square flashed behind my eyes anyway.
Burning roofs. A shadowwraith bending over a fallen body.
Irelia’s hand slipping from mine. The light had come then, too.
Not because I wanted it. Because I had broken badly enough for the Light to get through.
I shoved the memory away and my palm remained empty.
A whisper drifted from somewhere behind me.
“She nearly shattered the Crucible yesterday and now look at her. She can’t even make a spark.”
“Maybe Neseryn’s magic triggered hers.”
“I say it wasn’t hers at all. No Hollowborn can wield enough power to destroy a Shadowwraith let alone a pack of them. I mean look at her she’s just a Veilrat.”
The final words sank deeper than they should have.
I curled my fingers into a fist. Mistress Calis turned her head slightly.
“If any of you have enough breath remaining for gossip, you have enough to maintain your manifestations for another fifty counts.” Several Candidates groaned.
“Seventy-five.” The groaning stopped. Her gaze returned to me.
“Open your hand.” I obeyed.“Your magic is not a beast to be hunted through the woods,” she said.
“The harder you chase it, the farther it will retreat.”
“I’m not chasing it.” One silver brow rose. I regretted the words immediately.
“Then what are you doing?”
Failing, apparently. I kept that answer to myself. “I don’t know.”
Mistress Calis studied me for several long seconds.
She was not old, exactly, but age had settled into the fine lines beside her eyes and the certainty with which she carried herself.
There was no softness in her face. No impatience, either.
That made her attention harder to bear. She stepped closer.
“Magic is not created in the hand,” she said.
“The hand gives it direction. Nothing more.” Her fingers touched the center of my palm.
Warmth spread through my skin. “Close your eyes.” The last thing I wanted was to blind myself while everyone watched so I did.
The sounds of the Aurora Circle sharpened.
Fabric shifting. Boots scraping stone. The quiet crackle of magic from Candidates who were pretending they weren’t watching.
Mistress Calis’s voice came from directly in front of me.
“What did you feel before the light answered yesterday?”
Grief. Rage. Shadow crawling up my legs. Kieran watching from somewhere beyond the ward.
“Pressure. Lots of pressure,” I said.
“Pressure is circumstance. Not a feeling.”
I swallowed. “Anger.”
“What else?”
“Fear.”
“And?” The scent of smoke filled my nose though there was no fire in the ring. I could hear Neseryn as clearly as if she stood beside me.
You weren’t strong enough to save anyone else.
“Grief.” The word came out thin.
Mistress Calis’s fingers left my palm. “Now reach beneath it.”
My eyes opened. “What?”
“Those emotions forced open a path yesterday. They did not create your power.” Her stare held mine. “Find what lies beneath them.”
I wanted to tell her there was nothing beneath them.
Only more grief. Layer after layer of it, buried so deeply I no longer knew where one loss ended and another began.
Instead, I pulled in a breath and thought of morning in Edenlo before the bells rang.
Maia crushing herbs at the kitchen table.
Irelia throwing pebbles at my window because she refused to use the door like a normal person. Warmth stirred beneath my ribs.
I reached for it.
The warmth brightened until a pale glow flickered at the center of my palm.
It was small and unsteady, but it was real and around me, the circle quieted.
I kept breathing and the glow expanded until it was no larger than a candle flame.
Silver shimmered along its edges, too cool and strange against the warmer gold of the other Candidates’ magic.
Mistress Calis noticed. Her gaze sharpened at it.
The light trembled. “Do not look at me,” she said. “Look at it.”
So I did.
The flame stretched toward my fingers. For one heartbeat, I felt hopeful.
Then someone whispered my name from behind and the light collapsed.
Gone so quickly that the cold rushing into its place felt like punishment.
A few Candidates sighed. Someone else laughed.
The sound was quiet but loud enough that it still found me despite Vareena’s cursing to whoever had found humor in my failure. Humiliation burned through my face.
Mistress Calis turned toward the class. “Release your manifestations.” Lights vanished around the circle.
“Pair for shielding practice.” Everyone moved at once.
Purposefully enough that I understood what was happening.
No one wanted to be paired with me. Vareena crossed the ring toward me before anyone else could claim her.
Mistress Calis stepped into her path. “Kamari, pair with Tira.”
Vareena stopped. “Mistress—”
“That was not a request.”
Her mouth tightened but before she could find away to ignore Calis’s orders, I gave her the smallest nod I could manage.
Go.
She did, though every line of her body made it clear she disliked it.
Mistress Calis waited until the others had spread across the circle before turning back to me.
“You will remain.” The assistants began calling instructions behind us.
Light flashed against shields. The ring filled with the dull thud of contained magical strikes.
Mistress Calis folded her hands behind her back.
“How long did your first manifestation last?”
I hesitated. “I don’t remember.”
“Answer again, this time with honesty.”
My jaw tightened. “I was being attacked. I didn’t really have time to count the minutes.”
“You remember.”
How could I forget? Smoke. Wings of creatures that were made of neither life or death. Blood. So much blood. The way the wraiths had been eradicated in the blaze. “I remember pieces.”
“How long?” She pushed again.
“I don’t know.” Her gaze did not leave mine. “Until the wraiths were gone,” I admitted.
“And afterward?”
“Nothing.”
“For how long?”
“Until the match with Neseryn.” One of the assistants shouted a correction across the ring. A shield burst, scattering harmless fragments of light that dissolved before touching the floor.
Mistress Calis looked toward them, then back to me. “Magic that manifests only under extreme distress is volatile.”
“I gathered that.”
“It is also dangerous.”
“To me?”
“To anyone near you.” My empty hand curled at my side. Mistress Calis’s voice softened, but not enough to be mistaken for comfort. “What happened in the Crucible was not control, Initiate Alerain. It was rupture.”
The word struck somewhere deep. Rupture. A body split open. A life divided into before and after. “I stopped it.”
“The wards stopped it.” My face went hot. She let the truth sit between us. “If you continue relying on fear to access your magic, your body will begin to believe terror is the only key it needs.”
A chill crawled across my shoulders despite the sunlight. “What happens then?”
“You will seek danger without realizing it. Create it when none exists. Or your magic will.”
I thought of the shadows curling at my feet. Moving before I had commanded them. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Learn the difference between power and pain.” The answer could have come straight from the Codex. Uselessly wise and impossible to follow. Mistress Calis glanced toward the others. “You will attend additional foundation sessions beginning tomorrow.”
My stomach sank. “With you?”
“With Kamari.” Vareena would be thrilled. I was already exhausted. Mistress Calis started to turn away. “Did you see anything else?” I asked.
She stopped. The question had escaped before I decided to ask it. A beat passed. “Else?”
“In the Crucible.” The backs of my knees prickled. “Besides the light.”