ONE #2
We move toward her in a herd, eager to warm ourselves by the heating stones within. But the vesper doesn’t invite us inside. Her gaze sweeps across each initiate in turn, assessing us like we’re books to catalog instead of people.
“It is a great honor to pass through these doors and give your life to the Stars,” she explains in a clear, strong voice.
Forget honor. I’ll take a coat. But I nod dutifully along with the others.
“Tonight, you will each face your Petition, the first step required to receive your birthright,” she continues. “Which of you will go first?”
For a moment, no one moves as it hits us.
The ritual is private, a showing of loyalty to the Stars.
Before we receive our magic, we’re meant to stand beneath their canopy and prove we’re ready to leave our old lives behind—whatever that means.
But if we’re doing this one by freaking one, and she’s blocking the door, the rest of us will wait outside.
I lift my hand to volunteer, but Team Captain shoots forward and bows.
“It would be my honor,” he announces, puffing his chest like he’s accepting a medal. Someone in the group across from us whispers to his friends, and they all snicker. Arrogant enough to mock someone in front of a vesper? What order are they from?
The vesper stares Team Captain down. “Name and order?”
“Ren Sata, Order Leontia.”
He’s a healer, like I thought. Although his ambition is a surprise, since his order prides itself on being self-sacrificing. Then again, he probably sees it as his duty to go first and show us we have nothing to worry about.
The vesper gestures for him to follow. They disappear inside, the door closing behind them.
Thick, uncomfortable silence descends again among the rest of us. With Ren gone, I’m exposed on one side. I wrap my arms around myself as the wind picks up.
“He better not take too long.” A blonde with wide-set eyes across from me flexes her hands. Her nose is upturned at the end, reminding me of my favorite cat from back home. “I feel like I’m going to lose a finger.”
The man beside her has the same green eyes and tilted nose, though he stands at least a foot taller. Twins or very closely related. He catches me studying him and winks. “That’s not the appendage I’m worried about.”
I almost find it funny. But his pants look a lot warmer than the silk dresses given to the women, so I dislike him by default.
“Would it kill them to let us wait inside?” I mutter, earning a few nods of agreement.
Unfortunately, the blonde takes this as an invitation to complain more. “This is why I hate visiting the capital. It’s always so cold in Wintour.”
In other news, water is wet.
I focus on warming up my hands, but another initiate takes her bait and asks, “Have you visited here before?”
“We travel all the time. We’re second cousins of Patron Calix.” She flicks a finger at her brother, brightening like the bragging is warming her up. “My father imbues armories, so we’ve been to nearly every province.”
My father always said Calix is the one family no one can afford to cross—and the gleam in her eyes tells me she knows that, too.
Because Calix is the only order that can make steel indestructible …
or as fragile as glass. Even my family’s magic isn’t enough to keep crops alive if our Calix-supplied equipment breaks.
But they also control the entire black market.
If it’s magical and convenient, a Calix has figured out how to sell it.
That’s not a problem for most of us, except Order Marius, who are stuck dealing with the forbidden magic. I guess after five hundred years of peace, it gives the military something to do.
“Wow,” I say, if only to keep my lips from freezing shut.
This conversation isn’t worth wasting energy better spent on maintaining the last of my body heat.
A few of the other initiates manage more enthusiastic responses, and she begins spewing stories about her family’s trips to nearly every corner of Antares.
“Where are you from?” her brother asks me, eyes twinkling.
First a dick joke and now this? Somebody’s here for more than their birthright.
Still, I admire his ability to flirt under these conditions, so I answer with a forced smile, “Damalis.”
“Damalis?” his sister repeats with a slow blink, like she’s just realized I have two heads. “I’ve never met anyone from Order Icaros before.”
Probably because agricultural magic requires sticking close to the land.
Even though my father was a patron, he only traveled to the royal city once a year.
My older brother took over those business trips when he got sick, but we couldn’t afford to send anyone else.
The Quincentennial might be my only chance to see something other than farmland in my lifetime.
The blonde must be thinking the same thing, because she says, “Farming must be so boring.”
My throat knots, heat rising to my cheeks despite the weather. From irritation, not shame. She might look down on me, but I bet she likes to eat.
“It’s not so bad. I know how to butcher a cow.” This time, I don’t smile, and she moves closer to her brother.
Agriculture isn’t the most glamorous magic—or the most lucrative—but it’s still necessary. And unlike Miss Second Cousin, I hail from a patron bloodline, one of the original founding families of modern Antares. Only a handful of the other initiates can claim the same, if any.
She’s moved on to describing her home estate when the ancient door opens again, and the initiate from Leontia staggers out.
His tan skin is paler than before, and he steels his face like he’s trying to keep tears from leaking out of his shining eyes.
His hands are clean and empty, but he wipes them on the hem of his tunic over and over, like they’re covered in something.
He doesn’t look at anyone as he pushes past us, hurrying away from the astrolatory and disappearing into the night.
“Are we supposed to just … leave like that?” the blonde asks.
“I don’t think so,” I murmur with another shiver. Not that they gave us a rule book.
The vesper reappears in the doorway. Her silver robes billow as she lifts her hand. “Next.”
But no one moves forward. A few people even back away, the cold forgotten following the first initiate’s hasty departure.
Tomorrow, we will all witness one another’s Kindlings, the ceremony when we receive our inherited power from the Stars.
The Kindling doesn’t just hand you magic, though.
That’s why it’s customary to undergo the night before alone to show proper reverence.
Whatever that means. Broderic only told me: what happens tonight is between you and the Stars.
That I should show I’m prepared to shed who I am and be what they need me to be.
That didn’t scare me before. Now I wish I’d badgered him for more information.
Because the Kindling only stokes the magical ember in our blood. It smolders unseen, waking on its own schedule over the months that follow, if ever.
Until it manifests fully, any nochtimetric patterns we attempt are pretty much useless in our hands.
Or worse, they backfire. Maybe that’s why duty and responsibility have been drilled into my head since I could understand the concepts.
I’m only half convinced I even want my magic to wake up at this point.
But anything is better than standing out here a minute longer. I’m nearly frozen to the stone, but I manage one step forward and then another, pins and needles stabbing the soles of my feet.
The vesper studies me, and her eyes narrow slightly. “Order?”
“Icaros.” I raise my chin and clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.
Her gaze settles on me like she can see the dirt that’s usually under my fingernails. “Name?”
“Arden Icaros.” My breath curls around my name like fog.
“Follow me, Lady Icaros.” The vesper steps to the side, nodding permission for me to enter.
“She’s from a patron line,” someone whispers behind me, sudden interest dripping in their tone. My family name changes the math.
For them.
I don’t turn to see who said it. Even if part of me wants to see Miss Second Cousin’s face. Instead, I square my shoulders and march inside, ignoring how my body protests the sudden movement.
I might not be beautiful or rich like the other initiates, but what I do have is enough common sense to get out of the fucking cold.
The sluggish warmth of the floor’s inlaid heating stones rewards me. It seeps into my numb feet and spreads across my skin before settling into my tight muscles. The vesper closes the door and latches it, locking the others out—or me in. Ren seemed pretty eager to get out.
Nope. Not going there.
“This way.” She breezes through the vestibule toward a bend in the corridor.
I’m not even half thawed, so I can barely keep up with her brisk pace. I still try, since the others are stuck out in the cold until I finish. It would be a shame to send Blondie back home with only nine toes.
I make it a few steps before I stop in my tracks. This time to stare.
Moonlight spills through the astrolatory’s glass ceiling—glass so the vespers can watch the Stars, and so the Stars can watch back.
Torchieres flicker with captured starlight that illuminates the hallway.
Their faint glow catches gold shards embedded in the floor to make the dark stone look like the night sky.
Our astrolatory back home is open to every citizen in the province of Damalis. Unlike this one, it is rustic and plain, little more than stone walls and a paned, sheet-glass roof. Dad used to tell us that the more gold there was inside an astrolatory, the less soul it had.
Which makes the Royal Astrolatory the most soulless place I’ve ever set foot in.
Either the black marble or the gold set into it could probably pay off our estate’s entire debt and fund our family for another century or two.
When we reach a series of alcoves carved high and shallow into the building’s stone wall to our right, she slows, allowing me time to study each one.