Chapter 39
Talisa
Three days crawled by like a fever dream. Classes resumed while everyone at the academy waited anxiously for official word about what had gone wrong during the Trial of Banners.
I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the crimson banner’s threads pulsing white-hot, heard the high, thin shriek of overstrained magic vibrating through my bones.
Remembered the imperial agents trying to make me admit that this had been my doing, because I hated Lukhan and wanted him dead.
The first whispers came the morning after the match, during breakfast in the dining hall.
“They need someone to blame, and it’s not going to be an aristocrat,” Mavia argued.
“It sure looks like someone targeted Councilor Murad’s son,” a second-year commoner girl agreed. “And General Corvellan’s son, too. If their banner had exploded the way it almost did—”
“Their fathers are powerful men with powerful enemies… including the Domina-Regent,” someone else commented. “Supposedly, Her Imperial Majesty never forgave Councilor Murad for whatever he did that got him kicked off the Imperial Council.”
The next day, I overheard two aristocratic students while I was on my way to the Fundamentals of Magecraft II lecture. The two girls stood with their backs to the wall, their heads bent together, their voices carrying in the stone colonnade’s peculiar acoustics.
“—Custodes Sanguinis says it’s obvious,” the taller of the two was saying. “That fishwife girl and her friends all hate Lord Lukhan. Everyone knows it. She and the others have been targeting him with magical pranks since last semester.”
“Revenge,” her friend agreed. She tucked a lock of pale hair behind her ear with a practiced flick. “The ‘saving his life’ ruse was just good theater to cover up whatever she did to his banner.”
Divine Mother preserve me! I stopped walking.
Elio’s hand found my elbow. “Ignore them,” he murmured.
I couldn’t ignore them. The lie was spreading… and it was so very believable because it explained everything: my victory, their collapse, the fact that I’d been the one to stabilize the banner. Of course I’d known how to fix it because I’d broken it in the first place.
Lukhan’s allies had built a convincing story to blame me. And after my interrogation two days ago, I feared the imperial agents were currently pressuring Chatelaine Lirelle to accept the story as fact.
And then there was the Custodes Sanguinis, the so-called “Guardians of the Bloodline.”
I’d heard the name before, in passing, whispered by Lukhan’s aristocratic hangers-on.
At dinner, the dining hall became unbearable. Lukhan and Damien’s absence only seemed to stir up the other aristocratic students.
I was sitting with Elio, Mira, Juno, and members of the Circle of the Open Hand at our usual table.
Lady Beatrix Fairhaven was holding court at a table nearby.
“—disgusting that they’re even still here!” Her voice was pitched to carry. She punctuated each word with an emphatic stab of her fork into the roasted squab on her plate. “Attempted murder, and Chatelaine Lirelle lets them walk around free as birds! My father would have had them in irons by now.”
Beside her, Lady Helene Morgrave nodded vigorously. “It’s probably only a matter of time,” she assured her friend Beatrix. “I heard that the Public Order agents are going to arrest those two troublemakers, and all of their miserable, lowborn friends, too!”
Our table had gone quiet. Mira’s fork hovered halfway to her mouth, her knuckles white around the handle.
Elio’s hand found mine under the table. He scoffed loudly.
“What a wagonload of wishful thinking,” he said scornfully, pitching his voice to carry. “Does anyone really believe Imperial Public Order agents are going around taking second-years into their confidence?”
On the morning of the third day, the twins and I skipped breakfast and stayed in our rooms.
I couldn’t face enduring another meal in public while aristocratic students shot me narrow-eyed glances, then leaned toward each other with the eagerness of people sharing a delicious piece of gossip.
Having to attend lectures and labs while trying to pretend everything was normal was bad enough.
All the while, I felt like a prisoner must feel, awaiting Chatelaine Lirelle’s sentence. In my heart, I knew it was only a matter of time before she announced that Elio and I had been disqualified from the Aurelian Trials for misconduct or endangering academy property.
Nemara only knew that Julissa would seize on any excuse to refuse us the prize money—a breathtaking sum of twenty-five gold aurei—that Elio and I had won for making it to the finals.
My share of the winnings so far amounted to one entire aureus and thirty denarii. Before coming the academy, I would’ve considered having the equivalent of two week’s wages for an island farmer in my fancy new velvet purse as being wealthy.
But when compared to the hundred and ten aurei I owed the academy, it felt like the merest pittance.
Elio, with Alara in tow, found me huddled in our sitting room. Neither of them asked why the twins and I were hiding from breakfast in public. He just settled beside me on the narrow sofa, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine, and handed me a large, napkin-wrapped bundle.
“Spiced squab pies from the dining hall,” he said. “Still warm.”
“I had one for breakfast. The aristos were complaining about having to eat leftovers, but the pies are really good!” Alara exclaimed, putting three steaming mugs of mulled cider down on our small table.
I took one pie from the stack inside the bundle and accepted the mug of mulled cider Alara handed me. Then I handed the remaining pies around to Mira and Juno.
The thick, triangle-shaped savory pastry in my hands steamed gently, smelling of saffron, fried onions, and herbs. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until the scent hit me.
“They’re going to disqualify us.” My words came out flat, stripped of emotion. I’d worn myself out contemplating this. “You know they are.”
Elio shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Juno said, her words muffled around a mouthful of squab pie.
Mira nodded vigorously. “The aristocrats are mad because you two are winning.”
I sighed, and chewed, though the pie’s delicious meaty filling had lost all its flavor.
“Talisa.” Elio turned to look at me. His expression was serious.
“If they wanted to disqualify us, they’d’ve already done it.
Who knows? Maybe a miracle happens and we get to face FitzMurad and Corvellan in a rematch.
” His mouth curved. “I’d enjoy trouncing Lord Pretty Hair and his hulking friend in a fair fight. ”
I wanted to believe him. The warmth of his thigh against mine, the warmth of the breakfast he’d brought me in my hand, the fragile bubble of hope his words created—I wanted to crawl inside it and live there.
But foolish hope was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Not if I wanted to avoid being utterly crushed when the investigation’s verdict was finally announced… whenever that might be.
“Elio,” I said. “Be realistic.”
“I am being realistic.” He spread his hands.
“Think about it. We’re the only first-years who’ve ever made it to the semi-finals of the Aurelian Trials.
And you just saved FitzMurad and Corvellan—and probably everyone in the stands—from dying when their banner exploded.
” He paused. “Chatelaine Lirelle isn’t stupid.
Half the Imperial Council was at our match, along with the bigwigs from Arcane Standards.
The chatelaine knows what it would look like if she eliminated us from the competition now.
And with Arcane Standards and Public Order investigating the banners, she can’t blame us unless they agree.
And why would they? Both of their organizations are looking to recruit mage-students who do well in the Aurelian Trials. And that means us.”
I stared at him. “Since when are you the political expert?”
He grinned at me, familiar mischief flickering in his eyes. “My parents sell luxury goods to aristocrats. I was listening to court gossip and learning how to read contracts while you were still learning to spell ‘apothecary.’”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The sound felt rusty in my throat, like a door hinge that hadn’t been oiled in months.
His arm came around me. He squeezed my shoulders gently.
“In any case, there’s nothing we can do except wait. It’s out of our hands.”
∞∞∞
That evening, as we sat downstairs in the common room with other members of the Circle of the Open Hand, the dining hall bell rang with three long, resonant peals.
A magically amplified voice boomed, “All students and staff, report immediately to the amphitheater for a mandatory assembly.”
As the announcement repeated, Elio and I looked at each other across a table piled with books and papers. Around us, our fellow students were already on their feet, pulling on discarded academic gowns and gathering up satchels and belongings.
“This is it,” I said, once more in the icy grip of imminent doom. “This is where they kick us out of the Trials.”
“I’m still hoping for a miracle,” Elio said.
∞∞∞
The amphitheater looked very different at night. The curved marble walls caught and multiplied the light of hundreds of floating mage-lamps until the entire edifice glowed an eerie blue, as if we’d been transported to the underwater realm of the Merfolk.
Elio and I seated ourselves in the competitor’s section. I spotted Lukhan and Damien enter the amphitheater and take their seats on the far end of the bench.
Lukhan’s posture was rigid, his shoulders set in a tense line beneath his black academic gown.
His hair fell across his forehead in its usual perfect arrangement, but his fingers drummed a rapid, irregular beat against his thigh.
Damien sat beside him, his gray eyes fixed on the empty dais at the center of the arena. His face gave nothing away.
Cresta, Bernardo, Jofre, and Berengar arrived shortly thereafter. They conspicuously ignored Elio and me.