Chapter 11 #2
‘The best. They’re fools, the Academy, if they really do plan to kick her out.
I was a disaster, everyone knows that. It’s the nature of my magic, the chaos of it.
It doesn’t handle boundaries and rules. Never has.
It’s powerful but… I was handed everything because they took some readings and decided I was the next great hope for the Academy.
And then I lost it all, but Portia… Portia worked like a dog to get there, to make things better for us all, to set things right and clear our family name.
She has dedicated everything to her work there. It really isn’t fair. It’s madness.’
‘The Academy has always been a law unto itself, hasn’t it?’ Noah muttered.
Seb shot him an insightful glance. ‘You too?’
‘The Academy governs who can study what remains of draconic culture. Even who can present papers or access the library. Not to mention those who want to travel to Elanholm. Imagine being without any magic at all and having the temerity to apply. They laughed me out of the place.’
For a moment Seb said nothing, just kept looking at Noah in a curious manner. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘Does Portia know that?’
Noah shook his head. ‘I just have to take a longer path, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, like me. Other paths are better sometimes. But for Portia… it’s all she’s ever wanted. She thinks the sun shines out of their—’ He bit off the last word and shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t know what it’ll do to her if they really do kick her out.’
‘Why does it mean so much to her?’
Seb’s shoulders rose and fell again and the dragons clinging to him spread their wings in alarm at the movement.
He gave a soft murmur and sparkles of witchlight spread out in waves around them, quietening them again.
‘Our grandfather was its chancellor. Our father was a dean and probably would have been chancellor as well eventually. It was central to her childhood, to what she remembers of our family when everything was… well, she thought it was perfect I suppose. We lived in Tesh, in a huge house with gardens and servants. She went to the finest school and had a glittering future laid out. Our parents were lauded in society. Then our father went against the king. Art tried to step in but he just made everything worse. I don’t know the details.
I don’t think anyone does except them. Not even Iris.
There was an accident of some kind, a magical disaster or so I’m told.
Our parents died. Art blamed himself and fled back here.
That was the end of the Starlings in the Academy until Portia went.
I followed her but…’ He sighed again, the weight of regret glistening in his dark eyes.
‘Some things run in the family it seems. Dad and his brother, Portia and hers.’
So, Portia wanted to make amends for what had happened, the acts of others before her. Or perhaps to clear a path for her siblings. It made a lot more sense now, her drive, her single-minded defence of the Academy that was treating her so poorly.
And perhaps the reason why so many of those sitting in judgement over her appeared so biased. Because what she had done was not bad. Not by any means. It was entirely justified.
Noah would have done the same thing in the same circumstances. Oh, perhaps she had used magic where he would not have been able to. But the upshot would have been the same.
‘You never wanted to go back?’ he asked.
Seb shuddered. ‘No. I’ve more than made peace with never setting foot in that benighted place ever again.
They don’t deserve us, the Academy, and especially not Portia.
She could have helped so many people, do you know that?
She and… and Milo…’ He swallowed hard, as if saying the name was difficult, noticed Noah’s frown, and ploughed on.
‘Their research was… I mean is groundbreaking. I doubt they’ll be able to continue it now, and they need each other to do it.
They complement each other. It’s such a loss and the academic board will never even realise until it’s too late.
All because of Lady Virginia Moorland and their slavish devotion to propriety. ’
‘You don’t think they’ll find her innocent of wrongdoing?’
He’d thought it was just a formality, that they’d never cast out a magician and apothecary of Portia’s ability.
They looked after their own, he had believed.
She might be infuriating, and opinionated, and have a temper worthy of the dragons of legend, but she was brilliant.
You only had to spend a little time with her to see that.
‘Milo will try to defend her, I suppose, and probably ruin his own career in the process.’ Seb took a deep breath and seemed about to say something more on that subject.
Then he clearly thought better of it. ‘But in the end, they’ll choose the expedient course of action.
And when you get down to it, we’re Starlings.
We’re always trouble. Everyone knows that. ’
‘What do you mean?’
Seb tilted his head to the side, studying Noah for another long moment, and then raised his hands.
The dragons took flight as the wave of thaumaturgical force made the air shiver.
Noah could almost see it, like a heat haze, rising around them.
The ground began to tremble and everything not nailed down in the snuggery took off, whirling and spinning around the two of them – feeding bowls, water, toys, bits of nest, along with every dragon there, looping in and out of the maelstrom in delight.
A strange music filled the air, and the dragons joined in with it, singing in harmony, a symphony of chaos.
Seb Starling threw back his head and closed his eyes, letting it wash over him and through him, revelling in it all, right at its heart.
Seb, Noah realised, was even more powerful than Portia, but that hadn’t helped him a bit when it came to the Academy. And if she had been sent away for upending a drinks table over a harpy with royal connections, for turning magic against another, what could he have done?
Portia had been intent on rebuilding the reputation of the Starlings.
But the Academy clearly had other ideas.