Thalen laughed, harsh and deep. “Of course she did. And where is Selena, so we can finally speak of the unrest in Befest?”
So. Straight to the bleeding heart of the kingdom.
Where in the seventh hell is Lo? He’d warned me about these assemblies. Magisters were difficult, hotheaded, and never in agreement. Such was the fate of court wizards. Trust no one, doubt your friends, despise everyone else.
And more importantly, where wastheCourt Wizard?
Three weeks ago,I had joined the court wizards, making my parents proud. Relieved, more like. I wasn’t the idle seerling in hiding anymore.
Where I came from, and almost everywhere else, it was hard for seerlings to find work as magi. We could be admitted into academies, but we’d be kept under close watch. So my parents had made me keep it quiet. They wanted me to have a future, a good and stable life. They didn’t want echoes to ruin that.
You don’t want to know some of the things I’ve seen against people’s will and my own. They’d put a few to shame, for sure.
And so I hid my magic, the real one. I could cast the usual spells, and I was very good when it came to matters of nature. I had taught weather magic, even animalism, at the Magi Academy of Hauvia. But my parents still worried I would be stuck to a life behind academy walls forever. They lived half a world away, yet I’d always felt them breathing down my neck.
Here in Befest, magisters served as advisors and savants to theseven councils. Each chancellor had their own wizard. When I put myself forth for the Council of Farming, Chancellor Bramwell Alderholt had said he’d seen something in me. I wasn’t convinced what yet. Speaking to animals, reading the weather, coaxing crops to grow, all of it served the farmers. So I became Bram’s own personal wizard, spending my first weeks listening to farmers’ complaints and, yes, talking to goats, learning about the land.
So instead of academy walls, I found myself confined to the castle and the fields. Which, in its own way, was a quiet blessing.
As long as my powers stayed quiet.
The guards here called me goat-whisperer. Not exactly cruel, just a jest I had earned. Still, did they have to keep repeating it as if it were the cleverest thing ever said? In truth, I preferred the goats to their masters. Who wouldn’t?
My thoughts snapped back as Thalen’s booming voice cut through the chamber. He spoke of these rumors of new revolts in the State of Bretannia, then of the riots festering in the city gutters again. His tone made it sound like magic should be used to pacify, or perhaps to punish. I wasn’t sure which. Shame curled in my chest. I should have been listening, but my thoughts were too loud, that sense of dread too sharp to let me shape a single word that mattered.
The creak of the door interrupted him. Another magister slipped inside.
Selena Hart.
My gaze followed her without permission. Her skin caught the light like silk, her golden braid laid carefully over one shoulder. Her eyes, sharp, ashen blue, matched the robe she wore, impossible to miss. Lo had told me she could soothe with a word, disarm with a glance. She was an empath, a powerful psion. I believed him.
And there was Lo himself, trailing after her. His shoulder-length smooth black hair hung loose, his blue embroidered robe flowing as he moved, a heavy leather-bound notebook under his arm and a quill balanced in his hand. The only true friend I had here in this court. We’d met at the academy back when we’d been students. Hewas half elf, and for me, who was a stranger in this land, we could relate to each other. He’d been the one who’d told me of the open post. His presence steadied me now.
And his presence meant one thing. Because Lo wastheCourt Wizard’s assistant, sohewould follow next.
“Enough with the talk of casting spells on civilians, Thalen,” Selena said, her voice soft but iron at its core. She did not need to shout. Her words cut clean as a blade. I admired that.
She took her seat beside Isolde, all grace, while Lo slipped in beside her, opened his notebook and sent me a quick smile. My chest eased.
“I’m only offering an option,” Thalen growled, folding his arms. “Unless you’d prefer to wait for the riots to burn your flower stalls again.”
Selena tilted her head, lips curving with cool dismissal. “The kingdom is already soaked in blood. Have you forgotten that winter, when steel did nothing but feed the gutters?”
“Better than provoking Bretannia into attempted civil waragain,” Jorren added slyly, twisting a jeweled ring as though calculating what it might buy him.
Again. That word sparked something in Thalen. Voices clashed. Words struck like blades on stone. I shrank into my chair. I had nothing to offer this quarrel.
The plague had hollowed this kingdom. Even here, its rot lingered. I’d only seen it from behind academy walls, but I’d heard the stories—in the markets, in broadsheets, on every tongue. I’d felt it in the echoes of the city. Loss. Anger. Riots staining the cobblestones with blood.
It had been two years since the Breath of Death had loosened its grip, yet the kingdom still bled from wounds that refused to close.
Across the table, Lo glanced at me, eyes gleaming, quill scratching quick notes. Days like this were his delight.
Then the door opened again. No groan this time. Only silence.
He entered.
Kael Forloren,theCourt Wizard. The king’s own magister.
