I remained, hollowed. Kael Forloren didn’t like me. He probably thought I was an apprentice who’d stumbled into the wrong chamber.
And I had spent the last three hours proving him right.
What a brilliant start.
Chapter 2
Evie
Irushed out of the council chamber and into the long corridor, its stone walls veined with torchlight and draped in heavy blue tapestries. My steps echoed against the flagstones, eager to carry me away from the suffocating weight of that assembly and toward the gentler harbor of the Council of Farming’s office. That chamber was humbler than the one I’d just left, no stone table broad as a kingdom, only Bram’s battered oak desk and the countless towers of parchment he treated like old friends.
I reached up, tugging loose the plain thread that bound my hair. I rarely wore it down, but the heat of that room had dampened my scalp, which made me itch beneath my composure. My long, dark brown curls spilled free, tumbling with a sigh of relief, though I hurried to rake them back into some semblance of order. The last thing I wanted was to appear before Bram looking as though I’d clawed my way out of a nightmare.
At the far end of the corridor, a flicker of movement stole my breath. The black fall of a shoulder-cape, Kael’s, vanished around the corner, silent as shadow. He was gone, likely heading out of thecouncil wing, yet the ghost of him lingered, etched into my spine like a lightning strike.
I forced a steadying breath. I needed control. The echoes were already ringing. If I lost my grip now, there’d be no salvaging it.
I steppedinto Bram’s office to give my report on the assembly of magisters. I didn’t know what else to say beyond a summary of a conversation I hadn’t even partaken in, but he’d asked me for a glimpse of what went on behind closed doors. And I could hardly deny him.
Bram was an interesting character. A portly man with ruddy cheeks and a booming laugh, I couldn’t recall a time I’d seen him without a smile. He sat at his desk, quill still in hand, though his gaze had drifted out the tall window to where rain veiled the rooftops of Befest. The office smelled of ink and damp parchment, a clutter of scrolls stacked high enough to rival the oak beams. The great desk in front of him was scarred and heavy, as though it had weathered centuries of hands before his.
I liked working with him. He was kind-hearted, light, a well-needed presence in a court where words could wound as surely as steel. And he was generous to twenty-six-year-old me, the youngest magister the Court had ever appointed. I supposed that was something to be proud of.
“Evie!” Bram exclaimed when he noticed me, jolting upright in his massive old oak chair. “Gone so long, I was starting to think you’d been lost in the weeds.” He chuckled at his own joke, shoulders shaking.
Dark, frizzy hair framed his brown face, wrinkles carved deep at the corners of his eyes. His heritage, like mine, was foreign to Hauvia, and perhaps that was why I felt an ease with him others didn’t grant me. The constant smile, though, and the terrible farming puns, probably helped. And it gave him back some of his youth.
“Three hours, and I didn’t even get to place a single word,” I said, holding my head high with exaggerated pride.
“That’s how you get people to like you!” he shot back, grinning. “So, tell me, what are the court wizards up to?”
Bickering, mostly.I bit down on the urge to say it outright. Instead, I gave him the safe version. Thalen’s insistence on sending troops to the gutters, the unrest gnawing at everyone’s nerves, and the endless disagreement on how to face it.
“The plague sure filled everyone’s hearts with anger,” Bram said knowingly. His gaze flicked to the portrait on his desk. A woman with long, braided brown hair and dark luminous skin smiled from the frame. For the briefest moment, so fleeting I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been watching, the smile slipped from Bram’s face, and in its place came something hollow. “Now that it’s over, people don’t know what to do with themselves. And if they must be angry, they’ll be angry at the Court.”
I wanted him to talk about her. On my first day, I’d asked Lo, and he’d told me Bram had lost his dear wife to the Breath of Death in its first wave. No one looking at Bram, he who laughed and joked and kept the world light, would have guessed such grief lived behind his eyes. Now he raised two daughters alone and bore the Council of Farming on his shoulders.
“So how will they address it?” Bram asked, breaking my thought. “Herd the sheep, or let the chickens run wild?”
I shrugged, replaying the council in my head. Easy to do since I’d only been a spectator. “Selena plans to speak at the markets in a few days. Give the people speeches of hope, promises of better. She said they need to see the Court’s face to feel supported. It seemed like Kael agreed.”
“Kael? Magister Forloren?” Bram’s brows arched, and he smiled like I’d just set a pie in front of him. “Oh, so you’ve mettheCourt Wizard at last. Tell me, did you find him terrifying too?”
Terrifying. That wasn’t the only word I’d use.Handsome.Enticing.Exquisite. Gods, where was my mind running off to?
“He is intimidating, for sure,” I mumbled.
Heat licked at my skin again, walls pressing in as dread tugged hard at the seams. I didn’t want to wrestle with echoes, not here, not now, not again.
The first time Bram had seen me catch an echo was right in the middle of an audience with him, right here in this room. I'd only felt shame, certain my life at the Court was over. But he’d just laughed. Since then, he’d made a game of asking if I could glimpse his future. Always in vain. I was no seer, after all, just a seerling. I didn’t think Bram knew the difference.
Bram leaned closer, hand half-covering his mouth as though whispering a secret. “I steer clear of being alone with him. They say he could smite you with a glance.”
I didn’t know whotheywere, but I believed them. Kael’s glance was already burned into my memory.
Evie, stop.
I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t think like this. My task was simple. Talk to goats, coax crops, serve the council. Nothing more. Because if I lost this post, gods, where would I go? Who would want a broken mage like me?
