“A ley-window,” I said, the words dying in the vacuum.
A jagged crack split the silvered glass from top to bottom, looking for all the world like a lightning bolt frozen mid-strike.
I hadn’t seen one of these since my second year at the Academy, before everything went wrong. I could almost smell the chalk dust and lavender polish of Professor Nightshade’s lecture hall, hearing the scratch of quills that always seemed to pause whenever I raised my hand.
“A ley-window is not merely a pane of glass, ladies and gentlemen,”Professor Nightshade had intoned, pacing the front of the amphitheater like a stork in tweed.“It is a membrane. A localized thinning of reality that allows a household to bask in the ambient glow of the earth’s natural currents. It provides excellent light for reading and keeps the scullery warm in winter.”
I remembered staring at the diagram floating above her desk, a cross-section of a manor house channeling volatile earth-power into a sitting room forambiance.
“Professor?”I’d asked. I hadn’t even stood up; I knew by then that drawing attention to myself was a tactical error, but mymouth often worked faster than my survival instincts in those days.
Nightshade had paused, her monocle catching the light.“Miss Emberlin. Do enlighten us. Is there a flaw in the standard architectural spell-forms?”
“It’s just... the dampening seals,”I’d said, tapping my own notes.“They’re rated for passive flow. If the ley-line surges—say, from a tectonic shift or a localized curse—that glass doesn’t just break. It becomes a conduit. You aren’t building a window; you’re building the barrel of a cannon and pointing it at the sofa.”
The silence in the lecture hall then had been almost as heavy as the silence in this room now. Three rows of students had scooted their chairs away from me. I heard the whisper from the girl who sat in the front row, a glossy-haired illusionist who fascinated kittens by singing to them.“Always so morbid. No wonder the dragons hate her.”
“Miss Emberlin,”Nightshade had sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.“We are training Domestic Mages, not siege engineers. We design for comfort, not catastrophe. If you are quite finished planning the inevitable explosion of our theoretical living room, perhaps we can return to the subject of drapery meant to withstand ethereal bleaching.”
I stared at the shattered glass in front of me now, the terrifying spiderweb of fractures pulsing with a sickly, trapped light.
“I told you so,” I whispered to the memory of the Professor.
It wasn’t funny, it was horrifying, but a dark, bubbling laugh tried to claw its way out of my throat anyway. This entire roomwas a testament to why you didn’t treat raw magic like a hearth fire. This was where Fenrik, or someone else, had tried to look into the veins of the world, and the world had looked back.
Beneath the oppressive quiet, a low vibration pulled at the marrow of my bones. It was the sound of magic screaming in a vacuum, a high-pitched keen that only someone with my curse—my gift—could hear. The fractured ley-window loomed ahead, the jagged crack down its center pulsing like an infected vein. The hum grew louder, as I approached. I reached out.
“Don’t,” said a voice in the back of my mind, but the compulsion was stronger. The pane looked like frozen mercury, trapped between states of matter.
My fingertips grazed the surface. My own magic, that well of stillness I had to drag to the surface, surged up my arm in a torrent to meet the dormant energy in the glass.
Flash.The world dissolved in blinding white. The air was sucked out of the room, replaced by a roasting heat. I gasped, stumbling back, but my back didn’t hit the wall. It hit nothing.
The room had changed. The melted floor was whole again, the granite polished to a mirror sheen. The fused books were distinct, colorful spines lining intricate shelves. And the silence was gone, obliterated by a roar that sounded like the earth itself was tearing apart.
“Hold it, Diane! You must anchor the weave!”
The shout tore through the roaring air. In the center of the room, where the scorched starburst would be, stood two figures. A man, tall and broad-shouldered with Fenrik’s sharpjawline but none of his haunted hollows, stood with his arms raised. Beside him, a woman with cascading dark hair fought against the air itself, her hands glowing with blue light.
Between them, the ley-line wasn’t a window, it was a bloody breach. A writhing, screaming mass of raw energy lashed out like a trapped animal, thrashing against the golden wards the two were desperately trying to knit together.
“I can’t!” The woman shrieked, her voice cracking under the strain. “The stabilizers are shattered! It’s feeding on the connection!”
“Father!Stop!”
The scream came from the doorway. I whirled, my heart beating fast.
Fenrik was a boy of not more than twenty. He wore a velvet doublet that was unbuttoned at the collar, his black hair wild, eyes wide and storm-grey, unmarred by the silver curse-light I’d grown used to. He held a violin bow in one hand.
“Get back!” Lord Stormgarde roared, not looking away from the blinding mass of silver fire. Sweat slicked his brow, blood trickling from his nose. “Fenrik, get out of the wing! The containment is failing!”
“You’re drawing too much!” Fenrik lunged forward, dropping the bow. He scrambled toward the circle, his hands reaching out, desperation etched in his young face. “The output valves, you have to shut the valves, not fightthe flow! It’s going to—“
“It will take the manor!” his mother cried, tears streaming down her face as the silver light lashed out, opening a gash across her cheek. She didn’t even flinch. “We have to hold it!”
“It doesn’t care about the manor!” Fenrik screamed, his voice breaking. He was so close to them now, fighting against the wind of the magical pressure that radiated from the center. “It’s going to kill you! Let it break!Let the house fall!”
The mass of ley-energy pulsed. The light intensified, turning the room into a wash of painful brilliance.
