“You know what I want to know.” Viri resisted the urge to turn and glare at him. “How did you do it? Destroying the nullicuffs, knocking me out, unlocking the door…none of those things should have been possible.”
“The ancient mages were able to use magic for everything,” Reeve said. “What I did was nothing compared to what they could do.”
“You’re not an ancient mage.”
“No, but I suppose I’m what you’d call a current one.”
Viri stilled in the process of opening a new box and whirled around in the narrow aisle to look at him. “That’s not possible. Mages don’t exist anymore. Not on Elverdine Isle.”
“The reason they don’t exist here is because children yield their ellixen to the obelisks, which stops them from being able to access and develop it,” Reeve said, taking the box from her hands, peering inside, then placing it back on the shelf. “If they didn’t, then some of them would find themselves powerful enough to become mages—assuming, of course, that they could keep from burning out in the process.”
Viri could only gawk at him as he nudged her around the corner into the next row.
“Are you—Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Her voice croaked with disbelief.
“I never Imparted,” Reeve confirmed. “And because of that, I found out I had enough ellixen to technically make me a mage.”At the look on her face, he added, “I was eleven when I left with Brae. When my fourteenth birthday arrived, I was already known to the Nox and hunters as the Reaper Priest’s right hand. I couldn’t exactly stroll to the nearest obelisk and yield my ellixen, not without chancing capture.”
“But therisk—”
“Was limited,” Reeve said with a dismissive wave. “I had a teacher of sorts, someone who taught me how to control my ellixen, which protected me from burnout.” Despite his easy words, there was a darkness to his tone as he spoke of his teacher, a bitterness Viri couldn’t ask about because she was too distracted by the impossibility of everything he was claiming.
“The knowledge you’re speaking of doesn’texist. If it did—”
“More people would defy the Impartation laws?” Reeve finished for her, brows raised. “Funny you should say that, given that your own best friend never went through with the ceremony.”
Viri froze in the act of reaching for a new box. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Wynter,” Reeve said. “She never Imparted—and like me, she ended up with the power level of a mage.” Seeing Viri’s shock, he chuckled. “Come now, Little Shadow, you’re smarter than that. How do you think she practices alchemy without using ellixen?”
“I know she uses bits of it in her more potent experiments.” Viri’s mind screamed that he waswrong, wrong, wrong. “But they don’t require much—just what she kept after she Imparted.”
Reeve cocked his head to the side. “Did she tell you that?”
Viri was about to say yes, but then she realized Wynter had never claimed anything of the sort. Viri had just assumed she wasaccessing the small amount that remained after she’d sacrificed the rest to the obelisks.
“I would know if Wyn never Imparted,” Viri said, wishing she sounded more confident. “And I’d definitely know if she was a mage. We tell each other everything.”
Reeve made a humming noise. “Like you told her about your brother being the Reaper Priest, you mean?”
Viri winced, but said, “I went to her ceremony, Reeve. I wasthere.”
He shrugged as he searched through another box. “Ask her yourself the next time you see her. I don’t think she uses her ellixen for anything other than alchemy, but I’m guessing that’s because she doesn’t know how—which makes her no less a mage, just an untrained one. She’s lucky that whoever left her that magic laboratory explained how to avoid burnout, even if they didn’t share anything else.”
“Her dad left her the lab,” Viri said, “but he didn’t explain howto—”
She broke off as she remembered the letter Wynter’s mysterious father had sent—the one that had arrived on the morning of her Impartation, mere minutes before they’d left for the ceremony. Viri had only seen one page, thinking that was the extent of it. But…if there had been more…if it had included instructions…
“Everyone has secrets,”Wynter had said in the undercity tunnel just last night.“I know that better than anyone.”
Viri cursed and closed her eyes as she thought of her too-curious-for-her-own-good best friend. If Wynterhadknown how to avoid the danger of burnout, then it wasn’t a stretch to believeshe might have caved to the temptation of faking her Impartation to practice magic, even if it meant breaking the law. Hell,especiallyif it meant breaking the law, given that she already did that every single day.
Groaning loudly, Viri said, “Her mother will die if she ever finds out the truth.”
A dark laugh left Reeve. “If only it were that easy.”
Viri’s eyes shot back open to narrow at him. “That’s my guardian you’re talking about.”
“I’m well aware,” Reeve said, his focus still on the shelves—as Viri’s should be. “Elders forbid anyone says anything against the great Magistratus.”
