I laughed, and the magic tripped through the crystals.
There were a lot more of them now—less of the hard, uncolored rock between them. Their cloudy facades were resplendent when the magic touched them. The cavern was larger—no, deeper than before. The roof felt as if it was at its natural height, but the walls wanted to reach further back.
Not yet, I thought. Give it time.
“Holy Mother,” Mistress Carolee whispered, spinning slowly in the cave.
Lunella folded her arms. “I told you.”
“I didn’t realize the effect was this strong.” Mistress Sona barely breathed the words.
“I’ve been telling you all along. Tymon and I have been here with Kimber, and this is why we know she is the Breaker.”
“You should have dragged us here.” Mistress Ophelia was unmoving as her eyes roamed the walls.
“No, I shouldn’t have. You needed to come and see for yourselves. This is what the Breaking Cave does when Kimber is present. It is nothing when she is not here.”
Raising my hand, I waited for someone to notice me. It took a long minute until Mistress Maurielle laughed and motioned me to put my hand down.
“What is it, Kimber?”
“What does Breaker of the Spine even mean?”
“It’s literal,” Mistress Maurielle said. “The magic has chosen you to change our world, to bring down the Spine that divides S’Kir—the druids from the vampires.”
“Bring down the Spine? How in the name of seven hells am I supposed to do that?” I jabbed my finger up toward the ceiling. “There are leagues of rock above us. Reaching so high even the best mountaineer cannot cross it. I’m supposed to destroy this with what? How? The spine is three hundred thirty leagues long!”
“Magic,” Mistress Sona answered.
Tossing my hands in the air, the crystals around me responded with a sad, minor tone chime and a flash of red of anger and green of frustration. “What does that mean? The magic this, the magic that! I don’t know what’s going on around me! I was a teacher until a few weeks ago! I’m not a wielder. I’m not a strategist. I need help. I need someone to explain all this to me!”
The mountain gave a frightening rumble around us, and a few of the dark rocks on the wall chipped and fell to the ground.
The other masters ducked and started to run for the entrance, but I was angry and irrational.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “You picked me! I didn’t want this! Stop trying to scare me! I’m trying to understand!”
The tremor halted.
My legs gave out. I landed flat on my backside.
The sobs burst out of me, and I couldn’t stop them.
Mistress Ophelia was the first to move again, rushing over to me. In a shocking move, she swooped down and gathered me into her arms.
She was the last I expected this from.
“Child, child. Take a deep breath; calm yourself.”
“I’m not a child.” I smeared the tears off my cheek.
Her fingers brushed my chin and lifted my gaze to hers. “To a twenty-one-hundred-year-old temple master, you most certainly are.”
“The mountain listened to me.” I was still trembling.
“Yes, I know. That’s because you’re the Breaker of the Spine. This is why this cavern listens to you.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means you will bring this mountain down. You will tumble it from its heights to the ground again. There may be tall hills and a few rocky peaks, but the division between us and the vampires will end when you bring the Spine to the ground.”
Lunella broke from the group by the exit. “Your magic has always been your magic, my dear. What you said in the garden has made us all realize women who are not of the temple have never been taught with a Triium. Ever. They are all students of the male.”
Mistresses Sona and Maurielle also walked back in, Mistress Sona moving closer to me.
“You have made us realize we have a great, untapped force out there,” she said. “Vast, in fact.”
“…force?” I could hear my own surprise.
“Yes. Force.” Mistress Neves ran her hand over the cloudy, dim crystals. “We have known that things were going to change for a while now. Dreams, precognitions, visions, foretelling… all the different ways we can see and be told of the future. They have all been pointing us toward a great upheaval in S’Kir.”
Mistress Sona took over the narrative. “We have been trying to find those loyal to the temple, more to the point, loyal to the magic of S’Kir. People who can wield magic well. Not even the most powerful, but the most skilled. We are peaceful, but it is always wise to know your strengths.”
“And weaknesses,” Mistress Neves added.
Mistress Maurielle harrumphed and sat near me on the ground. “Needless to say, they’ve nearly all been male. Skilled, loyal magic wielders, but males. We’ve been wondering where the women were.”
“And you”—Mistress Carolee folded her arms and leaned against the rocks—“may have just figured out why they’ve been almost exclusively men.”
Nodding, I whispered. “The Triium.”
“None of us knew about it as more than a legend when we were raised to the robes,” Lunella continued. “Once we were handed those, then we learned about it. It never occurred to me it might be the reason we haven’t found many females. Until now.”
Mistress Ophelia had let me go, let me sit up, but kept a hand on my arm. “And it’s critical, most critical, that we have both men and women to stand with the temple.”
I understood right away. “Balance. Always balance.”
Mistress Neves tapped her fingers on the crystals this time, and they rang, faintly, from the impacts. “Always balance. Between male and female. Vampire and druid. Good and evil.”
Sitting up a little straighter, things started to swirl together in my brain. “Seven and seven.”
Grinning, Mistress Sona tapped her nose.
“So a stronger force would be made of male and female.” I leaned back on my hands and considered the women in the cavern with me. “How on S’Kir would we go about recruiting women to fight? Most are… peaceful.”
“You have not yet had a child,” Mistress Carolee said. “Have you ever seen a mother when her child is threatened? When her home is threatened? It is a sight to behold.”
Leaning forward, resting her head on her chin, Lunella grinned at me. “If we are fighting for the continuation of our own way of life, women will fight.”
Mistress Neves held up a finger. “We have to pick and choose carefully who we train in the Triium magic if they aren’t in the temple. But…”
Mistress Ophelia said, “It’s our job to make sure they can wield both their magic and their sword with equal skill.”
Chapter Five
Kimber
The feeling of having to teach half the population of S’Kir was overwhelming.
My magic, I doubted.
My sword work, I didn’t. Not even a bit.
While my parents had indulged me when I was younger, excusing me from all kinds of magical and physical activities, they wanted me to know how to defend myself.
Since my father was a prize-winning fencer, he picked the sword for me.
I loved my sword.
Lunella chased me backward, the metal of her sword scraping along the blade of mine. The sound was horrible, but that was the idea.
At the last minute, as I saw her cringing from the noise, I twisted my blade, and she instantly became the attacked instead of the attacker.
I swept the sword up and around, dragging her blade with mine and slamming it into the wooden practice floor, disabling her.
Her spell slammed into the middle of my stomach, winding me, and throwing me backward through the room.
“When are you going to remember to use your magic to block?!”
I groaned at the ceiling, and sat up, staring at Mistress Neves watching our practice. She had a look of frustration that curled her lips downward.
“She will never learn,” Master Dorian said.