As we step out onto a cherrywood-banistered mezzanine, I feel my throat go dry. I pause at the crest of a sweeping staircase and look down over a mammoth, circular hall.
A sea of important-looking Gardnerians lies before us, uniformly garbed in black. Roughly half of them are in military uniform, most high-ranking, a few wearing the silver-edged cloaks of the magically powerful.
First, there are a few curious glances our way. Then someone gasps. A hush falls over the room.
I blink down at them, distracted by the enormous chandelier that dominates the foyer—hundreds of candles set on the branches of a carved, inverted frostbirch tree hung with leaf-shaped crystals. It suffuses the entire room with a dancing, changeable glow.
My eyes circle around the foyer, my gaze drawn toward a man standing in its center. He’s tall and slender and wearing a long, dark priest’s tunic, the image of a white bird emblazoned on his chest. He’s younger than most priests, with compelling razor-sharp features, a high forehead and straight black hair that falls to his shoulders. His green eyes are so intense and vivid, they seem to glow white-hot, as if lit from within.
He’s staring at me with a look of recognition so strong, it throws me.
An image bursts into view—the scorched shell of a tree, black limbs rising up against a barren sky.
Sucked into the image’s dark void, I grasp at the balcony for support.
The tree flickers then sputters out.
I squint up at the chandelier and let out a deep breath. Perhaps a trick of the light. It had to be a trick of the light.
Heart pulsing, I glance back down at the priest. He’s still staring at me with disconcerting familiarity. My aunt is standing close beside him. She beckons me to join their circle with one graceful, outstretched hand, her dark tunic and skirts winking sapphire.
Paige puts her hand on my shoulder, her voice soft and encouraging. “Go ahead, Elloren.”
Feeling rattled, I force one foot in front of the other and focus on the rich, emerald carpeting of the stairs that mutes my footsteps and blessedly keeps me from slipping on my new, slick heels, my hand tight on the shiny railing. The cherrywood steadies me, the source tree solid and strong.
As I step off the last stair, the wide-eyed, appreciative crowd parts, and soon I’m standing before the young priest. The image of the lifeless tree sputters to life once more. Thrown, I blink hard to clear the image, and it rapidly fades to nothing.
There’s something so wrong here. It’s like I’m standing before a deep forest, everyone sure that nothing’s amiss. But a wolf is waiting in the shadows.
I meet the priest’s overpowering stare.
“Elloren,” my aunt beams. Her hand sweeps toward him. “This is Marcus Vogel. He sits on the Mage Council with me and may well be our next High Mage. Priest Vogel, my niece, Elloren Gardner.”
Marcus Vogel reaches out with serpentine grace, takes my hand and leans to kiss it, fascinated curiosity lighting his gaze.
I fight the urge to slink back.
His skin is oddly warm. Almost hot. And he’s looking at me as if he can see clear into the back of my head to the image of the tree still reverberating there.
“Elloren Gardner,” he croons, his voice unexpectedly throaty. There’s a subtle, seductive quality to him that sets off a probing heat deep in my center—like an eerie invasion. I tense myself against it.
Vogel closes his eyes, smiles and takes a deep breath. “Her power. It courses through your veins.” He opens his eyes, his gaze now riveted on my hand. He traces a finger languidly over the skin of it, and an uncomfortable shiver works its way up my spine. Vogel lifts his gaze to mine, eyes intent, his voice a lull. “Can you feel it?”
I’m cast into a troubled confusion. “No,” I force out as I try to unobtrusively tug my hand away. He holds firm.
“Has she been wandtested?” His question to my aunt comes out thick as dark honey.
“Yes, several times,” my aunt assures him. “She’s powerless.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, his unflinching eyes boring down on Aunt Vyvian.
My confident, unflappable aunt visibly wilts under Vogel’s penetrating stare. “Yes...yes, quite.” Aunt Vyvian falters. “Her uncle assured me of it. He had her formally tested again only last year.”
I look to my aunt, astonished by both her cowering behavior and her words. No one wandtested me a year ago. I haven’t been tested since I was a small child.
Why did Uncle Edwin lie?
Vogel’s black void presses into me, warm and relentless, and I inwardly shrink back from it, eyeing his fiery stare with mounting trepidation.
Why does he unnerve me so much when Aunt Vyvian and so many other Mages clearly worship the ground he walks on?
Vogel releases my hand and I pull it back protectively, fingers repeatedly clenching, trying to throw off the disturbing feel of him.
“What a pity,” he laments, reaching up to touch my face with deft, artist’s fingers. I resist the urge to recoil. He tilts his head in question and breathes deeply, as if smelling the air. “And yet...there is something of Carnissa’s essence about her. It’s strong.”
“Ah, yes,” my aunt assents with a wistful smile, “she does have some of Mother in her.” Aunt Vyvian proudly launches into a description of my musical accomplishments, my easy acceptance into University.
Vogel’s half listening to her, his eyes fixed on my hands. “You’re not fasted,” he says to me, the words flat and oddly hard.
Defiance flares, deep in my core. I look straight at him. “Neither are you.”
“Good Heavens, child,” a neatly bearded Council member puts in, a golden Council M pinned to his tunic. “Mage Vogel’s a priest. Of course he’s not fasted.” The Council Mage shakes his head and titters a nervous, apologetic laugh toward Priest Vogel.
Vogel ignores him. “She needs to be well fasted,” he says to my aunt, his eyes tight on mine.
“She will be,” Aunt Vyvian assures him.
Vogel briefly turns to my aunt. “To someone of considerable power.”
She smiles conspiratorially. “Of course, Marcus. She’s under my wing now.”
“Has she met Lukas Grey?”
Aunt Vyvian leans to whisper something into Vogel’s ear, her stiff skirts rustling. The other members of their circle fall into easy conversation with each other.
I barely hear them, distracted by the feel of Marcus Vogel’s penetrating stare.
The sound of a boisterous group entering finally draws my attention away.
Fallon Bane sweeps into the room. She’s surrounded by a throng of handsome military apprentices in slate-gray uniforms, as well as her military guard and a few other officers decked out in soldier black. Orbiting them is a smattering of lovely young women.
But none is more beautiful than Fallon.
If she possessed a gown made of the same fabric as mine, she quickly abandoned it. The lush gown she now wears is a spectacular, glittering affair that flies in screaming defiance of the accepted dress code—scandalously purple on the edge of black, rather than black on the edge of purple. The two military men she’s flanked by possess her same features, stunning eyes and smug grin. They must be Fallon’s brothers—one of them taller, his uniform black, while the other wears military-apprentice gray. And they both bear five stripes of silver on their arms.
Fallon instantly zeroes in on me. She lifts a hand as if taunting me, and sends a spiral of smoke rising up that flashes a rainbow of colors. The crowd erupts into delighted “oohs” and “aahs” as all the attention in the room pivots toward her. The older military men in our circle eye her with wary deliberation. Military apprentices aren’t supposed to use magic unless they have permission—it can be grounds for dismissal from our Mage Guard.
The military commander near my aunt gestures toward the officer beside him with a subtle patting of the air—let it go. My head starts to throb. Apparently Fallon Bane isn’t just powerful. It seems she exists independent of all the usual rules.