Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Chapter Eighteen
Haide
The Flying Grounds are nothing like the rest of Rathe U. There are no polished stone walkways or pristine enchanted gardens meant to impress visiting royals. No ancient sculpture or scripture meant to make one gifted feel more inferior than the other. No distinction based on where they came from, the family names that built their realm, or the ones who merely exist within it. I may be from the island, but even there it was easy to see the hierarchies in the world of magic.
There is a food chain in every area: animal, human, and gifted alike.
Out here, the land is raw and sprawling, a wide circular basin carved into the hillside with cliffs rising on all sides. High enough for a dragon to launch. Low enough for a Fae to fall without dying when they’re still learning how to use their wings. Probably.
The afternoon sun spills through the canopy in fractured beams, catching on the floating practice rings that drift lazily across the field like oversized halos. Grassy patches give way to dark, scorched dirt in places where dragon fire has kissed the ground, leaving spirals of blackened ash curling like old scars. Farther out, massive stone perches jut from the terrain, smooth from centuries of scaled bodies landing and leaping again.
It’s huge, open, humming faintly with leftover magic—like every creature that’s ever flown here left behind a piece of itself.
I like it.
It feels honest. Untamed.
Not suffocating with rules, etiquette, or all the shit the rest of the university shoves down your throat the second you blink at the wrong noble.
And best of all.
It’s empty.
Finally, an entire damn space to myself. No classmates pretending not to stare; no professors watching me like I might sprout fangs and rip someone’s spine out. Honestly, I’d be grateful for some fangs right about now. At least that meant there was something under this skin of mine, as Creed so dickishly put it.
I drop into a patch of grass near one of the stone perches and pull out my codex. The leather cover warms instantly under my palm, as if greeting—or warning—me. Or maybe just trying to look impressive so I don’t set it on fire like I did the last training dummy.
“Let’s see if there’s anything worth a damn today,” I mutter, flipping it open. The pages flutter on their own, stopping somewhere near the middle where new spells shimmer faintly along the vellum, as if the ink hasn’t decided whether it wants to stay or run.
SpellChemy has been…weird.
Useful, sure, but weird.
Every time I leave that class, something inside me rattles loose and the codex shifts to match whatever new knowledge I’m taught. After that first day in SpellChemy, the book had maybe half a dozen spells. Now? It’s filling itself faster than I can keep up. Words rearranging, diagrams redrawn, margins scribbling with new instructions that were never there before.
I drag a finger down the latest section.
Binding.
Shielding.
Elemental Manipulation—fire, water, wind, stone.
I pause there, staring at the page.
Fire.
My palm tingles, a phantom echo of the heat that sparked there in class. Warm enough to notice, not enough to understand. I can’t decide if I like it or if it unnerves me. Maybe both. A symbol swirls below—a thread of script that curves into something almost serpentine, like flame curling through scales.
It’s the first fire-related spell that’s appeared since that first day. This one a focusing spell: a way to take raw heat and give it shape. Give it purpose.
That…actually makes sense.
The professor’s voice nudges the back of my mind: magic isn’t just power, Haide, it’s precision.
A curl of anticipation winds through me, low and warm.
I roll my shoulders back and read the script, slower this time, letting the diagram settle into my mind, feeling for anything inside me that might respond. Nothing dramatic happens. No burst of flame or explosion. But my palms warm just the slightest, a simmer beneath the skin, like something alive is turning over in its sleep and stretching its claws.
“Okay…” I breathe, dragging the heat up toward my fingertips, imagining it shaping into the pattern the spell wants from me. “Let’s try—”
A prickle runs down the back of my neck.
I freeze, eyes lifting and flicking across the grounds.
It’s empty, but the sensation of being watched doesn’t fade. It fucking tightens, circles like a predator’s breath against the back of my skull.
I turn slowly, ready to tear someone’s face off, but there’s no one there. Nothing but the perches and a distant bite of wind.
I shake it off, forcing my shoulders down. “Paranoid much,” I mutter, returning to the diagram despite knowing it’s pointless.
How can I be precise if I can’t give all my focus?
Taking a deep breath, my pulse steadies. The heat flickers again along my palm, climbing toward my knuckles, and I focus on imposing the shape the spell wants on the delicate thread of control that—