Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Only when the luminist has passed do I exhale and drop my hand, now damp with Maskios’s breath. He stares at me in the dark, and that oddly ticklish shiver returns.
I hold his gaze. “He and I don’t see eye to eye. If he sees me, he’ll tell Father.”
We emerge from behind the brazier to tend to a malnourished child covered in rashy rings.
“Is it plague?” her mother asks, clutching her close. “Is she going to—”
I take the girl’s pulse. “It does look fearsome, but I’ve seen this before.” I speak gently to the child. “Did you play in the woods? Did you touch a plant that looks like strawberry vine?”
She nods. I smile. Maskios watches closely.
“She’s touched thistleweed,” I murmur. “Harmless. It’ll fade on its own eventually. But . . .”
I pour a spell into her skin. Within minutes, the rash fades.
It’s past midnight when I heal the last person in the line. My head is spinning from overexertion, my limbs heavy. Still, I keep upright, mostly because Maskios is watching. I pull myself up the icy path toward the street.
The cobblestones blur. The lights from nearby houses shimmer.
And then I tip . . .
Into strong arms. Again.
I bite back a few self-chastising words and shiver. “Windy.”
“Let’s sit a moment.”
We perch on the bridge wall beneath a sky dusted with stars. Across the canal, the dome of the royal luminarium glows with magic. I grimace at the sight, but bow.
Maskios studies me. “The way you were with the luminist, I thought you didn’t care about the Arcane Sovereign.”
I shrug. “I distrust the idea that if we follow linea rules we’re reborn as linea, and I have definitely—repeatedly and shamelessly—broken linea rules. Bowing seems redundant. And yet . . . just in case.”
Maskios nods slowly. “I’ve told myself again and again not to do certain things. And yet, I keep doing them anyway. Telling myself no seems pointless, but still. I keep trying. And failing.”
I smile faintly. “Are you trying and failing to reform your criminal ways?”
“As successfully as you are.”
I laugh. “I wish I could practice properly. As a vitalian. There’s so much I don’t know, so many spells I’ve only heard about, and even more I haven’t.” The Arcane Sovereign himself must have it in for me up in the heavens.
The luminist’s bell sounds again ahead. And approaching fast.
I lurch off the wall and bolt, slipping and sliding down the icy arch toward the shadows of the side streets.
Small flashes of my magic light up the leaves in the tree I’ve climbed. “Take this one, Akilah.”
“Must we really collect syrup here? There are trees in the city.”
“Not this kind. This tree is rare. It makes the best taffy.”
“Great. We’re not just pilfering royal syrup, we’re pilfering precious royal syrup. Have you not heard the phrase ‘off with his head’?”
“Look at all those stains! That’s years of syrup gone to waste. Years of delicious taffy that never came into existence.”
“You and your taffy!”
“Let the whole world know: I love taffy!”
“The difference between syrups is barely noticeable. Are you sure you didn’t come back here for . . . other reasons?”
“Ha!”
A deep voice rumbles from below, startling me. “You love taffy more than life?”
Akilah yelps. I lose my balance and tumble.
I just manage to plant a foot on a broad shoulder and launch myself back onto the branch. “Arcane Sovereign!” I gasp, clutching the trunk.
I peer around. And nearly fall again.
Those lips pressed tight. That unimpressed stare at the fresh boot print now decorating his spotless cloak.
My breath catches.
He steers his horse a step closer, just enough to flick my nose with a single finger.
“Maskios!” I wince-laugh. “We meet again.”
“Not my name.”
“Who are you then?” I hang further off the branch. “Are you really a criminal?”
He tries to flick me again, but I swing out of reach.
“You can call me . . . Calix Solin,” he says.
“Sure, Maskios. I’ll do that.”
He glares. “I travel here a few times a year to study. From Hinsard.”
“A scholar from Hinsard.” I reach for one of his braids, lift it, and breathe in the scent of magic—just like I did the first time. And the second. The scent fascinates me. I want to . . . understand.
“Why hide your true appearance, then?”
Calix regrips his reins, meeting my gaze head-on. “I have trouble with unwanted attention. My magnetic beauty becomes problematic. Like Skeldars.”
I laugh and drop the braid. “I’m part Skeldar. Does that mean I have magnetic beauty?”
Calix jerks his horse back a step and looks away.
I glance up at Akilah. “What do you think? Am I handsome?”
“No,” she says serenely. “You’re extremely pretty.”
I murmur, “Why don’t I have trouble with unwanted attention?”
She tosses down the answer without hesitation. “You scare all the girls off by ‘testing’ spells on me in front of them. They’re afraid of their own faces coming to ruin.”