It took me a few seconds to parse out what he meant from the stream of images and emotions, but I eventually got it.

  The wand was a Fae artifact, and it held fifteen darts of force. Each dart was weak—even against an undefended opponent, it would be less effective than a throwing knife, let alone a bullet or a proper force bolt.

  But it had two strong advantages. First, it could fire as a swarm. I actually thought I may be able to create an artifact that did something like that on its own—I’d seen the king and Osheen both do something like that.

  The tracking component, though. It used Fae magic that was complicated, mixing fae runes that I knew with strange knots and vines of silver and bright yellow in a pattern that gave me a distinct impression of autumnal leaves drifting on the wind. It was so distinctly Fae magic that I wasn’t sure I could replicate it without a powerful, unbonded source of Fae magic and a druid to help me, and even then, I was certain I’d need to be near an open gateway to the Fae Sovereignties.

  That may still be worth it, but it’d definitely be a project I’d address when and if I needed it.

  I glanced at the scroll. Silver, of course, and sealed with a red wax seal. I’d draft out a letter and send it to Draven’s estate when we got back to Paerús. I’d try and see if I could extract some value from him for it, but I had an idea that being paid twice wasn’t very likely. The Silver Queen may even have told Draven that I was going to give him one of her owls already.

  He’d definitely have figured out that she’d use it to spy on him, he wasn’t stupid, but even what little we did get could be valuable.

  I glanced down at the wand again. It would be a helpful tool. I had no doubt that other enchanters, like George Heenling, would be able to afford a dozen things like it—in his first year, he’d had the most powerful force armor that I’d ever seen, after all.

  They’d be able to send him Aura storage crystals in spades, useful spells to build, and detailed explanations and tutors. I had no doubt he’d have been receiving tutoring over the summer as well, from home, rather than Travis. Given his father, he may even have been tutored by an Archmage.

  But… I couldn’t control that. I could only control myself.

  I headed over to Victoria’s room with the books on the Aura inductors and capacitors, for us to discuss. I wasn’t entirely there, far more nervous about having a talk with Osheen than I was about enchanting.

  When Osheen did eventually wake up and come into the hotel room with me, he must have been able to read my nervous energy because he raised an eyebrow almost as soon as he saw me.

  “Evan? You alright?”

  I nodded and looked at Victoria.

  “I need a moment with him. Mind if I come back in a bit?”

  “Sure,” she responded.

  I pulled Osheen into our room, then locked the door. I wish I’d had a ward to protect us, but I wasn’t a good wardcrafter, so I’d have to make do with the building’s basic privacy wards.

  “We need to talk. Remember how I said that I’d try to see if I could tell you about things?”

  He nodded, and I took a deep breath and tried to marshal my thoughts into an orderly sequence. First, I needed to make sure he wouldn’t talk about it.

  “I need you to make a compact with me that if you don’t accept my proposition at the end of the conversation, or if you fail the test, then you’ll never communicate anything that I tell you in this conversation or anything even remotely related to it to anybody other than me.”

  He studied me seriously, then he slowly nodded.

  “Alright.”

  He held out his hand and lit up his aura. I took his hand and lit mine up as well.

  “By this oath, bound by the power of our Aura…” I intoned.

  Once the compact was done, I took in a deep breath.

  “Alright. So. Have you ever heard of the Ligature?” I asked. I didn’t think he would have—it’d be a terrible secret society if most of the nobility knew about it.

  Osheen frowned, biting his lip as if thinking, then shook his head.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, it’s an international secret society dedicated to the spread of magical knowledge. I’m a member. As is Finnalir’s mother. And at least one other person in Hallowbrooke as well.”

  He nodded slowly, processing as I explained the books we hid in libraries, the mission I was on now, and how the society worked with the Silver Queen.

  It felt like pulling a weight off my chest. I hadn’t even realized how much the secrets were weighing me down until they were gone.

  “So, I have a test from the Silver Queen to see if you’re suitable. She’ll rifle through your mind and memories, and then… if you want to join, and if she agrees, then I’ll give you this”—I held up the knot as I wound down my explanation—“and you’ll become a member.”

  Osheen took a deep breath and let out a low, rumbling laugh.

  “Well, that does explain some things about how you managed to contact a reclusive Fae Court twice,” he said. “It also explains a lot of other things. House Elide has been trying to ferret out whoever was planting glyph grimoires and banned books for years. Even my own house has had a few planted in it—I had an illegal political treatise appear on my shelf when I was a teenager. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that a lot of noble kids had something like that happen. It was this… Ligature?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know for sure, of course, but… it seems likely to me. I don’t know who else would do it. I have a suspicion they also helped with getting the laws on homosexuality passed through the senate and parliament, just based on the oaths I swore.”

  “What oaths were those?” he asked.

  It wasn’t a strain to remember them. The compact was still in the back of my mind, bound there by my Aura.

  “I swore to not knowingly harm a member of the Ligature. To attempt to further the goals of equality between all peoples and to further the access to knowledge and magic. Not to speak of or reveal information about the Ligature to anyone who is not a member or prospective member without the consent of at least one other member of the Ligature.”

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” I responded. “They seem to have some structure—I report to someone, after all—but by and large, they seem to value the judgment and choices of their members more than anything.”

  Osheen nodded seriously, then sat there, thinking. He took several minutes to think, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to pressure him.

  “Alright,” he finally said. “Give me the test.”

  I raised my palm, marked with the Silver Queen’s power, and ran some Aura into it. It activated with a flash, then evaporated off my skin.

  Power surged out, and I saw Osheen’s eyes glaze over. There were several long seconds as she rifled through his memories, and I felt bad. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and I remembered it still.

  Finally, there was a pulse of slow, grudging acceptance from the power, and it faded.

  “That… was gross,” Osheen said, shaking his head as if to clear water out of his hair.

  “It does feel a bit invasive,” I admitted. “But… you passed. If you want, you can become a member of the Ligature.”

  Osheen held out his hand for the knot in response.

  As we left our rooms, I felt much lighter. There was a spring in my step.

  Osheen had joined. I’d known he would, of course, but it was still a relief. I’d half expected the Silver Queen to fail him, just to mess with me, but… she hadn’t.

  Osheen seemed quiet but not upset. Rather, he felt steady. I felt the quiet embers of determination burning in him—ones that I’d only seen a few times, when he was at his most serious.

  I wondered if he’d needed something like this. Most of his life, he’d had a goal of improving our country.

  But then he’d lost his chance to do that. He had to have felt lost like a man adrift at sea.

  But now, he had something to focus on. It wasn’t specific, not as concrete as his previous plan to help by taking a noble position, but it was still better than a generic goal of getting stronger.

  I smiled. Maybe letting him into the Ligature had taken a weight off his shoulders, just as much as it had mine.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Leaving Zheren

  When we arrived back in Victoria’s room, she was packing her things, and to my surprise, Finnalir was there. Emilia wasn’t, though.

  That was strange. It was the first time I’d seen them apart. I hoped everything was okay.

  “Hey,” Finnalir greeted as we entered the room. “Perfect, I’d been hoping to talk to you two.”

  I tensed at that. I didn’t think I had it in me to do another high-stakes negotiation. I was getting exhausted with them. It felt like I’d bounced from one to another, with only a few days of leisure in between.

  “Nothing bad,” Finnalir said with a raised hand. “Emilia has decided to stay here with me. I’m pretty much done at Yesgol anyways, and I think I’m going to continue my education at one of our colleges. Learning magic was fun, but I need to learn a lot more about law if I’m going to follow in Mom’s footsteps. Emilia’s going to become a personal guard for me.”

  That was hardly surprising, but I didn’t understand why he was telling us.

  “We’ll escort you to the border, but we’re not crossing back over,” Finnalir continued.

  I nodded, as did Osheen and Victoria.

  “If you ever decide that you want to come back,” Finnalir said, after a pause, “you’re welcome. I know we don’t have any solid lines of communication with Paerús, but we do sweep the border for refugees every few days. We have systems in place.”

  Refugees? From Paerús?

  After a few seconds, I supposed I could understand it.

  I’d been lucky in that Aldvarri had adopted me. But if I’d gone to a workhouse? Worse than that, I knew the horror stories about those who inherited strong debt from their dead parents.

  Whomever mine had been, they’d been kind enough to abandon me in an orphanage without identification. Otherwise, I may have inherited their debt. I wondered if that was why they’d done it. Better an orphan in a workhouse than a non-orphan in a workhouse facing debtors’ prison if they couldn’t pay off their parent’s debt.

  “Thank you,” Osheen said, crossing the room to shake Finnalir’s hand. “We may take you up on that deal sometime.”

  Finnalir gave a wry smile but simply nodded.

  The next morning, we headed out on the hike out of town, towards the Grande Ward. Finnalir and Emilia escorted Victoria, Osheen, and me, but there was an air of somberness as we headed back.

  We said our goodbyes and stepped through the ward. I was upset, but not so upset as to not notice that the ward was one-directional. That was interesting… A nationwide ward allowing anyone to get out, but nobody to get in?

  As we hiked down the mountain, towards the military town not far from Paerús’s side of the border, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The last time we’d passed through, we’d been attacked, after all.

  The view from the top of the mountain, facing down on Paerús was beautiful, the land spread out beneath us, and I could see out for at least a hundred miles, if not more. It was pretty, but I was so nervous that I could barely appreciate it.

  Osheen noticed my nervous energy and took my hand, gently squeezing it. I smiled and squeezed his hand back.

  There was nobody but us here.

  Probably.

  I didn’t want to stop the group from hiking, so I couldn’t take the time to sketch out a proper divination spell in the snow, but…

  I flicked open my third eye.

  And froze.

  From our vantage point atop the mountain, I could see a good third of Paerús spread out below us. But under my third eye, I didn’t see the beauty anymore.

  I couldn’t even really interpret what I was seeing until Oracle began to piece it together with me, adding his expertise in reading ambient Aura.

  But, where Zheren’s magic had been wild, shifting like currents of wind, the magic in Paerús looked completely different.

  Off in the distance, I could see at least half a dozen different… spires, for lack of a better word. Points where the ambient Aura was so thick and strong that it glowed, towering in the sky like a series of mountains.

  Some were larger than others, but none could have been smaller than a house to be visible this far off.

  And the rest of the ambient Aura? Rather than swirling around freely, it was pulled down the mountain.

  Towards those immense pillars of ambient Aura.

  My breath hitched as I stared out over the landscape. Osheen squeezed my hand tightly and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

  “Do you see… it?” he asked.

  “The ambient Aura?” I responded. “What… what’s wrong with it?”

  Victoria glanced back at us, having pulled ahead when I’d stopped dead at the sight, and Osheen coughed.

  “Evan, let’s talk later, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said with a nod, still in a daze.

  Unfortunately for me, Osheen and I didn’t get a chance to talk about it until we were all the way home in Yesgol again.

  That was quite unfortunate for me because I spent much of the trip back with my third eye open, doing what I could to note down the pillars of Aura. There was one out in the wilderness that the train passed by, but it was too far away for me to see exactly what it was.

  Around Hallowbrooke, however, the pillar of Aura was massive. If the ones I had seen in the distance were buildings, this was a mountain. It stretched from the entrance of the city, all the way through the forest, through and past Yesgol, and into the forest beyond, all the way to the far-off mountains. It wasn’t quite blinding, but it was distracting—like looking at the world through a thick pair of glasses.

  But, when we were finally back in our room, unpacking from the trip, Osheen broached the topic of ambient Aura once again.

  “So,” Osheen started as he stuffed one of his shirts into his drawer. I made a face at his mistreatment of the poor shirt, and he stuck out his tongue in response.

  “So,” he started for a second time. “You saw the ambient Aura of Paerús?”

  I nodded, but when he didn’t respond, I realized he probably needed me to explain more.

  “There are… pillars, for lack of a better word, of ambient Aura that stretch into the sky. They seem to work by drawing in ambient Aura from the world around them to concentrate it there. It’s nothing like Zheren’s ambient Aura. If anything, it looks… artificial? Is this what that oath thing was about? Can you explain that now?”

  I glanced at Osheen to see if I was on base with my suggestion. He looked impassive, then closed his eyes.

  He must be debating with himself, I figured, and testing the oath that he was bound to, in order to see if it shifted when he spoke about… whatever he wanted to talk about. It was what I would have done in his case, at the very least.

  “It is,” he said after a long moment, though he didn’t open his eyes yet. “That is a secret of the nobility, and it’s kept through a series of mind mages, assassinations, and oaths. Anyone who figures it out or is close to figuring it out is made to swear a compact to reveal nothing to anyone who isn’t in on the secret.”

  So, that was why he had made me swear an oath the moment I’d found out. Oaths were useful tools, but his must have had a loophole. Then again, if he’d sworn it before he’d pissed off his father, his father probably had believed that he’d swear me to silence.

  “Do you know how someone’s Aura awakens?” he asked.

  I blinked, confused about the sudden change in topic.

  “It’s genetic and random, isn’t it?” I asked. That was why there were so many mage families and nobility, after all.

  “No,” he said. “This is a bit of an open secret, so I haven’t been sworn to not talk about it the way I have about the ambient Aura manipulation that the nobility does. It used to be more closely guarded, but someone leaked it about seventy-five years ago. Nowadays, the threat has more to do with someone putting this together with the knowledge about ambient Aura.”

  He took a breath.

  “No, the way that Aura develops in a person is just the same as in a plant, a stone, or anything else. Bodies grow, and as they grow, they take in traces of magic from everything around them—stray magic runoff from spells, leakage from wards and magic items, ambient Aura, everything. If they manage to take in enough to concentrate it before they finish developing, then they’ll manifest into a full connection. An Aura. A proper one. Children of mages tend to be mages due to their heightened exposure to magic, magic items, and other things.”

  Other things…

  My eyes widened.

  “The pillars of ambient Aura. They’re not random spots. They’re noble houses. You mentioned noble houses export the majority of inherently magical components. That’s not just because they have a monopoly. The areas of intense Aura are the only spots where those can grow with any degree of regularity,” I said. “Others can awaken them, but it’s a lot less common, and a lot weaker.”

  “Yes,” Osheen responded. “Or at least, that’s a large part of it.”

  That would explain why the mages in Zheren were so much more common but also so much… weaker. Most were stronger than I was, but I hadn’t seen many with the strength that Osheen, Sarai, or Lyn had displayed.

  Lyn… She used to sneak onto the noble estate of the Chantal family. That may have been why she awoke such a strong Aura, compared to me.

  I wondered if the luck armor spell that Aldvarri had kept hidden had contributed to my own development. It could have, but it was so small that it may not have either. It wasn’t like my Aura was especially large.

  “How?” I asked.

  Osheen stayed quiet, but his mouth twisted in disgust.

  He couldn’t tell me everything, then.

  Then, I put something together and took in a sharp breath. Osheen looked at me in confusion.

  “Archmage Zachary Dormer has protested against the system as it is right now, hasn’t he?” I asked.

 

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