“R-Raz?”

Nafala barely raised her voice to call my name, but it still shocked me out of my reverie. The imps had been ordered to keep their mouths shut, and the room had been relatively quiet, broken only by low conversation. Even my brother and sister were keeping the noise to a minimum.

I crossed to her desk, smiling gratefully.

“Thanks for actually listening,” I said quietly. She was the only one so far who remembered to leave off the title.

She smiled back, but it was the dreamy smile of the over-awed, brown eyes wide and glittering. The girl was probably five years my elder, going off the way the others spoke to her, the way she spoke back – yet she was a tiny toy of a woman, barely five feet tall. Not slender, but heavy-looking in all the right areas. The long eyelashes and shapely dark-pink lips added to her overall alluring appearance. She wore her long, near-black hair tied loosely on her left shoulder, a shadowy river cascading down over the mage-robe, spilling over her chest.

“I – er – just vanted to check vot zis means…”

She swung the book around, pointing at a diagram summarising the wasted energies that came as by-products of transdimensional apertures – Nafala was skipping ahead, it seemed – but I answered her in a state of numbness, suddenly unable to focus my thoughts.

The girl’s shyness was a contradiction. The blush lighting up the pale cheeks. The eyes that couldn’t seem to rest in one place longer than a second.

Her voice. So similar.

The enchantment. The fake attraction that’d felt so real, attraction I’d reciprocated in my desperate, wilful naivety…

Emrelet…

“I don’t even know you, sorcerer! And you do not know me!”

I looked down at the floor, trying to stop my eyes from watering, cutting off whatever rambling sentence was falling in chunks from my tongue.

“Raz?” Nafala murmured.

“Raz, are you okay?” That was Jaid from across the room – she sounded unconcerned, but must’ve been keeping an eye on me all the same.

I looked up, forcing myself to smile brightly. “I’m fine. I’m – I’ll be right back. Everyone, keep working.”

I left the room, wiping my eyes on my sleeve and blinking as soon as I was out of sight. Heading up the ladder-like stair into the private sections of the tower I’d barely even glimpsed, I went out onto a balcony and stood there with my elbows and forearms on the rail, leaning over and gazing down at the glimmering sea.

She was out there, somewhere, platinum hair gleaming like the sunlit waves. Saving lives. Ending lives. Channelling the lightning.

I didn’t know whether I loved her or hated her, but I knew I wouldn’t be where I was, who I was, without her.

I sighed. It was a nice, rainless day, the clouds lying low like a mist upon the water, leaving the sky clear and sapphire-blue, giving the lie to Telior’s ugliness. The wind was cold, but not biting. As much as I’d cursed myself for bringing Wyrda with me across Northril, the spring also came in our wake, it seemed, even to the north of the world.

The little wooden tower I’d been granted for my own was more than I could’ve ever hoped for. I’d been in Telior a little over twenty-four hours, and already I had more going for me than in a decade and a half in Mund. It was situated just opposite the High Hall, one of the structures that would help obscure the palace’s pillars when viewed from the vantage of a boat in the bay. As such we would be afforded the best protections, here, with guards milling about all day and night in the street right outside. I wasn’t naive enough to believe it was all altruism, though. King Deymar surely wanted to keep a close eye on me – and that was understandable. He’d been more than magnanimous with his ‘captive’ magician.

I drew a deep breath of the cold salty air, then headed back inside, feeling miles better for some reason. I descended back to the ground floor, and in the corridor outside the makeshift classroom, I ran into Prince Lathenskar, flanked by a pair of ugly knights.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Your Highness?” I inclined my head respectfully, regarding him with some confusion.

“Lord Sorcerer.” He inclined his back, his eyes very serious, his gaze intense.

I felt my eyebrow raise, but I was hardly going to try to correct him.

“My fazzer vould speak viz you. Ze Lord Vizard, Finfaltik, is ready to meet you.”

“And he sent you on messenger duty because…?”

The serious expression softened, just a whit. “I vould speak viz your sister – and your brozzer, of course, if zis vould not offend.”

I ducked my head. “Go ahead, I’m sure they’re dying to see you again.”

“Vot is zis?” He furrowed his brow. “Zey are dying, in seeing me?”

“I mean, erm –“

One of the knights spat something in Telese, cutting me off.

“Ah, I see.” The prince’s lips twitched in a slight, self-deprecatory smile. “Dying, indeed.”

I looked from him to the glowering knights (who clearly understood more Mundic than they were willing to actually use), then back again to the prince.

Did the boy know? That he was destined to wed a sorcerer’s sister? If he did, it didn’t look like he’d be sharing it with the ‘highborn’ thugs following him around.

I dismissed the class, and my pupils left the room babbling with at least some excitement in their incomprehensible voices. It was an odd feeling, watching them filing out of the room at my command, knowing that every single one of them was older than me, probably wiser than me in many ways – yet I was the master here, even amongst strangers.

Lathenskar, ‘Shirya’ and ‘Vintilar’ went ahead. The prince was holding my sister gently by the elbow in a very un-childlike move, as they ascended the stairs before the pillars and Wyrda’s open maw. With his free hand he was pointing to the statue of Ismethyl and swinging it like he wielded an invisible sword; he was surely regaling them with some tale from Telese myth, the story of one of his legendary ancestors.

I was happy to let them go ahead, and hung back with the knights, enjoying the way my immediate presence seemed to set their teeth on edge. I couldn’t sense it, but I could imagine it: the way their eyes must’ve kept shifting to glare at me – they were just behind me on my left and right, and I wouldn’t display any weakness by glancing back at either of them. I wore a smile on my face, knowing their distaste at escorting someone like me, knowing it would only increase their frustration to see me beaming when they caught my profile. Few shared King Deymar’s apparent enthusiasm for progressive sorcery.

Within a few minutes I was walking into the throne room, the prince and the twins nowhere to be seen – they were off playing somewhere together below the stronghold again, I could tell from their shields. I heard the knights muttering in their own tongue to one another as soon as they broke off in the doorway. I walked alone towards the throne, feeling the pleasant sea breeze coming in through the huge window behind me.

Orcan Finfaltik was there, standing tall and erect before the king, and he was nothing like I’d expected. For some reason when I’d heard the wizard was old, my mind had painted the image of a wizened, shrunken man, all scholar, no soldier. But for all his age – there was no way he was a day younger than seventy-five – he seemed strong, exuding an aura of confidence and power. Rather than a lined face, time had smoothed his brow and jowls, but his skin was almost mottled with spots and blemishes. He wore no whiskers and had shaved his head – the only white hairs on him were mixed with the black, in his eyebrows. His mage-robe was cut in the Telese fashion like those of the Night Order, shorter than their Mundic parallels and with less-spacious sleeves. But this one was dazzling with its patterns of green stones and glass, sewn like wave-surf into the fabrics; a spray of tourmaline, emerald, jade shimmering here and there across the breast and shoulder.

His gaze was less than welcoming, all of winter’s chill still lingering there in the dark-blue, icy irises. He was armed with the disapproving expression only the elderly could perfect, and he lashed me with it, up and down.

I lashed him back with a commensurate broadening of my smile. My shield’s boundary slipped over him without result. As much as Orcan seemed to loathe me before we even exchanged our first words, he didn’t want to harm me.

“Your Majesty.” I gave my slight bow, keeping my eyes on his wizard. “I received your summons.”

“Indeed. Lord Sorcerer – Raz –“ King Deymar was smiling faintly “– this is the Lord Wizard, Orcan Finfaltik, through whose power our city has endured these last years. I would have the two of you be friends.”

“Or you should not have this warlock at all,” Orcan said haughtily, his Mundic flawless.

“Indeed,” Deymar rumbled ominously – but when I looked over at him, the king gave me a surreptitious wink, cracked the briefest smile.

I returned my focus to the arch-wizard. I had to indulge my elder, whether I thought I knew better or not.

“Lord Orcan,” I said in my smoothest voice, trying to walk the line of subservience and equality by using his title and his forename. “I can only hope I can impress you, given time. What his Majesty has bestowed on me – I neither looked nor asked for it. But I hope to earn it.” Perhaps I could change the topic? “In fact, I’ve already engaged the Night Order in their first lesson. I hope that between our students – between us – we can outfit Telior towards a brighter future.”

The eyes lost none of their iciness, but the scowl wavered.

“What do you want, boy?” he groaned at last. “Money? Fame? Power? Why are you here?”

Money. Fame. Power. I had them. I lost them. I gave them up.

For this.

I looked past him at his king.

And I don’t even regret it.

“I’m here, because it’s home.” Slowly, stiffly, I performed the proper, low bow of a vassal before his liege-lord. “Because I have made up my mind. I’m staying. And if by my magic, my service, Telior can prosper – gods willing, so be it…

“My king.”