Beneath the Wards
The summons arrived the following morning.
Additional affinity evaluation. Lower ward laboratory. Attendance required.
Aurelia read it twice.
The seal was genuine.
So was Voss’s authorization mark.
Nia leaned over her shoulder.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s an official request.”
“Official requests have murdered plenty of people.”
Azalea took the paper.
“What time?”
“In twenty minutes.”
Theo frowned.
“Voss is in a council meeting.”
Aurelia looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“Thorne cancelled our practical because he was attending it.”
Silence settled.
Nia reached for her boots.
“Wonderful. A trap with paperwork.”
* * *
They did not go to the laboratory.
They went to Thorne.
Or tried.
His office was empty.
So was Voss’s.
The administrative clerk informed them that the meeting had been moved.
“To where?” Aurelia asked.
“I’m not permitted to disclose—”
Azalea placed the summons on the desk.
“Then find someone who can.”
The clerk looked at the royal crest on her uniform.
For once, Azalea used it without apology.
While he hurried away, Aurelia felt a sudden cold pressure in her wrist.
The bracelet tightened.
Not physically.
Magically.
She caught the edge of the desk.
Azalea turned.
“Auri?”
“The lower wards.”
Something was drawing against her awareness.
A tug she had felt before.
But stronger.
Then a bell sounded.
Not the academy bell.
An alarm.
Through the window, the training court shimmered.
A student fell.
Then another.
Theo was moving before anyone spoke.
* * *
The lower court’s protective dome had turned gray.
Students pressed against its inside edge.
The exits would not open.
Aurelia reached the boundary and stopped.
Beneath the ground, she felt four channels.
Earth.
Water.
Air.
Fire.
Empty pathways waiting to be filled.
Her stomach dropped.
“The assessment,” she whispered.
Nia looked at her.
“What?”
“It wasn’t measuring me.”
The cracked basin.
The redirected force.
The symbols.
“It was learning how I respond.”
Azalea went pale.
Beyond the dome, a young girl slid to her knees.
Theo struck the barrier with a controlled defensive pulse.
It absorbed the force.
Gray light deepened.
“Don’t,” Aurelia said.
He stopped immediately.
“It feeds on magic.”
Cassian arrived with two security students.
He took one look at Aurelia’s face.
“What do you need?”
No argument.
No command.
She pointed.
“Clear everyone away from the boundary. Find Thorne. Nobody casts into it.”
He turned and gave the orders.
Then Aurelia heard Orlan.
“Miss Moretti.”
The deputy provost stood beneath the covered passage.
His dark robe was immaculate.
“You received my summons.”
Aurelia faced him.
“You forged Voss’s authorization.”
“Borrowed. Temporarily.”
Nia’s hand moved toward the copper cuff at her wrist.
Orlan noticed.
“I wouldn’t.”
Inside the dome, the kneeling student cried out.
Aurelia’s chest tightened.
“What do you want?”
“Cooperation.”
He looked toward Azalea.
“Both of you.”
Theo stepped closer to her.
Orlan smiled.
“The old records were regrettably incomplete. Your assessment supplied useful detail.”
“You hurt students,” Azalea said.
“I created conditions that encouraged an accurate response.”
Aurelia felt sick.
He had expected her to save them.
He was expecting it now.
“What happens when I fill the channels?” she asked.
Orlan’s smile faded.
So she had understood correctly.
The structure would take whatever she supplied.
And transfer it.
To him.
* * *
A shadow moved behind Orlan.
Cassian.
Aurelia kept her eyes forward.
“Your design has a flaw.”
Orlan tilted his head.
“Does it?”
“You built it for one source.”
Azalea’s fingers brushed hers.
Their bond opened.
Warmth.
Fear.
Trust.
Aurelia did not send words.
She sent the feeling of standing firm beneath a river’s pull.
Azalea understood.
Her wolf rose.
White fur swept over her arms, then her shoulders. Her academy shift-clasp flared, drawing the warded uniform and her jewelry safely into its keeping. A moment later, a great white wolf stood beside Aurelia, eyes bright as winter moonlight. She was larger than most of the wolves Aurelia had seen at royal gatherings, her paws steady on the trembling stones. Light gathered along her coat without hiding the powerful body beneath it.
The court went silent.
Aurelia placed one hand against her sister’s back.
The difference was immediate.
Her magic had always felt immense, difficult to divide without strain.
Now it settled.
Not smaller.
Supported.
Aurelia spread her fingers through the thick white fur. She remembered those same fingers parting Azalea’s hair before the supper, her sister complaining that she was pulling, both of them laughing. The familiarity steadied her more than any prophecy could. This was Azalea. They had been finding their way back to each other all their lives.
Orlan stepped forward.
“That is extraordinary.”
Cassian caught his wrist from behind.
The deputy provost twisted.
A dark pulse struck Cassian’s shoulder.
He hit the stones.
Theo raised a shield between them.
“Now!” he shouted.
Aurelia knelt.
She did not fill the channels.
She called the earth beneath them.
Stone remembered pressure.
Cracks.
Old foundations.
She traced the ward’s physical anchors and found the points where metal had been driven into living rock.
Water seeped through the soil.
Air pressed into the openings.
A small, fierce heat expanded the buried metal.
Aurelia pulled.
The first anchor tore free.
Pain drove through her temples.
Azalea leaned against her.
Steady.
The second anchor broke.
Then the third.
Inside the dome, students stumbled as the pressure changed.
Orlan shouted something.
Nia’s copper cuff snapped open.
A bright net struck him across the shoulders.
He staggered.
“Prototype,” she said through clenched teeth. “Please don’t embarrass me.”
The fourth anchor held.
Aurelia’s vision blurred.
Too deep.
Too much stone.
She could force it.
She could also tear the court apart.
Her grandfather’s words returned.
Being capable does not make you inexhaustible.
“Theo,” she gasped. “Under the east post. Brace it.”
His shield slid into the ground.
“Cassian. The exposed rod.”
Cassian was already rising.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
He gripped the rod with both hands.
“On your word.”
Aurelia looked at Azalea.
Her sister’s eyes held hers.
“Now.”
Gold light ran beneath the skin of Aurelia’s wrists. Her shadow stretched across the stones, edged by the silver radiance gathering around Azalea. The courtyard smelled of split earth and rain driven out of hot metal. Aurelia held her sister’s presence close and gave the four elements one precise, final instruction.
Metal screamed.
The anchor came free.
The dome vanished.
Sound rushed back into the court.
Crying.
Footsteps.
A student calling for a healer.
Aurelia let go.
Her knees struck stone.
Azalea shifted back beside her and caught her before she fell.
* * *
By the time Thorne arrived, Orlan was bound inside Nia’s smoking net.
The King came moments later.
Aurelia saw him through a haze of exhaustion.
He looked first toward Azalea.
Then immediately toward her.
Both.
She noticed.
She wished she didn’t need to.
Voss knelt.
“Stay awake.”
“I am.”
“Convincingly, please.”
Aurelia tried to smile.
Across the court, Cassian stood while a healer examined his shoulder.
He was watching her.
She looked away first.
Not because she hated him.
That would have been simpler.
Because he had listened when it mattered, and she did not yet know where to put that beside everything else.
Azalea pressed her forehead to Aurelia’s.
“We did it.”
Aurelia closed her eyes.
“Don’t tell Grandfather I nearly split the foundations.”
“He’ll know.”
“He always knows.”
Azalea laughed shakily.
Then Thorne’s voice cut across the court.
“What is this?”
He stood beside the opened maintenance chamber.
Inside lay four metal conduits.
And a fifth.
Smaller.
Newly installed.
Voss went still.
Orlan lifted his head.
For the first time, his expression showed genuine fear.
“That,” he said, “isn’t mine.”
Aurelia opened her eyes.
From somewhere beneath Blackhawk, something answered the broken wards.
Three slow knocks.
Too deep to come from the maintenance chamber.
Too deliberate to be settling stone.
Azalea’s hand tightened around hers.
The academy bells began to ring.