Page 22 of Faerie Trials

I shook my head and swiftly drew my energy back to me, half afraid of what else I might discover if I kept at it.

My memory went back to my time at the Fae Academy for Halflings in the mortal realm. The shifter brothers who had been on the search for the Imperium had slaughtered their way to the artifact, and then I’d seen more of them during the graduation ceremony before crossing the portal into Faerie for the first time.

Which led me to question whether the students I sensed here were working with the ones I’d left behind at the mortal academy. Or were these new shifters, souls who’d found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and went out of their way to hide their shifter natures from the rest of the world?

Was Dorian Jade the puppeteer behind all of this?

I needed to find out, although I had a bad feeling that the more I dug up, the more questions I would find instead of the answers I wanted.

The only thing I knew for certain was this: Dorian Jade was a pure-blood Fae no matter what the rumors said. He considered the royal family and any governing bodies under King Tywin his enemies. It only made sense for him to ally himself with others who saw the royal family the same way.

What if these latest murders were done in his name? And if they were, then I needed to find out how to stop them, to keep the people I cared about safe.

I saw red for a minute thinking about Mike in danger.

“Tavi! I know you’re out there.” Juno’s voice came through the stone walls clearly, as though she stood next to me instead of a room away. “It doesn’t matter how you try to delay the inevitable. We have a lesson today and you can’t get out of it. Better to come on in and get this over with.”

I sighed, rolling my eyes. Of course she would know about my stalling. The woman seemed to have an extra set of eyes in the walls as well as the back of her head.

Time to get this miserable situation over with and maybe, just maybe I’d get into bed before twenty-four bells tonight. Trying to fall asleep at midnight only to wake up at six…an entirely new world for me and one I entirely hated.

I pushed into the office and saw Juno waiting for me, her butter-yellow hair glowing like a candle flame. How did she manage to look this chipper every day? I didn’t get it. Even on my best day I would never look as happy or enthusiastic as Professor Ians.

“There you are,” she teased with a wagging finger. “Thought you could wait outside the door and waste time?”

I shook my head and took off my school blazer, hooking it on the standing coat rack to my left. “No, definitely not. Just thinking deep thoughts.”

“I expect nothing less. Except those thoughts better be about the Trials and not about something trivial. Have you looked over the spell I left with you?”

I thought about my humiliating defeat yesterday and finally told her, “No. I didn’t have time. Between work and homework last night, I barely got to sleep.”

Her expression went sour and she paused halfway through pouring herself a cup of tea. “Better you make the time now thandie. All right, then.” She finished pouring and then downed the steaming cup in one gulp. “We’ll go over a few of the basics before we get started. Consider them a warm-up.”

A warm-up. More like the first step down a road to a bleak ending. I didn’t have faith in my magic, not really, not when it came down to the wire. We went through a few introductory spells to get my magic bubbling and brewing before Juno went in for the kill.

Her test today? Not one of bravery, like my first day. No, this one would try my resilience. How long would it take me to call down the light from the sun and how long could I hold it between my hands, like I was some god who had control over the stars and the heavens.

How did they expect school-aged people to handle this level of magic? I didn’t know. And those kinds of questions wouldn’t help me succeed, either.

“Tavi, I’m serious now,” Juno called out, sounding far away. “You need to master this spell. You’re only able to call down the barest flicker of light.”

I cradled the swirling sphere of yellow–orange that looked like fire but no heat came from it. It had taken me close to twenty minutes to get the wording correct, not to mention pushing my power into an unfamiliar direction. When I finally managed to call down the light, it didn’t want to stay and extinguished almost immediately.

My latest attempt I’d been able to hold for about ten minutes but I felt my strength flagging. “I’m trying!” I insisted, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m not sure if it’s the words I can’t get or—”

“It’s your internal fortitude.” Juno speared me with a look. “You are doubting yourself and it’s not allowing your magic to manifest to its fullest potential. How are you going to be able to hold the heat of the sun for hours like this? You can’t!”

“I don’t understand why this is important, anyway,” I grumbled. Throwing more and more of myself into maintaining the magic connection to the land and coming up short every time. The ball of light in my palm began to flicker.

My energy dipped to a dangerously low level and I gritted my teeth, bearing down. Whoever came up with this stupid test, anyway? And what possible use could there be in calling down the sun? It wasn’t like I was actually strong enough—no one was!—to manifest a piece of theliteralsun. It was just a fancy name for an extremely bright, hot, dense ball of light held on the physical plane.

Yet Juno seemed to think it was life and death.

“What is the point?” I asked, frustration spilling out.

Juno ignored the question. “I need you to put your everything into this because it’s really only an exaggerated spell for light. This is something you should have been able to master in the first fifteen minutes, tops. The other students at your level in the academy are doing the same thing. They have to.”

“Yes, but they’re full-bloods,” I argued.

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