Page 82 of Charmed

CHAPTER25

ALDEN

Each step felt weighted as I ascended to the final floor of the enchanted tower. My anticipation seemed to cast a charm of its own, making the door awaiting us drift farther away rather than drawing closer, symbolic of my aspirations feeling eternally out of my grasp despite being this close to fulfilling them.

Even with my fears creating the illusion that the twisting staircase went on forever, eventually we reached the top. The door became aglow with light that faded into several more doors, one for each member of our party.

Silently we faced each other, realizing that our partnership had come to an end. Although we’d regained our voices, no one spoke, and finally we all turned away, taking on our individual challenges.

The door was barred with an enchanted lock, the most advanced mechanism I’d seen yet in the competition. With the nerves making a tangle of my thoughts, I struggled to decipher the puzzle, my movements repeatedly slipping due to my trembling hands. By the time the lock finally clicked open I was the only remaining competitor on the landing, but for once I was unbothered by finishing last.

My hand hovered uncertainly above the knob, unsure what I expected to find awaiting me on the other side. Maeve stood faithfully beside me, just as she had the moment the competition began, a place I wished she could always remain.

Beyond this door lay the dream I’d spent my entire life pursuing. I’d always imagined I’d feel differently upon finally arriving at this moment, but rather than anticipation I only felt terror at the prospect of finally discovering whether I was worthy of the aspirations that had guided me my entire life…or if in the end they would amount to nothing. The thought kept me paralyzed.

Maeve’s expression softened as she cast me a sidelong glance and glimpsed these emotions. She reached for my hand and laced our fingers together in a familiar gesture that stirred something within my heart deeper than the solace I usually experienced from her touch.

“It’ll be alright, Alden.” She’d given me these assurances so often over the course of our journey that I’d come to associate encouragement with her sweet voice, finding as much comfort in her soothing tone as in the words themselves.

“I’ve spent my entire life striving for this position. I’m terrified that I’ll have no purpose to guide me forward if I’ve achieved it.”

“Then you will simply need to create a new dream, such as using your new position to help as many people as possible.”

The old Alden would have embraced such an aspiration…but now it didn’t seem like enough, especially considering she wouldn’t be able to sit on the council with me. All the knowledge and experience I’d gained throughout the competition felt trivial in comparison to my deepening relationship with the woman beside me.

I found myself lost in her dark brown eyes that seemed like an enchantment of their own, pulling me in deeper to a place I never wanted to escape. I wanted to spend a lifetime discovering the secrets they held, deciphering the charm behind the beguiling lift of her lips, and finding the answers to every curiosity she ever fancied.

The spell cast by her presence provided me with the necessary courage to square my shoulders and open the door.

The chamber that lay beyond the threshold was empty, save for Enchantress Ivy standing in the center, surrounded by the light of dozens of floating candles. The soft sheen of moonlight tumbled through the glass-domed ceiling, offering a view of the night that had fallen while we’d ascended the tower, the only measurement of the hours spent in the final competition. The moonlight wove through the flickering candlelight to cast waltzing patterns across the marble floor and illuminate Enchantress Ivy’s expectant expression.

Upon my entrance she smiled. “I never doubted you’d succeed in ascending the tower.”

While I relished her praise, it no longer brought me as much satisfaction to receive it from my mentor as it did from my apprentice. “Thank you.”

“I’m quite pleased by what you were able to accomplish with your limited powers,” she continued. “It’s one thing to accomplish a challenge when facing it with an abundance of skill, and quite another when the odds seem stacked against you. Adversity allows us to see who we truly are beyond our abilities. You have done well, Alden.”

I waited for her to accompany her speech with words of congratulations for having successfully completed the competition, but only silence followed, her calm expression expectant.

“Is the competition over?” I asked tentatively.

She tilted her head. “Isit?”

I frowned at her cryptic tone, at the look in her eyes that indicated she possessed a secret it was my duty to uncover.

I glanced around the empty chamber for any clue I might have missed, but as far as I could determine it was entirely absent of any, the room seemingly empty…well notentirelyempty. The familiar hum of magic filled the air. I’d become so accustomed to its melodic patterns that they’d become background noise…yet now that I listened closely, I could sense something was…off, a sensation so subtle I almost couldn’t discern it.

I listened more closely, trying to detect the differences in each of the magic’s soft notes…no longer melodic, as if the magical pitch had shifted into harmony. But even as I recognized the difference, I didn’t immediately know what it signified.

I combed through the shelves of knowledge my diligent study had accumulated over the years. Learning to recognize magic’s communication was one of the most fundamental skills I’d acquired in the early days of my training, but there were various levels of understanding—a basic comprehension of the enchanted language that was enough to grant each enchanter the ability to wield magic, and a deeper comprehension that took years to master.

This was only one of many aspects of magical theory I’d invested much of my education into. It was one thing to understand magic on an intellectual level and quite another to build a relationship with it—to come to understand every law and nuance that comprised it, to more than memorize its patterns but understand their meaning on a deeper level in order to apply that knowledge to my own powers.

Throughout the competition I’d come to recognize that one could only go so far with book knowledge when it came to practical application of my craft, and how an exclusive focus on theory limited my creative application—which my apprentice possessed in abundance. Whether or not I earned a spot on the Enchanters’ Council, I could at least confidently claim growth in my abilities beyond where I’d started.

Maeve noticed my concentration and her brow furrowed. “What is it, Alden?”

As much as I wanted to answer her curiosity, my distraction compelled me to tug her along as I wandered the chamber, exploring the magical frequency in different areas. It was consistent throughout the entire room, save for the pocket closest to Enchantress Ivy herself. She watched me expectantly, as if awaiting my discovery…almost as if my search was an extension of the competition itself rather than it ending upon reaching the top of the tower. But what could a chamber full of unusual magic be testing?

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