Page 45 of Daughter of the Drowned Empire
How could I be sent away from my home? From Tristan? My family? My future? They might as well have sentenced me to death. My heart was shattering, splitting open and spilling its contents out.
And as it did, one small secret came to light. A secret truth that had settled deep inside my heart amidst the darkest of nights, tucked out of sight and locked tightly away.
One day, I would be Arkasva Lyriana Batavia, High Lady of Bamaria. Meera couldn’t rule, not with her vorakh. Neither could Morgana. We all knew it, even if we never dared speak it aloud. And on the day Meera was named Arkasva Batavia, the day she was set to take the Seat of power and place the Laurel of the Arkasva on her head, she’d abdicate and step down. To me. The third daughter.
The secret I’d held onto for so long was this: I wished for it. I desired and longed to rule with all my heart. I loved Bamaria. I loved our people, history, and traditions. I wanted to take the Seat like my mother had. I wanted to replace my diadem with the Laurel, to name my Second, to rule and preside over society, to improve it with a voice on the Bamarian Council. I wanted all of it.
But that future was slipping away.
A Watcher of the light shifted her position. The Bastardmaker coughed. I pressed my hands against my hips. A stream of light through the colorful temple windows cast a rainbow of color onto the floor. Dust particles danced in the streaming light. My left arm itched. Small details. Stay present. Keep breathing.
“Please,” I said, blinking back tears. My voice broke, and with my throat still so dry, I wasn’t sure anyone had heard me. Maybe my dreams were lost, but if I could buy myself time, if I could find a way to stay, I could find out more. Maybe change things. I’d found a way to manage Meera’s symptoms when I’d been told it wasn’t possible. I’d discovered ways for Morgana to find pain relief when her vorakh was supposed to cause constant suffering. Who was to say I couldn’t find some answers for myself? I could do research, see if the library had any information or scrolls that had been overlooked or not considered since circumstances like mine had never happened before.
“Please don’t send me away. I…I’ll do anything. Renounce my title, my home….” I nearly choked on the words. I had to abdicate my dreams, to do whatever it took to stay. Not just for me. “Please, your highness. Let me stay with my family.”
“The law is the law, and it applies to every child of the Empire.”
The Ready’s hand snaked toward his sword, and my eyes caught the hilt of his ceremonial dagger tucked into a small black leather scabbard and glinting from the sunlight streaming through the windows. If I’d chosen the soturion path, what would they have done? How would Arianna have destroyed my blade? Melted it down?
I’d never touched a dagger before, or a sword.
But I could.
I’d been expelled from the Mage Academy because I couldn’t use a stave. But I didn’t need magic to lift a sword or fight. Blades cut flesh whether their owner possessed magic or not. Akadim didn’t respond to magic. All Lumerians had magic, but not all used it on a daily basis for spells or work. Some kept it contained in their bodies. They trained and channeled that force into becoming warriors.
I stared at my palms, at the freshly healing scar. Right for mages, left for soturi. I glanced up to see Aemon watching me closely.
“I understand the law, your highness,” I said. “Without magic, I cannot be a mage. I cannot contribute to society in that way. But I believe there’s another option.” I swallowed. “I could become a soturion.”
Aemon’s eyes brightened, his lips curving into a smile, and I knew I’d stumbled on my answer. He shared a quick look with my father, who breathed a sigh of relief.
“A soturion?” the Imperator guffawed. “You? A girl without magic? Do you even realize what soturi do, girl?”
“I grew up with them in the halls of Cresthaven,” I said, lifting my chin. “They’ve trained in my backyard and shadowed my every step. No magic is needed to throw a punch.” Rhyan had even given me a start on how to give one.
“It is not as simple as that,” Aemon said, but he gave me a conspiratorial grin.
I continued, “Soturi fight akadim, the one thing in our world impervious to magic.”
“We have already reached our verdict.” The Imperator turned the full force of his anger toward me. He was a trained soturion, and even through his robes and armor, I could see the powerful muscle covering his body, muscles that had been empowered and enhanced with magic. “Now you’re just encouraging the fantasies of a delusional child.” His voice grew cold. “My son and future soturi are enrolled in this Academy because of its esteem.”
The Ready snarled. “Your soturi come here because they need our proximity to the ocean for proper training. You rely on our magic, on our source. It’s the folly of your people who retreated too far into the hills! Too far from the water.”
The one weakness in Lumerian magic: the farther one went from the Lumerian Ocean, the weaker their magic became, and the harder it was to draw on. It was the one reason why our Empire had not conquered the entire human world.
“Even so,” the Imperator drawled, “even our weakest warrior on the outskirts of the Empire outmatches her on his worst day. Look at her. Just because she’s wearing her hair like a soturion doesn’t mean she can be one.”
I self-consciously felt the braid Brenna had created for me.
“Can you imagine her taking on one soturion?” the Imperator asked. “Forget five. She’d be slaughtered.”
All at once, my plan seemed childish. I took a step back, but the Ready gave me a look that ordered me to stand tall, not to back down. He was on my side. Knowing that, hope surged. If the most powerful warrior in the Empire supported me, that had to mean it was possible, had to mean this could work.
Aemon gave me a small nod. “At this moment, without training? No,” he said carefully, looking to the Imperator. “I wouldn’t expect her grace to perform well in a fight.”
“But you’re considering it! You’d let the standards sink so low, Aemon?” the Imperator spat. “This is what the Soturion Academy of the esteemed University of Bamaria has become? Little girls playing dress up as soldiers? Enough. She’s been found without magic, without the ability to attend either Academy properly. The law is the law. She goes.”
“The law says a Lumerian over the age of nineteen, having taken part in the Revelation Ceremony without magic, is to be banished,” Aemon said. “But we all know the legal interpretation is a Lumerian who has been stripped of their magic, punished for being a disruption to society, unable to contribute to it. Lady Lyriana is neither. She may be able to attend the Soturion Academy, in which case she would be contributing. We are still the country of education and I won’t have an ignorant, base reading of the law determine her future over its true meaning as interpreted by actual legal Scholars.”
