Crown of Danger (The Hidden Mage Book 2) Read online

  I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “I know you would. Sorry to be so negative.”

  “I still think you should start stealing some of the compositions lying around this place,” she muttered rebelliously. “You’ve told me the palace is practically coated in power.”

  “Yes, power that is doing something. All kinds of things, in fact. Things I can’t identify properly until after I take control of the working. Who knows what might happen if those compositions suddenly disappear? Or who might start investigating why the palace compositions are failing?”

  Bryony rolled her eyes at my practicality but didn’t protest further. It wasn’t the first time we’d had the same conversation. She strode restlessly up the room, collapsing into a chair on her way back.

  “There’s something else I’ve been wondering about—from what Captain Layna said about short compositions.” She gave me a confused look. “She made it sound like some sort of epic feat that needed vast training. Even for Aunt Elena. But you do it. You always have.”

  I nodded. “I’ve actually been thinking about that all summer. From what I understand, in normal power compositions, the biggest issue is binding the power long enough to shape the working properly. As we know from the commonborns, once power is drawn on, it wants to explode out—violently. That’s why mages always start with binding words. Mother doesn’t have to use them because her compositions are so short there’s no time for the power to get out of control, but she took a long time to train to that point.”

  “I guess I don’t know much about that,” Bryony said. “None of us energy mages have that issue given our access to power is naturally sealed before we’re even born.”

  I nodded. “And as well as the control issue, power is also difficult because there’s so much you can do with it. It’s inherently shapeless and has to be molded to the mage’s purpose. It takes a lot of skill to do that in few words.”

  “I always knew you were skilled.” Bryony grinned at me.

  I snorted. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been thinking about how it’s different for you and other energy mages. You don’t have to worry about binding words because you’re drawing on your own energy directly to work your compositions—the energy you’re using for your workings isn’t unstable in the way that power is. And your range of potential compositions is so much more limited that length isn’t really an issue either.”

  “Thanks,” Bryony said dryly, but I just grinned, knowing she wasn’t really offended.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m using energy not power,” I said.

  Bryony raised an eyebrow. “Energy compositions can’t lay building foundations.”

  “I mean for the first part,” I said, “when I take control of a working. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like something in me senses the working and just…reaches for it.”

  Bryony narrowed her eyes, speaking slowly. “I suppose that makes sense. It does sound more like energy than power.”

  “But once I’ve taken control of the working, I’m using whatever the composition was originally crafted with—be that energy or power. So it was power I used on the foundation today. But I didn’t need binding words or even lots of words at all because it wasn’t shapeless power. It had already been contained and directed. I was just…twisting it. Which is one of the reasons I was so hesitant to take it over in the first place. The power has already been shaped enough that I can’t just do whatever I want with it. I have to find a way to direct it that at least somewhat aligns with its original shape. Like when the assassin used a composition to empty my lungs. I was able to turn it around to fill my lungs instead, but I couldn’t have used it to…I don’t know, grow a flower or something.”

  Bryony frowned, clearly trying to follow my logic. “So you were scared that you wouldn’t understand what the creator mage had directed the power to do and therefore wouldn’t be able to control it. It sounds like that’s not going to be a problem, though.”

  I nodded, letting out a breath. “It’s a big relief actually.” My face fell. “Not that I suddenly have any more options for practicing than I did before.”

  Bryony straightened in her chair. “That’s one good thing about being back at the Academy soon. We’ll have more opportunities there. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”

  “Hopefully you’re right.”

  “I generally am,” she told me with a twinkle. “And personally, if I were you, I would stick with the ‘I’m a prodigy’ explanation. You deserve it after thinking you had no powers at all for so long.”

  I laughed. “Why do I feel like you would absolutely claim to be a prodigy in my circumstances?”

  “Because I’m shameless?” Bryony chuckled. “But now you’d better head back to your own rooms. We’re going to have to go to the evening meal with work site dust all over us if we don’t hurry up and get changed.”

  I looked down at my gown and then guiltily at my friend’s bedspread. “I think I already got it all over half your room.”

  “Never mind that.” Bryony waved away my concerns. “But this is our last meal with your family, and I don’t want to be late.”

  She shooed me out the door, and I went willingly, her words having redirected my thoughts. As much as I found my mind turning more and more constantly to the Academy, I still didn’t like the idea of this being my last meal with my family.

  I had hated not being able to tell them the truth of my new abilities. It put up a barrier between us, even if they didn’t know it was there. But I had still enjoyed having time with them again. Especially now that my love for my brothers wasn’t complicated by my constant need to suppress my resentment that they had both received abilities from our parents while I had not. I would miss them when I returned to the Academy.

  We ate the meal in a private dining room reserved for my family. My aunt didn’t join us, and I felt guiltily glad. Aunt Lucienne loved us, I knew that, but she was always queen first and aunt second. It was the reason I couldn’t risk telling anyone in my family about my new ability. I couldn’t risk the crown of either kingdom finding out my potential as a weapon—especially a weapon against my own mother.

  The summer hadn’t taken away my fear that as soon as either kingdom discovered the truth, I would be reduced to nothing more than a tool—and one too full of danger and potential to be allowed to travel freely between the kingdoms. My aunt’s crown created a barrier that wasn’t there when it was just my parents and brothers.

  Her presence always affected Lucien as well. With us he could be himself, but when my aunt was around, he never forgot he was crown prince. It made sense she had taken him under her wing, molding him to be like herself. He was her heir, after all. But I had long suspected that it pained my parents to see their son so weighed down with responsibility.

  They never tried to curb the time he spent with our aunt, though. They understood that being monarch was the kind of job you needed to be trained for from birth because it was a role that consumed all of you. Lucien would always have to put Ardann first, and it was better that he was raised to understand that from the beginning. But I still enjoyed the moments we got to spend just with our family, not thinking about what was to come.

  I was the last to arrive, entering the room just in time to see Bryony present my mother with the sculpture, accompanied by an explanation of its history.

  My mother embraced her in response. “Thank you, Bree. It’s beautiful.”

  My father put his arm around my mother’s shoulders. “The symbolism is perfect. It’s a thoughtful gift, Bryony.”

  Mother turned slightly, and I suspected she was surreptitiously wiping her eyes against his jacket. But when she turned back to us all, she was all smiles.

  “I’ll put it here.” She placed it in the center of the table, my father removing the vase of flowers that had been standing there before she asked, anticipating her want as he so often did. “Then we can all admire it while we eat.”


  We all sat down, my parents at the head and foot of the table and two of us on each side. The room would have taken a larger table, but my mother had always insisted this smaller one remain. She wanted us all to be able to talk comfortably.

  Over the initial scraping of chair legs and clanking of cutlery, my younger brother, Stellan, leaned toward me. “I don’t know that I’d want a flower growing out of my hand, to be honest,” he said in an under voice.

  I grinned at him. “Didn’t you hear what Father said? It’s symbolism, Stell.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying. I’m all for grasping hands across the divide, and what have you, I’d just rather not have roots through my tendons.”

  “You’re going to have to learn something about romance if you ever want to convince a girl to marry you.”

  “Ha!” He grinned back at me, showing all his teeth. “I think you’re forgetting I’m a prince. And the lucky kind who doesn’t ever have to be king. The girls will be falling all over themselves just as soon as I start at the Academy.”

  I snorted, although his words reminded me uncomfortably of Prince Jareth. Darius had always insisted his brother felt the same way as Stellan—that he saw the throne as something to be avoided rather than coveted. I wasn’t so sure.

  I took a mouthful of soup. “You’re just lucky Lucien will graduate before you start.”

  We both turned to examine our older brother. If I looked like my grandmother, everyone had always said Lucien was the exact image of my father when young. And even I had to admit his bright green eyes were striking against his dark, almost black hair. Although we shared the hair color, I had sometimes envied him those eyes, although my mother always assured me the glints of gold in my own brown eyes were just as beautiful. But then, as my mother, she could hardly be viewed as having an objective opinion.

  Lucien, sensing our scrutiny, looked up from his bowl and narrowed his eyes at us both. “What are you two plotting?” His voice held all the superiority of an older sibling.

  “We’re just marveling at what a fine specimen you are,” I said in a tone of utmost innocence.

  He choked on his mouthful of soup and had to pause to cough it back up. Once he’d recovered his breath, he gave me a baleful glare.

  “Now I know you’re up to something.”

  “Leave your sister alone,” Father said. “It’s her last meal with us, remember.”

  I gave Lucien the prim smile I knew always left him fuming and quickly finished my own bowl. Mother looked between us and shook her head, a smile on her face that was half-amused, half-indulgent. She was probably thinking of her own brother and sister.

  “Maybe we can foist him off on Bree,” Stellan said abruptly, continuing our quiet conversation at full volume. “Then the way will be clear for me.”

  Bryony, sitting across from him, looked up from her soup in alarm. “If you’re talking about Lucien needing some extra energy compositions to keep on hand, then I’m more than happy to help out, but if it’s anything else you have in mind…” She shook her head so vigorously she nearly lost a hair pin from the rather haphazard arrangement on her head.

  Lucien grinned at her. “Thank you, Bree. It’s always good to be reminded of how repulsive I am.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You are all too aware you’re not in the least repulsive, Lucien.” She paused to give Stellan a stern look. “But aside from the fact that I’ve been raised to consider you all family despite the lack of blood connection, not even the prettiest eyes in the world could tempt me anywhere near a crown.” She shuddered dramatically.

  “There you go, Lucien,” I murmured. “Some consolation for you. At least you’ve got pretty eyes.”

  “The prettiest eyes in the world, apparently,” Stellan said with a wide grin.

  Bryony snorted. “I’m nothing if not fair. Although it’s a sad waste. I’m sure some poor laborer somewhere could do with those eyes. You hardly have need of them, Lucien. Not when there are plenty of girls who do find a crown attractive.”

  “Let your poor brother be,” Mother said, directing a quelling look at me in particular.

  I instantly felt guilty. I had forgotten her words from a few days before about my aunt’s desire for a marriage alliance with one of the imperial princesses. There was every likelihood poor Lucien wouldn’t get the chance to choose his own bride.

  “Stellan is just afraid of the competition,” I told Lucien. “He’s already thinking of when he’ll be starting at the Academy next year.”

  “About that,” said Stellan quickly, and the mood in the room instantly dropped.

  My father’s expressions could be hard to read, but I had long ago learned the tricks of interpreting them. Bryony might not have noticed anything at all, but to me he looked thunderous. I glanced at my mother who, even after more than twenty years as a princess, had never achieved my father’s level of control. She was giving Stellan the look we all knew meant it was time to let something drop.

  My brother pushed on.

  “If you would let me join the sealing ceremony next week, then I could properly start at the Academy next autumn. Who knows when another opportunity will come up?”

  “We’ve already discussed this,” Father said flatly.

  “And the answer is still no,” Mother finished for him.

  I looked back and forth between them before looking across the table at Lucien. He looked as confused as I felt. We both turned our gazes on Stellan.

  “Sealing ceremony?” Lucien asked at the same moment as I spoke.

  “You want to be sealed?”

  Stellan, who had remained resolute in the face of our parents’ disapproval, threw us both a guilty glance.

  “Your brother has spent most of the year while you two were away trying to convince us to let him be sealed along with the next group of commonborns,” Mother said. “I thought he had finally given up on the topic.”

  “I had,” Stellan said. “Until I heard there was going to be a sealing ceremony next week. We don’t have many of them anymore, so this is my best chance.”

  “But why would you want to be sealed?” I asked blankly. I glanced across at Bryony, expecting to see her sharing my confusion, but she looked merely thoughtful.

  “It makes perfect sense if you think about it,” Stellan said. “I know my royal status means they’ve bent the rules and allowed me to learn to read, but the Academy would be much easier if I could write as well. Mother knows that’s true because she had to make it through all four years without writing herself.”

  “And I graduated just fine,” Mother said. “As will you.”

  “We’ve already agreed to discuss it again after you finish first year, Stellan,” Father said in a closed voice. “You’re not yet sixteen. It’s much too early to think of limiting yourself in any way.”

  “But that didn’t work for Verene, did it?” Stellan asked before cutting himself off with a guilty look in my direction. Changing tack, he focused his attention across the table. “You understand, don’t you, Bryony? An energy mage doesn’t need access to power. All we can do with it is accidentally destroy ourselves. You’re all born sealed, so I don’t see why it’s so strange I would want to be sealed myself.”

  Bryony opened her mouth but then looked at me and closed it again.

  Stellan glanced at me as well and then at Lucien. “I know being a spoken energy mage makes me strange, but I’m still an energy mage. Everyone agrees on that. It’s just another one of our oddities that I wasn’t born with my access to power sealed like all the regular energy mages. But thankfully that’s easy enough to remedy.”

  “But…” I struggled to find the words. At Stellan’s age I had been desperately awaiting my sixteenth birthday, hoping against hope that some hitherto unsuspected power might emerge, and now my brother wanted to do the opposite and purposefully limit himself.

  And yet, I also understood what it was like to dread starting at the Academy, knowing how different you were fro
m everyone else. And in Stellan’s case, he would be starting the year after Lucien graduated, not only different from his year mates but walking in our brother’s impossibly large shadow. At the moment he was like a commonborn, unable to safely write without unleashing uncontrolled power, and so being sealed alongside commonborns actually did make sense. And unlike the power mage conducting the sealing ceremony, he would still be left with his ability intact since he appeared to have an energy ability which wouldn’t be affected by sealing his power.

  But looming over all of those thoughts was the knowledge that had closed Bryony’s mouth. The knowledge we had agreed not to tell my family—and by inevitable extension, my aunt. My brother thought my example proved his case, but he didn’t know the truth. I was actually proof it was entirely possible he did have some power that hadn’t yet emerged.

  “I think Mother and Father are right,” I said slowly, earning a betrayed look from my brother. “Sorry, Stellan, but I just don’t think it’s worth the risk. You can wait another couple of years.”

  A crease appeared between Mother’s brows as she gave me a long look. I bit my lip, hoping I hadn’t somehow given myself away. However she didn’t challenge me, and immediately my concern was replaced with guilt. If I wasn’t concealing the truth from my family, then my brother wouldn’t be trying to get himself sealed.

  I glanced at my father’s implacable face. Sealing wasn’t the sort of thing Stellan could do on his own in a fit of rebellion. He was safe for two more years. I resolved that if his opinion remained the same next summer, I would think of a way to warn him properly. I couldn’t let him forever limit himself because of my lack of transparency.

  Meanwhile, my mother had turned her attention from me to Stellan. Her face and voice softened as she looked at her younger son.

  “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but we’re saying this because we love you. I’m truly sorry you children have had to inherit such a muddle of powers, but each of you is unique and special. Your Father and I couldn’t live with ourselves if we let any one of you limit yourselves in an effort to be normal.”