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“Are you really about to break up with me?”
“Look. It isn’t anything you’ve done—”
“I’m well aware of the fact that I haven’t done anything wrong, Devlin.”
His lips quirked. It was the same distasteful look he’d given in response to her earlier answer.
“Go on,” Ren said, unable to keep the bite out of her voice. “I’d hate to part ways without whatever… wisdom you have to offer. That is the Brightsword Legion motto, isn’t it? Leave them better than how you found them?”
Devlin’s jaw tightened. “Fine, Ren. You want the truth? You’re too much of a temptation for me. We’ve—I’ve been uncomfortable. With… the things we’ve been doing. I sought advice from my training general. She believed our activities might have been what caused the crack in my divinity shield. There’s some anecdotal evidence that—”
Ren couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’d never expected to marry Devlin, but for him to try to end their relationship with some holier-than-thou speech was beyond absurd.
“Evidence of what, Devlin? I’ve never read an account that suggested a heavy make-out session broke a paladin’s divinity shield. Oh, and I’m trying to recall the part where our activities made you uncomfortable. Because from what I can recall, you looked pretty comfortable with everything that was happening at the time.”
Devlin’s teeth actually clacked together with force. “Keep your voice down.”
“Sorry. I could barely hear anything over the smugness ringing in my ears. How did you think this was going to go? You’re breaking up with me to protect your purity? I hate to break it to you, Devlin, but I wasn’t getting horizontal with myself for the last few months.”
He swung from embarrassed to angry with predictable speed.
“And I have repented for my part in all of this. I highly doubt you feel bad about what you’ve done. That’s the difference between us, Ren. Do you want to know what happened when I decided to break up with you?”
Her hands were shaking. First, she’d been stood up by House Shiverian. And now even a basic creature like Devlin was abandoning her? Ren had rehearsed what she might say if they broke up a hundred times, but practice was different from the real thing. She tried to ignore the people sitting nearby, their conversations gone quiet for the sake of eavesdropping.
“Let me take an educated guess,” she finally said. “I’d imagine your divinity shield healed itself. And you falsely correlated that occurrence with some… arbitrary decision you’d made, even though it actually lines up with a far more conclusive study that Thurman did in Golden Years that shows definitive timelines for healing are about a fortnight with young paladins. That book also explains shield cracks are common in new trainees. Which is the entire reason I gave you that book in the first place. Guessing you didn’t get around to reading it? But, you know, I’m glad you think your change of heart is what made everything better.”
Devlin made the face a third time. Ren waited for him to speak and knew she was about to hear the real reason for all of this. “You’re always right,” he said. “No matter what. You just have to be right. It’s exhausting.”
Those final two words struck Ren like a blow. She could suffer judgments on her purity, but she would not be made to feel small for being well read. Good research was not a sin.
“You know what, Devlin? May the magic’s light be with you.”
She brushed past him.
“Marcus,” he called after her. “The right answer is Marcus. He was doing what’s right by making the sword that he did. Everyone knows that’s the right answer.”
Ren couldn’t resist turning back.
“Yeah? Well, in the real story Marcus kills Rowan, because his sword was better. But I’m sure you’ll believe whatever fairy tale makes you feel less guilty about being a sanctimonious prick.”
She left him there, bells tolling in the distance, desperate to believe she’d won the exchange.
6
Ren needed a proper target for her fury.
She went straight to the archive room. There were seven scattered around Balmerick, but she always booked the same one. It was in the northeastern corner of campus, hidden in a grove of speckled pines that had been translocated from the southern plains to provide a better atmosphere for the Heights. Their great limbs bent overhead like the arches of a cathedral. An appropriate image, as time in the tower room was the closest Ren came to worshipping anything.
The cellar door was set diagonally into a hillside. A stone staircase descended into the dark. As she reached the bottom, the passage narrowed. There were no torches to guide her steps. This far down, the darkness became a living thing. She shivered against the cellar’s chill until the first lights stirred in reaction to her movement.
Bright tendrils reached out from the stone walls. As Ren walked forward, the entire room filled with their gentle glow. A low hum of energy buzzed to life. She still remembered the first time she stepped foot in an archive room. Her teacher had explained that the rooms were designed to make magic visible in the air around them, offering wizards a safe environment to practice their spellwork. It was here that wizards could learn—and archive—new spells for their arsenals. Ren reached out now, as she had then, and let her fingertips graze the almost-solid wisps.
Before coming to this continent, Ren’s ancestors—the Delveans—had no magic at all. Neither did the Tusk people, for that matter. It was only in sailing here—to the land where dragons once lived—that both groups discovered a new power. Every time Ren stepped into an archive room, she could not help tracing back through history. If she’d been born three centuries ago, she’d have lived a magicless life. Two centuries ago, and only the most fledgling spells would have been in use. One century, and she’d have been practicing wild magic as she waited for the impending discoveries that would form the cornerstone of the modern, structured magic system.
But she hadn’t been born in any of those eras. She existed in a time when she could walk into a room made by and for magic—a time when anyone could build up their arsenal, one spell at a time. Even if society did its best to limit people in her position, Ren was always grateful for that small gift of fate. After all, she could not imagine a life without her favorite spells.
The narrow passage widened into a single room. Two small towers waited at the very heart of the space. One stood about waist height, the other up to her shoulders. Neither tower was wider than a stack of books. A parade of facts marched traitorously through Ren’s mind. She knew the number of attempts it took the average person to master a new spell, and how many spells the greatest wizards in history had in their possession when they died.
