Crown of Power (The Hidden Mage Book 4) by Melanie Cellier

Author:Melanie Cellier [Cellier, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Luminant Publications
Published: 2021-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Midwinter had felt like the end of my time as a trainee. Difficult as it had been, I had accepted that reality. And yet, when the break ended, classes resumed. It felt surreal to sit at a desk and hear the instructors talk of exams as if life as I knew it weren’t about to end.

And yet, it didn’t end. We had no specified time for our mission to begin, but no one thought the middle of winter an ideal time to set out. And the armies needed time to arrange the logistics. Never in all our long annals had all three armies come together to fight a single enemy before. We had no established precedents to use.

I received word that Ardann had sent a small contingent of soldiers to the Kallorwegian headquarters, and they had sent their own group back. The whole process felt glacially slow, but I reminded myself of my own reaction to the black and red robes of the soldiers in the arena during our first battle. And I had never fought against Kallorwegian soldiers like some of the older veterans of the Ardannian Armed Forces.

I didn’t even notice the robes now, and I could understand why the leaders of both kingdoms wanted a chance for their troops to reach the same level of familiarity. Nothing could be more disastrous than our combined forces turning on each other during the campaign.

But still, it felt almost unendurable waiting out the cold winter days at the Academy, knowing what was to come.

Royce seemed to have found peace with our interaction in the gardens by ignoring me. He still sought Darius’s favor, though, and he now avoided showing me any overt disrespect while he did so. It was a situation I could accept. We needed Royce—and those like him—to work with us; I didn’t need him to love me.

Having my brother present provided one spark of interest at least. Stellan had been assigned Royce’s old suite on the royal level, and he joined the five of us for our daily energy lessons. Cooper seemed as interested in him as Stellan was to learn from Cooper.

The instructor who had taught Stellan the previous year had been able to give energy, the most common of the energy mage abilities. But giving energy was only half of my brother’s ability. Stellan—a spoken mage like our mother, but an energy mage instead of a power one—could both give and take energy. He was the only known energy mage to be able to do both, as well as the only spoken energy mage.

It was easy to understand why Cooper found Stellan’s unique ability intriguing. And my brother had never before had such easy access to a mage who could take energy. He was especially fascinated by the medical uses Cooper had found for the ability, and in their enthusiastic conversations on the topic, I received an insight into the fears I had never heard my brother voice.

Stellan had also wrestled with the aggressive part of his ability.

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