First One, please get me out of this. I still resented my deity, for everything had been fine until I’d prayed at the village’s altar, but no one else was going to save me. Bring the blue fire back. Make the Carthesian’s spell fizzle. Anything!
I didn’t really expect the prayer to work. Just like I didn’t expect the Dragerian to enter the courtyard.
Even in the dim light, the massive part of him was impossible to miss. He towered a head taller than the larger Carthesian. Better than his height, however, was the lattice of black fire between his hands—that and the absence of a tattoo above his white-flecked beard.
I nearly sobbed with relief. I’d worry about him being a noble after we lived.
The speaking Carthesian noticed the direction of my gaze; he spun as the Dragerian threw the lattice into the air. The magic enveloped his friend and brought the Carthesian to the ground. The speaker growled something and the red curtain squeezed together and zipped toward the Dragerian as a lightning bolt. The noble batted it away, but his eyebrows raised at his smoking sleeve. The magic had broken through. He met the next two bolts of lightning with black ones of his own.
Fear melted into awe. Never, ever, had I seen something so beautiful. Red and black clouds swirled in a storm of lightning. Bursts of wind swept through the courtyard and pulled at the hairs that had escaped my braid. The power thrummed through the air as crates rose without hands to lift them and raced toward the Dragerian.
Cold sweat broke out on my neck as my eyesight blurred. Not again. Not…
Ghostly forms began to float over the real ones as the vision began.
I am bathed in blue fire. Blackness halos my enemy as he advances and chairs float into the air. I’ll never be able to push them back. Instead I form a wall of fire as they begin to hurtle toward my head...
The vision vanished. I fell to the cobblestones. The battle waged on, the Dragerian exploding one crate after another. White may have flecked his dark beard and his close-cropped hair, but the Dragerian looked as if he could fling spells all night.
My fingers brushed against a loose cobblestone. Let’s not gamble on all night. I pulled the stone from the ground and hurled it. The stone struck the Carthesian in the back of the head and he crumpled to the ground.
The noble flicked his wrist and an orb of black vanished. He nodded at the unconscious man and spoke with a voice so deep the air rumbled. “Creative.”
“Normal,” I managed.
He chuckled. “Well spoken.”
The noble went to the unconscious man and stooped to check his wrist. Black ropes formed out of air and wrapped themselves around the Carthesian. His enemy secured, the Dragerian turned, cursed. The other Carthesian had slunk past him and away without either of us knowing.
“We need to leave,” the noble said. “Before he finds reinforcements. Come, I have a carriage waiting.”
He gestured, expecting me to follow.
I didn’t move.
Chapter Two
Over and over in my head, I heard Lily’s voice: Nobles kill babes like you. Your ma saved your life by hiding.
I prayed the Dragerian hadn’t seen my spell. I needed him to think me some random peasant. So, instead of following, I swallowed and tried to keep my voice steady. “Thank you for saving me, my lord, but I’ll not bother you further.”
He may have frowned. It was hard to tell; falling darkness made it almost impossible to see his expression. It also made the glowing blue splinters he pointed to all the easier to see.
“They will come after you,” he said. “Carthesia isn’t going to let a blue mage through its fingers. Either you will join them, or they will kill you. You need protection until you can control your Gift.”
Pigshit. I swallowed, my tongue dry as ash. Maybe he thought me a noble runaway, dressed as a peasant? He didn’t seem like he wanted to kill me, not after saving me, but there was surely something bad coming.
“My name is Orrik,” the man said. He held out his hand. “I’ve been to Stoneyfield. I saw the effects of your manifestation, Adara, and I know why you are running. I promise, I will let no harm come to you—from Carthesia or from Drageria. But I would rather not battle other mages to keep that promise.”
I relaxed, just a little, and drew closer. First One, he towered larger than any man I’d ever met. Built like an ox, too, for all the salt and pepper in his hair and beard. I couldn’t guess his age—fifties, sixties—because he didn’t have the deep lines of an old farmer. My hand disappeared into his and, to my surprise, I felt calluses on his fingertips.
His grip tightened, firm but not painful. “Let’s go.”
Orrik led, checking around corners and his free hand poised as if it would fill again with fire any moment. Every check, my heart squeezed in my chest. We made it to the larger street, most of the foot traffic gone for the day, then to a place where two large streets met. A carriage did wait, with horses that stamped the ground, and Orrik helped me inside. The door clicked behind us, and darkness vanished as a globe of black appeared at the carriage’s ceiling. I peered at it for a moment, wondering at how a black-colored orb could give off clear light. Orrik thunked the ceiling with his hand and the carriage sprang into motion, so smoothly it barely felt like movement.
He pulled the curtains. Midnight-blue fabric shut out the lamps that lit the roadway, yet inside the carriage the magic made it feel like day.
Maybe it’s another one of those daytime dreams.
The noble hadn’t killed me. I sat on a cushioned bench comfier than a cloud, in a carriage worth more than Lily and
