His dark eyes sweep the students in the lecture hall, sharp and assessing. “The most catastrophic failures in magical history were not caused by recklessness, but by success—or the illusion of it. Magic that fails is obvious. Magic that appears to work is what leads to disaster; it encourages false confidence and delays the moment of failure.”
I cross my legs and lean forward, tipping my head. Somehow, he’s already got me intrigued.
“This,” he says, turning toward the board and picking up a piece of chalk, “is why elemental anchoring was outlawed following the Tempest Cataclysm.”
He writesThe Tempest Cataclysmon the board in flawless script—like something out of an ancient grimoire—and all around me, quills scratch against parchment.
“Power that must bemaintainedis already unstable. Power that convinces you it is permanent is worse. Nothing is permanent.” He turns away from the board, leveling us with another sharp look.
His words remind me of my energy sphere, of how hard I’ve been trying to maintain and control it, and a little flicker of irritation goes through me.
“The Tempest Cataclysm remains one of our clearest examples,” Professor D’Arques continues, his voice steady. “Can someone tell me what the cataclysm was?”
A hand goes up at the front of the classroom, and when called upon, the student says, “The storms went haywire. They demolished most of the city and are supposedly still there today, making the city uninhabitable.”
“This is notsupposed,” Professor D’Arques says, making the student turn red. “I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes; the storms still exist, and they are unrelenting. They were anchored, measured, and studied by a conclave—until their control revealed itself to be an illusion. And the results were catastrophic.”
That flicker of irritation returns, biting harder now.
Control is an illusion? Control over my storm magic is what I’ve spentyearsworking toward.
Suddenly, my mouth is moving, and words are pouring out before I can stop them. “Respectfully, Professor, that assumes instability is a flaw rather than a property.”
His eyes flick to me in a fraction of a second, and another shiver sweeps down my spine. Perhaps it’s because he’s a vampire, an apex predator. The intensity in his eyes almost makes me want to shrink away. Resisting that urge, I hold his gaze and sit up straighter.
“Storm energy doesn’t want to be static. It wants to move, to equalize. The elemental anchoring didn’t fail because the storms resisted control—it failed because the conclave treated movement as error instead of design.”
Around me, my peers turn to look my way, then back to our professor, tension building in the cool classroom air.
He’s still standing at the chalkboard, one hand holding the chalk but no longer writing. “The elemental anchoring that caused the cataclysm failed because the system requiredconstant control. The moment that control slipped, the pressure had nowhere to go.”
My heart thrums a little harder at his challenge. “That’s a failure of design. If the energy had been given somewhere to move, the pressure wouldn’t have built to that point. Storms need guidance, not dominance.”
A low murmur rises around me.
“You speak with confidence.” He narrows his eyes slightly. “Do you possess such mastery yourself, Miss...?”
He doesn’t know me, doesn’t know anything about me, yet the barb still pricks me right where I’m vulnerable. My storm magic thrums inside my veins, a well of energy I can summon but can’t hold—can’tcontrol. Not entirely. And not in the way I need to if I want to get that fellowship.
I clear my throat, then project my voice through the silent lecture hall. “Vandermere. Maeve Vandermere. And no. Not yet. But I know what happens when I try to force it. The energy spikes. It fights me. When I let it move, it stabilizes. Briefly. But long enough to prove it’s possible.”
I just have to figure out how to contain that movement long enough for the sphere to hold; I need it to remain steady if I ever want my energy sphere hypothesis to work.
“Brief stability is not mastery,” he says. “This is the temptation of dangerous magic. It convinces us that partial success is evidence of future control. But that is not always the case.”
Again, with no way of knowing what I’ve been striving for or how hard I’ve been working, his words lance through me.
Iwillhave future control, I tell myself.I just need to keep working at it.
Professor D’Arques holds my gaze as he says, “Now open your textbooks to chapter 15.”
The room comes alive around me, the tension disrupted as pages flutter, but I can still feel it dancing under my skin, like a bolt of lightning wanting to explode.
Control.
The word echoes in my head as I pull out my history book.
And from her place around my neck, Isis whispers, “Hmm, I think I like this one.”
