I brighten and place two orbs on the ground. “Repeat after me and remember to raise your voice as you go.”
“This isn’t my first time, Adraa.”
I don’t apologize—Riya wouldn’t want me to—and I begin the spell. Whispering at first and finishing in a shout, Riya and I coax our magic out.“Erif Jvalati Dirgharatrika…”
Purple smoke billows off Riya’s fingertips, red bleeds from mine. Both color streams hit the orbs and fire bursts inside each sphere casing. My heart erupts as I watch Riya bend to pick up her orb with its tiny flame glowing inside.
“You…”
She blows hard on the little life and a smoky ghost floats upward in passing. “Didn’t do it.”
I grasp my own orb, blow as hard as I can. The life doesn’t flicker. The bloodred flame actually seems to rejoice at the challenge, flooding my hand in light. With a click I shut the orb. “One done, three hundred to go.”
“I’ll keep you company.”
I roll my stiff pink sleeve up to let my magic breathe.
I had lied to my mother; it took well past an hour to make three hundred orbs of blazing and unwavering light. But since Riya stopped my sad endeavor to try to get better at white magic, I’m ahead of schedule. I sit down to rest by the central fountain dedicated to Retaw. Riya hands me a cup of water, and I chug.
“You know, I can see why you can’t do much of anything with snow and the cold. Watching you make these”—Riya picks up a sphere of firelight—“it makes sense.”
“Uh-huh.” The ice door of Azure Palace flits into my memory. I’ll never be able to do anything like that, and a fire door just sounds dangerous. My magic forteisdangerous. A rani is meant to snuff out problems, put out fires, not start them. And that’s what I want, to create, not destroy. That little ball of red light she holds is the first good thing I’ve been able to make.
“I’m serious. What’s so great about the cold anyway? Who likes to be cold?” she asks.
I give a tight smile. “Thanks.” I can’t voice my lack of progress with white magic again. When I turn eighteen in a month and a half, forty-five days to be exact, I must showcase my talent to all nine gods and request their blessing. And while it’s all well and good that I’m more powerful in fire than anyone I have ever met, the fact of the matter is that Dloc, the white god, may not accept me. And no one wants to be blasted off the podium by a blizzard. It could kill me. Or better put, the gods could kill me. If I were a normal Belwarian it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t attempt the ceremony, because being talented enough as an eight is amazing. But I’m almost a royal, a future maharani of Wickery, and I can’t rule unless I can control all nine types of magic and prove it to the gods and to my people.
At first, I neglected white magic because it came hard to me. Then I schemed that being an eight my whole life meant I could get out of my engagement and arranged to marry someone else, but a few years ago I realized how important helping my country, or rather its people, was to me. I may not want to marry Jatin Naupure, but I do want to become a maharani and lead Belwar in some capacity. Passing the ceremony is more about gaining the title than gaining a husband.
However, long ago I recognized how much everyone wants this arranged marriage to work, how good it would be for Wickery. My parents and Maharaja Naupure decided to wait until Jatin and I were older before uniting us with a blood contract’s holy and binding seal, which is normal protocol little eight-year-old me didn’t comprehend. However, that didn’t stop a verbal agreement, which is almost as binding when it comes from wizards of such power. What doesn’t help is the fact Jatin Naupure writes me “love” letters. From their perspective my parents have no reason to discourage the arrangement. One more reason to blame Jatin for this mess. Plus Maharaja Naupure actually loves me, wants me as his daughter-in-law no matter my weaknesses. But he doesn’t grasp how deep my weakness in snow delves. I stare down at my arms. One is soaked in swirls and designs, the other plain and as dark-skinned as the rest of me.Can you do it yet?Jatin’s voice jabs.
It’s times like these I wish I were Naupurian. Jatin’s ceremony was at the academy without a big to-do and where passing is all anyone cares about. He’s been presented as the heir of Naupure since birth, both arms shouting talent, doubt unheard of. In Belwar it’s different. On my eighteenth birthday, my ceremony will be my first grand entrance to the people. I will walk the streets of Belwar wrapped in the nine colors and I will do my trial at the heart of the Belwar temple, during which I fear my one arm will convey only doubt.
I get off the ground and pace.“Himadloc,”I send out to the bowl of water. The red strains of smoke streak through the water, and then nothing. I’m tired, I try to tell myself. I just finished three hundred firelights, I reason. The lies don’t work.
“You sure you aren’t practicing so much because youwantto be with Jatin?” Riya asks.
I spin to give her a dirty look. “Why does everyone think that? Like it’s odd I want to be a rani and not a wife.”
She laughs and points at my hands. Sometime during my pacing I pulled out Jatin’s letter again.
I flinch and let the parchment drop. Then I flail as I snatch for the paper as it floats over the bubbling fountain. “Blood.” I rub my temples and slide down the closest pillar.
Riya chuckles at my dramatic wilting and kicks my foot with her boot. “Are you still having those red room nightmares?”
“Only one last night. But it’s not that. It’s…he’s…he comes home today,” I groan through my hands.
“What?” she yells. I’ve surprised Riya, which is an unusual development. I peer up to take in her confusion, happy someone else feels like this is serious enough to warrant stress.
“Gods,” she gasps, before reeling in her shock. “But we still have time.” Riya is the only one who truly understands the extent of my problem. Of course, my parents know to some degree, but they believe I’ll pull through with more practice. It’s why I’m still allowed training time in the middle of the day. I would explain to Maharaja Naupure, but a little thing called pride gets in the way, and I refuse to tell Jatin, ever. He cannot have another thing to sneer at. That’s how I imagine him writing at his desk—sneering. The boy needs an ego boost as much as I need another reminder that I’m losing. That I may lose everything.
“Let’s get going. I want to fly, to forget about all this for a while,” I say.
Riya nods as she examines her timepiece. “Yeah, we’re running late anyway.”
The little stumps of our skygliders hang in the training yard attached to a wooden post. With a quick green spell, the post unravels and releases Hubris in condensed form. Riya keeps glancing at me, worry drawing her full eyebrows closer to her dark eyes. I proceed as usual, trying to convey through my actions I’m well and unafraid of my impending ceremony or my marriage.
With a hard flick and a simple spell, the eight-inch-long wooden tube enlongates. The handle, bound in interlacing wicker, extends, and at the tail two kitelike pieces of red fabric unfold and stiffen with a snap like when the wind catches a sail. I smile at Hubris’s full form as I chant the flight spell that will cast us both air bound. Red the color of blood pools into the woven wicker, finding and soaking its way into the wood’s slivers. I add a little extra magic to take the additional weight of two saddlebags filled to the brim with firelight.
