Page 51 of The Sundered Realms

Vhannor bent down and removed his boots.

Liris wasn’t sure why that action was so shocking to her, but she couldn’t help staring at the sight of him standing barefoot in the sand next to her.

All his attention on her.

“Try this if you want.” His voice was low, emotionless. Like he didn’t want her to know he cared one way or another whether she tried it, but that he really, really did. “Stand just inside the shallow part and feel what happens when the tide laps at your ankles.”

Liris followed suit silently, no questions. And stood there next to him, and then felt the rush of sand between her toes.

Watching him watch her, she saw the moment he saw her feel it, saw the gold in his eyes burst at whatever he saw on her face.

She didn’t know what to make of that and turned her gaze quickly to the sea, watching the water cover her feet, then run back out.

Liris knew seas were supposed to be teeming with life, and the deadening effect of the portal had probably killed the same seaweed that made the snacks Vhannor had brought her, that there were fish and all kinds of things she’d only heard of before that had not survived the magic draining out of the realm.

But she stood in water making waves, and it still felt like magic to her.

Liris closed her eyes; opened them. Took a breath. Explained to Vhannor what she’d asked.

“Ah. That makes sense.” He gazed out across the sea.

“What I was asking, or why Jiechit thought I needed to be trapped?”

“Both, but both of you lack context. Your only fault in this case is lack of information, easily fixed. What you proposed would have resulted in a demon portal.”

Liris whipped to face him. “What?”

“When you try to transport magic but can’t adequately specify an anchor for its destination, the magic opens a portal to the void,” Vhannor explained. “It was once possible to transport between realms, but since the Sundering there’s no way to locate them—specifically, we can’t specify a realm’s location in a spell.

“The question, especially given the circumstances, would have caught Jiechit off guard, since anyone else enrolled at an elite spellcasting university should have known that.”

Liris gaped at him. “I don’t know whether to be more embarrassed or angry. If this is such basic knowledge, why has no one mentioned it? Why didn’t it come up in my very first class?”

“It would have, if you’d stayed for the whole thing,” Vhannor said dryly. “Frankly, you know so much of politics and history from your training it didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t know this too.”

Liris slumped, sitting all the way down on the edge of the sand with her feet still in the water. Story of her life: smart enough to get herself in trouble. “So I didn’t do anything wrong, but I still managed to fail in a way that merited trapping me in a spell.”

“Liris—“

“You wanted me to be honest? I tried. So here’s some more honesty: I am really tired of being judged by rules when people keep claiming they don’t exist.”

Vhannor was quiet for a minute, and then blew out a breath, crouching down next to her and scowling at the water. “I thought the lecture would be the easiest way to introduce you to the university, but I was wrong. No, don’t look like that, it’s not your fault, it’s mine.”

That was worse.

But when she met his gaze again, she saw that hint of gold in the center had flared again.

“You do realize,” Vhannor growled, “that we are asking a lot of you?”

Liris frowned, unclear why that was relevant. “Yes.”

Vhannor studied her for a moment, then blew out a breath. “Of course. You just consider that your baseline.”

If he tried to convince her she couldn’t do this after all—

He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could at the water, and took a deep breath.

Great, now he was mad too.

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