Page 4 of Minor Works of Meda

I was almost inclined to agree, with his heat weighing down on my body. But I’d seen his fingers tremble sometimes, even when he concentrated. It took work to hold spells, and precise body control. It was why I spent hours curling my fingers into the shapes, holding them as I read or studied or walked. Why I stretched carefully. If Kalcedon bothered to do the same, I’d never seen it. Instead, he spent all his time bent over the garden beds.

I didn’t understand him. If I had power like Kalcedon’s, I’d be unstoppable. He could have ruled the world, if he had half a brain.

“Maybe if you practiced…” I suggested.

He leaned forward on his hands, legs still crossed, and my mind shuddered in a panic at the blaze of his magic. It seared through me, a weight as hot and oppressive as it was tantalizing. My whole body answered, melted, reached for the power. It only pinned me down harder. Kalcedon’s dark eyes bore into me, holding my mind from scattering entirely. His face was too symmetrical, pretty and terrifying all at once, with his full lips, high cheeks, teeth a little too white.

“Don’t say scat like that around Eudoria. Ever.”

He leaned back. The weight of magic lifted, but my heart kept racing. I frowned at him, lips pressed tight.

“Do you hear me?” he growled, when I didn’t answer.

“I heard. Why?”

“Just don’t.”

“She’s not going to replace you.”

“You don’t know that,” I heard him mutter, under his breath. Kalcedon looked away from me off to the left, where the long cliff sloped down to Missaniech village and the sea.

“You’re too powerful to let go of,” I admitted. “Even if you don’t practice and you say cruel things. I bet just about any witch would take you. Especially if you tried.”

Kalcedon stood, unfolding his lanky body.

“I don’t need your help, Meda. Just leave my name out of your mouth. And get up. It’s time to make supper.”

“In a moment.”

Going back inside meant seeing Eudoria. I didn’t want to hear her say anything about the spell I’d crafted; the one she’d refused to even consider.

I stared up at the gleaming colors of the Ward again. My heart was just returning to normal when Kalcedon’s magic shifted. His hands spun through the air, sketching shapes and coiling power. Still on my back, it was hard to make out the sigils he drew above me. I wasn’t used to seeing them from below.

“What are you doing?” I asked, quickly sitting up to get a better view.

“Proving I don’t have to try to beat you.” He took a step back, then another, towards the edge of the tower’s roof. I scrambled to my feet, hurriedly scanning the pale, near-invisible lines that warbled around the storm-gray man. Trying to put it together without knowing what sigils he’d used was almost impossible.

But the volume of it. This was no normal casting. This was more power than I’d ever seen anybody use. This was more power than I’d ever seen anybody have, except for Kalcedon.

His eyes met mine. His raised hand stayed crabbed, fingers hooked into the glittering web of spell to hold its shape from fluttering apart in the breeze. His lips split into a grin. And then—

He leaned back, and surrendered himself to gravity’s pull. I screamed so loudly my throat burned.

As Kalcedon tumbled over the edge, I ran forward and tried to grab him. I was too slow. The isle sprawled out beneath us, a fifty-foot drop to the overgrown garden and the arid, hungry soil beyond; the cliffs to the sea, the path to Missaniech.

The air fizzled and he tucked into himself, colors melding, shape shifting faster than the eye could track, until there was no Kalcedon. There was only a massive osprey. Bigger than a sea hawk had any right to be. The not-bird flicked out his wings and skimmed low over the garden, then wheeled up on the air.

I fell backwards onto my rear, too close to the dangerous edge. All at once I felt dizzy and sick.

I had witnessed a triumph. A spell the likes of which the Protectorate hadn’t seen since the Ward was raised three centuries ago.

But I couldn’t get the taste of loss out of my mouth. It lingered, just like the burn in my throat.

Chapter 3

Kalcedon landed in the garden below, body unfurling as he stumbled on newly grown feet. Feathers sheeted off his gray skin and fell apart like blossoms of smoke on the breeze. He straightened and looked up at me.

With a scowl, I bolted for the stairs and clattered down the long, winding circle of the four-story building to the tower’s base. By the time I reached the ground floor Kalcedon already stood in the kitchen with his back to me. Eudoria was nowhere to be seen.

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