Page 11 of The Exile's Curse

"Both are well. Riki will be happy to see you again. She always did like you. How is Sophie's Tok doing?"

"He's learning to talk." She smiled at the memory. "The Anglions aren't entirely sure how to take him. I don't think talking crows are common over there."

Madame Simsa grinned as they rounded the corner and passed onto the long oblong patch of grass that lined the front of the sturdy stone buildings that housed the Academe’s practice rooms. "I dare say he is less startling than Elarus."

Chloe laughed. "Yes. I think it's going to take years before most of them are anywhere approaching comfortable with a sanctii in their midst. What they're going to do when more people start practicing water magic is anybody's guess. I don't envy Sophie her task."

"She is a smart girl. She will win them over. Or that husband of hers will bash some heads together until they listen to her."

"He does tend to loom menacingly in the background and glare at people who are being difficult." Sophie's husband, Cameron—formerly Lord Scardale but now the Prince Consort of Anglion—was tall, dark-haired, and blue-eyed like many Anglions who hailed from the north of the island. He didn't waste much time with small talk, and he was, as far as Chloe could tell, 100 percent focused on keeping his wife safe and happy in her new role. He wouldn't hesitate to do what needed to be done to protect her.

"The best ones do, child."

She didn't respond to that. Charl had tended to try to charm, not loom. He, too, had had dark hair and bright blue eyes, but he'd laughed a lot more than Cameron did and talked a mile a minute, his emotions running close to the surface. Or so she'd thought. But it had, it seemed, been an act, or at least partially so. There had been secrets he'd kept hidden beneath the charm. Secrets she'd learned too late.

No. Best not to think about that.

They reached the first practice room, and Madame Simsa opened the door, sweeping a hand to usher Chloe forward. "After you."

Crossing the threshold was like stepping back in time. She reached by habit to lift the student robes she wasn't wearing to walk over the threshold, then twitched her hands away, shaking her head.

The practice rooms were small and low-roofed, built from stone and reinforced with magic to withstand student mages losing control.

"Light the lamps, girl," Madame Simsa said from behind her.

Chloe hesitated. Lighting the earth lights was the job of any student with even a hint of earth magic. And there were few, no matter how heavily their talents might lean in other directions, who couldn't manage even that tiny spark. It should have been as instinctive as lifting her robe to step inside.

Illvyans used magic casually to make life easier when it came to things like lighting lamps or warming water or themselves. Blood mages and even some illusioners—though they were schooled to be cautious, as their powers could be amplified by strong emotions—could nudge a stray object out of the way. Water mages had less magic that was useful for small daily tasks, but most had at least some talent for one of the other arts. That was another thing the Anglions had wrong, the idea that people could only use one kind of magic. But it seemed the years she'd spent being so careful to not use magic anywhere anyone could see her had broken her of being careless of her power. She hesitated, one hand half raised toward the lamp before she dropped it back down.

"You are in a bad way," Madame Simsa said, moving around to face Chloe. She waved a hand and the earth lamps came to life, warming the gray walls to something more cheerful. "Tell me, when was the last time you actually used your magic?"

"Before I returned," Chloe admitted. "But only for simple things." She'd gotten used to hiding her powers. Barely dared to use even the odd trickle of earth magic to add strength to some of the potions and medicines and teas she'd sold at her store. A hard habit to break, even after Sophie had taken the throne and rescinded some of the temple's more ridiculous strictures. She'd had no need for water magic in Anglion, anyway. No desire to scry for the future when she'd spent most of her time trying to avoid thinking too far ahead. No need for a sanctii nor any illusion that she had enough control over her powers to bond one anyway.

"Lighting earth lamps is simple enough," Madame Simsa said. "Why the hesitation?"

"Spend ten years stifling the urge to use your powers and you learn to be careful," Chloe said. "I've grown used to doing without magic."

"Sounds like a dull sort of life," Madame Simsa said with a brisk shake of her head. "Well, then, best we re-introduce you to Illvyan magic. Start with the ley line. I am guessing it will remember you. Or you, it, rather." She smiled. "Or both."

Chloe shook her head. Madame Simsa was one of the few mages who thought the ley lines were more than just a source of power. That they might have an awareness of a kind of those who tapped into it. True, there hadn't ever been a recorded case of the ley lines rejecting a mage. In Anglion she'd tapped the lines a time or two, limiting herself to the least amount of power necessary to achieve her aims. Once when she'd created her highly illegal portal to give herself an escape route, should she ever need one, and once when she'd caught a fever that had left her shaking and sweating and half delirious, scared she might die. In the end, the portal had served Sophie and Cameron better than her, but knowing it was there if needed had been a comfort.

Even though she knew Madame Simsa was being whimsical, it was hard to shake the fear she might be proved right. What if Chloe tried to use the ley line and nothing happened? What if her powers had withered and faded through disuse?

Once she'd planned to try to bond a sanctii. Imogene had managed it, and Chloe had been, if anything, the stronger of the two of them.

But Imogene had honed her powers in the diplomatic corps before she'd tried and been schooled by the best. Whereas Chloe had left the Academe to look after her mother and the family. There was little need for grand workings to run a household. And even when she'd married Charl and been free again, she had focused on being a good wife and hadn't tried to return to her studies and her ambitions straight away, thinking she'd have plenty of time.

She'd been wrong about that. Foolish to sacrifice everything for love, even though, at the time, it hadn't felt as though that was what she'd been doing. Maybe she was being foolish again now to try again.

"You'll never know if you do not try," Madame Simsa said. "I understand that you have been through a lot, child, but trust me, reconnecting with your magic might make you feel more like yourself than anything else can."

Would it make her feel like Illvya was home again? That would be true magic.

Perhaps beyond her reach. But she hadn't survived ten years in Anglion by being timid. She might have denied her powers, but she'd used her wits, her brain, and the strength of her body, and she had survived. She had never backed away from a challenge. She was hardly going to do so now, in front of one of the mages she respected most in the world.

So. The ley line. Running far beneath her feet through the depths of the earth. A river of magic, light, and song that once had been a constant reassuring refrain in her head. She could hear that again.

If she let herself try.

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