Page 32 of Ashes of Gold
“Look, the only helpful thing I’ve found is there.” She points at the pages parted in front of me.
I’veflipped through this one ten times at least and keep coming back to the section on Magical Malfunction. That’s the closest section on any sort of magic loss.
“This doesn’t say anything about losing magic. It’s only if it doesn’t work.”
“Exactly.” She smooths down her flyaways and tugs her gadget back in front of her. “I hate to say it, but this looks like a dead end. Best we can hope for is…” She grunts. “Me getting this stupid thingto…” Another grunt and a blue light flickers on. “YES! Would you look at that?” She holds in my face a metal something that looks like a banana and an iPad had a baby.
“You don’t look impressed. Rue, be impressed.”
I sigh.
“Rue, this Refractor can trace magic from miles away. Not only that, it works undergroundandit can source where the magic came from like… magical fingerprints.” Her expression is as bright as the sun. “This is going to help us!”
She wants me to get hyped, but I’m entirely distracted by the fact that none of these books I’ve managed to look through has what I need or anything close to it. But Bri’s proud of her gadget, so to be a good friend, I plaster on my most impressed face and that seems to appease her.
She eases it in her bag ever so carefully and I press my book open wider. I guess I have to figure this out myself. I’m not giving up that easily. I don’t believe there’s not a single word written anywhere on what happens if magic is lost. They could never do anything about it because they didn’t have magic to do magic. But I do.
I pull my knees to my chest and flip a few more pages, then flip several more until my back aches. I switch positions and start at the front of the book again. I’m missing something. I have to be. I flip and flip, practically reciting the words, they’re so familiar. And it amounts to nothing. My shoulders sag and Bri scoots closer to me, peering over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I’d hoped in the footnote in this one, maybe there’d be something. I’ve seen a few of these texts before. But I went through them all again… nothing,” she says. “I’m sorry, Rue.”
“It’s like in every instance if magic is lost or not given… it’s intentional. So they wouldn’t need to teach ways to get it back.”
“Yep. Because if itwasgiven back, that’s on the Chancellor. Onlyhehas to restore it. Because he gave it.”
“Oh my god, Bri. That’s it!” If my brain was a light bulb, it would be buzzing. “Magic can only be restored by those who gave it, right?”
“Yep, the Chancellor.” She furrows her brow. “How does that help us?”
How did I not see this before?I stand. “The Chancellorstolemagic. He’s not the real magic giver.”
Bri’s eyes widen and she stands, too.
“The Ancestors,” we say at the same time.
It makes perfect sense. If magic can be restored only by the giver because the Chancellor gave the Grays magic, then the Ancestors must be the only ones able to restore Ghizoni magic, since they were the original purveyors of magic.
“Bri, we’ve been looking up the wrong spells! We need to reach the Ancestors.”
“As in raise the dead?”
“Well, when you put it like that… it sounds… creepy. But yes! That’s what we need to do.”
“Hmmm.” She taps her lip and grazes the spines of a stack of tomes piled in a corner. “Do you remember anything about your time locked up that could help us?”
“There’s this weird bit of memories that keeps coming back to me in pieces. I remember prison fairly well, and the battle, of course.” My insides slosh. “But…”
Eyelashes.
A white lab coat.
Something cold on my lips.
“I think I was… I don’t know. There are pieces from a lab or something missing and I’m not sure why.”
“A lab?” Her lips push sideways. “What do you recall?”
“Not much, Bri, really. Fragments here and there. It’s like I’ve lost a huge chunk. And I don’t know why or what caused it.” I pull a book from the bottom of the stack and the others topple. I read its title—Magic Beyond the Grave—then restack them.
