Her Graces

  Knock, knock.

  No one answered, but he expected that. He kept his head down, a secret smile on his face as he closed his eyes and rested his head on the cold wood.

  Knock, knock.

  Without dropping his smile, he opened his downcast eyes and announced his presence quietly, under his breath. “I’m coming in.”

  He turned the doorknob and took a step inside, softly closing the door behind him before he finally lit the candle in the palm of his hand.

  Empty.

  The table where books used to be neatly stacked. Papers and notebooks filled with class notes. Scrap parchment for reports. At the other end of the room, a neat desk with more books. The journal she always carried around with her, open flat on the desk. A pen and some ink. A single mug for drinking. Some tea bags in a small chest they had found in the village. The sweater she always liked to drape around herself while studying.

  He walked further into the room, filling the silent room with the creaks from the floorboards.

  Her simple, unadorned bed. Lying on it, her single Academy-issued blanket and sometimes her class robe. Her timepiece on her nightstand, meticulously tuned so she wouldn’t be late to classes or appointments.

  The chest on the floor across from her bed. Sachets of medicine inside—the ones she always carried around with her. Some of her other belongings, like her clothes stacked nicely across the wall, sorted into blouses, skirts, socks, and shoes. Nothing extraneous, nothing unnecessary. What she needed, she had there.

  Empty. All gone now. All that she had before she left had been moved into his room. If he wanted to search for a remnant of her, it would be with him. There was nothing here anymore, nothing that could be saved.

  Except it smelled like her. Sweet, like winter. Like winter flowers.

  Smile beginning to waver, he walked back to her desk and sat down on the cold chair, looking straight in front of him, where her journal no longer was because she had taken that with her. Only the two things she would never leave without.

  You don’t have to take it right now. When you’re ready.

  What if I can’t?

  I know you. You’ll come around.

  He had held it several times before, but her tactician’s ring had never felt so heavy as it did when he picked it up at that very moment.

  A heavy platinum base, ornately engraved on all sides with gold. A gold circle that blended in with markings you could press, a tiny needle on the inside to release blood into the well for authorizations.

  Gingerly, he dropped it into his breast pocket and reached for the second item.

  Heavier than the ring, it was her black tactician’s pen, so normal it could pass off as a normal fountain pen. There was still blood in its reservoir, so full he could barely hear the liquid move.

  Feeling the smile turn into a trembling frown as he bit down on his lower lip to stop his emotions from pouring out, he tucked the pen away and rushed outside to safety.

  When his steps no longer echoed in the empty halls and he was back in his room again, he placed the spell candle on his large study table—ever-laden with books and papers—and sat down.

  I know you. You’ll come around.

  No, you don’t.

  I trust you.

  Theo tilted his head back until it hit the stone wall behind him. Shoulders shaking, he covered his face with his good hand, felt the movement in his breast. Her spell, her ring, her pen. An ache that had not ceased for two months.

  After a long pause, he finally let his hand fall, not bothering to wipe the tears. He looked forward, past the spell candle in front of him, and imagined her sitting in the seat at the other end of the table. Smiling because he had fallen asleep while studying again. Smiling because everything was normal.

  He looked to the side and picked up the first book on top of the stack closest to him.

  I trust you.

  I don’t trust myself.

  Slowly. Little by little.

  In the dead of night, alone in his room, the tactician pretended everything was normal, that there was an old friend across from him that believed in him, that he was studying for a class he had to do well in, that he could still smell the sweet scent of winter flowers hanging in the air.

  * * *

  “Look at you.”

  Theo’s eyes fluttered open, and he straightened up from his seat, wondering for a moment where he was until he realized he was at his desk.

  “Skipping Moriya’s class? Bold.”

  He saw who was across from him and groaned loudly before letting his head hit the table with a loud thud. “Uuughh. Don’t you have anything better to do, Faris?”

  “You’ve been staying up for the past two days reading that book. Is it really that hard?”

  “Even on my good days, I couldn’t memorize an entire book of spells in two days. Give me a break.”

  “It’s Ty’s tact book, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It couldn’t possibly be that difficult.”

  “Uuughh.”

  “Show it to me.”

  The tactician-physician straightened up immediately, keeping a firm hold on the book in front of him, glaring at his nonchalant friend through narrow, bloodshot eyes.

  His caster’s tone was bone-dry. “Wow. I didn’t even move.”

  He wiped the sleep from his eyes and exhaled. “What time is it?”

  “Nine twenty-five.”

  “Oh, Graces. Class is in five minutes.”

  “So, you gonna skip or not? Depending on your answer, maybe I’ll save myself the grief, too.”

  Theo tilted his head back to face the empty ceiling. “What happened with not going to classes?”

  “Lectures.”

  He then eyed his bedroom door. “How did you even get in?”

  Getting up with a thunk of his cane, Faris yawned into his hand before answering. “It was wide open. You haven’t closed it, these past two days. That’s how I know.”

  “I…I swear I closed it.”

  “Come on, let’s go. I don’t want Moriya to be in a shitty mood because you didn’t show up for class.”

  Watching Faris leave, Theo snapped, “Hey, what does that mean?”

  He didn’t stop. “Exactly what you think it means.”

  Slam.

  * * *

  “Right on time. I’m surprised.”

  Adjusting the left side of his coat, which was dangling like a cape because his arm was still technically healing, Theo walked into his position beside Faris. The professor’s unimpressed tone was not lost on him.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Well, I’m here,” Theo snapped back, thinking to himself that the same words would have probably earned him a smack on the head from Emrys when the professor began speaking again.

  “Since it looks like we don’t have our usual nine, we’ll just start with the spells I assigned for homework. From the top, in the usual order.”

  Still dazed from all the tactician’s spells he to memorize for the past two days, Theo scrambled to find out exactly which spells had been assigned for homework.

  Were they the Taf…series three spells?

  Frighteningly aware of the silence that permeated the courtyard, not even the call of birds around to save him, the tertiary caster—physician first, a poor tactician’s substitute second—finally located a sheet of paper he had slipped into his casting book for today’s class.

  “Anytime,” called the professor.

  Unlike most class tests like these, he didn’t mouth the words first, didn’t mull over the words. He looked at the target ten steps away from him and let the words carelessly spill out of his mouth.

  A haze of brilliant blue slowly formed above his target, dripping a thick, black liquid over it and boring holes that went cleanly through the wood and straw.

  “Next.”

  Sloppy. You let some land on the ground. Try again, Em admonished in his mind.

  Another sapphire cloud appeared over the target beside his. It looked denser, the droplets thicker, thus reaching the ground at least twice as fast as his; however, it only covered half the target.

  “That’s a miss, Faris.”

  Better spell. But that’s an egregious amount of spilling. A waste of magic, even—you could have shaved off a few words if you had not intended to land half, and then saved the other half-charge.

  He probably can’t see well, Theo defended Faris in his mind.

  Professor Moriya’s face was stony as the tip of his pencil made a mark in his notebook, waiting for the next dummy in line to disintegrate.

  The class continued like that for an entire half hour, going through every assigned spell until finally the professor stepped into the center of the courtyard.

  “That was only ten spells. None of you should be tired.”

  Already lightheaded, Theo focused on breathing and blinking away the pain in his dry eyes. When did he fall asleep last night? He had returned from class and dinner at eight, finished cleaning up the common room at nine, checked everyone back in by curfew at ten, washed himself before eleven…studied maybe eight, nine spells?

  “Many of those spells were sloppy at best. Some of you don’t even look like you care about being here.” Judgment thickly coated the professor’s words. “If you don’t want to be here, don’t show up. I don’t care that you don’t take this seriously. I care about you wasting my time.”

  Then, as expected, and as he did every other class after the morning test and drill, Moriya began at the top of the class and moved down.

  “Theo. Your spells were surprisingly mediocre, but lazy and unprepared. Not like you. You didn’t even bother to try.

  “Faris. Obviously, I should not have tried to convince Lundkis to clear you, because I am questioning more and more whether you can actually see anything. Most of your spells were fine, but improperly placed, or flat-out missed moving targets. Improve, or I’ll put you on probation. You’re the primary caster for your class. Act like one.”

  Theo observed Faris and his steely look that absorbed the scathing criticism in stride. No hint of emotion to be seen on his deathly pale visage, though it had always been plain to see that he was disappointed in himself.

  Always in the shadow. On his best days, slightly below Theo. Injured? The gap was far too great to be measured.

  At the end of the professor’s expert lambasting of his students’ laughable performances, and after making a few more notes, he announced, “Seeing as everyone is pathetic today, we’ll do a final individual spell test, and then I’ll dismiss you. If you cannot successfully cast what I ask of you, then you are not leaving. I don’t care if you’re going to be late to your next class.” He snapped his head up toward who should have been Class 2-A’s caster. “Theo.”

  Walking over to the center of the class, used to everyone’s eyes on him, he met Moriya’s stony gaze with his own pathetic one.

  “Cast that Planaris for me again. I want to see it.”

  The dizziness dispelled in a shaky heartbeat. Theo blinked several times before finding the right word. “What?”

  “Planaris.”

  “T-that’s a—” Balking at the request, lowering his voice as if the soulless casting professor could pull pranks, he replied in a hushed whisper, “That’s a Grade V trigger spell, professor.”

  “And?”

  Theo thoroughly racked his brain. He thought about the words, going through them carefully and deliberately in his head this time, before he stepped back and raised a hand toward his teacher.

  The words rolled off his tongue, smoother than silk, conjuring up an unnerving ball of pure darkness in his hand that only grew as he spoke more of the spell.

  Where had I learned this? It was one of Em’s spells, of course. It had just come out during the duel with Moriya. I was scared. I was in pain. It felt like fighting Em. I wanted it to end.

  When he was almost done with his spell, and the mass hovering in front of his hand was triple the size of a balloon, Theo finally stole a glance at his teacher.

  Moriya was mumbling something quickly, but nothing was happening.

  Theo’s first thought: He doesn’t have a counter for this?

  The second: He’s trying to find one.

  Before he could form a third cohesive thought, the spell vanished with an anticlimactic blip.

  Theo froze.

  “What?” he said for the second time that day, looking at where the black mass used to be.

  With a mild grin, Professor Moriya nodded and quickly scribbled something in his book. “Aha. Very good.”

  “Did you—you found a counter that quick?” He still could not believe his eyes, how quickly his spell had disappeared.

  The casting professor’s expression was inquisitive. “You spoke that far slower than the first time. It was child’s play. Good job. Now go.” He turned his head to the rest of the silent class. “Next.”

  * * *

  Having wanted to return to his room and sleep off the fatigue, Theo stood in the infirmary instead.

  Dark. It was so dark.

  Nearly all the windows were covered up now, leaving a few solitary lights at the back, all backward facets.

  “Hythe, Grace of the Wind,” he dared to whisper while walking across the Graceful threshold, only lowering his gaze when he heard familiar voices.

  “Look who’s here.”

  “Ah, the successor.”

  “Get him to do the window.”

  “That’s your job, Seth.”

  Three individuals stood in front of the primary attending physician’s desk at the back, where Physician Chel sat with her head hung.

  “Er,” he started awkwardly, stepping around the student council members and trying to dodge the weird looks they were giving him. “S…sorry?”

  Chel finally raised her head when he approached, her eyes unfocused and hair disheveled.

  “Did…did you just wake up?” he asked impulsively.

  She rubbed her eyes, taking in a breath, which became a yawn. “Ah. Hello, Theo. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m supposed to be on duty over the weekend…?” He changed his statement to a question at the last second upon seeing the bleary-eyed, curious look on the attending physician’s face.

  She fumbled to put on her glasses before cocking her head. “Nate said you had accepted being the tactician for 2-A, though?”

  He fought the urge to tilt his head along with her. “But…you just called me a physician?”

  The tilt intensified, almost a full 90 degrees. “…Did I?”

  “Yes, you did. I thought that I’d still be a physician, though?”

  “You’re not, though.”

  Theo was at a loss for words. Sure, it would free up some time, but he liked it. It was enjoyable getting to fix people. The blood didn’t bother him, and neither did death. He had seen enough of it growing up, Em’s training aside.

  “You know, they’re kinda adorable together,” Seth piped up first.

  “In that case, we should get Nate. It’d be funny if he flipped like that one time in the First Circle. The first and only Ex-Obelisk at school in sixteen Circles, and we missed it.”

  Theo took a step back even though he was separated from Chel by the desk and at least five steps.

  “Ha, he stepped back,” chortled Pia.

  “He’s cute. His girlfriend’s basically dead, right?”

  “Holy shit,” Theo erupted, turning in furious disbelief to the two blabbering twins, and then the head of the student council. “Do they have no filter? What the fuck’s wrong with them?”

  Just as Halle opened her mouth, Seth interrupted again.

  “Maybe—”

  Pia kicked her brother before he could continue. “Go do something useful with your life and take down Chalsis. I can see the crack all the way from here.”

  Not looking apologetic at all, Halle smiled. “Sometimes I tune them out so much, I don’t even notice they’re talking.”

  With wide eyes following Seth walking into the Head Physician’s office, and Pia standing by the wall below the mosaic, Theo gradually dropped his scowl. “Why do you have to get rid of the windows?”

  “You don’t believe in the Graces, do you?” the healer chuckled.

  “No…I don’t.”

  “Then you must not know about their history.”

  “Only the basic stuff for class.”

  “Watch.”

  Coming out of the office with an unbelievably long ladder tucked under his arm, Seth leisurely walked over to the window where the backward facet of the Grace of the Light was and set it against the wall. He cast a spell extending the ladder until it reached the bottom of the stained-glass window of a golden-haired child, then swiftly ascended it.

  Theo held his breath.

  Between the time that Seth raised his hand up to the Grace, and the window shattered into a thousand pieces, was a single second. And in that time, his twin, who was now standing at the bottom of the ladder, engulfed the tiny shards in so intense a fire they turned into a floating, dense ball of glass the size of a fist.

  Thinking that they were going to lower it down to the floor for safekeeping, Theo jumped when Seth lobbed it out the window and sent a spell after it.

  Boom.

  Effortlessly, Seth slid back down the ladder to a proud, smiling Pia before heading into one of the infirmary’s back rooms.

  “It is said that long, long ago, the Academy of the Graces was originally founded by the twelve Graces. After the Great Burning, which reduced the Academy to a quarter of its original size, and before Thaon departed the land—the First Departure—Anasot built an infirmary. As he considered the school to be the central gathering place for all the Graces after they left the Temple of the Earth Mother to fulfill their purpose of creating Chloris as we know it today—the Temple now being the Royal Capital—he left the very first Ancients with not only instructions to craft the infirmary windows in the image of all the Graces before their Departures as proof of their existence, but also a spell allowing them to embed a part of each Grace’s anima into their respective window.

  “As you may have learned in class, the Earth Mother scattered each Grace across Chloris upon their Departures, their true divinity cemented by the trees that sprouted from their graves not long after. While some records state that the Earth Mother first brought the trees into existence in an attempt to bring light back into Hythe’s world—as Thaon’s untimely Departure utterly shattered her—they eventually gave us commoners the means to practice the same magic that was once only unique to them. Little did She expect, the magic the Souls of the Earth Mother brought—the infinite gift bestowed upon us by both Her and Her Graces—must now be destroyed, as it has become the very reason for their people’s suffering.

  “Every time Ty ravages the final resting place of a Grace, a window cracks—that’s why we take them down. As for what it means…maybe it’s pure coincidence. Maybe someone is purposefully destroying the windows without us knowing. I, however, like to believe that it’s a sign that what she’s doing is real, that the original Graces once walked this land. That Anasot’s magic was perfect, that there really is a way to preserve part of your soul and anima in another object, even if you end up reincarnating into a completely different person. That Ty is truly sundering every vestige of the original Graces from the land to free us all from the wretched grasp of a loveless Earth Mother.”

  With a heavenly, matronly smile that looked more divine and threatening than any of the Graces, even the Earth Mother’s most devout follower, Lycea, Halle turned to Theo.

  “After all, my dear nonbeliever, you could be the reincarnation of a Grace, and she could be saving you, too.”