handle twisted easily under my grip, and I leaned in to shoulder the door open.
The air inside the room was stiff, lamps turned up high and windows shrouded in heavy dark curtains. It was immediately clear where the queen's magic was going. At the center of the room was a massive crystal prism, throbbing with light, shimmering without cause. The most outrageously enormous and well-charged conduit I'd ever seen in my life, my dreams even.
Doors remained open on either end of the room, but there was no one here watching this prism, and I hesitated in place, almost afraid to step forward. Bryony's magic that she'd shared with me tugged me in the direction of the prism. It called magic, like to like, and I closed my fist at my sides, holding on tightly to what I possessed.
There was no furniture in the room aside from tables in the corner, and none of the trinkets other mages might use to collect power—gold coins and shells, fine gemstones cut into rings. Of course there wasn't, anything else would've interfered with the vacuum of the prism.
I stepped softly closer, moving in a slow circle around the object. It was resting in a gold stand, branches extended around the facets of the prism, pinching it between the ends like an egg held in a bird's claw. It was about a foot off the ground and as tall as my waist. Every step I made, the light changed and shifted inside, as if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Or the prism was.
This was what powered waterfalls in our bathing pool, what made the palace floors shine and the chandeliers glitter and the fires roar. This was also what held magic captive, preventing it from being so easily accessed outside of the castle.
"Who are you?"
I spun, stepping away from the prism and facing the older man leaning forward on his cane, glaring at me over the glasses perched at the end of his nose. He looked more like a solicitor than a mage, dressed in a careful black suit coat and brightly polished shoes. From the other doorway, papers rustled and footsteps clapped closer.
"Aric Martin, Chosen," I said, the title a little odd on my tongue.
"You can't come in here," the second man said, and I was surprised to find him so much younger, closer to Bryony or Owen's age. He was slight with a full beak of a nose and hair so light, it reminded me of Sam, wispy and too long around his ears.
"I'm also a mage," I said.
"Where's your certificate?" the old man asked.
"Well, I haven't got it on me, have I?" I didn't have a certificate at all, not that they needed to know that.
"I have. He has," the young man said. "You've got magic in your fists, and you're not wearing a conduit ring. He's untrained, Nathan."
"I can see that, Kenneth."
"Are you two the only royal magicians?" I asked them. The prism was a constant presence in the corner of my eye, pulsing and pleading for my magic.
"Don't answer," Nathan, the older magician said.
My eyebrows rose at the obvious suspicion. "You had a Leftman's locking charm on the door. It isn't hard to break."
Kenneth squawked and slammed his door shut on me, but Nathan only tilted his head. "You'd better come in, I suppose. He still has trouble with Leftman's. Prefers Bundry's."
I scoffed, glancing back at the other door. Bundry's lock was child's play. A good lock pick could break it, let alone any mage with basic skill. Weren't royal magicians meant to be powerful? I turned again and followed Nathan into a crowded office. He remained at the door for a moment, staring at the prism, before slowly shutting it behind us.
"Make me a cup of tea."
I frowned at the older man, watching him drift toward a large but old fashioned armchair with bald patches on the velvet. He sat down and cocked one eyebrow at me, tipping his gnarled hand in the direction of a teapot resting on a table.
This was the kind of instructional magic I'd avoided learning when I first discovered my talent. A pot of tea? When people were starving and sick? Eventually, I discovered that the principles in the charm reappeared later in more significant workings, ones with meaning.
I moved to the table, smiling and studying the scraps of paper with scribbled notes as I set about the magic. Pulling humidity from the air to supply water in the pot. I added