The Kingdom's Crown (Inheritance of Hunger #3) - Kathryn Moon Page 0,24

a spoonful of tea from an open tin and deftly pocketed a note on balancing magical frequencies to examine later. My hands cupped around the chipped and cracked porcelain of the pot, held together with magic no doubt, and I created heat to warm the water and steep the leaves.

There was a mug on the far end of the table, stuffed with another note, and I called it over with a manipulated breeze. Nathan's breath caught, and he bit off a grumble as I swept the note—this one was more scientific and a little beyond my knowledge—into another pocket, and cleaned out the mug with a rinse of hot water.

"This is why mages aren't meant to be Chosen," Nathan muttered as water steamed from the teapot, and I strained the leaves as I poured his mug.

"I don't understand," I said, taking the mug to him.

He reached for it, eyeing the color, taking a deep sniff, and only frowning more deeply with every detail. "You have too much access to the source," he said, eyeing me warily.

I searched the floor and found a stool buried under a pile of books. Nathan didn't reprimand me when I moved the books, but he huffed as I helped myself to the seat.

"Because I don't use conduit charms to hold—" I didn't want to say Bryony's name. He probably knew exactly whose magic I used, but she was more to me than magical theory and a power source. I suddenly regretted showing off my skill with her power. "To hold power?"

"You're unmeasured. You spent twice the magic you needed on every one of those acts."

"The tea is too hot? Too strong?" I asked.

Nathan scowled at his tea. "It's a perfect cup. I think you know that. But no one needs magic to brew a cup of tea."

"Oh, and they need it for a luxurious bathing pool?" I laughed and narrowed my eyes at the older man, glancing briefly around the room. He was obviously scholarly, but also nervous, secretive. That prism was stuffed with magic, not because this man was using it for himself. He was hoarding power. "And you know about the source?"

"You know about the source!" he tossed back, leaning forward, a little tea spilling over the brim of the cup onto the floor. "That's another reason why mages aren't meant to be Chosen. And why mages aren't meant to be self-taught. To do as they please with any kind of instruction they can get their hands on!"

"If no one is meant to know about where Kimmery's magic comes from, why all the talk about the queen's line and—"

"Prosperity," the old man hissed. "It's not a very clear word, is it? Could mean plenty of things. None of them necessarily magic."

"I don't understand why it matters either way, if I'm honest."

"It's too much. It's too much power running about," Nathan muttered, leaning back into his chair, head shaking and eyes trailing away from mine.

I frowned, running through his words, through the fragments I'd read on the notes strewn about.

"Unpredictable. Dangerous! Might end up doing anything, in anyone's hands. Might hurt someone," Nathan continued.

My mouth opened and then shut again. The royal mages were preventing magic being released? And even more disturbing was the fact that Nathan's words sounded a little too similar to the one's I'd thrown in Bryony's face when I discovered her Hunger. I'd been wrong in that argument—on many points—and the Hunger had more or less demonstrated that it posed more danger to Bryony than it did the general populace or any inexperienced magician.

"What does a royal magician do?" I asked. Aside from choke Kimmery's magic inside of a conduit the size of a boulder.

"It really isn't any of your business. You shouldn't even be here." Nathan was growing agitated again, taking a gulp of the tea I'd brewed and then grimacing as he remembered how it had ended up in his hands.

"I was only thinking I might be able to assist—"

"Assist? A Chosen?! That's not—you're not… We don't need any extra hands around here as it is. We're running the castle, we're not some experimental busybodies from the universities. Certainly not self-trained mages."

His words were winding in all the wrong directions, and he gave up his chair to pace around the room. The pulse of the conduit on the other side of the wall was tangible and tempting, overwhelming even, and I wondered what kind of toll it took on a magician who worked next to that drum of