“You pulled back when you should’ve pushed forward. You were already inside of her mind...and now what do you have? You’re changing her body a little bit? That’s ridiculous. We should’ve taken her when she was in the medical bay.”
Marc still didn’t respond. There was something slightly strange about Phuong. There was something in her aura that felt different. She was much bigger in spirit now.
Yes, of course some of the change was due to taking dragon blood. But there was more than that.
“Maybe we should try to...”
Marc stopped listening to his brother, but he nodded at appropriate intervals. Lucien hated the twins even more than he did. As the oldest, Lucien had spent his young years in a very poor Draka family, before their father had dug them out. Yes, they were part of generations of criminals, but their grandfather hadn’t been especially great at what he did.
“And then we can be Thrones,” Lucien finished. “What do you think?”
“I need more time to think about it.” Marc got to his feet and walked out of the room.
46
Spellbook
Phuong
Phuong looked at Hoa.
“Wow. This book is huge and old.”
“It has all the old Y
ore spells and rituals that can bring you up to speed on what a queen should do. Your parents entrusted the Yore to give it to you when you were of age and able to use it. Now it’s your time.”
For her whole life, Phuong’s identity had been a mystery. Yes, she knew that she was Yore. She could see that in the mirror. But she had no idea about Yore magic.
She couldn’t read the spell book all that well, but she had Hoa with her. The characters in the book weren’t anything like the Standard characters that the Draka used. And even though she had a little Draka blood in her now, her Yore heritage was the strongest call.
“What should I memorize first?” Phuong felt overwhelmed by the foreign characters. She felt like she was a little child learning how to read all over again. There was a part of her that felt as if she should’ve learned Yore characters earlier than the Draka ones...but she’d been in an orphanage, a lost princess.
“You need to internalize the magic that you have, not memorize some spells. These spells are just the basics. As you use magic more and more, you’ll be able to do more. We’re going to train you in basics first.”
“If the Yore have magic, why were the Draka able to take over?”
Hoa sighed. “The Yore thought that the Draka were just merchants. We welcomed them on our planet, no matter how many people they wanted to bring. It was a fatal mistake. Once they had enough people and technology on the planet to take over, they did. Your parents went into hiding before being found and murdered. Most Draka don’t know that you and your brother even exist, or you would’ve been killed as children.”
“So Yore magic isn’t that powerful?”
“It depends on what you consider powerful. A small amount of power in the right place can help. Think about the first rock that falls during a rock slide. You can do that.”
“I can start rock slides?”
“Or avalanches. A very small amount of magic in the right place can help you.”
“But the Yore didn’t use it before.”
“That’s because when you use the power of nature, you’re blasting innocent people, too. It wasn’t as if the Yore rulers were going to murder thousands of their own people in order to beat back a few hundred Draka. We thought that we would prevail until we couldn’t.”
“How do you know all this?”
“It’s Yore history.”
Phuong hadn’t learned any Yore history in school. She’d learned all about Draka conquests and their space exploration attempts, but she realized that she knew nothing of her own history.
“So how fast can I learn how to do this?”