House of Shadows (Royal Houses 2)

The raven cawed again. And then it rushed at her. She screamed, running backward, but in an instant, there were hundreds of ravens cawing and flying straight toward her. She screamed as their bodies connected with hers, and the cloud around her collapsed. Her scream turned shrill as she fell through the open sky. Seconds ago, she’d had complete control over the clouds and flying, and now, she could do nothing but fall.

She broke through the last cloud and realized she was plummeting toward a distant ground. Rolling hills and a far-off forest dotted the landscape she was hurtling toward. She’d never seen this before. She didn’t know where in Kinkadia this was. But she didn’t particularly want to find out what would happen if she landed. If she was injured in the spirit plane, would she die here?

She gasped and threw every ounce of air magic she had out to cushion her fall. It did nothing, of course. There was no magic in the spiritual plane. Nothing at all to save her.

Her fear clouded her mind, and the ground was getting closer and closer. She was going to die. Oh gods, save her!

No, she couldn’t go out like this. The ravens were still at her side. No longer touching her, but soaring toward the ground, as if this were completely normal. She remembered Gelryn’s words a year ago when she’d first entered the plane. If she was in the plane, it belonged to her. It listened to her command alone. This was her circus.

Kerrigan closed her eyes and drew in her magic, as she would in the physical world. Then, she pushed not with the air magic, but with the very essence of self. Something shifted, small but malleable. She drew on it until it became almost solid. Then, she grabbed it with both hands and pulled.

She jerked to a full stop. Her ears were ringing, and all of her hair whipped forward around her face. Her heart beat a staccato in her chest. Even though this wasn’t real, it felt more real than reality.

Slowly, she peeled her eyes open and found she was a mere foot from the ground, held aloft on her stomach by the spirit magic she had conjured out of thin air. She gasped, and the magic dissolved. Then, she clumsily toppled forward onto the ground.

“Ugh,” she groaned.

“Impressive,” a voice drawled.

Kerrigan stumbled hastily to her feet and found a woman standing before her. She was easily six feet tall with white-blonde hair, braided like a crown around her head. She wore sturdy, scholarly attire but of high quality with a crimson sash across her chest with three slashes across the front.

“Who are you?” Kerrigan demanded.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Kerrigan.”

The woman stared her down. “And are you the one making all the noise around here?”

Kerrigan blinked. “I… well…”

“Shouldn’t you be in schooling?”

“Schooling? No, I’m seventeen.”

The woman sighed. “So, you’re from the country then? Don’t know the first thing about how to get to the academy?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh Lords, help me,” she said, crossing her arms. “What backward town are you from that you don’t even know about the academy?”

“What? I’m from the city.”

The woman walked a pace around her. “Don’t seem like a city girl to me.”

“Why are you on my spiritual plane?” Kerrigan demanded.

“My ravens brought you onto mine, girl,” the woman grunted. “You’ve been irritating me for nearly a year in this place. I finally got sick of it when you used enough crux to level a mountain.”

“Crux?” Kerrigan asked in confusion.

“You’re a spiritcaster, right?”

“I… yes?”

“Well, who has been teaching you?”

“No one,” Kerrigan said. “I’ve been kind of doing it on my own.”

“Emperor on high,” the woman said, looking skyward. “No wonder you’ve been so loud. We need to get you to Rhithymna as soon as we can. If you have no parental standing, it’ll be hard to get you into Himera, but I’ll do my best.”

Kerrigan blinked. “Can we back up? What in the gods’ names are you talking about? Who are you? What is Rhythm-uh-whatever?”

The woman stilled completely. It wasn’t until that moment that Kerrigan noticed how much she had been fidgeting, shifting her hips, tapping her foot, adjusting her clothing and the like. “Where are you? What city?”

“Kinkadia.”

She furrowed her brow. “Huh. Well, I guess that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why you weren’t found earlier.”

“Found?”

“I’ll begin at the beginning. I’m Professor Cleora. I teach theoretical casting at Emperor’s Academy in Himera College. I specialize in spiritcasting. Though there are so few of us anymore that much of my job is giving a more theoretical basis to the spiritual.”

Kerrigan’s eyes widened. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

“Obviously,” Cleora said. Her brown eyes lit up, and she began to pace back and forth. “The answer is clear. If all possibilities exist on a plane, then it only makes sense that they could bisect without direction.”