Kovács was sitting behind the desk, and the other Guardians-in-training were scattered around the room in small groups. Her piercing stare made Simon’s heart drop and he immediately knew why Mariana was warning him about her.

  “Hurry up and join the others,” she muttered.

  Simon scurried inside the room, Mariana right behind him. They ended up standing next to Diana and her sister once again.

  “With the arrival of these two, I’ve had to reorganize the training areas,” the instructor started off. “The order in which I put you will vary day to day, depending on your power ranking. The best two teams have the front spots.”

  Kovács pointed to the two training areas closest to her and furthest from the mirror.

  “The two worst teams will be in the back, where they will be carefully looking at their technique and improving it, understood?”

  Mariana was eagerly nodding, and that was when Simon understood that this was something only he and Mariana were being briefed on—everyone had had this talk yesterday.

  “The two of you are taking the left training area at the back. Everyone else, take an area higher for today.”

  “Yes, instructor.” Mariana nodded and grabbed Simon by the sleeve of his shirt, practically dragging him to the further-most training area.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. What are you doing?!

  But staring back at him was a plea. “Please don’t embarrass me in front of her,” Mariana whispered just for him to hear.

  He wasn’t planning on it, but he couldn’t promise her anything. He was still in awe of the room and of the fact that he was about to learn how to cast his first spell.

  “We will be starting with concentration today. We will be summoning your weapon of choice,” Kovács started off once everyone was in their designated training area.

  Weapon of choice?

  Instructor Kovács walked to the center of the room and then raised her hand to point at one of the tapestries on the wall.

  “Summoning a weapon made of pure magic is one of the key abilities of a Guardian. For this two-week period before the Clash, you will be focusing only on one weapon, so make your choice carefully.”

  She then clapped her hands together and brass knuckles made out of a pale green light flashed into existence.

  Simon had to blink to convince himself that what he was seeing was real.

  With a wave of the instructor’s hand, the knuckles were gone.

  “Everyone sit down on the floor.”

  Twelve butts dropped to the ground immediately. Kovács hadn’t actually been scary at all, Simon realized. Rather, the air around her commanded this immediate respect. She felt powerful.

  Everyone was now looking up at her in awe, waiting for the next instructions.

  “Close your eyes and imagine the weapon you want to call upon.”

  Simon did as instructed, his mind racing on what weapon he wanted… What kind of weapons did Guardians use?

  A sword… I couldn’t go wrong with a broadsword, now could I? he thought.

  He imagined a broadsword in his mind’s eye, traced the length of the blade and a crossguard followed by a thick handle.

  “Now imagine the energy from your core seeping into the shape of your weapon until it is bright and glowing.”

  Kovács’ voice made Simon stiffen, and he tried to push the heat that he felt in his chest toward the sword in his mind.

  “Once your magic has taken the shape of the weapon, reach your hand in front of you, grab it out of your mind’s eye, and bring it here.”

  His breath got stuck in his throat.

  Do what?

  Silent panic rose in Simon’s chest as he reached out with his right hand to the hilt of the sword he was imagining.

  His skin collided with something cold, and his eyes immediately fluttered open—he was holding a simple broadsword of semi-transparent gray smoke. Kovács looked over at Simon and nodded, but his eyes were immediately searching for Mariana, so he could show her, but she was already staring at him.

  “Ispoleens be damned, I hate you so much.” She snickered under her breath and scooted over to him. “How come everything comes so naturally to you?”

  She was twirling a long, thick stick in her own hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at the others.”

  Simon looked around the room. No one besides them had a weapon in their hands. Some had opened their eyes prematurely, and some still had pained expressions, supposedly trying to imagine their weapons or draw on their power.

  “What’s your weapon anyway?” He nodded to the faintly red stick in her hands.

  “It’s a Fire-staff,” she whispered back. “It burns whatever it touches.”

  She then squeezed it a little, and a small flame erupted from both ends of the staff.

  “That’s what you fought the agents in Sofia with?”

  She nodded. “You really chose a sword?”

  “It was the first thing that came to mind,” Simon protested. “I didn’t know we could make Fire-sticks.”

  “Call it a Fire-stick again, and I will show you—” Mariana started but cut herself short.

  Kovács was walking toward them.

  “And here I was worried that the two of you were going to be behind.” She smirked down at the two friends.

  Mariana scrabbled to get up and bowed her head a little. Simon rose as well.

  “A Fire-staff; your brother would be proud.” The instructor smiled at Mariana. She blushed.

  Now Simon finally understood why she just had to talk about Kovács to him.

  “And you, Simon. If you have inherited even a fraction of your father’s talents… He too would be proud. Try to keep the weapons summoned for the rest of class.” And with that, she walked away from them and started checking up on the others.

  Simon and Mariana were left to sit in their training area to twiddle with their thumbs.

  “You should’ve told me you had such a crush on the instructor.” He elbowed his friend to take her attention off Kovács.

  “It’s not a crush, Simon!” she whined. “Just because I admire certain people doesn’t mean that I have a crush on them.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Simon looked away from Mariana to make a point. He was getting distracted and felt the magic that held the shape of a sword in his hand slipping away because of it. It didn’t stop Mariana from continuing, though.

  “She is one of the most accomplished Guardians of our time, Simon. She has been the only Guardian to wield two Primal Ispoleens simultaneously!”

  “That would sound impressive if I knew anything about the classification.” Simon laughed. His magic was back to being stable, so he turned to his friend again.

  “We’ll be covering it in history in a lesson or two, but those are the Light-Dark Ispoleens. There are only one hundred of each affinity. Kovács not only found and tamed two of them, but she could also summon and fight alongside both of them at the same time.”

  Simon turned his attention to the instructor again. This battle-hardened woman did have an air of intensity around her that went beyond what Simon felt was natural. He wondered if that was her magic or if it was just her presence.

  But Simon noticed Mariana has stopped looking at Kovács and was now looking at the rest of the Guardians-in-training.

  “I wonder why Kovács isn’t encouraging the others to use a different technique if they are struggling with this one?” she whispered, nodding to Oliver, who had just summoned a mace with Kovács instructing him individually. “She’s just repeating the same instructions to them…”

  “There are other ways to do it?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Not everyone is good at visualizing. I had to teach myself, for example. There are some people who can’t even teach themselves visualization. Their brains just don’t work like that,” Mariana explained. “There are ways around that, and she isn’t teaching them.”

  “Do you use a different technique?”

  “Kind of. I’m already so used to summoning my Fire-staff, I can just think of how it feels to hold it in my hand. But if I were to summon a brand-new weapon, I would be doing Kovács’ method.”

  As the end of the lesson approached, everyone but Victoria was able to summon a weapon. Some were able to summon it for a minute, some were able to keep it summoned for ten.

  Mariana had been able to hold it with half a thought through the whole lesson.

  She tried to teach Simon her trick for keeping the weapon in the back of her mind, but when he tried it, his sword disintegrated. And as it did, the magical core in his chest turned to stone. He swayed on his feet as it weighed him down. All of his focus was on not dropping to the ground because of it.

  Mariana noticed and explained to him that this was what happened when a Guardian’s weapon was broken in combat. She gave him a few minutes to catch his breath before she urged him to summon the sword again.

  Summoning it a second time was faster. Simon could tell that even the gray color of the sword was more solid this time around. The color of his magic had been semi-transparent before, but now he could barely see through it.

  Kovács showed them how to safely recall the weapons without jumping out of their skin when there were ten minutes left in the lesson. She was holding a small knife made of pale green magic.

  “Take the thought that is keeping your weapon summoned and imagine it evaporating.”

  The knife in her hand became a cloud of smoke, then a second later, blinked out of existence.

  Simon held his sword and tried to do that—unsuccessfully once again. The moment the sword evaporated, the same wall of cold slammed into him and the air got sucked out of his lungs.

  “That’s the same feeling when your Ispoleens get defeated in battle,” Mariana whispered.

  Kovács released them from class. Simon and Mariana were the first out of the room.

  Simon, this time around, was thankful for how far the spells classroom was from everything else. He needed to clear his head after experiencing that.

  It had shaken him every time his weapon disintegrated in front of him, a pain he had never felt before. He felt utterly spent in a way he didn’t think it was possible. It wasn’t physical or mental fatigue. It was his magic, his core—it felt hollow.

  “What’s wrong, Simon?” Marina asked, trying to make him look at her.

  “It’s nothing, I’m just extremely hungry,” he answered with a half-smile. “Focusing on that sword messed with my head a little.”

  The two friends walked into the dining hall and immediately spotted their mentors already sitting at a table.

  “You look like you were run over by a train,” Devin remarked as they sat down opposite their mentors. “How are you feeling?”

  “I can’t think straight. Everything hurts. Trent was really demanding, and Kovács finished me off,” Simon complained.

  “If you had told me Kovács was teaching spells, I wouldn’t have argued about coming here.” Mariana smiled at Devin. “She’s incredible.”

  Kaira chuckled. “You’re right. She is. I’m glad to see you appreciate her talents. She’s been helping me connect with my own Primal Ispoleen.”

  Mariana slammed her hands into the table, and everyone’s bowls rattled. “No way! You have a Primal?!”

  6

  Kaira having a Primal Ispoleen solidified in Mariana’s mind why she was assigned to work alongside Devin on missions. She might as well be the next Kovács. Mariana could tell her mentor was no ordinary Guardian ever since Jansen told her that Kaira specialized in Illusionary and Mind spells.

  Mariana was always fascinated by those, mostly because her family was always quick to overlook them, just like they were quick to overlook her. They underestimated the power of these ‘fake’ spells, as they classified them.

  If those spells were so weak, how had the Syndicate used them to drive the Auclair into hiding all those years ago?

  She thought back to the only other time she had run into their agents—Paris. They had sent an elite team of theirs. Mariana couldn’t discern what was real and what were the lingering effects of their Mind spells for three days.

  “Which Primal Ispoleen?” Mariana asked after a pause. It wasn’t going to matter much to her, anyway. Simply the feat of a Guardian being so in tune with their core in order to bond with a Primal Ispoleen was impressive enough.

  “Mariana, this isn’t—” Devin started saying but Kaira cut him off.

  “Lilith, the Shadow Claw,” she answered.

  Mariana’s jaw must have dislocated because she couldn’t move her mouth to say another word.

  On the other hand, Mariana hadn’t seen the woman smile genuinely before this. Kaira’s eyes wrinkled, and a dimple appeared on her left cheek. She must have been proud of that, and for a good reason.

  It was almost enough for Mariana to stop taunting her mentor. But still, something bothered her about the woman. She had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right in the way Kaira acted around them. At first, she chalked it up to whatever was going on between Devin and her, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  Simon tried to elbow her to straighten up. “Judging by Mariana’s reaction, wow,” he mumbled.

  “I’ll show her in action when we get back from the doctor’s appointment,” Kaira promised. “If you behave, of course.”

  “I would love to. I haven’t seen a Primal in action before.” Mariana nodded. She chose to ignore the remark Kaira had thrown in about behaving herself.

  Her mentor wasn’t even that much older than them. If Mariana had to guess, Kaira was in her mid-twenties, and she was definitely younger than her brother. It was weird that she treated them like children.

  That didn’t stop Kaira from rushing her so the two of them wouldn’t be late for the appointment.

  When Mariana finally finished her food, Kaira swept her away and the two of them walked through a series of corridors in order to get to the hospital wing of the academy, where Mariana had awoken the other day.

  The room was small with a medical exam table dominating the center of the space. The table was covered in a crisp, white paper. On a small desk against the far wall sat a computer and a few medical instruments, including a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff.

  The doctor there made her undress, and Mariana was given the most thorough physical exam she had ever gotten. Dr. Dupont was very gentle, but spoke only to give her directions to what she wanted to examine next. She kept frowning at times, and it was getting Mariana worried about the information she was going to receive about her health.

  She put her red training clothes back on and sat down on the table again. Lastly, Dr. Dupont was going to draw some blood from her to run a few other tests. Silent panic overtook Mariana as she reeled in her magic, which was going haywire because of the bleeding. The exercise in the morning had helped her align her body and core, making it easier to control her Auclair gift, but she still had to exercise her will over it.

  “I have good news and bad news,” Dr. Dupont started. “I’ll start with the bad news. You really have to scale back any physical training. Your lower back has an old injury. If you have been experiencing any migraines recently, it’s probably from that. The good news is that you can probably fix it with just some physical therapy, and it won’t need an intervention. I’ll communicate this to Trent and he will adjust his training accordingly.”

  “What do you mean?” Mariana asked, her face falling.

  “It means no high intensity training for you, and nothing that stresses the lower back. After the Clash, you will get a special training plan from me that will tackle this further.”

  Mariana was about to argue. She felt fine. Hell, she outran all of those other Guardians earlier that day. She had been training normally for months. She had no migraines, and she felt no pain.

  “For how long would she have to do physical therapy?” Kaira interjected before Mariana could say anything.

  “At least three months. Maybe less, if everything goes well.” The doctor looked back at Mariana. “These kinds of injuries are invisible, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat them.”

  Kaira’s eyes narrowed as if she was calculating something, and then she nodded.

  “I’m going to inform your other instructors as well,” Dr. Dupont continued.

  “Thank you, Elena,” Kaira said before opening the door out of the doctor’s office and nodding for Mariana to follow.

  “Thank you…” Mariana echoed and bowed her head goodbye to Dr. Dupont on her way out.

  “You heard her, and you are going to stick to her recommendations,” Kaira said but did not slow her steps down. She was walking down the corridor with a purpose. “And I will make sure of it. Don’t test me.”

  “I… I wasn’t going to argue.” Mariana tried to catch up by quickening her pace.

  The two of them walked outside, and Mariana willed their conversation into the back of her mind and focused on finding Simon. He and Devin were waiting outside at one of the outdoor training areas. She spotted her roommates and their mentor, Tina occupying the training area next to them.

  “Good news or bad news?” Devin called out once they got closer.

  “Just as I feared, Mariana has an old injury she has to heal first, but it’s fixable. Trent will have to go easy on her in physical training.” Kaira filled him in.

  “Which injury?” Simon asked, putting a hand on Mariana’s shoulder.

  “My lower back. Remember when I injured that while ice skating? Apparently that,” Mariana explained and gestured to it.

  While she was talking to Simon, Mariana noticed that Devin and Kaira had started stretching.

  “What are you doing?” She turned to them as the two started to move to the middle of the training area.

  “Showing you what sparring is really like. Didn’t you want to see Lilith in action? Stand back and don’t come near,” Kaira warned them with a smirk.

  “It’s our first time sparring, too,” Devin called out before following Kaira.

 

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