A Kiss of Hex and Lightning

The stone was cold and unforgiving under the thin leather of my gloves. Below, the ground was a distant, fatal promise. The wind whipped around the monolith, trying to peel me from the rock face like a scab. Each handhold was a decision. Each foothold, a commitment my joints screamed at me for making.

You are favoring your left side, Silver One, Tairn’s voice rumbled in my mind, a deep and ancient counterpoint to the high-pitched shriek of the wind. It wasn’t a question of concern. It was a statement of fact.

My left side is the one currently threatening to slide out of its socket, I thought back, gritting my teeth as I tested a narrow ledge with the toe of my boot. It was a twenty-foot traverse across a sheer face, with nothing but crumbling handholds and a thousand-foot drop. The other cadets, the ones built for this, had muscled their way across, their broad shoulders and thick legs making a mockery of the obstacle. I didn't have that luxury.

An inefficient design.

I ignored him, my focus narrowing to the rock in front of me. My breath came in short, controlled puffs. Pain was a constant. It lived in the ligaments of my shoulders, my hips, my knees. Today it was a sharp, insistent fire. I couldn’t afford to let it win. I couldn’t afford to fall. Falling meant death. It was the first and last lesson of Basgiath War College.

Instead of going straight across like the others, I’d noticed a series of nearly invisible vertical fissures running down the rock face. A path downward. It was longer, more technical, but it offered holds that were deeper, more stable. It required precision, not power. It required a scribe’s eye, not a brute’s strength. I angled my body down, my fingers finding the first fissure. The stone bit into my fingertips, but it held.

Slowly, carefully, I descended, then began to move horizontally along a lower path. It was a geometry problem. Angles and leverage. My body was the variable I had to solve for. My gaze flickered up to the platform on the other side. Professor Emetterio stood there, arms crossed, his face as weathered and grim as the stone around us. His eyes tracked my unconventional route, his expression unreadable.

When my boot finally touched the solid wood of the destination platform, my legs trembled with a mixture of relief and exhaustion. I straightened up, pulling my shoulders back against the searing protest of the joints, and met the professor’s gaze. He gave a single, curt nod. It was more praise than I’d received all week.

“Clever trick,” a voice sneered from my right. “Almost makes you forget you’re too fragile to be a real rider.”

I didn’t have to look to know it was Jack Barlowe. He leaned against the railing, his arms thick with muscle, not even breathing hard. He’d probably taken the direct route in half the time. His contempt was a physical thing, a constant pressure in any space we shared.

“It’s not a trick if it works, Jack,” I said, my voice flat. I didn't have the energy for a real fight.

He pushed off the railing, his bulk seeming to suck the air from around me. “You’re a liability, Sorrengail. One of these days, your clever tricks are going to get someone killed.”

He is projecting his own inadequacies, Tairn noted, his tone laced with a profound boredom for human posturing. Tell him I will be happy to demonstrate what a real liability looks like.

I almost smiled. Down, boy.

I turned my back on Jack, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, and moved toward the next challenge. The pain was already settling into a familiar, dull ache. Another day, another dozen ways to die. It was the only normal I had.

The archives smelled of dust and decaying paper, a scent I’d always found more comforting than any perfume. It was the scent of knowledge, of history. But today, it was just the backdrop for the droning voice of Major Markham as he lectured on the lesser-known atrocities of the First Venin War. I sat at a long oak table, my notes spread before me, the ink from my quill bleeding slightly on the cheap parchment. My shoulder ached with a deep, throbbing rhythm that matched the cadence of Markham’s speech.

Around me, other cadets were in various states of attentiveness. Rhiannon was scribbling furiously, her brow furrowed in concentration. Imogen was staring at the high, vaulted ceiling, probably counting the cobwebs. It was a mandatory lecture, one of those dreary academic requirements meant to remind us that our brains were as much a weapon as our dragons.

It started as a low vibration, so faint I thought it was just the familiar tremor of my own overtaxed nerves. It felt like a string being plucked deep in the earth beneath us. I paused, my quill hovering over the page. I glanced at Rhiannon, but she hadn’t noticed. No one had.

Then came the headache. It wasn’t the dull ache of fatigue. This was sharp, a spike of cold iron being driven into the space just behind my right eye. I winced, pressing the heel of my hand against my temple. The vibration grew, no longer a feeling but a sound, a low hum that seemed to emanate from the very stones of the archives.

The glow-globes suspended from the ceiling flickered once, twice, then dimmed, casting the room in a sickly yellow light. A few cadets murmured, looking up. Major Markham faltered in his speech, frowning at the interruption.

“Settle down,” he said, his voice sharpened with irritation. “The wards are probably just recalibrating.”

But I knew that wasn’t it. This feeling was wrong. The air grew thick, heavy with a static charge that made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end. My connection with Tairn, usually a steady warmth at the back of my mind, flared with alarm. It was his panic, not just my own, that was making my heart hammer against my ribs.

Tairn?

The hum intensified, and the heavy leather-bound tomes on the shelves nearest to me began to tremble. A few slid forward, thudding softly against the retaining bars. The source was deeper in the archives, somewhere back in the restricted section where the oldest and most dangerous texts were kept. Back where the foundation ward-stone was.

There is a power here, Silver One. It is… incorrect. Tairn’s mental voice was stripped of its usual sarcasm. It was blade-sharp. The last time I’d heard him sound like this, we were facing a venin.

The headache was a blinding pulse now. I could feel Andarna, too, a frantic, high-pitched terror that echoed Tairn’s alarm. She was too young to understand it, but she felt the wrongness of it.

What is it? I pushed the thought through the pain. Is it venin?

I could feel him searching, his ancient senses probing the disturbance with a speed and precision I couldn’t comprehend. The hum in the room rose in pitch, becoming a dissonant whine that made my teeth ache. Even Markham looked unnerved now, his gaze fixed on the trembling shelves.

No, Tairn’s reply was stark, absolute. The venin draw from the earth. Their magic is a corruption of a known source. This is… other. It is not of the sky, nor of the ground. It is not of dragonkind. It is alien.

The word hung in my mind, stark and terrifying. Alien. Before I could process it, the hum became a roar. The stone floor beneath my boots didn’t just vibrate; it shook with a violent, grinding shudder. A deep groan echoed from the foundations of the college, a sound of immense pressure, of something ancient being forced to bend.

Panic erupted. Cadets scrambled back from the shelves, stumbling over one another. Books rained down from the highest stacks, their spines cracking as they hit the floor, sending up clouds of ancient dust that choked the already-thinning air. Major Markham was shouting something, orders probably, but his voice was lost in the cacophony.

My headache was a white-hot nova, blinding me. I squeezed my eyes shut, my hand still pressed to my temple. Through the pain, through the noise, I saw it. Not with my eyes, but in my mind, a searing afterimage of the power Tairn was sensing.

The tremor peaked, and with a sound like tearing silk amplified a thousand times, the air itself ripped open.

Near the back of the archives, in the space between two towering shelves of forbidden histories, reality fractured. A vertical line of light appeared, impossibly bright and wavering like a heat haze. It widened, stretching into a gash about seven feet tall, a shimmering, ozone-scented wound in the world. It wasn't a doorway. It was a violation. The edges bled a violent purple and green, and the air that spilled out was cold and smelled of storms and something else, something sharp and clean I couldn't name.

"Get back!" someone screamed. "To the doors!"

My feet were rooted to the spot. My fear was a cold knot in my stomach, but my curiosity was a fire in my veins. This was what Tairn had felt. Alien. The word now had a shape.

From the shimmering tear, two figures were violently ejected, tumbling through the air as if thrown. They landed in a heap on the stone floor amidst a shower of white and gold sparks that sizzled and died on contact with the ground. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the rift contracted, collapsing in on itself with a final, deafening crack, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and a profound, ringing silence.

The shaking stopped. The dust began to settle. The only sounds were the ragged breaths and fearful whispers of the other cadets huddled near the exit.

Stay where you are, Silver One, Tairn commanded, his voice a low growl of pure threat. Do not approach them.

But I was already moving. I ignored the frantic shouts of Rhiannon and the furious glare of Major Markham. My body ached with every step, a protest against the sudden movement after the tension, but I pushed it aside. My scribe’s mind, the part of me that my mother despised and my father had nurtured, was overriding everything else. The need to know, to see, to understand, was more powerful than my fear.

I moved slowly, my footsteps unnaturally loud in the quiet room. The two figures were sprawled on the floor, tangled together. One was a young man, the other a young woman. They were dressed in clothes unlike anything I’d ever seen. Not the practical leather and wool of Basgiath, but soft, dark fabrics that seemed to have no discernible function. The man wore a black shirt of a fine, smooth material and dark trousers. The woman wore something similar, but with a strange, deep red garment over it.

As I drew closer, I saw the objects clutched in their hands. They were sticks. Polished, slender lengths of wood, one a pale blondish color, the other a darker, richer brown. They were clutched with the kind of desperate familiarity a rider has for their saddle straps in a steep dive. They weren’t weapons, not in any way I understood. They had no edge, no point. Yet the lingering energy in the air seemed to cling to them, a faint hum that my senses, heightened by Tairn, could just detect.

I knelt a few feet away, my gaze sweeping over them. The woman had hair the color of a sunset, a brilliant, shocking red that was matted with dust. Her face was pale, freckled, and still. The man’s hair was so blond it was almost white, stark against the grime on his cheek. His features were sharp, aristocratic, and even unconscious, his mouth was set in a disdainful line. They were both young, around my age. They were not venin. They were not from any of the provinces. They were… other.

The man’s fingers twitched around his pale stick. His eyelids fluttered. My breath caught in my throat. He was waking up.

His eyes opened. They were grey, the colour of slate after rain. For a moment, they were unfocused, blinking against the dust-filled light. Then they sharpened, darting from the stone arches above to the towering shelves of books, and a raw, animal panic flickered across his face. His gaze landed on me, kneeling a few feet away.

He took in my riding leathers, my silver hair, the hilts of the daggers strapped to my thighs. His expression shifted. The panic was still there, deep down, but he layered it over with something else, something practiced. A high-born disdain, an aristocratic contempt that assessed and dismissed me in the same instant. It was a look I knew well. I’d seen it on a thousand ambitious faces at Basgiath. But beneath the arrogance, I saw the terror. It was the sharp, disoriented fear of something caged.

The heavy oak doors at the far end of the archives slammed open, hitting the stone walls with a deafening boom. The sound made the blond man flinch, his head snapping toward the entrance.

My mother stood framed in the doorway.

General Sorrengail didn’t enter a room; she conquered it. Her presence sucked the air out, replacing it with an atmosphere of absolute, unforgiving authority. Her gaze, a colder version of my own, swept the room, cataloging the damage, the frightened cadets, and finally, me. Her eyes rested on my kneeling form, and her lips thinned into a familiar line of profound disappointment.

Behind her, Xaden Riorson moved into the room. He didn’t follow her so much as flow in, a shadow detaching itself from the doorframe. His own dark, intense eyes found me immediately. I couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t my mother’s cold fury, but it wasn’t simple concern, either. It was watchful and calculating, as if I were a new, unexpected variable in an equation he was trying to solve.

“Squad B, secure the hostiles,” my mother’s voice was clipped, devoid of emotion. It was the voice she used on the battlefield. “Squad C, perimeter. Markham, report.”

Riders in black fatigues moved past her with silent, deadly efficiency. They swarmed the area, their movements economical and practiced. Two of them descended on the pair on the floor. They hauled the blond man to his feet with a roughness that made him cry out, a sharp intake of breath as they wrenched his arms behind his back. He struggled, but he was weak, disoriented, and the riders were strong. One of them pried the pale stick from his grasp, holding it up for a moment’s inspection before tossing it dismissively to the side as if it were kindling. They did the same to the girl, who was just beginning to stir, a low moan escaping her lips.

“Violet,” my mother’s voice cut through the controlled chaos. It wasn’t a request. “Out. Now.”

I pushed myself to my feet, my joints screaming in protest. Every scribe instinct told me to stay, to argue, to demand answers. But I knew that look on her face. To defy her now, in front of her command, would be unthinkable. I turned, my gaze pulled back for one last look.

The blond man was on his knees now, a rider’s boot planted firmly in the center of his back. He had his head twisted, glaring at the people surrounding him with a venomous hatred that seemed to be the only thing holding him together. Then his eyes found mine again across the dusty space. The fear was still there, a frantic glint in their depths, but it was overshadowed by a wave of pure, unadulterated contempt. His lips curled back from his teeth.

He muttered a single word, the sound so low it was almost lost beneath the scrape of boots on stone. I don’t think I was meant to hear it. It felt like something he said for himself. A curse, an epithet, a word to place me, to categorize me, to put me beneath him.

“Muggles.”

The word meant nothing. It was a nonsensical sound, a string of syllables. But the way he said it, the sheer aristocratic disgust packed into that one, unfamiliar word, told me everything. It was an insult of the highest order. It was the sound of one world looking down its nose at another. A guard stepped in front of him then, blocking my view, and I was just another cadet being ushered out of a room that was no longer my concern.