ICE

171. Grateful

ANOTHER ENDLESS SPARRING session commenced. It stretched out over the course of several days — a non-stop dance of flying daggers and shields made of magic. Caelan even taught her how to create her own sword and wield it.

As the extensive training continued, the magical map that Caelan had created to monitor Vyses' movement remained stagnant, depicted across the wall like a moving tapestry of light. Any small break that was taken, Caelan would approach the map and monitor it. Vyses moved slowly, his army of ice-soldier replicas slowly approaching Zeporia.

As he got closer, their training shifted away from sparring to more focused ice soldier-creating sessions. Ravenna made as many ice soldiers as possible during each session, filling almost every single room within the castle and the forest surrounding it. Caelan aided more so with finding secure locations to store the soldiers, allowing Ravenna to personally create and modify each soldier on her own.

Caelan stood in front of his massive magic-map currently, monitoring the small movements that Vyses had made. As he focused on that, Ravenna gingerly took a seat in front of the ancient spellbook. It had been a while since she'd glanced through its pages — pages that she no longer fully trusted. Her fingertips gently touched the aged paper, gaze scanning over the contents displayed to her. The book had been left open, revealing a simple cleaning spell. It was the same spell that Caelan used to remove the leftover magic remains that lingered along the walls and floors of the study after their training sessions.

She gently picked up the book and started to skim through it. It was a weird sensation, seeing everything fully and completely unlocked for her. Spells that she remembered reading — remembered studying and attempting to perform. There were so many differences now, ranging from subtle ingredient changes to major portions of the spell itself.

A single page caught Ravenna's eye. She paused and looked a little closer at it, taking in the elegantly scripted words and detailed sketches.

Her heart sunk lower and lower within her chest as she registered the words written in front of her. Slowly, she set the book down, allowing it to sit open on the table in front of her. Her hands retracted away from it. She couldn't tear her gaze away from it.

"What did you find?" Caelan asked her. His sudden presence startled her. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, eyes wide with surprise. He loomed over her and peered at the book. One of his hands pressed flat against the table while the other rested on the back of her chair.

"This spell looks familiar," she told him. Her voice was quiet.

It was too familiar. The actual spell itself and ingredients were not — she had never actually performed the spell herself. But the effects of the spell and the desired results told her all that she needed to know.

"Ah," Caelan made a funny noise. A grimace tugged at his facial features.

"This is the spell that Vyses used to give me magic," she said. She stared at the words printed across the page. She felt a little hollow inside. "This spell is meant to give a human-being the ability to manipulate magic, just as if they had been born with it. It requires a certain amount of magic to be absorbed by the human."

Her heart sunk down a little lower as she read further.

Her mind reeled back to that night.

Her mother's corpse, sprawled out across the bed. That shadowy creature — that demon — lurking behind the bed, watching Ravenna with crimson colored eyes. It had chased her out of the house and into the streets, where a small group of guards had gathered during their investigation of her hometown. The guards witnessed it jump at her. It had appeared to get absorbed into her body — causing them to believe that she'd been the witch guilty of murdering the humans within her town. In her conversations with Caelan, she was able to deduce that Vyses has caused the creature to appear as though she'd absorbed it. It was an effort made to frame her and get away with the murders.

"But it was so much more than that," Ravenna whispered under her breath, mostly to herself.

Caelan looked down at her quizzically. "What do you mean?" he asked.

She frowned a bit. "The demon that attacked my home wasn't just there to frame me for the murders," she explained. She pointed at a specific line of text on the page, which detailed a brief overview of the spell and how it worked. "Right here, it says that the human must absorb a specific amount of magic in order for the spell to work."

Her gaze shifted upward to meet Caelan's. "That creature also acted as a vessel. That is how he managed to get his magic inside of me, so that the spell could work."

She stared at her hands. Nausea roiled within her stomach with the thought that Vyses' magic was within her. "I just don't understand why the spell managed to work correctly on me," she said softly, watching as small tendrils of glowing ice blue magic pirouetted around her fingers. "But it didn't work on Ellie. Considering that spellbook always appeared incorrectly for him, it should not have worked on me."

"Ah," Caelan said. He pursed his lips for a moment and then crossed his arms over his chest. "Technically, it didn't work though," he stated after a moment of thought. "Think about it. You have had issues with controlling it from the start. The spell might have given you the ability to manipulate magic, but not to genuinely control it."

Ravenna heaved a small sigh. That did make some sense to her. The spell was supposed to give others magic — which is why Vyses had originally attempted it on Ellie. That portion of the spell had worked on Ravenna. It had just been impossible to control it.

"I thought it was because I'm not observant enough," she joked at him.

The tip of his index finger tapped the tip of her nose.

"You aren't," he told her. The corners of his lips twitched upward into a ghost of a smile.

She rolled her eyes. Then another thought crossed her mind. She paused for a moment. Her eyes focused on his face. "I do have to say, this spell is awfully similar to the spell that I use to create my soldiers," she remarked.

Her tone came across as more accusatory than she'd intended and she watched his reaction carefully. It was within Caelan's personal spellbook that she'd discovered the spell used to create her ice soldiers. That meant that Caelan, himself, was also experimenting with a version of the spell. In fact, both he and Vyses had attempted to perfect their own versions of it.

Caelan met her gaze. "The spell that I was attempting to create — that you ultimately perfected — was indeed inspired by this one," he admitted. His voice was very quiet. "I just did not want to risk attempting the spell on a living human being. I tried to create my own somewhat-sentient being that I could use this spell on instead."

He gestured toward the small list of side effects depicted on the page. "There was too much of a risk to endanger a human-being."

"That makes sense," she murmured.

Caelan appeared to hesitate in front of her. He stared at her for a moment, a sliver of happiness flashing across his dark irises. Then he reached out and his hand gently touched her cheek. Her cheek burned in response.

"While I am not pleased that Vyses ruined your mortal life," he admitted, "I do feel grateful that it led you to me."

~

hi friends! 

I hope that you are having a good week so far! I'm sorry that I've been a bit behind on new updates. I seriously appreciate your continued patience with me!! Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this book! ❤