Burning Bridges

Chapter One: Unprepared

Julian was getting tired of hearing men grunting in her backyard. Frankly, Julian was getting tired of men. This was the third time in the last week that a group of half-trained boys reeking of cologne and arrogance had turned up at their door asking for a lesson with her grandfather. Of course, he always ushered them in and set them to sparring with wooden play swords that Jules had grown out of five years ago. She knew how to use real blades, how to draw real blood. And yet she was never allowed to join.

Instead, she spent her days tending to the little shop she'd grown up in. Elegantly named Sakura, she loved the tea shop almost as much as her parents had before leaving to pursue adventure across the ocean. Its creaking wooden floorboards and roughly sanded tabletops were humble where the rest of her Grandfather's estate was extravagant. It seemed strange that the only way into the rest of the grand house was through the displays of honey and flavored sugars (Jules' favorite was lavender), but the customers were charmed and Grandfather always kept it well stocked.

"Jules!"

Chamomile tea leaves fluttered off the desk as Jules swiveled to face the storeroom. Yellow light seeped into the room as Grandfather opened a door at the back of the room and helped one of the scrawny boys through. His brown wings were unfolded and dragging on the floor behind him, probably picking up splinters.

"What is it this time?" Jules asked, stool screeching against the floor as she got up.

The boy limped toward her. He couldn't have been more than fifteen with wispy blond hair matted to his forehead by sweat. His hakama, made of a thin beige fabric, was stained with mud and fraying around the ankles. He looked a mess, but there weren't any obvious injuries.

"Bruised knee," Grandfather said, easing the boy onto a stool before leaning closer to Jules and whispering, "and bruised ego, I imagine," before rejoining the other trainees in the backyard.

Jules tried to offer an encouraging smile. She was usually only a few years older than the boys who came to earn her grandfather's favor, but the longer she looked at this boy the younger he seemed. How could his parents send him off alone?

Setting her thoughts aside, Jules examined the boy's knee. It was only a bruise, but a bad one. Already purple and blue was spreading out in spotted tendrils.

"What's your name?" Jules asked, soaking a towel in cold water and wringing it out. She wrapped it around the purple splotches to help with the swelling.

"Soren." His voice was a squeak. Fifteen seemed a generous guess. Likely he was closer to twelve or thirteen.

"Would you like some tea, Soren?" Jules asked. After a pause, he gave a hesitant nod.

While Jules busied herself boiling the water and choosing the tea, Soren surveyed the shop, probably noting all the ways it differed from the other parts of the estate he'd seen.

But, to her surprise, when Soren spoke, he said, "You don't have your wings out."

Jules joined him at the checkout desk with the pot of tea. "True."

"But isn't it harder to do magic with them folded?"

It was much harder to do magic with them folded. Wings made a mage's connection to rock or glass twice as strong at least, but she hadn't figured out a way to wrap the bandage around her chest that didn't obstruct where her wings would come out. And she tended to care more about binding than sensing rock. Besides, she'd gotten relatively good at doing magic without the use of her wings.

"It is, but it gets a bit tricky to walk around the shop without breaking things," she lied.

"Oh," Soren said, and sipped his tea without comment.

By sunset, each of the other three boys had trickled through the shop with bruises and scrapes. Grandfather appeared a few minutes after the last of them left, shaking his head.

"No luck?" Jules asked, because she always asked.

Grandfather shook his head, taking a heavy seat on one of the stools behind the counter. Ivy crawled along the walls, dangling from hanging pots beside Grandfather's head. He kept batting it away as he spoke.

"Undertrained and unprepared," he said. "My hope of finding a suitable heir before dying grows thin."

"I could—"

"Now Jules, don't start on that again," he said with a little chuckle. "I believe we've established that you are no more prepared to hold my magic than those boys."

Jules ground her teeth. Of course not. It wasn't as if he was desperate to find someone to transfer his magic to before dying. It wasn't as if she'd grown up learning how to wield a blade and reading about glasswork magic even if she couldn't perform any.

"Suppose you'll have to keep looking," she said.

Grandfather grunted, staring off vaguely at the shelves of tea leaves along the far wall, mind already wandering away from her voice. Sighing, Jules wondered why she thought his response would be any different.