Soul Blaze (8 page)

“Yes.”
“But he came back,” I recalled the rose garden. “And
said he’d see me again soon.”
Jett smiled.

“Well, he was apparently full of confidence in our
ability to get you back. He tipped us off about you, what
they were making you do, what they’d done to you, and
then he returned to Orthandrell.”

“Why?” I asked, completely baffled. “Why would he
return to the place he was trying to run from?”

“These questions are best answered by those who know
more on the subject,” he replied. “There will be a few
people arriving in a couple of days to help us sift your
magic from Iain.”

“Okay,” I could use a few days of peace to let this all
sink in. But there was another matter weighing heavily on
my mind. “Je-Dad... could I contact my mum? Is there any
way to do that?”

“I can have a letter delivered to her,” he said, his voice
suddenly taking on a strange quality. “What would you
like to say?”

I sat at his desk for some time, gnawing on the end of a
quill. In the end, I just wrote down what had happened as
clearly as possible. It was inevitable that she’d think I was
insane, but I couldn’t to lie to her; one day I hoped to
prove this all to her.

I finished the letter, holding it up to read it. Satisfied
that I hadn't left anything out, I blew the ink gently to
help it dry. I caught Jett looking at me strangely.
“What?” I asked, still holding the parchment aloft.

“I’m just trying to get my head around the fact that I
have a daughter,” he said quietly. “All circumstances
considered, our reunion was a bit far-fetched, don’t you
think?”

I put the letter down.
“Why did you never visit?” I responded. “Why did I
never hear from you?”

“I had no idea you existed,” he picked up my hand and
folded it between his. “Up until the very moment you
were banished, I didn’t connect the dots. It had been so
long since I’d seen your mother... and to think I had been
standing in her kitchen when I rescued you from the fire!”

“I didn’t believe it either,” I said. “I’d gone so long
without a father that to have one again felt... false. Wrong,
almost. No, not wrong,” I corrected as his face fell.
“Different, I suppose.”

We sat together quietly, until I asked another question
that I’d always wondered about.
“Do I have grandparents?”
“You did until a few years ago. Both lived and died in

Gowar. They lived long, happy lives. Of course, they
would’ve been happier if they’d known they had a
granddaughter.”

“Any aunts or uncles?”
He was already shaking his head, having guessed my
next question.
“No, just me. I was an only child.”
“Well, ‘just you’,” I patted his hands and grinned. “How
does it feel do be a dad?”

“So far I’ve gone through a whole whirlwind of
emotions, but I tore through a universe to get to you and
to be quite honest, I want to challenge Phoenix to some
kind of duel. Apart from that, I guess I just want to be a
barrier between you and the world but... I really can’t, can
I?” His dark eyes were wide, and I realised he was truly
asking.

“I don’t think so,” I said, trying to ignore the tears that
had gathered in my eyes. “When I was littler maybe, but
now... Now I’ve got to fall and get hurt and learn on my
own.”

“I understand,” he tightened his grip on my fingers.
“But anyone you want to be dealt with, just point and nod,
alright?”

I laughed through my tears. I stood and he hugged me
to him, resting his chin on my head.

“You tore through the realms for me,” I sniffed into his
robes, suddenly realising what he’d done to get me back.
“You blatantly defied Iain and Netalia and started a
revolution.”

“I’d rip through any universe just to make sure you
were safe,” he murmured quietly. “As for the revolution...
well, let’s just say that was a by-product of fatherly love. I
needed a small army to get you back.”

He kissed me on top of my hair on then let me go.

“Now, I feel I’ve been selfish keeping you all to myself.
I think there are some students who very much want to
see you.”

I grinned widely at that. As much as my body yearned
for power, my heart ached for my friends.
“Where are they?
~
I didn’t have a chance to knock on the door once before
it was thrown open.

“You’re here!” Yasmin screeched and pulled me into a
hug. Two more people joined us, and I looked up to see
Rain and Ispin grinning down at me.

“Can I get in there?” someone asked, and I peered
around Ispin’s curly hair to spy Dena.
I opened my arms to her. She held me tightly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, but
she was grinning. “But I’m glad you made your way back.”

I returned the smile. I knew she was hiding the fact
that I’d told her my human name. It was probably better
this way.

I hugged Theresa and Petre, then looked around.
“Dustin said he’d be here soon,” Rain said, perching on
the table. “He was on guard duty.”
Guard duty? I began to ask, but then remembered. “Oh,
right.”

Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably. Just as
Petre opened his mouth to say something, there was a
light knock on the door and then Dustin entered, towing
Raven with him.

“Hello,” she said to me, somewhat subdued. “Good to
see you again.”

“You too,” I said, smiling. I remembered bringing down
the rogue scout with her in the woods outside the
Academy. “What are you doing here?”

I hadn’t meant to sound like I was accusing her of
intruding on our private reunion, but when she glanced
worriedly at Dustin, I felt like I’d swallowed a small
pebble. I suddenly remembered his interest in meeting her
when I introduced her to the group.

Oh.

Dustin, oblivious, hugged me as tight as anyone else
had. I beamed at him, momentarily forgetting my
consternation about Raven.

“Thank you,” I told him warmly. “I’ve been informed
that you were a major player in bringing Iain and Netalia
down.”

“I’d like to think myself somewhat responsible,” he
said. “But I just wanted to get you out of there. It didn’t
take a genius to figure out what was going on.”

Didn’t it? I still felt like I was swimming out of my
depth.
“Mother sends her greetings,” Petre said from beside
Rain. “She and Father will be here soon with my siblings.”
I smiled, but something about his sentence stood out to
me. Then I figured out what it was.
“Siblings?” I asked, my eyes wide. “Plural?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, his eyes sparkling. “Little baby Sky
is one year old now.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes as I hugged him again.

“Congratulations on a little sister,” I told him, punching
him lightly in the arm. “How does it feel to be a big
brother?”

He rubbed his arm, pretending to be miffed.
“Well, I was already a big brother, Sky. Oh, and Samlin
is dying to see you.”

I brightened even more, if that was possible. Petre’s
little brother Sammy was one of my favourite people in
the world. I looked forward to seeing him.

“Does anyone know what’s going on?” I asked the
group as a whole, sitting in a chair just below Rain, who
still presided over the group on her table. “Because I am so
confused.”

The group as one, looked to Dena. I followed their
gazes to meet my best friend’s eyes.

“Well, it’s been a year since you were banished,” she
began. Everyone was settling in and I realised there was a
lot to tell. “Everyone was really shaken up about it, and
there was almost a full-scale rebellion just from the
students about it. But before we had time to recover and
maybe think about doing just that, they exiled Phoenix.”

Everyone in the room looked down. I licked my dry
lips.
“Why?” I asked. “Was it just because of us, or-”
“Yes,” Dena said, but Theresa cut in.

“You have to tell her the whole story,” the red-headed
girl said, her yellow-green eyes hard. “Or there’s no point
in telling it.”

“What?” I demanded. “Dena, what’s going on?”
She sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“They exiled him because of you two, yes, but also for
another reason. You see, after you were gone, he lost the
plot a little.”

My heart twisted painfully.
“Eleanora tried to calm him down. She tried to be there
for him.”
Eleanora. The young woman who had tried to make my
life hell for the one year I attended the Academy.
“What happened?”
Dena closed her eyes and tried to form the words, but
failed.
“He took her magic,” Theresa said for her. “He stole
Eleanora’s magic.”
“
What
?” my mouth fell open. “He did
what
?”
“She went back to her family in Thurin. She’s no longer
a mage.”
I was shaking violently. Ispin put his arm around me.
“How can he do that?” I asked. “Can anyone do that?”

“No. Only him.” Theresa folded her arms. “They sent
him away because they couldn’t risk that happening to
anyone else.”

I found myself nodding, as though approving of his
exile. I stopped immediately.

“And Eleanora?” I asked.
“No one has seen or heard from my soul mate in almost
a year,” Dustin said, his voice hard. He had his arm around
Raven. “I’ve been to Thurin several times, but each time
her family would not allow me to see her.”

“Rumour has it they’re not treating her very well,”
Ispin said, uncharacteristically grave. “My family are close
to hers, but they haven’t been getting on lately. My
mother disagrees with what they’re doing.”

Poetic justice, the colder side of me snarled. I recalled
the way Eleanora reacted to my claims of slavery amongst
the servants who were the lower members of society due
to their lack of magic.

But the other side of me remembered the good parts of
her. She had fought for Phoenix, had risked her life to
keep him in the castle. And now he’d taken her magic
from her and lowered her to the status of the very people
she’d belittled.

“Do you think they’d let me see her?” I asked, but
everyone ignored the question. I took that as a no. I
doubted that Eleanora would want to see me anyone,
would probably misinterpret why I wanted to see her. I
desperately hoped that she didn’t think that I’d gloat.
After all, I was as magic-less as her at the current moment.
That meant she would be going through the same
withdrawal symptoms as I was.
Except she’d been going through them for a year.

I shuddered at the thought. Luckily, Dena was
continuing her story and all eyes had turned to her.

“After he was exiled and Eleanora had returned to her
home estate, Iain and Netalia tried to return the Academy
to how it had been before. They succeeded, in a way; I
think all of the students had been through so much that
they just wanted to try to regain some degree of normalcy
again.”

“That’s not to say we didn’t fight,” Yasmin told me.
“We gave them as much trouble as we dared to. We still
learnt, but we refused to hand up assignments, we’d miss
classes as often as we could, we never returned library
books…”

“You rebels,” I said, grinning. “I’m sure the librarians
are ropeable.”

“We didn’t want to risk getting banished ourselves,”
Theresa told me, and my grin faded. “I’m sure you
understand.”

We locked eyes for a second in a battle of wills. I broke
it as I nodded slowly.
“Of course I understand. I would never have wanted
you to risk banishment in honour of my memory.”

“And so we entered our second year of education pretty
subdued. We’d lost two students in our first year; I think
everyone was expecting it to happen again. When it
didn’t, we were all relieved. We let ourselves get
comfortable. I’m ashamed to say that we all just kind of
accepted that we’d never see you again.”

My stomach sank, and everyone looked appropriately
apologetic but Dena ploughed on through.

“At the end of our second year, Jett was getting restless.
We could tell something had happened, but we were too
comfortable to hope. When he disappeared at the
beginning of term, however, we all began to wake up. We
knew something was going on. We were trying to get all
the information we could.

“But he never came back. We hadn’t seen him for a few
weeks when Dustin discovered you in the dungeons and
realised we’d all been living on top of you for goodness
knows how long. Most of us left that night, to find Jett,
and to begin planning how to take you back,” her eyes
were serious. “We began planning how to overthrow Iain
and Netalia.”

“And today we succeeded,” Petre said. “Today, they sit
in cells below the Academy and you sit here with us-”

“Memories intact.” I finished. “So what now? Does
anyone have any master plans? What’s going on with
Phoenix? Do we bring him back? Forgive him? Should we
try and bring Eleanora back as well?”

Dena held up a hand to stop my plethora of questions.

“We’ve been instructed not to let you question us too
much. We were supposed to give you the run down on
what’s been happening since you left, but Jett wants to
wait for a few people to arrive who’ll explain it to you
better.”

I scowled, but I really did want a comprehensive
explanation of what was going on and not half-arsed
guesses.

“Who’s he waiting on?” I asked instead.

“We’re not sure,” Theresa admitted, chewing her lip.
“But we’re all heading to the city shortly after they
arrive.”

“Castor?” I asked. I’d never seen the capital of Lotheria
in the year I’d attended the Academy. I was eager to
remedy that. “Why the capital?”

More shrugs all around.
“What about your education? You’re in your third
year.”

“Jett warned us it may be patchy from now on; he says
the times we’re about to enter may not allow for a
thorough education,” Dena explained. “Either way, we’ll
continue when we can, when we have time. I’m coming to
the city with you, but I’ll be spending a lot of my time at
the hospital there.”

I remembered Dena’s healing talents and her
enthusiasm to further her education down that line. I
remembered Jett offering to speak to the matrons in
charge of the city hospital to see if he could arrange for
her to learn with them. Apparently, they’d accepted.