“Compositions.” Her grin was fierce, her face alight.
I nodded.
Zora turned to the duke. “The time has come. You know it has. We must stand by the prince.”
“And what is it exactly we can do for him?” the duke asked.
“You have influence—” Zora began, but I cut her off.
“Actually there is something specific you can do,” I said. “Something only you can do. Something that might make all the difference.”
Four pairs of eyes pinned me in place.
“As Academy Head, you’re a member of the Mage Council. Call an immediate, emergency meeting of the Council here, at the Academy. Give the prince the chance to have his say, and when the time comes, lend him your support and your vote. I believe that if you are willing to do that, then Kallorway will never be the same.”
“Call the Mage Council,” Zora breathed. “Brilliant.” She fixed her husband with her bright gaze. “And so little to ask, really.”
He let out a long, slow breath, seeming to visibly deflate. “Very well. I will call them. Tell the prince to prepare himself.”
“How long…?”
“They will ride through the night if necessary. Expect the full Council by afternoon tomorrow.”
My eyes widened, triumph making it hard to stay in my chair. “So soon.”
The duke gave me a reproving look. “I am calling an emergency session. Not one of us would tarry in such a situation.”
“Of course not.” I stood. “I must—”
“Not so fast, young lady,” Raelynn said, reviving enough to jump from her chair. “I’ve only relieved your pain, not healed you.”
I bit my lip, glancing at the door.
“It will only take me a minute.” She rummaged through her case.
“I’m sorry, Hugh,” the duke said quietly behind me. “I promised you a haven from politics and the court.”
“And you have delivered on that promise for more years than I care to count,” the librarian said solemnly. “Raelynn and I will stand with you now.”
“Of course we will,” the healer said sharply. “The very idea of sending assassins into the Academy after our trainees!”
As soon as she found the right composition, I hurried from the room, leaving the four old friends in privacy. They were the old guard, offering their support to the new, and they needed time to come to grips with the changing situation.
But someone else needed time to prepare as well, and all my attention was on him now.
I burst into my suite, almost tripping in my haste to pull aside the tapestry and open the door between us. Darius was standing at the window, but he turned sharply at my precipitate arrival.
His eyes latched onto my cheek, and his face softened. “You went to Raelynn after all?”
“What?” My hand flew to my cheek. I must have had a graze there that I hadn’t even noticed. “Never mind that. I’ve been with the duke. He’s called an emergency meeting of the Mage Council here at the Academy. They’ll be starting their journeys even now. And he’s going to support you.”
Darius stared at me, his brow slowly creasing. “An emergency meeting here? But Duke Francis is always neutral. He has always been so since before my birth.”
“We made a mistake about him,” I said. “We didn’t understand why he was neutral. His sense of responsibility to this Academy is absolute, we should never have kept the attacks secret from him. Zora was the one to see that. Once he understood that your father had been sending assassins into the Academy grounds, the rest came easily.”
“Zora? How does she come into this?”
“That is the most incredible part of all.” I hesitated suddenly, realizing their secret wasn’t mine to tell. But I knew Darius wouldn’t rest unless he understood exactly what had brought about the change in the duke.
“If the duke helps you win your throne,” I said slowly, “you would never do anything to hurt him personally, would you?”
Darius frowned. “Of course I would not. And that’s regardless of his assistance.”
I nodded. “Then I think you’d better sit down.”
The first members of the Mage Council arrived that afternoon. Rumors began circulating through the Academy within hours, but I heard none that approached the truth.
Bryony cornered me in my suite, and I told her as much as I could without revealing the duke and Zora’s secret. I trusted my friend’s discretion, but it wasn’t my secret to tell unless there was dire need.
She was astonished enough without that revelation, a great deal of her ire directed toward the attack on me. She wholeheartedly agreed that Jareth’s presence had been highly suspicious, despite Darius’s excuses for him, and she looked ready to storm his suite.
“I just wish we could have kept the gathering Council from him.” I sighed. “But Darius will have told him, of course. For an emergency session, the messages go direct to the ten discipline heads, and they know better than to explain the summons to anyone. But I’m afraid Jareth will tell his father, and then the king will arrive and ruin everything. Or Jareth will find some other way to destroy Darius’s chance.”
“You need to be there,” Bryony declared. “If anyone tries to use a composition to interfere, you can turn it aside. You’re more powerful than any shield.”
I bit my lip. “But how could I possibly arrange that? Not even Darius could get me into that meeting.”
“We’ll think of something,” Bryony said.
But in the end, it was Zora who held the answer.
I skipped classes the next day without a second thought, pacing up and down in my suite and listening to Darius doing the same in the room next door. I thought the tension of the initial wait was bad enough, but it was nothing to the feeling when he finally left the room, closing the corridor door behind him.
I wasn’t left to wait alone for long, however. Zora appeared at my door and beckoned for me to follow her. I did so in silence, hardly daring to breathe, afraid of giving in to false hope. Perhaps she just meant to console me with tea while we both waited to hear the outcome.
She led me into the back passages, winding through increasingly dusty and unused spaces until she gestured me into a narrow cupboard. I peered into the space, bare except for a single chair. But when I began to ask her where we were, she gestured for silence. I gave the room a second look and saw a pair of holes at the height of a sitting person.
I turned back to thank her, but she was already gone. Without hesitation, I entered the narrow room, closing the concealed door behind me. Had this space always existed, or had the duke had it installed so his secret wife could be privy to his important meetings? I imagined the true council room at the palace was protected against such intrusions, but this was probably the first Council meeting the Academy had ever hosted.
In normal circumstances, I would never have hidden in such a way to spy on the deliberations of a Mage Council—Kallorwegian or Ardannian. But my aunt had sent me here to be an intelligencer of sorts, and Bryony’s words kept ringing through my head. I might be needed to protect Darius and the Council itself. I was still wrestling over where my true loyalties lay, but here was an opportunity to serve them both at once.