She had to wait. She had to figure out just what Agnew wanted from her, then try to find a way to escape. The farther belowground he brought her, the harder that was going to be. Even with full access to the dragon stone, augmented as it might be with the bloodstone, there were limits to her power.
What was more, she feared he might bring her someplace where she wouldn’t have access to any sort of power whatsoever.
He stopped at another doorway. It reminded her far too much of Raollet’s room beneath the earth. Even the faint chill that washed over her was similar.
Jayna looked over to Agnew, watching for a sign that might tell her what he was planning, but he remained silent.
The door opened to a tunnel, a wide arching ceiling looming over them, and as he forced her forward to slide along the stones, she kept trying to call upon power. A wash of cold worked through her.
Enchantments.
More than that, they were the kind of enchantments that stripped power off of her, and would completely prevent her from reaching for any more of it.
She was helpless.
Jayna wouldn’t be able to get out of here.
That thought struck home more than anything else.
Agnew walked her to another door, and when he pulled it open, he shoved her inside before hurriedly closing the door again.
Faint, enchanted light glowed along the floor, illuminating the inside of the room and reminding her of the library. It was empty other than her.
The power he’d been holding around her started to ease.
It happened slowly at first, but she soon found that she could move her hands, then her arms, and finally was freed altogether.
But not entirely.
Jayna was inside of a cell.
She focused on the power within the dragon stone ring, but nothing came to her.
What about sorcery?
She had a feeling that she was still cut off from that as well. Whatever enchantments had been placed here were more than she could overpower, but maybe . . .
All she needed was something small. Simple. If that worked, then she could try to expand it from there. She began slowly, sending a bit of power out from her, then adding more. She traced a pattern on the floor, a form designed to concentrate her energy, but she couldn’t—she didn’t have enough power to concentrate.
She was distantly aware of some remaining part of her connection to sorcery, but it wasn’t enough for her to do anything with.
She took a seat and pulled out her satchel. As she sorted through the enchantments, pulling one after another out of her satchel, she realized they had all been triggered.
Each of her enchantments had already been spent.
There would be no way for her to use anything in the satchel to help her escape—which meant her escape would have to come from her. For a moment, despair washed through her.
She had to find the strength inside herself.
She closed her eyes as she sat in place, thinking back through the lessons she’d had at the Academy. She would need them to regain control. If she still couldn’t reach sorcery here, she might not be able to reach her connection to the dragon stone either. And if she couldn’t do that . . .
Then she was going to be stranded here until someone realized she was here. She was going to be stuck while the attack in the city persisted.
And now the dular would be targeted because of her.
It was bad enough with the Sorcerers’ Society and the dular at odds, but she had a feeling that the Society had never taken their attack directly to the dular in full.
There would be fighting. War.
Jayna didn’t want to be responsible for that.
It was almost enough for her to think there was some power trying to coordinate it, but she was sure this was simply the anger of two factions within the city, both of which wanted power.
Worse, her friends weren’t even going to know where she was. Eva would’ve known she had come to the outpost, and Char knew she was here, but he wouldn’t have known she was captured.
The only one who knew of her presence was Agnew.
She took a deep breath, working slowly and steadily, trying again to call power up through her.
It simmered beneath the surface. There was a bit of energy there, and the longer she held on to it, the more she thought she could use it, only it didn’t come flowing to her quite as well as she thought it should.
That energy lingered, drifting upward, yet she could do nothing with it.
It was as if there was a cover over her access to power.
Then there was the power within her. As she sat and focused, she could feel energy remaining there, but not enough for her to act upon.
She remembered the first time she had been at the Academy. She had been helpless, or near enough. Not tormented, not the way she felt now, but still helpless—and terrified, mostly because of her own sense of insignificance.
How could she not feel that way though?
Going to the Academy had been an act of bravery, but it had been an act that had left her uncertain, as well. Her brother had been her staunchest ally up until the point she had told him she wanted to go and see what she could learn of magic.
She hated disappointing Jonathan. Jayna remembered meeting with him, finding him sitting in a room in the upper level of their home, his friend Matthew sitting across from him. A stack of coins rested on the table, along with a sheet of paper with what appeared to be a diagram for a break-in. Jayna had seen those plans before, and understood that her brother used them to help him figure out where he would target his next attack.
She had never feared her brother and had always respected him; she always knew he was the most skilled of anyone she had ever met. Jayna remembered clutching the acceptance letter in her hand. She hadn’t been afraid of anything else up until the point she had gone to Jonathan with the news of her decision.
Jonathan looked up at her, his dark eyes unreadable, his black hair, so different from her own, cut close. He looked like a soldier, and with the cloak, jacket, and pants folded neatly alongside the chair next to him, she suspected he needed to look like a soldier in order to carry out his next assignment.
“What is it, Jayna?”
Matthew had looked up too, watching her, and it seemed as if his eyes glittered with a spark of amusement. Had he known?
Since then, Jayna had thought back to that day a few times, considering what she had gone through at that point, and what all of them had known.
But she didn’t know whether Matthew had known.
She held out the note to Jonathan, her hand trembling. She realized, though, if she were to do the same thing today, she wouldn’t tremble so much.
“What is this?” Jonathan asked.
“I . . . I have something.”
Matthew chuckled and leaned back, saying nothing.
“Well?” Jonathan said. “Get on with it.”
“It’s an acceptance letter.”
Finally, Jonathan took the letter from her and skimmed it, his brow starting to furrow, and she noticed more and more irritation in the way he clenched his jaw, the tension in his knuckles as he squeezed the letter.
“I didn’t know you intended to go.”
“I will if I can afford it.”
He sat the letter down and looked up at her, the tension fading from his jaw, but the irritation in his eyes remaining.
“If you can afford it?”
She nodded slowly. “The Academy is expensive, as I’m sure you know. I’m trying to come up with a payment plan, and given the kind of work I can do after I leave the Academy, I should be able to find a backer, but—”