A Trial of Sorcerers: Book One by Kova, Elise (universal ebook reader .txt) 📕

She emerged on the surface gasping and coughing violently, shards of ice bobbing around her. Eira splashed. “Marcus?” she called weakly between coughing. Her throat burned. “Marcus!”

He hadn’t come up.

Every bit of survival instinct rallied against her ducking her head under those dark waters once more and returning to where she had just been trapped. But Eira did so anyway. She summoned the last of her strength and brought ample air with her this time.

She swam down, into the inky depths, into the deep void of the Father’s realms themselves. She would leave this world if that’s what it meant to bring him back. Marcus came into view, pale and ghostlike in the filtered moonlight.

Eira pulled him back to the surface. With her magic, she pushed them over toward the bank. The water deposited them onto the frozen ground with a disembodied hand that quickly collapsed back into the lake.

“M-Marcus?” Her teeth chattered. But not from the cold. Frost was already freezing her clothes to her skin, her hair to her neck, but that wasn’t why she was shivering. “Marcus?”

Eira placed her hands on his chest and tried to feel the water in his lungs. Carefully, clumsily, she pulled forward. Like a horrible geyser it bubbled up from his throat.

“Breathe,” she whispered. “Please breathe.” She pushed on his chest as the sailors had taught them to do that day they were playing on the beach. But Eira knew her technique was wrong.

Maybe she could do something more if her uncle had taught her as much as he’d taught Marcus. Maybe if she had been stronger from the start. Maybe if she hadn’t been in the trials at all, he would’ve stayed on the beaten path because he wouldn’t have researched this alternative route.

“Come on, Marcus. It—it’s just the illusion of danger. It’s not real. This isn’t real.” Eira grabbed her brother’s face with both hands. “Marcus, please,” she whined. “Please.”

Letting out a cry, she went back to pushing on his chest. At first she was counting, but then her pushes lost all rhythm. They were hopeless and frantic.

“Don’t do this. Marcus. You can’t. You can’t—” Die.

Eira tilted her head back and let out the most horrible sound she had ever heard. The stars shivered at her scream. The trees trembled.

And when she was done…

She let out another.

24

Eira screamed in a long, fading wail until her ragged voice finally gave out. She would scream until there was no more sound left in her—until she was an empty cavern, hollow, void. Numb.

“Help!” she cried to the heavens. Her brother was gone. She knew that. And yet, she called anyway, “Someone, please, help! Help!”

She screamed on instinct…without considering that whoever may answer might be the person who had trapped them beneath the ice. That they might be someone Eira didn’t want to draw any nearer.

“Help! He’s—my brother—he is—” Her voice gave out.

Did this happen because we broke the rules? Eira wondered as she wept over her brother. We were supposed to survive on our own…and we dared to survive together. We cheated on the second and fourth trials.

And they were punished for it.

No.

The trials were hard…but they weren’t supposed to be dangerous. She looked to her brother, gray in the last of the moonlight, and hiccupped a sob. No one was supposed to die. Least of all him.

It had to be a rogue elfin. Someone was out there who— Her thoughts faltered.

There was a shadow moving between the trees that surrounded the lake. Eira peered through the darkness as she choked on ragged breaths. Ferro stepped into the pale moonlight.

“Thank the Mother,” she breathed. “Fe—”

“Yargen,” he snarled, continuing to approach.

“Wh—”

“The Goddess’s name is Yargen, you heathen. Mysst soto larrk.” He held out a hand, his hateful words becoming a sword spun from light. “The people of Solaris are as annoying as weeds and as evil as the shade of the god they were born under. The one whom they have unleashed back into the world.”

Eira open and shut her mouth several times, trying to make sense of his words. Her mind could only focus on one thing. “Please, Ferro, please, your Lightspinning. Help Marcus.”

The snow crunched under Ferro’s boots as he came to a stop before her. His violet eyes shone with malice. His hair was damp from snowfall and it clung to his head in clumps. He clutched his sword tightly.

The actions hardly registered to her. How could she reconcile the man who was standing before her now with the man who had spirited her away, who had kissed her, whom she had…she had loved.

“You should have died with him,” he whispered, shattering the illusion of that man. “You should both be at the bottom of that lake.”

“What’re you talking about? Help my brother, please. I beg you. I’ll do anything you want. Save him.”

“Pathetic creature.” Ferro leaned forward and grabbed her by the throat. Eira’s hands closed around his wrist as she kicked her feet, struggling to find balance in the snow and mud as he hoisted her up. His hand was like steel. “You were useful when you had information I needed. But now you’re nothing more than a loose end that knows far too much.”

Ferro pulled back his sword, holding her out. Stars pricked at Eira’s vision as she gasped for air. Darkness encroached all around her. He thrust forward.

Eira pressed her eyes closed, bracing herself. She’d be with Marcus again soon. It should have been her that died, not him. This was righting a wrong of fate.

But the sword sheered off her harmlessly. Her magic had risen to protect her as a thick layer of ice over her skin. It had acted just as she’d read in the journals of that hidden room countless times over but could never consciously summon.

Off balance, Ferro dropped the sword and his grip on her. Eira landed, rolling backward. Her side slammed into a rock by the lake bed. She