And sometimes it feels like all I can do is change the subject. “I have to make more firelight and deliver it to the East Village. You in?”
“Of course. Could I even get out of it?”
A joke again, but this one bites because I think part of her means it. “Don’t fret over petty things like a couple of words.” I pat her arm playfully as I fetch the orbs for the firelight, hoping she knows just how much I mean that.
She takes my distraction, though, and helps haul the bowl with hundreds of small spheres over to the huge courtyard. Frostlight petals crunch beneath our feet, perfuming the air with the smell of crisp snow even though it’s summer. These blossoms like to saunter into my training grounds like they own the place, which they kind of do. Hundreds grace the floor, taking over and leaving nothing but a sheen of white-speckled blue. One time they caught fire and almost burned the arched wooden pillars that surround us. I learned an extinguishing spell pretty quick after Riya and I saved the palace with a wave of water from the bubbling fountain. I chuckle at the memory as I wipe some of the blossoms away to reveal the dirt underneath.
“You want to try again?” I ask, gesturing to the pile of orbs and the bare spot I created.
Riya sighs. “You know I’m not good enough with red magic.”
I mimic her sigh. “Yeah, just wishful thinking.”
“Fine, fine.”
I brighten and place two orbs on the ground. “Repeat after me and remember to raise your voice as you go.”
“This isn’t my first time, Adraa.”
I don’t apologize—Riya wouldn’t want me to—and I begin the spell. Whispering at first and finishing in a shout, Riya and I coax our magic out. “Erif Jvalati Dirgharatrika…”
Purple smoke billows off Riya’s fingertips, red bleeds from mine. Both color streams hit the orbs and fire bursts inside each sphere casing. My heart erupts as I watch Riya bend to pick up her orb with its tiny flame glowing inside.
“You…”
She blows hard on the little life and a smoky ghost floats upward in passing. “Didn’t do it.”
I grasp my own orb, blow as hard as I can. The life doesn’t flicker. The bloodred flame actually seems to rejoice at the challenge, flooding my hand in light. With a click I shut the orb. “One done, three hundred to go.”
“I’ll keep you company.”
I roll my stiff pink sleeve up to let my magic breathe.
* * *
I had lied to my mother; it took well past an hour to make three hundred orbs of blazing and unwavering light. But since Riya stopped my sad endeavor to try to get better at white magic, I’m ahead of schedule. I sit down to rest by the central fountain dedicated to Retaw. Riya hands me a cup of water, and I chug.
“You know, I can see why you can’t do much of anything with snow and the cold. Watching you make these”—Riya picks up a sphere of firelight—“it makes sense.”
“Uh-huh.” The ice door of Azure Palace flits into my memory. I’ll never be able to do anything like that, and a fire door just sounds dangerous. My magic forte is dangerous. A rani is meant to snuff out problems, put out fires, not start them. And that’s what I want, to create, not destroy. That little ball of red light she holds is the first good thing I’ve been able to make.
“I’m serious. What’s so great about the cold anyway? Who likes to be cold?” she asks.
I give a tight smile. “Thanks.” I can’t voice my lack of progress with white magic again. When I turn eighteen in a month and a half, forty-five days to be exact, I must showcase my talent to all nine gods and request their blessing. And while it’s all well and good that I’m more powerful in fire than anyone I have ever met, the fact of the matter is that Dloc, the white god, may not accept me. And no one wants to be blasted off the podium by a blizzard. It could kill me. Or better put, the gods could kill me. If I were a normal Belwarian it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t attempt the ceremony, because being talented enough as an eight is amazing. But I’m almost a royal, a future maharani of Wickery, and I can’t rule unless I can control all nine types of magic and prove it to the gods and to my people.
At first, I neglected white magic because it came hard to me. Then I schemed that being an eight my whole life meant I could get out of my engagement and arranged to marry someone else, but a few years ago I realized how important helping my country, or rather its people, was to me. I may not want to marry Jatin Naupure, but I do want to become a maharani and lead Belwar in some capacity. Passing the ceremony is more about gaining the title than gaining a husband.
However, long ago I recognized how much everyone wants this arranged marriage to work, how good it would be for Wickery. My parents and Maharaja Naupure decided to wait until Jatin and I were older before uniting us with a blood contract’s holy and binding seal, which is normal protocol little eight-year-old me didn’t comprehend. However, that didn’t stop a verbal agreement, which is almost as binding when it comes from wizards of such power. What doesn’t help is the fact Jatin Naupure writes me “love” letters. From their perspective my parents have no reason to discourage the arrangement. One more reason to blame Jatin for this mess. Plus Maharaja Naupure actually loves me, wants me as his daughter-in-law no matter my weaknesses. But he doesn’t grasp how deep my weakness in snow delves. I stare down at my arms. One is soaked in swirls and designs, the other plain and as dark-skinned as the rest of me. Can you do it yet? Jatin’s voice jabs.
It’s times like these I wish I were Naupurian. Jatin’s ceremony was at the academy without a big to-do and where passing is all anyone cares about. He’s been presented as the heir of Naupure since birth, both arms shouting talent, doubt unheard of. In Belwar it’s different. On my eighteenth birthday, my ceremony will be my first grand entrance to the people. I will walk the streets of Belwar wrapped in the nine colors and I will do my trial at the heart of the Belwar temple, during which I fear my one arm will convey only doubt.
I get off the ground and pace. “Himadloc,” I send out to the bowl of water. The red strains of smoke streak through the water, and then nothing. I’m tired, I try to tell myself. I just finished three hundred firelights, I reason. The lies don’t work.
“You sure you aren’t practicing so much because you want to be with Jatin?” Riya asks.
I spin to give her a dirty look. “Why does everyone think that? Like it’s odd I want to be a rani and not a wife.”
She laughs and points at my hands. Sometime during my pacing I pulled out Jatin’s letter again.
I flinch and let the parchment drop. Then I flail as I snatch for the paper as it floats over the bubbling fountain. “Blood.” I rub my temples and slide down the closest pillar.