All Chapters of Ashes of Six: Chapter 11 - Chapter 13

Smoke still rose from the shattered threshold of the arena, drifting lazily up into the washed-out sky like an injured breath. I stood at the very spot where she had been when the magic exploded from her, boot soles scuffed with ash and the detritus of spells burned too hot to take solid form. Even the Everley-stitched wards, designed over the centuries to handle a wide breadth of Arcanum, had not held against her power. The latticework of glyphs meant to contain and dampen her raw magic still sputtered along the stone like charred embers. It would take weeks to reset them. Maybe longer. All from one girl. One explosion of power.One dragon.I knelt, fingers skimming the edge of the ashen fissure that stretched from the arena’s center to its far reaches. The residual energy singed at my fingertips, not cold like Nerezza enchantments or crackling like Everley spells. It was heat, ancient and inherited, threaded through with something savage. Raw. Untamed. It wasn’t just power. It was le

I told myself I was here for research. It wasn’t a lie, not really. I had a half-finished report on elemental-channeling relics due next week and no intention of turning in another half-assed paper. But that wasn’t why I sat at this table by the restricted section, why I let the hours drag while I pretended to study a book I hadn’t cracked open for twenty minutes. I was listening. Watching. Eavesdropping. But unlike those brooding bastards of Nerezza and Hawthorne, I wasn’t above using my brain to fight instead of my fists.It had been two days since Nora Carver turned the training arena into a raging inferno of fire and magic, and the entire school still hadn’t stopped buzzing. Whispers flickered through every hallway. Dragon. Monster. Threat. I had even heard one Everley girl whisper that she might be a vessel for Seraphine herself. The last one almost made me snort out loud. Almost. I wasn’t that stupid. Not when so many interesting things were coming undone.Caelum had barely