Todos los capítulos de Ember Academy : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

"Again." Oren's voice carried flat across the practice yard, arms folded, eyes narrowed against the low afternoon sun. "This time, faster. You won't always get the luxury of a slow, careful reach.""That's the third time you've said faster in the last ten minutes.""Because you keep hesitating. Hesitation is where the fire finds room to make its own decisions." He nodded at the brazier. "Again."Sera reached, and the flame answered quicker this time, a bright curling column rising clean out of the cold iron, and for a moment she let herself feel something close to pride in it, the fire obedient, steady, hers.Then Mira's voice rang out from the archway, bright and unbothered. "Am I too early? Oren said I could watch today, he thinks I'm good practice for keeping your control steady around, and I quote, people you actually care about not getting hurt.""You're not too early." Sera's smile came easy, the first real lightness she'd felt all lesson. "Come sit, just, maybe not too close."

"Careful. Wouldn't want to catch fire just standing near her."The voice came from a cluster of students by the dining hall doors, pitched just loud enough to carry, and Sera felt her whole body go stiff before she'd even turned to see who'd said it. A boy in noble green, tall, sharp-jawed, flanked by two others who were already laughing before he'd finished the sentence, like the joke had been rehearsed somewhere before it ever reached her ears."Ignore him." Mira's hand found Sera's sleeve, tugging her gently toward their usual table. "Kessler's an idiot. Everyone knows it. His family barely holds their seat, they're desperate to look important, so he picks on whoever's easiest.""I'm not exactly easy to miss right now.""No," Mira admitted, "you're really not."They found a spot at the end of a long table, and Sera had barely sat down before she noticed the tray already waiting there, someone else's leftover meal, half eaten, pushed deliberately into her spot like it had been left

Sera didn't wait for the trial results to be posted. She crossed the courtyard fast, ducking around clusters of murmuring students, eyes fixed on the gallery rail where Cassia had been standing only moments before.By the time she reached the spot, both women were gone."Sera." Mira caught up to her, breathless, having pushed through the crowd just as urgently. "What is it? You went white as a sheet up there.""The woman with Cassia. Grey robes, silver clasp at the throat." Sera's heart was still hammering, faster now than it had been during the entire trial. "That was Vell. The instructor who came to collect me from my village."Mira's face went carefully blank, the way it did whenever she was thinking hard and didn't want it to show. "You're certain?""I rode three days beside that woman. I'd know her anywhere." Sera turned in a slow circle, scanning the thinning crowd, but there was no trace of grey robes anywhere in the courtyard now, as if the woman had simply dissolved into the

"I don't know what you think you saw." Sera kept her voice level, though her heart was still hammering hard enough that she was certain Cassia could hear it in the stillness of the courtyard. "I was walking. It's a large academy. People walk.""At this hour, alone, coming from the direction of a garden that officially doesn't exist on any map given to students." Cassia tilted her head slightly, studying her the way she might study a puzzle box she was fairly confident she already understood the mechanism of. "You'll forgive me if I find that explanation somewhat lacking in detail.""I don't need your forgiveness.""No," Cassia agreed pleasantly, "I don't suppose you do. Not for that, anyway." She took a slow step closer, and Sera made herself hold her ground, refused to give the retreat Cassia was so clearly waiting for. "But I do wonder what an Academy instructor might be doing, meeting a first-year student alone, in a hidden garden, well past curfew. That seems like the sort of deta

The academy looked different by morning, transformed overnight into something almost unrecognizable. Banners Sera had never seen before hung freshly raised along the main courtyard walls, deep crimson worked through with silver thread, House Corvane's sigil catching the early light. Servants moved in careful, practiced rows, sweeping stone already spotless, polishing brass fixtures that hadn't needed polishing the day before."They've been preparing for this for longer than one night," Mira murmured, walking close beside Sera as they crossed toward the main hall. "This isn't the kind of welcome you throw together on short notice.""You think the Headmaster knew he was coming early. Before we did.""I think," Mira said carefully, "that everyone in this academy answers to House Corvane one way or another, whether they'd admit it out loud or not."The entire student body had been assembled in the courtyard by mid-morning, first-years through final-years arranged in careful rows facing th