It’s #BookQW and Raven can’t be ‘late’ with his important question.
More from Chapter 1:
Raven and Willow were alone, just the two of them between the high canvas walls. This was his chance. “Will you take a turn with me when we’re sent off to buy food? I think I’ve got their coins figured out, but I don’t want to lose any of my trade credit—”
“It’s simple tens.” Coral of the Seas barreled around the side of the tent, brown braids swinging and knee boots showing beneath the hem of her blue skirt. “A hundred pence to a pound. The coins have the amounts on them. Surely you can keep that in your head?” The younger—and much shorter—lass reached up to tap Raven’s cheek, but he lurched back.
“Coral, I swear—”
“Ah-ah!” She shook a finger at him, all the while grinning smugly. “Careful. Wouldn’t want your temper to”—she leaned closer— “show.”
He darted a look at his hands. No glow.
Coral giggled.
The little stinker. He loomed over her. “Just wait until we’re back on the isle,” he muttered so only she could hear.
“Aye.” She winked, not at all intimidated by his greater height. “Just wait.” She knelt, dampening her skirt in the wet grass, and tugged at the knot Willow had tied. “Blimey, Willow! A granny knot? This will never hold!” In a trice, she had it undone—
Raven reached to catch the loosening rope just as Coral yanked it tight, and the friction burned his finger. He kept his grunt to himself.
Coral retied it. “Thank the… Um, good thing Lady Lark sent me around to check them.”
“Oh dear,” Willow said. “Redo my other, please.” She grasped Coral’s arm and steered her around the tent’s perimeter.
Raven followed a few steps behind. He could go along and hold the rope, though Coral would overrun the conversation again and get in more digs at him. Before he was close enough, Willow clasped the rope and held the section of the tent upright as well as he could have. Right, chap, the lass is more than capable, magically and physically. Even Coral was.
He’d spent many sleepless nights listing reasons Willow would refuse to try a prebond trial with him, the courting agreement in which teens could also test how their magic worked together. She had far more experience in caring for her habitat than he did—she’d been learning the care of the Forest from her mother since eighth year, while he’d begun his apprenticeship at the customary tenth year. She remembered every spell she ever learned, while he had to practice repeatedly. To his knowledge, she’d never angered a single elder…unlike him. His latest mishap at the start of summer—a complete accident, and the bird was progressing fine now!—had put him under the scrutiny of every elder at any lesson.
Why would she be interested in prebonding with me when I have such a rotten reputation?
Raven rechecked his fingers, though there’d been no sign of magic. After the elders had threatened them with months of a quash—a grounding of their magic—if they showed anything magical in this human village, he’d locked his energy out of his hands. Even so, he hadn’t gone as far as to lock it away in its storage cores. He wasn’t a child. At fifteenth year, he could control his magic, thank the Or—
Argh! No doubt, he, of any of them, would get in trouble for spouting a Windborne curse. If he wanted to fix his reputation, he ought to start with passing this trial at fitting in among human society. Which meant he couldn’t get into one bit of trouble today.
~~~
If you’ve followed The Windborne series, you’ll love reading the adventures of the island’s wizard teens two years before the series starts, when they were fifteen and learning through their wizard trials.
If you haven’t read other novels in the series yet, Trial at the Faire is the perfect start, an 85 page novella!
Trial at the Faire releases July 1, 2021.
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