A soft knock woke Amaryllis. She blinked up at the ceiling. The light coming from the gap in the curtains told her that it was well into morning already. The memory of soft lips and warm breath on her hand had kept her awake late into the night. 

Normally, Sally would have awoken her by now, not thinking it proper for a lady to lay about idle. But since her confinement had started yesterday, she supposed the woman hadn’t felt the need to remind Amaryllis that she was stuck in her room while guests were there. She probably thought of it as a kindness. 

Amaryllis could hardly complain. She still felt tired despite sleeping late. Her scattered thoughts had made it hard to rest.

“Come in,” she called, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes as she sat up.

“I brought your books,” Romello called as he entered the room.

He glanced around the space with a slight frown. Compared to the twins’ chambers, each of which held many lavishly decorated rooms, her chambers could at best be described as cozy. She still had multiple rooms but they were all relatively small. Not that Romello could tell from being in the main space. Thankfully her bedroom was still well-furnished. Her father would never sully his home with anything that wasn’t of the best quality. Even her plain desk, nestled under a large window looking out towards the back gardens, was made from rare purple oak.

“Thank you, Romy.” 

Amaryllis went to take the books from him. All four heavy tomes were there and she sighed in relief. She didn’t need the librarians mad at her too.

“Why do you always read such random books?”

He plopped himself down on her bed and watched her put the books on her desk. Amaryllis wasn’t surprised by the question. She tended to read books written in the ancient language to avoid scrutiny. The duke had required all of his children to learn the language from an early age so Romy was one of the few in the castle who could read it. This last trip to the library she had grabbed a history book detailing the adventures of one of the knights that had helped found a now fallen empire, a book on medicinal plants, one on art theory, and another from a famed philosopher.

“Well . . .”

 Amaryllis tried to wrack her brain for a good answer. Merely stating that they’d caught her eye wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her curious younger brother. Even if that was the truth. 

He also had a bit of a loose tongue so it was always best to give him an answer that would be harmless. 

“I already know all the basics of running a household, but I can’t know what my future husband will be interested in. I thought it best to read a wide variety of things.”

“That’d let you have good conversations as a host as well,” he crossed his arms and nodded in approval. “Sometimes the ladies who come to the tea parties and afternoon walks look lost when conversing with the knights. It’s hard to watch.”

“Then perhaps I should get a book to explain the different types of weapons next time,” Amaryllis murmured, recalling how she had floundered with Sir Vincent the night before.

“It wouldn’t hurt,” he shrugged and got to his feet. “I have to get ready for the luncheon. Father will be introducing me to a few of his business partners.”

His excited, boyish smile did not match the haughty tone he spoke with. Amaryllis gave him a fond smile in return and chose to ignore his bragging.

“I hope you have a good time,” she replied and found she meant it.

The business meetings, with their calculations and manipulations and veiled threats, were never a comfortable place for her. But Romello had been raised to handle those conversations with ease, or had simply inherited the skills from their father. 

Either way she had no doubt the dukedom would continue to prosper under her brother. He was more naïve than their father, but certainly shrewd enough to not lose out when it came to money. All things she was more than happy to leave in someone else’s capable hands.

“I’ll let the maids know you’re up,” he smirked as he eyed Amaryllis’s hair. “They’ll need to get started soon to tame that mane for the banquet tonight.”

“Romello!” Amaryllis admonished, hands flying up to see if her curls had really become so disorderly overnight.

He practically skipped out of the room, his bright laugh filling the halls. Amaryllis grumbled as her fingers only found a few tangles. Hardly enough to be criticized.

Soon after Sally and the maids arrived and Amaryllis resigned herself to their attention. As soon as her meal was finished, she was whisked to the dressing room to start the hours long process of getting ready for a banquet all over again. 

If she was lucky, they’d finish early and she could relax with one of the books. Though she doubted that would happen.

 ---

That night’s sendoff banquet was the last. After that Amaryllis settled into solitary days in her room. 

It wasn’t the first time she had been punished with confinement, but she no longer found it as tedious as she did when she was younger. Ever since her awakening she had come to enjoy the quiet time where she knew no one would interrupt her.

Unlike most in her situation, her awakening hadn’t been frightening because of her magic. In fact, her magic had brought relief despite her questionable affinity. 

A brief bit of good weather last fall had started it. The weather in the duchy tended to be mild, but unpredictable in the colder seasons. The sunshine coming from a gap in the clouds had been too tempting so Amaryllis had gone out for a walk in the gardens. She had just reached the azaleas when a downpour started. Without an umbrella or even a proper cloak she was soaked almost instantly. Feeling like a drowned rat she had run back to the castle.

Her rotten luck only grew worse when she got inside and went to find a servant to get her towels while she walked to her room. As she rounded a corner, she spotted several high-ranking nobles that she had forgotten her father had invited for a visit. They must have gotten to cover immediately as only their shoulders were damp. 

In contrast Amaryllis was a shivering, dripping mess. Her pale grey dress clung to her skin and left little to the imagination. The heavy skirts tangled between her legs when she stumbled back to get out of sight.

She fell and panic took over. Amaryllis didn’t care that she would hit the hard marble floor. Or that the nobles would see her sprawled out and disheveled. 

No. It was her father’s fury with her. His embarrassment and shame that he had such an unbecoming daughter. Those were the thoughts that made her blood run cold.

As fear bloomed in her heart something else stirred as well. A cloud passed over the sun, dimming the light coming through the windows. A surge of power erupted from her chest and spread through her body. The surrounding shadows swarmed her.

Too shocked to scream she could only screw her eyes shut and brace herself. 

Only, instead of the pain from the floor or being devoured by the darkness, she felt nothing. Tentatively she opened her eyes. 

The shadows had wrapped around her body to cushion her fall and blanketed the entrance to the hallway she was in. Dimming it well enough to hide her from sight. Relief replaced fear and she relaxed.

She didn’t understand what had happened, but she clung to the feeling that was connected to the shadows. Amaryllis scrambled to her feet and retreated further into the castle. Trembling, she slumped to the ground in a back room. Fatigue washed over her and the shadows dissipated. 

It wasn’t until she put her hand over her racing heart that she understood. Or at least she tried to put her hand over her heart. The reflexive motion was off. Normally when she was frightened, she could feel her heart pounding against her palm. 

But this time, this time it was pounding against her fingertips. Her heart had shifted to the left.

She slid her hand to the right and did her best to focus on the feeling from earlier. Beneath her palm that new sensation trickled out. A few drops of power, of mana, tickled her skin. 

She had a mana core. She was a mage, but not a normal one. She was a wild mage. They were the only ones to have their powers manifest like this.

Amaryllis didn’t remember how she’d gotten back to her rooms. She had spent the rest of the day in a daze. 

Mages were rare enough, but wild mages were even rarer. A normal mage was developed with the help of a master. The master would search for a child who possessed the rare ability to absorb mana. That child would become their apprentice and receive regular infusions of mana to develop their mana pathway. Over time the pathway widened enough for additional mana to accumulate in the body and eventually a core formed to the right of the heart. 

Time and practice grew the core. The bigger the core, the more mana a mage could wield.

Besides developing a pathway, the masters would also teach their apprentices runes and help discover their affinity. Runes were the formulas that allowed mages to cast spells. In theory, a mage could cast any spell so long as they had mana and the right rune. The reality was a bit different though. There was some basic magic, like healing spells, that needed no affinity. Any mage could use those runes. But most spells were tied to one or more elements.

 Elemental affinity determined where a mage’s talents truly lay. There were six elements: light, water, earth, fire, wind, and dark. Mages all had an affinity and some even had two. 

Affinities determined strengths as well as weaknesses. Fire mages struggled with water spells. Wind mages struggled with earth spells. Light mages struggled with dark spells. Opposing elements simply weren’t compatible. Amaryllis assumed the masters either had magical devices to test affinity or simply taught a rune of each element to see where their apprentices floundered.

Wild mages were a different matter though. They awakened with one concentrated burst of mana that formed their core and released a blast of elemental magic.

She had heard many stories of wild mages causing terrible destruction when they got their powers. Fire mages accidently burning themselves, others, or entire villages to the ground. Water mages causing tsunamis or broken damns. Earth mages that had made the ground split. 

The stories were all horrifying. The mages always lost control and become corrupted. There wasn’t a single story she had heard where they hadn’t died early or been killed for their crimes.

Corruption was the worst fate a person could have. Not only was their soul condemned to wander the afterlife forever, but the corruption infected everything around them. People, animals, plants, even the land itself. 

When the empire had fallen two hundred years ago corruption was rampant. Several cities had been completely abandoned and blocked off until the church managed to purify them. Sometimes more than a hundred years later. 

Corruption made people and animals sickly. When they died, they came back as undead even if they had been baptized. 

Monsters that wandered into corrupted areas became inexplicably stronger and more vicious. A corrupted goblin was as hard to deal with as a werewolf, a corrupted werewolf as strong as a drake, and a corrupted drake was enough to fell a small kingdom. Spreading corruption, purposefully or not, was justification for an immediate execution.

The fact that she had awakened, even if it had saved her from an immediate problem, was terrifying. 

She had scoured the library for books on wild mages and dark magic, as what else could power over shadows be, for weeks. Most of what she found was what she already knew. She had been gripped by the fear that she was condemned to an early grave or that she’d accidentally hurt those around her.

Amaryllis had tried to ignore the mana slowly collecting in her core as she did her research. But in the same way she couldn’t help but see her nose when someone pointed it out, she couldn’t push the new sense from her mind. The temptation to reach out with her mana, to see what she could do with the shadows, was stronger than she cared to admit. 

But fear stayed her hand every time.