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restored. Taking a deep breath, she got to her feet and straightened her armor. Despite the healing magic, it still felt as if her bones were covered in bruises and her lungs filled with soot.
                Magic can't do everything, she reminded herself.
                 
     
                 

            Chapter 3
     
                Rhys sat in the Knight- Commander's antechamber, waiting for the inevitable summons into his private office. It was a bare room of grey stone, furnished only with a pair of wooden chairs, little to recommend it beyond the enormous bay window that dominated the far wall. From there one could look down at the entirety of Val Royeaux, even as far as the port district at the sea's edge. It was a spectacular view of the capital, one that few mages got to see; they were rarely invited into the upper levels of the White Spire— unless something had gone wrong, of course.
                Which it had. None of the templars would actually say what had happened, but their grim faces spoke volumes. There had been another murder.
                He glanced over at Adrian, grinning as she stormed from one end of the small room to the other. Back and forth, back and forth, like she was just getting going when a wall balked her and forced her to turn around. Then she would spit angrily and glare at the Knight- Commander's great oaken door, as if willpower alone could command it to open. In all the years they'd served together in the Circle of Magi, he'd never known her to back down from a confrontation, imagined or real. Some people said it wasn't very mage- like of her, a comment that could get her frothing at the mouth.
                Rhys tended to chuckle at those remarks. What was a mage supposed to be like, anyhow? He knew what the common folk out side the tower thought. If they were kind, they'd say a mage was a thin old man with a white beard who spent all his time surrounded by scrolls and books. If they were unkind, then a mage was a sinister- looking fellow with black hair and a pointed beard, someone who lurked in shadows summoning demons whenever the templars weren't actively preventing him from doing so.
                Adrian was about as far from their idea of a mage as it was possible to be. She was tiny, for one, with a shock of red curls and freckles that still made her look like a child even though she was only a few years younger than Rhys, and he was rapidly approaching his fortieth. She despised such comparisons, and only Rhys could get away with the occasional teasing. If she was in a good mood. Plus, she swore like a fishwife.
                Come to think of it, Rhys wasn't all that mage- like himself. Adrian said he was too handsome, a comment that always made him laugh. He did think the grey that was starting to show in his beard was terribly distinguished, but it didn't cause women to swoon as he passed. That he noticed. Beyond that, Rhys was terrible at lurking in shadows, and not what most people would consider "scholarly." He'd done a great deal of field research in his time, but locking himself into a library and staring at books until his eyes became tiny was far from his idea of a good time. Not unlike being summoned to the Knight- Commander's office.
                It made him angry. Both he and Adrian were senior enchanters; having served the Circle of Magi faithfully in the de cades since their Harrowing made them mages in full . . . but here they might as well have still been apprentices for all the consideration that got them today.
                "This is bullshit," Adrian swore. As always, she was far more willing to show her rage than Rhys. She stopped pacing for a moment and shot him a scathing look that said Wh y aren't you doing something?
                "You're cute when you get like this."
                "You want to see cute? How about I