Page 5 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
"Will you?" She laughed, but it was a broken sound. "You don't know what the bond does to people, Leah. It changes them. By the time you're done with the Academy, you won't even remember what it feels like to be human."
"That's not true." Father stepped between us, his hands raised like he was trying to calm a spooked horse. "Mary, you're scaring her. You're scaring all of them."
He was right. I looked at the twins, who had crept closer together and were holding hands, and at Lily, who had started to cry without making any sound, and I felt something harden inside me. I didn't know what was happening to me or what it meant for my future, but I knew one thing for certain: I was still the eldest, and I still had a job to do.
I walked over to my siblings and knelt down, gathering all three of them into my arms.
"It's going to be okay," I said, with a confidence I didn't feel. "I'm not going anywhere yet. And even when I do, I'll write you letters every week, and I'll send you presents from the Academy, and every summer I'll come home and you can tell me all about the adventures you've had while I was gone. Okay?"
"Promise?" Samuel whispered.
"Promise."
"Cross your heart?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
It was a child's oath, silly and meaningless, but it seemed to comfort them. The twins relaxed slightly, and Lily's silent tears slowed, and I held them all for a long moment before standing up and turning to face my parents.
"We should go inside," I said. "It's starting to get cold."
It wasn't getting cold. The sun was still shining and the breeze was still warm, and the garden looked exactly as it had an hour ago except for the massive apple tree with its impossible fruit. But nobody argued with me, and we gathered up the remains of my birthday party and went inside, and nobody mentioned the word Manaborn for the rest of the day.
That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, I crept back out to the garden. The apple tree stood silver in the moonlight, its new branches casting shadows across the grass, and I walked up to it and pressed my palm against the bark. I could still feel it, that strange connection, the green pulse of life flowing through the wood and into the earth and out through the roots to touch every other growing thing in the garden. It was beautiful and terrifying and completely, utterly overwhelming.
"I don't want this," I whispered to the tree, or to myself, or to whatever force had decided to turn my ordinary life upside down on my eighteenth birthday. "I just wanted to stay here. I just wanted to get married and have children and grow old in this garden. That's all I ever wanted."
The tree didn't answer. Of course it didn't.
I stayed there until the moon set and the stars began to fade, and then I went back inside and lay down in my bed and stared at the ceiling until dawn.
CHAPTER THREE: THE GOODBYE
Two months passed faster than I thought possible.
The first week was chaos. Word of my awakening spread through Hartwick like wildfire, racing from the baron's estate through the merchant quarters and into the crowded tenements of the lower city, and suddenly everyone wanted to see me, to talk to me, to touch the hem of my dress as though some of my newfound power might rub off on them. Neighbors who had never spoken more than three words to me showed up at our door with gifts and congratulations, and the baker who had once accused me of stealing a roll when I was six arrived with a basket of pastries and a tearful apology. Strangers stopped me in the street when I went to the market, asking to shake my hand or blessing me in the name of gods I'd never heard of. I accepted it all with what I hoped was graciousness, though inside I felt like screaming.
The imperial assessors arrived on the tenth day. There were two of them: a tall thin woman with silver hair and a permanent expression of mild disapproval, and a shorter man with kind eyes and ink-stained fingers who seemed apologetic about the whole business. They had come all the way from the capital, they explained, because reports of my awakening had been unusualenough to warrant personal attention. They examined me for hours, testing my power in ways I didn't fully understand, making notes in leather-bound books and conferring with each other in whispers. When they were finished, they sat my parents down at the kitchen table and delivered their verdict.
"Class A potential," the woman said, as though she were commenting on the weather. "Possibly Class S, though we won't know for certain until she's properly trained. Either way, she'll be a considerable asset to the war effort."
"What does Class A mean?" Father asked.
"It means your daughter has more raw power than ninety-five percent of the Manaborn we assess. It's quite remarkable, actually, given her background. These things usually run in noble families."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Mother's voice was sharp. "Her background?"
The woman looked at her with something that might have been surprise, as though she hadn't expected a gardener's wife to take offense. "I meant no disrespect. Simply that magical ability tends to concentrate in certain bloodlines. Your daughter is an anomaly. A pleasant one, I assure you."
"We should discuss the apples," the man said, clearly trying to change the subject. He flipped through his notes until he found the right page. "The ones she created during her awakening. We took samples for analysis, and the results are... unusual."
"Unusual how?"
"They appear to be magical in nature. Not just grown by magic, but imbued with it. Eating one seems to convey temporary enhancements to strength and stamina, and thereare indications they may have healing properties as well." He glanced at my mother. "Have you eaten any of them?"
"We all have. They taste wonderful, and there are so many, we couldn't let them go to waste—"
"That's fine, that's fine. No harm done. But we'll need to confiscate the rest. The Empire has use for such things."
