Page 4 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
I started to respond, but the words died in my throat as a strange sensation washed over me. It started in my chest, a flutter of warmth that spread outward through my limbs like ripples in a pond, and suddenly I was aware of things I had never beenaware of before: the roots of the apple tree extending deep into the earth beneath us, the slow pulse of sap moving through its trunk, the dormant seeds in the garden waiting to be born. It was as though someone had opened a door inside me, a door I had never known existed, and on the other side was a vast green world of growing things, all of them connected to me somehow, all of them singing with a life I could suddenly, impossibly, feel.
"Leah?" Mother's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Leah, what's wrong?"
I tried to answer, but the warmth was building now, becoming heat, becoming something too big to contain in my small human body. I felt like a cup trying to hold an ocean, like a candle trying to contain a bonfire, and the pressure was building and building and I didn't know how to stop it, didn't know how to let it out, didn't know—
The power erupted from me without my permission.
I didn't choose to release it toward the apple tree. It simply went there, pouring out of me in a wave of green-gold light that I could see even with my eyes closed, rushing into the old trunk like water finding its level. I heard my brothers scream, heard my mother cry out, heard my father shout my name, but I couldn't respond, couldn't do anything but stand there as the energy flowed through me and out of me and into the tree.
The tree that was growing.
I opened my eyes and watched, too stunned to be afraid, as the ancient apple tree transformed before me. Its trunk thickened and its branches stretched higher, reaching toward the sky like arms raised in prayer, and where a moment before there had been only blossoms, now there were apples. Dozens of them. Hundreds. They swelled into being like bubbles rising from deepwater, growing larger and larger until they were the size of my two fists put together, their skin so red it was almost black, gleaming in the sunlight with an inner radiance that had nothing to do with reflection.
The power cut off as suddenly as it had come. I staggered, would have fallen if Father hadn't caught me, and for a long moment there was no sound in the garden except my ragged breathing and the soft thud of apples dropping from the overladen branches onto the grass below.
Then Lily said, in her small serious voice, "Pretty."
I looked at my family. The twins were frozen in place, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open. Father was still holding me, his arms tight around my shoulders, and his face had gone pale beneath his tan. And Mother—Loss was crying. Not the way she cried at sad stories or sentimental songs, but silently, terribly, with tears streaming down her cheeks and her hand pressed over her mouth as though she was trying to hold something in. I had never seen her look like that before, so broken, so afraid, and it scared me more than the power had, more than the impossible apples, more than anything.
"Mama?" I whispered. "What's wrong? I didn't mean to, I don't know what happened, I—"
"It's all right," Father said, but his voice was shaking. "Everything's going to be all right."
"She's Manaborn," Mother said, the words muffled by her hand. "Thomas. She's Manaborn."
Manaborn.
I knew what that word meant, of course. Everyone in Hartwick knew, everyone in the Empire knew. Once a generation, giveor take, a child of the Empire awakened to magic on their eighteenth birthday. They could be anyone: noble or common, rich or poor, city-dweller or farmer's daughter. The power didn't discriminate. It simply chose, seemingly at random, and whoever it chose was claimed by the Empire and sent to Lucent Academy to learn to control their gift. They spent three years there, studying and training and, at some point during their education, summoning a mate from the Pacted Realms. The mate was bonded to them for life, a partner and protector and, if the stories were to be believed, something like a spouse. After graduation, the Manaborn and their mate were sent to the front lines of the Voidwar for nine years of mandatory service, using their combined powers to fight the creatures that had been trying to destroy our world for longer than anyone could remember.
Nine years.
And after those nine years, if they survived, they went to live in whatever realm their mate came from. They didn't come home. They couldn't. The bond between Manaborn and mate was absolute, unbreakable, and the mate's realm had first claim on them both.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
"No," I said. "No, there must be some mistake. I can't be Manaborn. I'm just—I'm nobody, I'm a gardener's daughter, I'm—"
"The power doesn't care about that." Mother had lowered her hand, and her face was composed now, though the tears still tracked down her cheeks. "It takes who it takes. I had hoped... you were so close to eighteen, and nothing had happened, and Ithought maybe we were safe, maybe you would stay with us, but—" Her voice broke. "I'm sorry, Leah. I'm so sorry."
"Why are you sorry? You didn't do this."
"I prayed for a daughter," she said quietly. "Every day for three years before you were born, I prayed. Maybe if I hadn't..."
"Mary." Father's voice was firm. "This isn't your fault. This isn't anyone's fault. It just... is."
"She's going to war, Thomas. Our little girl is going to war."
"Not yet. Not for three years. And she'll have a mate to protect her, someone powerful, someone—"
"Someone we'll never meet. Someone who's going to take her away from us forever."
They were talking about me like I wasn't there, like I had already left, and something about that snapped me out of my shock. I pulled away from Father's arms and stood on my own, though my legs felt weak and strange, and I looked at my mother until she met my eyes.
"I'll come back," I said. "They get summer vacations, don't they? One month every year, I read about it in the town newsletter. And you can visit me at the Academy, and after the war, maybe I can convince my mate to let me—"
"The Academy is three hundred miles away." Mother's voice was flat. "We don't have the money to visit. And after the war, you'll belong to someone else. You won't be ours anymore."
"I'll always be yours. No matter what realm I live in or who I'm bonded to, I'll always be your daughter."
