Severa Book 1 - Chapter 2 & 3

The Aetherweld Silversteel gates of the Montreal estate caught the dying sunset, throwing spectral fragments across the carriageway like scattered jewels. 

The butler, Berrick, was already waiting for Severa as she stepped out of her carriage. He was a man so tall and immaculately pressed, with posture so precise it could have been measured with a ruler. That had been a requirement for Montreal house staff since her grandfather’s time—every spine straight enough to hold a ledger, every word enunciated as though for court testimony.

“Miss Montreal,” Berrick intoned, inclining just enough to signal deference without risk of wrinkling his collar. “Your father is in the east drawing room. Master Forsing arrived this morning.”

Her heel caught on the gravel for a half a second, not from surprise—she had known before Berrick spoke—but from the sudden rush of heat in her jaw. Her eyes had caught a sleek black roadster sat gleaming, the sigil of the Magisterial Bureau of Aetheric Law embossed on its side panel.

The last she’d heard, her older brother had been sworn in as the youngest ever Under-Clerk to the Council of Aetheric Law—a role that was one rung below a full Council Seat and already gave him a voice in drafting policy. And of course, he’d been everywhere since then: in the papers, in speeches, standing behind the High Legates like he’d been born there.

Severa mounted the marble steps without hurry, allowing her breathing to even. The estate doors opened before she reached them, and a pair of liveried footmen stepped aside with the silent precision of clockwork gears. Inside, the central hall had been transformed—her father’s latest obsession with presentation made manifest.

Along the polished length of the corridor, inventions had been staged as though for an exhibition: a self-writing ledger whose ink gleamed with mnemonic glyphs, a hovering globe of shifting terrain mapping the leyline topographies of five continents, a perpetual tea service that replenished cups at precisely three-minute intervals. Some bore discreet brass placards reading Property of the Department of Thaumaturgic Standards—a delegation from the Bureau’s research arm, no doubt, given the crests etched into the corner.

The east drawing room lay at the corridor’s far end.

Severa felt the familiar tightening just under her ribs; a small rebellion of muscle memory that came every time she had to face her father. It was unavoidable; the terms of her stay in the estate meant reporting to him at least once a day, and she preferred to meet that requirement quickly rather than let it loom. Best to get it over with.

The parlor doors were already open.

Magister Elon Montreal sat where he always did: center chair, not the largest in the room but the one with the best sightlines. His hands rested lightly on a thin walking rod of black gloss, and his eyes were fixed not on her but on the fire. He refused to look at people unless it was to intimidate.

Forsing Montreal was already there, seated just far enough from the hearth to give their father the unbroken center of the room. Where Elon’s presence surged like a tide, Forsing’s seemed to run quiet and deep, a current you only noticed when it shifted against you. He dressed with a young minister’s precision—cuffs square, collar straight, signet on his right hand catching the light in deliberate flashes. The silver thread at his cuffs marked him as a Deputy Adjudicator of the Order’s Inner Tribunal, a post most men twice his age would never touch. Even here, in his father’s private study, he wore it without comment.

As Severa walked in, Forsing glanced up and gave her a quick and perfectly weighted smile.

Neither man stood.

“Severa,” Elon said, as though greeting an employee. “You’ve returned on a timely week.”

“Is that so?” she replied, keeping her voice even as she crossed to one of the lower chairs. She didn’t bother with tea.

“The Committee for Legislative Harmonization pushed the Aetheric Requisition Amendments through first reading,” Forsing said, leaning slightly forward, elbows on his knees. “If they pass in full, private acquisition of Class-II artifacts will require direct Bureau licensing, and anything older than the Fourth Border Dispute will be classified Class-III by default.”

Elon tapped the tip of his walking rod once against the floor. “The stated aim is containment. The unspoken aim is consolidation.”

It means the Eidralith, and anything like it, would be locked behind enough Bureau seals to make serious research almost impossible.

Severa caught the meaning easily enough; she’d run enough retrieval missions for the Bureau to recognize a power grab when she saw one. What she didn’t follow was the elaborate chain of procedural maneuvering Forsing began laying out—which subcommittee had been quietly stacked, which Council bloc had traded favors to get the amendments this far, and which foreign delegations were whispering for exceptions.

It was like watching two master fencers circle each other in a game she’d never trained for. She caught the thrusts; she just didn’t care to play the sport. Her game was different: slipping through collapsed vaults, cracking seals older than most nations, prying relics from the dust before the Bureau ever drafted a claim form.

Forsing’s tone was almost affable. “With amendments like these, field collectors may soon find themselves . . . well, outpaced by those who know where the real decisions are made.”

It was polite enough for the room, but she heard it for what it was: You’re chasing trinkets in the mud while I’m shaping the rules that decide who even gets to touch them.

Severa’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. I’m not trading the fields for a desk, thank you very much.

Elon’s gaze must have caught her change. His next words were still pitched for the chamber, but the edge was for her alone. “Some of us,” he said mildly, “excel at the kind of brilliance that leaves no dirt under the nails.”

She swallowed the sting and let the jab slide. Forsing was looking at her and possibly fishing for a reaction, and she was determined to not give him the pain in her eyes. The last time she’d done so, hoping for an iota of compassion underneath those glossy eyes of his, he’d only leaned back with the faintest smirk.

How had he ended up this way? Once, he’d been the one out in the wind with her—an aspiring thaumaturge who’d taught her half the wind tricks she still used. Now, the same hands that had shaped gales were content to shuffle papers and pull strings.

Forsing leaned back slightly, as though remembering something somewhat relevant. “By the way,” he said, tone almost companionable, “is Aunt Merry still funding those . . . what do you call them . . . deep-vault excursions? I heard the Bureau’s Cultural Division is talking about packaging them for public broadcast. They can make the entire sport safer and more palatable for the mass.”

“It’s not a sport, brother,” she answered immediately before clenching her fist. That’d been a grave mistake.

He gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Oh, but for the more strategically minded among us, it very much is. Once dungeon work is finally reduced to a fair-weather sport, you could be a star attraction. We can find you the right lighting and a crowd to cheer you on.”

The words slid under her skin before she could catch them. Severa stood too quickly, the legs of her chair skimming against the carpet. “I have reports to finish,” she said, too curt to be mistaken for polite.

She’d just reached the threshold when her father’s voice followed her, mild as ever but weighted enough to stop her stride for half a breath.

“A Montreal,” Elon said, “contains their emotion better than that, Severa.”

She didn’t answer, only stepped through the door and let it shut behind her with more force than she’d meant. 

Berrick was just coming down the steps from the gallery as she made for the entryway. “Having dinner alone again tonight, Miss Montreal?” He asked.

She didn’t break stride.

“Miss—?”

She was already past him, the great front doors yawning open before she touched them.

Beyond, the manicured lanes dipped toward the outer sprawl, lanterns pooling gold against stone walls and wrought-iron gates. Far off, past the veil of rooftops and orchard lines, the faint white glow of the Synod’s wards shimmered against the horizon. She set her eyes there and didn’t slow.

By the time she crossed the threshold of the Synod campus, the tightness in her chest had burned itself into irrelevance. The training rings were mostly empty at this hour, save for a few silhouettes running drills under the lanterns.

Good. She didn’t want witnesses.

Tonight she’d train until the air tore around her, until her body remembered how to move without thought, until her mind stopped replaying every word spoken in that drawing room.

Control, after all, was the only form of defiance she’d ever been allowed to keep.

She stepped onto the packed-sand floor, and then caught sight of movement at the far end of the ring. Fabrisse Kestovar. Even at this distance, she knew the way he carried himself: shoulders set but never stiff, a gait that always looked like he was on the edge of a turn. He wasn’t alone. Beside him strode a man she didn’t recognize, tall, fur-collared coat hanging open over a set of well-cut traveling clothes. The white-thread insignia at his lapel marked him as faculty—new faculty. Magnus Kaldrin, she guessed, the visiting professor from the Outer Fold.

And shadowing him on the other side was a tall, blond woman, always with the same petal tucked into her messy bun like a stubborn crown. Severa had seen her tagging along with Kestovar several times, but had never learned her name.

Why’s Kestovar here? Is he here for training?

Impossible. He never trains.

Severa’s first impression of Kestovar had been different. Even now, he carried an almost effeminate kind of charm about him, with an intensely focused gaze that made her think he’d be a different kind of person. Someone driven, someone serious. But that early assessment had disappointed her grandly. He had no interest in ever pushing boundaries, no fire for aetheric study, no real motivation beyond getting through each day.

His only passion in life was collecting quartz and inert rocks from nearby caves and riverbanks. It infuriated her just a bit more even as she saw him. One time, he had spent an entire afternoon inspecting a dull chunk of granite as if it held the secrets of the cosmos, and dared to show up an hour late while the rest of them were drilling glyphs or mastering elemental shifts. She remembered watching him, almost aghast, trying to understand what satisfaction anyone could find in such a tedious, painstaking routine.

Her eyes would almost twitch every time she caught sight of him, perched at the same spot near the riverbank, utterly absorbed in inspecting his rocks. It was maddening. No matter how often she passed by, there he was, still hunched over a pile of quartz and dull pebbles, lost in whatever slow, meticulous world he inhabited. It was the kind of obsession that made her blood boil.

One time, it pushed her right over the edge. She’d just received her practical score for Veil Thaumaturgy I—the highest anyone had ever gotten in that span, a solid 48 out of 50. But the only comment Elon ever gave her was what she should’ve done to snatch the perfect 50. Nothing about the effort, just cold, cutting criticism.

Fuming, Severa stormed out to the riverbank, seeking some quiet, some escape from the grinding weight of constant belittlement. It was a mistake, since Kestovar was there too. How he was still allowed in the Synod while she had to endure constant dismissal for falling short of perfection was nothing short of baffling.

She’d lashed out at him because it was a natural thing to do. By the end of her one-way tirade, her voice rough with frustration, Kestovar didn’t even flinch. He just looked at her, then calmly reached down and plucked a small, smooth pebble from the ground.

So she had to take it from him. She took his pebble and marched off. It was a childish thing to do, but Kestovar seemed the childish kind, so it was only fair.

Back to reality, the current Kestovar waved a brief goodbye to Magnus Kaldrin and the blond woman. Then, without a word, he turned and began walking alone toward the center of the ring.

Severa frowned, caught off guard. He rarely moved alone like this—always surrounded by someone or retreating into his usual detachment. The silence left her momentarily speechless.

He glanced over briefly, eyes meeting hers for a fraction of a second, then quietly looked away, dismissing any expectation of conversation.

In one hand, he carried a small glass bottle of water. With careful fingers, he uncorked it and let a few droplets fall onto the packed sand. Then he pulled out a pair of mitts, impossibly ugly in its orange colors, and put them on. Right afterwards, the surface of the water inside the bottle began to ripple in slow circles.

Her frown deepened. She hadn’t known Kestovar could perform water thaumaturgy now.

Doesn’t matter. What matters is my own training.

Severa shoved her hands deep into the folds of her robe, searching for the talisman she’d meticulously prepared for tonight’s training. Her fingers closed around something smooth and cool instead—an inert stone, rough-hewn and dusty. This stone was the one she’d looted from the dungeon earlier, forgotten in the rush to leave the estate.

Her eyes found Kestovar again. He still stood with his back to her, distant and quiet, the small bottle of water steady in his hand. She knew how knowledgeable he was with stones. If anyone could shed light on what she’d found in that dungeon, it would be him.

Severa pulled the stone free from her robe and held it up to the fading light. She turned it slowly in her palm, watching how the angles caught shadows.

But the thought of asking Kestovar felt absurd. For one, he’d rarely given answers worth considering. However, there were more. The memory of her own sharp words, the barbs aimed at his apathy and timidity, echoed in her mind. How many times had she unleashed her frustration on him, using him as an emotional punchbag whenever her father’s cold weight pressed too hard? He was everything she despised right now—unambitious, unresisting, a passive vessel for her anger rather than a partner in it. It frustrated her all the more that he’d never found it in him to fight back, until very recently.

A sudden awareness prickled at the back of her neck. She looked up, sensing someone’s gaze. Indeed, someone was looking.

Kestovar was watching her, though not her face. His eyes were fixed on the stone.

Severa lifted the stone a little higher. “Do you have business with me?”

“No,” he replied.

Severa thought that was it and was about to slip the stone back into her robe when he added quietly, “That stone might release its imprint under sub-zero conditions.”

“I beg your pardon?” she furrowed her brow.

Kestovar’s gaze remained steady. “It is exceedingly rare,” he said.