“Please.” Darren rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen you in the practice yards. No one spends that much time trying to impress Sir Piers for his charm. It would be admirable, if you actually knew what you were doing.”
“Pray, enlighten me,” I growled.
He cocked his head to the side. “Hard work doesn’t mean anything here if you don’t have the castings to back it.”
I glared at the prince. “I have magic. You saw it.” And you just admitted that.
Darren raised a brow. “I know. But you aren’t trying to develop it.”
“I am trying!” I resisted slamming the book in hand.
Darren shot me an incredulous look. “You spend all your time in those books and drilling with your friends.”
“What does that even mean?” I demanded.
Darren smiled wolfishly. “If you really want an apprenticeship, I am sure you’ll figure it out.”
The next morning I awoke with a sense of dread. My stomach was in knots, and Darren’s mocking counsel had done nothing to assuage them. The best first-year in the school had insinuated I was making a huge mistake. And instead of telling me how to fix it, he had left me to fend for myself.
You spend all your time in those books and drilling with your friends. What was wrong with that? I devoted more time than any other student, with the exception of his highness himself, to my studies. Wasn’t that what I was supposed to be doing?
And what did Darren mean when he said he had been right to assume I was one of “them,” the ones with no real magic or potential? We hadn’t even started casting yet. How could he even discern who the ones with potential were without seeing them cast beforehand?
He had to be alluding to Master Cedric’s lessons. His were the only ones I continued to struggle with. But it was meditation. Who hadn’t fallen asleep during it?
And, sure, I hadn’t exactly tried to improve my standing there. But I only had so much time. I couldn’t do well in everything. What more could Darren expect of me? Surely learning to fight and Master Eloise and Isaac’s lessons were more important than focusing on a blade of grass for two hours?
And why did it matter anyway? Why was I so upset over something the non-heir had said? He wasn’t a master. He was a first-year, a very, very opinionated first-year.
I shoved my blankets off my cot and stood resolutely. Darren didn’t know what he was talking about. He was just trying to unnerve me. Maybe my potential scared him. I wouldn’t put it past the prince to try and intimidate me into leaving.
Determined not to give Darren’s words another thought, I hurried to the dining commons to join my friends.
“Ready for a change?” Ella greeted me.
I smiled weakly. “Would it make a difference either way?”
Alex chuckled.
Ella elbowed my brother. “Well, ready or not, you two, we are about to embrace the magical realm of blood and bandages.”
I groaned. “Lucky us.”
It was bound to be a long, arduous week.
CHAPTER SIX
The first day of Restoration did not want to end. If I had ever complained of lack of time before today, I regretted it now.
Four hours were spent staring at complicated diagrams of human anatomy. Thousands of foreign sounding names for the parts of the vessel and the various rules one was expected to understand in order to mend. We learned about the most common complaints during a knight’s service, and I was surprised to see how much time was spent going over natural maladies. Battle wounds were, apparently, too advanced for the week’s orientation. Instead, we were to focus on the most common inflictions: jungle rot, frostbite, burns, and dehydration.
Alex and I had an advantage thanks to our years in the family apothecary. Unfortunately, most of that knowledge was lost to some frazzled recess in the corners of my mind. Darren’s warning from the night before kept invading my thoughts, destroying any semblance of concentration I had.
The next few hours were even more disheartening. Piers had kept our regular conditioning, with its various laps and lunging and stretching between, but he had traded our staffs for heavy, weighted sacks of grain.
We were instructed to carry, lift, and drag them up and down the field. Repeatedly.
“Those are your patients,” he barked. “Don’t think you’ll always be able to treat a victim in the middle of a battlefield. If there’s still a fight going on, you’ll need to get them to safety first. So pick up the pace, children!”
By the end of the exercise my arms were too weak to even reach up and adjust my ponytail.
Master Cedric’s exercise wasn’t any better. I had thought our first week of actual casting would change things, but it didn’t. At least not in the way I had hoped.