This is from Book 10 of The Academy of the Accord and it hasn’t seen the editing pen yet.
(By the way, just to avoid confusion, this is from the prologue and is set at a different school (Arcane Academy) not The Academy of the Accord.)
We’re picking up from last week, with Calef thinking over the events that had led him to be seated in the waiting area outside the headmaster’s office.
Curses was Calef’s least favorite class. He didn’t like the idea of using his magic to hurt someone, and he spent most of his free time researching how to block a curse and how to lift one, practicing both in his mind until they had become nearly second nature to him. He didn’t trust Master Epans’ assertion that they were strictly an academic subject.
So when Master Epans had announced that they would be practicing on live subjects, Calef had felt a sense of unease – something in the way the man had looked at him when he had made the announcement had sent a chill through him and made his heart freeze in its rhythm.
And when they had gone out to an enclosed courtyard to find a group of cadets waiting for them he had thought he was going to be ill; Rarian was one of them and the surge of fear nearly brought his breakfast back up.
He was assigned Rarian as a target, and if he had had any doubt that the pairing had been deliberate, Master Epans’ smirk laid them to rest. Looking away from the Master he focused on Rarian and knew that he couldn’t do it, and knew what he would have to do.
One by one his classmates threw curses at the cadets standing in front of them, sending them to the ground, writhing in pain and gasping for air.
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