Book 2
July 2025
Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXN1LF23
The Spring Ball on the first Saturday of Caldryn Parliament’s Spring Term is a night of glamour and power.
However, this year the witch clans are feuding, and when rival clans trade curses in the ballroom non-magical bystanders are the victims.
As people transform into animals, burst into unwilling song, or fall into magical slumber Vanda Kavanagh, the Warden of Caldryn Parliament, is suspicious.
The witches claim they never intended to hurt anyone, and Vanda believes them. So, who is using the witches as a stalkinghorse for their own agenda, and what is it that they hope to achieve?
Most importantly, why can’t the witches undo their own hexes?
If the spells aren’t broken by the next full moon the curses will be permanent.
Excerpt
Vanda has a new apprentice! Are you surprised? She certainly is.
“Rex, have you finished your degree in magic studies?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Vanda.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Vanda sighed.
“Sorry, ma’am. Vanda.” He gulped. He also straightened his shoulders.
That straight-backed, braced posture rang all sorts of warning bells. It was the sort of bearing the military drilled into its people. But just as Rex was too young to be a university graduate, he was too young to be a military veteran.
“I’d completed the second year of my degree when I was court-expelled. From Arverni Academy.”
“By the void.” Vanda sagged in her chair. Evelyn had outdone herself. “You were court-martialed and expelled from Arverni Academy, Zam’s premier military academy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For what?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “At the end of our second year all cadets must participate in a live-fire exercise. Last year it was in the Lynx Field, the Serval Moon. Half of us were descending from ships in orbit. The other half were defending a base on the ground. Most of the dropships were protected by technology. One had a witch onboard who sustained a shield spell. I was ordered to ward my dropship. I did so. The witch on the ground, the daughter of General Bahari, radically overcharged her spell-guided missile. It struck my dropship. Three of the personnel onboard died. Myself and one other survived. They were regular personnel, not cadets.”
“Holy void.”
“After I was discharged from the hospital, I faced a court-martial. I was found guilty of manslaughter by negligence and dangerous conduct.”
Vanda interrupted the rehearsed speech. “Why?”
“I had modified the standard ward.”
“Holy void,” Vanda repeated herself with even greater feeling. “You varied from a tried and tested ward in the middle of a live-fire exercise.”
“My ward was more efficient. If Celeste hadn’t—”
Vanda cut him off. “So, this witch overcharged her spell and you underpowered your ward and three people died?”
“Celeste is still at Arverni!” In his outrage at the unfairness of life, his voice boomed before breaking. “It’s because she’s a witch and there’s more of them than us in the military, and because General Bahari intervened.”
“If by ‘us’ you mean wardkeepers, then that’s a fact of life you should have accepted by now. Magic users are rare, and wardkeepers are far rarer than witches.” She studied the raging ball of resentment in front of her.
Giddy was less tolerant. It was still learning about embodied life outside the void, but the gremlin had its own moral code, and had proven it was willing to sacrifice itself for others.
Rex disgusted Giddy, and the gremlin demonstrated that fact by turning its back on the boy.
Vanda suppressed a sigh. Social exclusion was the least of what the military might punish Rex with. She met Giddy’s squinty-eyed, disapproving gaze.
“Grandmother does have the power to appoint my apprentice,” she reminded the gremlin.
It sneezed in disgust.
“Ms. Kavanagh agreed that it wasn’t a fair judgement,” Rex said.
Giddy turned around to glare at Rex. If its tail wasn’t so stubby, it would have lashed it in anger.
Rex gulped and appealed to Vanda. “Mom said you’d be angry.” He curled his hands into fists. “I don’t want to be apprenticed to you and stuck here in Caldryn Parliament.”
“Then resign, refuse, leave.” She couldn’t fire Rex as her apprentice and her supposed successor, but he could choose to leave.
“Mom would kill me.”
“How old are you?”
He blushed. “Twenty. But Mom pays my allowance. She says I need this job if I’m to have any hope of ever working as a wardkeeper. I’m to finish my degree and work for you for at least five years.”
Giddy hissed, which entirely failed to hide Vanda’s groan.
Rex responded indignantly, “I’m a good wardkeeper.”
“The families of three dead personnel would say otherwise.”
Rex went white.
The words were harsh, but Vanda refused to regret them.
Beside her, Giddy nodded severe agreement.
Maybe Rex’s brief account of events was accurate and the Bahari witch had been as guilty as he at breaking standard procedure. However, even if leniency toward the other guilty party was arguably unfair, it didn’t negate the three deaths or Rex’s culpability.
Whatever worm Evelyn had planted in Rex’s mind about her supposed sympathy for the “unfair” judgement, Vanda was positive she’d lied. The matriarch of the Kavanagh family was many things, including ruthless, but she upheld standards for Kavanagh wardkeepers, and Rex had failed them.
No, Evelyn had fostered Rex’s resentment for her own purposes and planted him in Vanda’s office.
Vanda spelled out Rex’s new reality. “Look at Giddy.”
The kid looked.
The gremlin glared back.
“Now, look at what you can see behind me through the window.”
Rex gulped. “Military HQ.”
“Indeed.” Vanda was aware that she was acting like the worst kind of boss, but Rex had to understand the situation he was in, and what his existence as her apprentice meant. She had to drum it into his adolescent, resentful skull. Was an allowance from his mother really worth all of this trouble?
Who was his mother, anyway?
Surely there were other avenues for Rex to continue as a wardkeeper after his court-expulsion?
“Military HQ,” Vanda repeated portentously. “The Realm Military. The same people who court-martialed you, found you guilty, and threw you out.”
Rex gulped. “I can work with them.”
Her hands hit the desk. Bam!
He flinched.
“I don’t care whether you feel emotionally capable of working with them! I care that they will resent the void out of working with you. I need a good relationship with our nearest, largest wardkeeping allies and I was well on the way to building one before my grandmother threw you into the mix.”
“You can’t fire me,” Rex muttered. “Ms. Kavanagh said she appoints your apprentice.”
“Oh, she does.”
He leaned back from Vanda’s vicious tone.
“But there are limits to what she can do. I won’t house you.”
Evelyn had intended for her previous candidate, Micah, and his family to move into Warden House with Vanda, and then, for Vanda to be evicted from it and from her position as Warden.
“I’m staying with Mom,” Rex said, sullen and bewildered.
“Where?”
“Shangti Tower.”
It was Vanda’s turn to blink. She’d expected Rex to be the son of a strong wardkeeper. But Shangti Tower was where lawyers lived.
Vanda suddenly recalled the name of the strangely dressed woman she’d met a few days ago at her own mother’s cocktail party. At the time, Vanda hadn’t recognized the woman who’d spoken so familiarly to her. She’d assumed that she was family of some kind, but now she knew. “Orla Kavanagh. Your mother is the lawyer Orla Kavanagh?”
“Yeah, she’s non-magical,” Rex muttered. “I’ve heard it all before. She enjoys shocking people. That’s why she dresses the way she does.”
Orla’s conversation with Vanda had been infuriatingly vague, but it had given Vanda an important piece of information that she’d later used to bring a murderer to justice.
Exactly how diabolically clever was Orla? Had she sought out Vanda specifically to create a sense of obligation, knowing that her son, Rex, needed the support of a strong wardkeeper?
Few wardkeepers were stronger than Vanda, especially with her connection to the Caldryn Parliament wards to draw on.
By what machinations had Orla positioned her son so that Evelyn, of all people, gave him this second chance?
If Orla could manipulate Evelyn, then Orla was someone Vanda needed to be very wary of. That thought had her reassessing Rex.
“The other keepers won’t be any more sympathetic to you than the military,” she warned him.
Caldryn Parliament employed four wardkeepers who reported to Vanda, mostly unwillingly, but she was working on their relationships and effectiveness.
There were team building exercises in everyone’s future.
She shuddered.
“I can do the work,” Rex said.
“Except that you also have to finish your degree. And I’ll judge what work you can do.” Vanda had achieved an important win in her ongoing war with her grandmother. She’d removed Evelyn’s authority to add a person’s magical signature to the parliamentary wards. Recognition of their magical signature permitted them to manipulate the wards. Now, only Vanda or one of the four keepers could do so, and if one of the four keepers tried it, Vanda would know.
Rex wasn’t touching the parliamentary wards until Vanda had a solid sense of his skills and his understanding as a wardkeeper.
She also required the full story of his expulsion from Arverni Academy. “Stay here,” she said to Rex.
He nodded and gazed apprehensively at Giddy, who remained on the desk while Vanda exited her office and shut the door.
Hazel was alone in the outer office.
Vanda closed the door to the corridor and warded it.
After decades as a security guard at Caldryn Parliament few things fazed Hazel. She watched Vanda’s antics with mild curiosity as the Warden paced in circles in the small space.
Vanda was wrestling with a political decision. Who, in the military, should she ask for background on Rex?
Major Benjamin Hosseini was the obvious choice. He was the Chief of Wards for Military HQ and she could talk to him wardkeeper to wardkeeper. However, he’d be handing over to a new Chief of Wards in less than two months, and if Vanda was going to owe anyone a favor she didn’t want the military to think that she was trying to limit it by asking someone who wouldn’t be in Forum City to cash it in.
She could ask Major Fallon Tran who was a witch, but Vanda already owed her for healing Giddy, even if Major Tran had rejected Vanda’s gratitude and sense of indebtedness. In a way, asking Major Tran for the information would be a way of granting a favor the Major could call in at any time, but asking someone for help when they’d already granted you one miracle felt wrong.
“Carter,” Vanda said decisively.
“Captain Forbes?” Hazel asked, hand hovering over her phone. She didn’t ask why Vanda had left her new apprentice in her office, guarded by Giddy, and was out here pacing and wishing to talk to the military.
Captain Carter Forbes was the military liaison to the House of Powers. Importantly, he was non-magical, but he’d proven himself sympathetic in the wake of the attack on Giddy, and he had an interest in magical affairs.
“I’ll call him,” Vanda said. She had his number in her phone. “Listen in. You’ll hear just what Grandmother has landed us with.”
“Oh my.”
Reluctantly, Vanda smiled.
Hazel might offer a sympathetic “oh my”, but her expression was one of entertained anticipation. She enjoyed Vanda’s skirmishes with Evelyn.
Vanda hoped it was because Hazel trusted that Vanda would triumph. “Hi, Carter. Can I ask a favor, please?”
“Of course.”
“My grandmother has appointed my new apprentice, a Reginald Kavanagh, recently court-expelled from Arverni Academy.”
Hazel choked.
Vanda raised an eyebrow. Not so amusing, now, hmm? “I need to know the details.”