A Binding of Blood Read online

  A Binding of Blood

  Azalea Ellis

  Copyright © 2021 by Azalea Ellis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Seladore Publishing

  * * *

  Cover art by James T. Egan of BookFly Design

  To Jared.

  … But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Contents

  Join the Inner Circle**

  Note to Readers

  A Practical Guide to Sorcery Recap

  1. Competing for Points

  2. Paper Spells

  3. Sleep Research

  4. Friendships Forged by Accident

  5. The Mysteries of Sleep

  6. Alliance with the Nightmare Pack

  7. Chastisement

  8. Sirens

  9. The Intersection of Transmutation and Transmogrification

  10. Useless Clutter

  11. Unresolved Curiosity

  12. Reverse Scrying

  13. Eagle Tower

  14. Saved by the Enemy

  15. Faulty Deductions

  16. Through a Glass Darkly

  17. Commission to Investigate

  18. A Pact of Stars

  19. Forming a Team

  20. Noticing Confusion

  21. The Constitution of Cockroaches

  22. A Simple Solution

  23. Request a Boon

  24. To Slumber but not Rest

  25. Cold Sweat

  26. Theoretical Exercises

  27. Snowfall & Spilled Secrets

  28. A Convenient Concoction

  29. An Interview

  30. Secret Thaumaturge Meeting

  31. Attack Strategy

  32. Drills

  33. Old Wives’ Tales

  34. The Penultimate Piece

  35. First Fallen

  36. Mid-Terms & Tournament

  37. The Glasshopper

  38. These Violent Delights

  39. Healing

  40. Have Violent Ends

  41. A Sacrifice of Light

  42. Connections

  43. Nerves Wracked

  44. The Siverling Line

  45. Things Go Wrong

  46. Things Get Worse

  47. Blight

  48. Pullulation

  49. The Consolations of Philosophy

  50. Decoherence

  51. The Implied Invisible

  52. Hiraeth

  Glossary of Magical Terms

  Also by Azalea Ellis

  About the Author

  Join the Inner Circle**

  Become part of the Inner Circle.

  Instantly receive a free excerpt from Siobhan’s illustrated grimoire.

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  I will send you new release updates, exclusive content like pre-release or deleted scenes, as well as news about giveaways or contests I’m doing (signed paperbacks, posters, etc.) and other cool stuff I think you might enjoy. Sometimes I tell weird stories about my life.

  * * *

  Support me on Patreon

  https://www.patreon.com/azaleaellis

  Read along chapter by chapter as I write the next book in the series, with early access chapters not available elsewhere, plus exclusive short stories/bonus chapters, and other goodies like various illustrated excerpts from Siobhan’s grimoire.

  Note to Readers

  The world-building for this story is extensive and can be quite complicated. If you find yourself forgetting terminology or wanting a little more detail about a term, the end of this book holds a Glossary of Magical Terms.

  * * *

  Thank you for reading!

  * * *

  Azalea

  A Practical Guide to Sorcery Recap

  If you have not read the first book in the Practical Guide to Sorcery series, spoilers lie ahead.

  * * *

  Previously, in A Conjuring of Ravens:

  Siobhan Naught unwittingly becomes a wanted criminal when her father steals a mysterious book during their visit to the Thaumaturgic University. Her hopes of becoming a student dashed, she runs from the coppers with the book. Later, in danger from being caught by their ambush, she meets Oliver Dryden, who tries to help her escape.

  When the coppers corner them, she accidentally activates a transformation amulet that had been hidden in the stolen book, turning herself into a young man who looks nothing like her original form. With this new body, she deceives the coppers and escapes arrest. To have a chance at entering the University under a new identity, she takes a huge loan—one thousand gold—from Oliver and Katerin at the Verdant Stag, the criminal organization they run.

  Oliver helps her create a new identity for herself as Sebastien Siverling, but she makes a bad first impression on Damien Westbay and his group of Crown Family friends upon their first meeting.

  When Siobhan learns the coppers caught her father Ennis, she and Oliver enlist the help of local illegal thaumaturge Liza, who helps Siobhan contact Ennis with a spelled raven messenger. To Siobhan’s disappointment, Ennis has tried to sell her—and the stolen book—to the Gervin Family in marriage, in exchange for benefits for himself.

  Much disillusioned, Siobhan studies for the University entrance exam and works for the Verdant Stag, who actually seem to serve and help the people within their community. When young Theo, Katerin’s nephew, injures himself, Siobhan unthinkingly uses some harmless blood magic learned from her grandfather to heal the boy, earning both Katerin and Oliver’s ire for the reckless use of illegal magic that could get her executed, and them implicated by association.

  As Sebastien Siverling, she takes the University entrance exam, but her results are poorer than she hoped, and the panel of professors who administer the verbal portion of the exam plan to deny her entrance. In a fit of rage, she refuses to be dismissed, casting a hastily prepared spell to prove that she has the only thing that matters to a potential sorcerer—a strong Will.

  Professor Thaddeus Lacer, a famous free-caster and Siobhan’s childhood hero, takes an interest in her and overrides the panel of other professors, forcibly admitting Sebastien Siverling under special circumstances.

  Sebastien falls into her University classes with glee, learning with feverish enthusiasm. She keeps to herself except for a budding new friendship with Anastasia Gervin, a Crown Family heiress, and Damien Westbay, who remembers their first meeting and finds Sebastien abrasive, nurturing the pseudo-rivalry between them. One of their student liaisons, Newton Moore, also extends an olive branch of friendship, believing her to—secretly—be a poor student just like him.

  When she is not studying, Sebastien brews alchemical concoctions for the Verdant Stag to pay back the debt she owes them.

  Oliver makes moves to expand the power of the Verdant Stags, but things backfire when the Morrows, a rival gang, attack one of his warehouses with the help of a mysterious sorceress. Oliver sets off Sebastien’s alarms, waking her in the middle of the night to give emergency aid to his people.

  Returning to her female form, Siobhan uses the minor spell exercises she’s been practicing for Professor Lacer to sling balls of shattered glass at the Morrows. When the fighting is over, she tries to help the Verdant Stag warehouse workers, some of whom have been severely injured. Unable to do much, she patches up what she can before the coppers arrive.

  Trying to give the others a better chance to escape, Siobhan uses a harmless esoteric spell that controls her shadow, molding it into a frightening creature of tattered darkness with a huge raven’s beak. The coppers are successfully frightened, but one of them shoots a grasping spell at Siobhan, tripping her and cutting her hand.

  She and Oliver escape to a safe house owned by one of Oliver’s subjects, but the coppers found some of her blood left behind at the scene and use it to cast scrying magic on her. Siobhan’s warding medallion, given by her grandfather, holds off the scrying attempt—at the cost of Siobhan’s Conduit—and they go to Liza for a more permanent solution.

  Liza creates a divination-diverting ward, anchored in five disks that she inserts underneath Siobhan’s skin. The ward uses her blood for power, and can activate at low efficiency on its own or be further empowered by Siobhan’s conscious efforts.

  Thaddeus is called to the scene of the crime to consult on the investigation at Titus Westbay’s request. Given the available evidence and witness accounts, they come to some erroneous conclusions. Siobhan Naught—codename Raven Queen—is a free-caster with some unknown, nefarious purpose that involves curses and blood magic.

  She fascinates Thaddeus.

  Siobhan, now without a Conduit, contacts Ennis in jail again, hoping to retrieve her mother’s Conduit from him, but learns that he gave it to the Gervin Family as a bond for his word in the marriage agreement he gave on her behalf. Enraged and desperate, she spends most of her remaining funds to buy a dinky, overpriced replacement Conduit, then breaks down in tears.

  But she isn’t the same person who came to Gilbratha with Ennis those months ago. She’s no longer under his—or anyone else’s—control. She takes ownership of her life and her choices, pulls herself back together, and returns to the University.

  * * *

  A Binding of Blood begins immediately after these events.

&
nbsp; 1

  Competing for Points

  Sebastien

  Month 11, Day 30, Monday 8:45 a.m.

  * * *

  When the scrying attack hit Sebastien, she immediately began empowering her new anti-divination ward. The five artifact disks that Liza had embedded under the skin of her back consumed her blood, making the skin around them prickle like it was being stabbed with needles. This provided magical energy, which Sebastien channeled through the small Conduit pressed between her ankle and the inside of her boot, right back into the spell.

  Fortunately, there were only a few stragglers still lingering around the University dorm, and they were all hurrying to gather their things before class. No one paid any attention to Sebastien.

  She cursed the coppers, dropped the luggage she had been repacking into the chest at the base of her bed, and hurried toward the bathrooms. Liza had warned her that, with the ward active, anyone paying enough attention might notice a strange difficulty focusing on her, which could have very unfortunate consequences.

  If things had gone even a little differently when she and Oliver went to defend his warehouse and the people inside from the attack by the Morrows, she might be fully rested, clearheaded, and relatively safe. If that last attack by the coppers, when she was trying to distract them with her shadow-familiar, hadn’t hit her, she wouldn’t have fallen and cut herself, and they wouldn’t have her blood. She could have returned to the University without fear.

  And maybe, if she had gone long enough without giving them any more leads, living as Sebastien Siverling instead of Siobhan Naught, they would have given up searching for her.

  Instead, she was trembling in a bathroom stall as she brought her strained Will to bear. The coppers had her blood, and if she failed, they would find her through it. If she was arrested, she would likely be executed, since they had branded her a blood magic user. Even if she somehow escaped that fate, she would forever lose her chance to study at the Thaumaturgic University of Lenore. And without the University, she might never gain the knowledge and power to become a an Archmage level sorcerer and a free-caster. The kind of power that meant she would never be vulnerable again.

  The ward deflected searching tendrils of magic for the next few minutes despite the sheer power battering across the entire city through the coppers’ scrying spell. It was a stronger spell than Liza had used to test the ward’s strength, but the protective magic held.

  Some part of Sebastien had hoped that the transformation into her male body might mitigate the coppers’ ability to find her through the sympathetic connection to her blood, but it seemed that was not the case. Siobhan’s blood was still her blood, even in Sebastien’s body. Which would have been interesting to know in less dire circumstances.

  Panting, Sebastien rubbed the back of her neck as the stinging sensation subsided. Her head was pounding again. Not as bad as when she had first strained her Will, but bad enough that she had trouble concentrating. She wished she could neglect her classes and spend the day in bed.

  Instead, she steeled herself, made sure she looked calm and alert, and hurried toward the Citadel and Professor Burberry’s classroom. She arrived a few minutes late to Introduction to Modern Magics.

  Professor Burberry gave her a stern glance but said nothing as Sebastien slipped into the seat beside Anastasia.

  “Are you alright?” the girl murmured to her, her eyes roving over Sebastien’s face with concern.

  Sebastien realized sweat was beaded at her temples and quickly wiped it away. “Fine. A little nauseated. Lost track of time in the bathroom.”

  Ana patted her hand sympathetically and pulled a potion out of her bag. “It’s for stomach cramps, but it should help slightly with nausea, too. The cafeteria food is atrocious. Really, I don’t understand why we cannot simply purchase a better meal. We have the gold for it, and you would think they’d be happy to take it. I’m going to start losing weight at this rate.”

  Sebastien took the vial and stared at it bemusedly. ‘Great. There’s no reasonable way for me to decline this. I hope it doesn’t have side effects on someone who’s perfectly healthy.’ Aloud, she said, “Can it be taken on an empty stomach?” When Ana nodded cheerfully, Sebastien suppressed her misgivings and took a swallow.

  Having satisfied the other girl, Sebastien settled into her ruse, hiding her fatigue as completely as she could. Though for once, her mind wasn’t on her classes. ‘It was well done to request Liza’s help with the ward against divination. If not for that, my time at the University would definitely be up.’ She shuddered at the thought. Finding information on the coppers’ scrying procedure and capability was a priority, as soon as she could slip away to do so.

  ‘If I had known how all this would turn out, would I have stayed in bed when Oliver activated my bracelet’s alarm? What would have happened to Jameson without me? He would probably still be dead.’ Setting that thought forcefully aside, she consoled herself. ‘It is possible that things could have gone worse if I wasn’t there.’ If she was honest with herself—and she tried to be—she would still go with Oliver knowing what she knew now. She would just perform better the second time around.

  During the lunch period, she ate quickly, then went back to the dorms and made herself a strong cup of wakefulness brew from some tea leaves she had stashed in her trunk, as the basic meal options didn’t cover such “luxuries” as caffeine.

  When she arrived at Practical Casting, she was finally more awake, though her heart was beating a little too fast and her chest held a sour tightness.

  Sebastien did a double take after entering the classroom. Something was off. She frowned, looking around quickly, and then realized that the classroom seemed to have shrunk. She had noted on the first day that this was the biggest class, both in room size and number of students. Though that remained the case, with hundreds of students drawn by the allure of free-casting, over the first few weeks many people had stopped coming, leaving empty desks behind. Those desks were gone now, and the back wall seemed to have contracted toward the front.

  Her muscles tensed with unease, and without quite realizing it, she had taken her Conduit from her pocket. Walking around the room and examining the doorway showed tracks, and she realized with awe that the dividing walls that broke up each floor of the Citadel into classrooms could be moved, shifted forward or back to change the size of the individual rooms. Constructing a building with such capabilities, at this scale, was a feat she doubted could have been accomplished without impressive magic.

  She took her seat, close to the front of the room on the side farthest from the door, and waited.

  A few more students arrived after her, but no one else seemed to notice the classroom’s modification. At least, if they did, they weren’t particularly surprised by it, instead chattering with their fellow students or hurrying to complete homework before the class started.

  Professor Lacer strode in dramatically, his trench coat flapping helplessly behind him. He was a tall man with a hawkish gaze, and he kept his dark hair pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck. The hair of his short-trimmed beard was always a little wild, as if it was afraid of him and trying to escape his face. He stopped in the middle of the lecture stage, ran his eyes over the students, and nodded to himself. “Those of you remaining are those who will not be leaving my class because of unwillingness to put in the work. You may be lacking, but at least you have shown dedication, and you should have enough experience to avoid Will-strain with some more strenuous spell-casting. Now, it is time to make you stronger.” There were some murmurs of excitement, and he waved them to silence. “How does a sorcerer become stronger?”