Abaddon Summer

Chapter Seven

AN: Jasor Salord is a certain type of man. I'm not sure how often he will narrate, he's almost impossible to work with. If these were essays on how they spent their summer, well, even his effort in that shows a great deal of his character.

Jasor Salord saw something that couldn't be. He saw the son of a boy he had killed in third year standing at Magi Yole's desk, staring back at him as if he knew. He, at least, got his reading list filled while Magi Yole wasn't at the desk. His research was safeguarded, even if the image of the boy burned into his mind.

The boy had been a second year. Aloof but far too friendly, following Jasor around and always with an excuse. Nothing was ever out of place. Everything had been oh so perfect.

Too perfect, the boy had likely been a shield choice for the Seven. Jasor executed him before he could share secrets with the Seven that would have gotten him killed.

Hadn't mentioned a child... maybe he hadn't known.

Nillon was caught up with Lugh doing research on Hellgates because Naena threatened to throw him into one. It made sense for Nillon to do the research but not for Lugh to support it. Even if a Seven spell could work against Salord blood and Nillon told them about Sentinels, they had no reason to look deeper into Hell unless they knew something about Naena.

The day Trathor performed his spell, Jasor followed in because he knew the university would be emptied. He went first to Naena's dorm, but he felt the magic there. Strong, powerful, driven into the stones of the building and uncrossable. The magic was unlike anything he had felt before. The raw power of that magic swirled around the dorm, erasing everything that attempted to reach in. He was aware that the spell could be triggered by the barest touch.

Jasor spent some ten minutes outside Naena's room, trying to come to terms with the fact that his bastard daughter was stronger than any mage he had ever felt before. He had thought himself over his head with Theon but had managed.

But Naena?

The kind of magic that had gone into that spell was nothing to be trifled with.

Instead, he went to Graydon's room. Barely more than a prison cell, the Pan heir had almost nothing in the room. Jasor had seen Seven bring practically their entire bedrooms to the school, but not Graydon. He brought a quilt protected by a woman's touch—no cast-off magic could attach to the quilt—and three contraceptive spells in his nightstand showing a vague but careful spell allowing all actions during.

That nagged at him even as he wedged a stone into the bed between the mattress and the frame. He had taken the stone from Nillon. While he wouldn't be able to retrieve it until the next summer, that wait would pay off tenfold.

He left the dorms, headed into the main building and to the salon. He looked over what she had done. The destruction she wrought.

The magic here felt different from her dorm, but a maelstrom could do that. Weaker than what was done in the dorm. His report said she uttered the words 'place glow here' before she went off. The term once applied to a spot in a spell where the glow would go to complete the spell. Yet as he leaned back and looked up, all he saw was protection and keeping spells.

So, he left the salon as he turned it over. If it wasn't the term itself and not a place where a glow might go, then she must have made some other connection. She must have seen one of those spells.

Where could she have seen such a spell?

He went to Trathor's office. There he placed the open letter written in Trathor's hand addressed to himself but unsigned.