Free Bookworm III by Christopher Nuttall

Maybe Daria had a point, putting them together, but it was going to be embarrassing as hell. I’ll leave her alone to change, then change myself, if we do .
    He sat down on the bed, then closed his eyes and tried to feel for Elaine’s presence. It was the furthest they’d been apart since forming the apprenticeship bond, but he could still feel her in the back of his mind. He smiled to himself, feeling an odd sense of reassurance just from knowing the bond was there. Elaine could no more abandon him than she could cut off one of her own hands. The bond, for all that it was weighted in favour of the master – or mistress, in this case – carried obligations of its own.
    “Assuming they apply to us too,” he muttered to himself. “The rules seem to be different for me.”
    He sighed. There were times when he wished his magic was normal , just like the magic of his brothers and sisters. The bond not forming properly didn’t strike him as a good sign. He’d spoken to a couple of apprentices who had visited the library and both of them had shared a much more intimate link with their masters than he enjoyed with Elaine. But it was better – by far – than being Powerless. His family would have kept him prisoner indefinitely, he suspected, or they would have killed him eventually. There had been quite a few children listed in the books who had vanished from the records, somewhere around the time they would have attended the Peerless School. Had they been sent for private tutoring ... or had they been killed for being Powerless? There was no way to know.
    And then he felt a sudden shockwave of alarm from Elaine.
    He jumped to his feet ... and banged his skull against the low ceiling. Cursing, he rubbed his head with one hand as he tried to reach out to Elaine. But there was nothing, beyond a sense that something was very, very wrong. Elaine’s presence was always light and ghostly in his mind, as if she was nothing more than a dream or a figment of his imagination, but now it had faded almost to nothingness. He was aware of her when she slept, he knew; he’d never sensed any change in the bond. But now ... was she dead?
    There was a tap on the door. “Are you alright?”
    Johan gritted his teeth against the pain, then opened the door. A young girl, barely older than himself, was standing outside, her white hair spilling down over her chest. She’d been one of the children outside, he recalled, probably one of the ones who had giggled at him. But right now it hardly mattered.
    “I don’t think so,” he said. “Can you fetch Daria? Now.”
    He jumped out of the carriage as the girl sped away, feeling his head spinning in pain. It was difficult to separate his own thoughts and feelings from Elaine’s, despite the simple fact that they were two different people. Some of the weirder cautionary tales about apprenticeship bonds had warned that two people could blur together, if they didn’t keep a barrier between themselves at all times. It hadn’t seemed possible, to Johan, because Elaine was very definitely a woman, but now he had his doubts. He sat down on the ground and forced himself to focus his mind. The pain didn’t make it easy.
    “Johan,” Daria said. He looked up to see her standing, looming over him. “What happened?”
    “Something’s wrong with Elaine,” Johan said. The pain was fading now, but the sense of her presence was also faint. He had no idea what could produce such an effect. According to the books, apprenticeship bonds could not be accidentally broken, short of one partner dying while the other survived. And it was next to impossible to sever a bond before time even if both parties consented. “She’s in trouble.”
    Daria’s eyes narrowed. “And you know that how?”
    “We have a bond,” Johan reminded her. “And now she’s very faint in my mind.”
    “The Mothers and Fathers want to leave,” Daria muttered. She held out a hand to Johan. “I think we may have to go with them