Free The Wizard's Daughters: Twin Magic: Book 1 by Michael Dalton

moments.
    “The resonance cube?”
    “I wanted to test him,” she said weakly.
    He looked up at Erich, who had backed away but was still on the floor half-stunned. “Walther, you have my word,” he said. “I have no idea better idea what just happened here than do you.”
    Her father looked back down at her.
    “You connected him to the cube? The two of you at once?”
    She felt so embarrassed and humiliated that she wanted to melt into the floor. “Yes.”
    He scowled at her, wrinkling his forehead and eyebrows in a way that made her feel like a child. “ Why ?” he growled.
    “I wanted to see,” she said softly.
    Some understanding dawned in his eyes. But at that moment, Astrid appeared in the door to the front hallway looking at the three of them in complete bewilderment.
    “What is going on? What was that noise?”
    Father turned to her. “Go back to bed. I will explain tomorrow.”
    Astrid did not move, and Walther repeated himself. “Go!” Astrid left.
    Now he looked back at Erich. “You may return to bed. I need to speak to my daughter privately.”

13.
    The explosion that had woken Walther from his much-needed rest was still ringing in his ears. Ariel stood by the central table in her nightdress, holding her hands tensely before her. Walther was not sure what upset him more, what Ariel had been up to or that she had destroyed an invention he was quite fond of.
    “Tell me the truth. All of it. What in God’s name were you trying to do?”
    Ariel fidgeted for a few moments, then said something he did not catch.
    “Speak up. After that explosion you caused, I am not sure my hearing is not permanently damaged.”
    “I thought he might be a mage.”
    This was not what Walther had expected.
    “ A mage ? Him?”
    “Yes.”
    Suddenly, he saw it. “You thought he might be a mage. So you thought you would use the resonance cube to see if he was your match. And of course, when you were both connected, the cube immediately exploded because he is not a mage and has no talent at all.”
    Ariel looked up. “No. That’s not what happened.”
    Walther scowled at her again. “What do you mean?”
    “It didn’t explode. Not at first. At first, it did nothing at all.”
    “When you put on the rings, and he did, nothing happened?”
    “No. I had the knobs turned all the way down. And when I started to turn them up, it still did nothing.”
    Confusion spun through Walther’s head. The lingering exhaustion she had woken him from was still clouding his brain, but what Ariel was saying made no sense.
    “You put on the rings. He put on the rings. You turned the knobs how far?”
    “About a quarter of the way.”
    “All four?”
    “Yes.”
    “And it did nothing at all?”
    “Not at first. But then, I could sense something. Not a sound, but a feeling. A resonance. Then, when I turned up the knobs more, the cube began to give off a blue light.”
    Walther snorted.
    “A blue light ? That’s impossible. The resonance cube contained no illumination circuits. There was nothing in there that could have created any light.”
    “But it did. And when I turned it all the way up, it was so bright. Like the sun.” Her excited mood then deflated. “At least right before it exploded.”
    “That was when it blew up?”
    “Yes.”
    Walther sat down in his chair. This meant something, something important, but he had no clue what it might be. He looked around his workshop, at the nearly completed automaton, then back as his daughter.
    “Know something, and know it well. Erich is not a mage, and not your match. I know that because I tested him with the cube when he first arrived, to test his character. The cube must be adjusted differently for mages and non-mages to determine truth accurately. Erich is not a mage. The flow seems to move through him oddly, I will concede, but a mage he is not.”
    Ariel looked down at the floor sadly but said nothing.
    “Go to bed. We will discuss this further in the morning. I cannot