Free The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

I can walk,” Gray said, rather crossly, though in fact he was far from certain.
    As Sophie slipped an arm about his waist to support him, he considered protesting that he was not ill, had in fact been feeling very fit until a few moments ago. In the end, he said nothing: Something undoubtedly was the matter with him now.
    But it had, he was equally certain, nothing to do with being out in the sun.
    *   *   *
    Mrs. Wallis brought him a tray at noon: tea, toasted bread, and strong beef broth, an invalid’s meal. Gray glowered at it.
    â€œI am not ill, Mrs. Wallis,” he said.
    â€œMiss Sophia tells me you ’ad a touch of the sun this morning,” Mrs. Wallis replied calmly. Gray knew Sophie well enough by now to suspect that she had not put the matter so politely.
    â€œIt was not the sun; it was—”
    It had felt, in fact, rather like magick shock—the dragging, hollowed-out aftermath of too much magick used too quickly—though magick shock had never so terrified him. But
could
one be magick-shocked who had used no magick?
    Sophie.
The thought assailed him as he drifted into sleep, full of toasted bread and beef broth.
I used none—but I am sure that Sophie did.
    *   *   *
    At dinner that evening, Gray—feeling much more himself after sleeping nearly all day—watched Sophie as steadily as he dared. Once or twice he caught her eye and chanced a smile. But his vigilance was of no use; the eager, vivid Sophie of the morning was gone, replaced again by a shadow of herself who seemed bent on escaping notice.
    It
is
magick,
Gray thought;
magick this morning, and magick now. There can be no other explanation. Sophie’s own magick, whatever her father may believe. But what manner of magick is this?
    He had an unwelcome sense that someone was waiting for him to speak.
    Professor Callender said, in the tone of one ill-pleased to be repeating himself, “We shall soon be welcoming another guest, Mr. Marshall—rather a distinguished one, I am happy to say. I am sure we shall all enjoy his company; do you not agree?”
    Had the Professor ever in his life asked a question that really
was
a question? “Yes, sir,” said Gray. “Of course, sir.”
    *   *   *
    Gray stood in the centre of his bedroom late that evening, in the light of a single candle on the desk, and prepared to speak a warding-spell.
    This has gone on long enough,
he admonished himself.
The magick was there at Kerandraon; it is there still, if only you will have faith in it. Magick cannot simply disappear.
    He drew a deep breath, set his shoulders, and straightened his back. Closing his eyes, he reached down into the core of his magick, the words of the warding ready on his lips.
    At the first syllable, his stomach began to churn. Swallowing hard, he went on; the Latin words that ought to have slipped fluidly out into the air had to be forced out, painfully, through his clenched teeth.
    His vision blurred. Before he had finished even half the spell, he collapsed.
    When he woke—disoriented, with queasy stomach and pounding head—his first thought was that, somehow, he had returned to Merlin while he slept, to begin his waking nightmare all over. Soon enough he recognised his surroundings, but his relief was short-lived, for with it came the remembrance of what he had tried, and failed, to do.
    Was it possible that his magick
had
simply vanished? That his violent encounter with the wards on the Professor’s Oxford rooms, in bringing on the worst case of magick shock he had hitherto suffered, had also done him some more permanent damage?
    One need not—as the Professor himself gave daily proof—possess any extraordinary practical talent in order to master the most arcane minutiae of magickal theory; indeed, the Professor was not alone among the Senior Fellows in disdaining what he termed “vulgar and unnecessary display.”