A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (The Shadow Histories, #1)

by H.G. Parry

He had felt that he was pitching on a storm-tossed raft above crashing waves, only the waves were people and ideas, and the storm around him was the same. It had taken his breath away.

Neither of them was quite sure what it was that was supposed to be beginning, but it didn’t matter. They were twenty. Everything was beginning.

Outside the haven of their hotel, the France they had come to was in the grip of social unrest. The American War of Independence had left the country heavily in debt, driving the monarchy to impose taxes that enraged Commoners and Aristocracy alike. Poor harvests had left the country on the brink of famine and created smoldering resentment of the well-fed Aristocracy and still-more-extravagant royal family. To make matters worse, the king of France had been born that rare phenomenon: a member of a royal family without a trace of magic. His ancestor’s powers had been of such strength that he had earned the moniker the Sun King—partly because those powers were the unusual combination of fire and weather magic, but partly because it was said that during his blazing reign the last of the illegal shadows still haunting Europe after the end of the Vampire Wars had dispersed. Louis XVI could give no such protection: he didn’t need to, perhaps, but it was still not a good omen. Superstition stated that a king’s magic was linked with his country’s, and for a country to be without a mage-king left it vulnerable. The Knights Templar, in response to their monarch’s weakness, had clamped down harder on Commoner magicians than in any era before. They thought they were doing the right thing. And beneath the surface, something was moving. Something that spoke of change, and of revolution, and of blood.

His speech had worked. He knew it had, even before the final votes were announced and the bill was found to have passed by a very respectable margin. The words had been right, the room had resonated, and the law had changed.

He wondered briefly why it was so often more difficult to sound sincere when you truly were.