by Anise Rae
She did have a flair for drama.
“He claimed I was the girl for him, that he would protect my poor wayward self from the big, bad world.”
His vibes hummed through him, reacting to the danger, ready to defend, but there was no defending anyone from the past. There was only moving on.
She tugged and adjusted a piece of string that attached to the wheel. “It was a common tactic for some Power United bounty hunters at the time. Since then, sorceresses have wised up. Most know of the ploy.” Her voice turned wry. “There has never been such a foolish girl as I. I had no idea what was going on when he dropped me off at Power United. Their holding cell is lined with stone. It’s underground too. It’s not round though.”
He inhaled, slow and controlled. “Power United has a dungeon?”
She gave a small, tight smile. “I’m used to people not believing me.”
He opened his mouth to reassure her, but he stayed silent. He wasn’t sure he did believe her. Perhaps she’d been too scared to see the truth, and for good reason. “What was his name?” When they got out of here, he’d look up the bastard. He’d bet no one had done that for her. Hell, he’d do it for all the waywards who’d ever been helpless before a bully. Maybe that would help him move on.
She shook her head at his question. “And now here you are with your charming smile that lights up your handsome face, and here I am in a dungeon.”
He filed away the handsome comment. “Here we are in a dungeon. And I’m not a bounty hunter. I’m your guard, bound by a prophecy.”
“A prophecy that harmed your mage power. I’d think you’d want nothing to do with it.”
“You can’t outrun fate. Or your own foolishness.” He held up his hands at her gasp. “Talking about myself again.” He rubbed the scars on his neck. “Case in point. I was foolish to trust anything related to fairies. I knew better. I hate fairies.”
“Ah. I know one. He’s a friend.” She spoke with a crisp beat, her words building a wall between them as if she were siding with the fairies over him.
“Fairies are no mage’s friend.”
“And many would say the same of waywards.” She turned her back to him as she looped the fluff of cotton around the string she’d adjusted. “It’s going to take me every second I have to spin the threads for this.” Her tone made it clear that she was done talking.
He studied her fingers, gracefully moving over the spinning wheel. He’d been no friend to waywards. Not until he’d become one.
He wondered again, before the incident, would he have looked past her spectacles and her waywardness? He couldn’t imagine not being intrigued. She had the bravery of a warrior mage…and the legs of every man’s fantasy.
“I’ll help you get back to your sorceresses. I vow it.”
She slashed the air with her hand and gave him a sharp frown. “Oh, stop with your pointless vows. No wayward with any sense believes in the Goddess and if they do, then they certainly don’t look to her for blessings or hope. We’re her cast-offs, her imperfections.”
“Well, I wasn’t always wayward, so you’ll have to tell me what I’m doing wrong.” He fingered the side of his throat where the scars sat.
Maybe it would have been better if he’d been born this way. He wouldn’t know what he was missing. His strength drained with the thought. From his skull to his feet, it slithered through him as if his body was suddenly too weak, too imperfect, too broken to hold him. “I hate being wayward.”
How many years had it been since she’d had the same sentiment? She’d never talked about it with anyone, not even as a student at SWWM. She’d been isolated from the others because of the extremity of her waywardness.
Her heart hurt at his confession. The pain was so unexpected that she skipped a breath. “You’re certain you’re wayward?”
He lifted an eyebrow in her direction. “I’d take off the concealment spell on my eye—only one glows, by the way—but I’ve never even looked at it in the mirror.”
She pulled off her glasses and let her eyes shine with her power. She’d let her sorceresses see them when she didn’t have a choice. But she’d never done this before.
He sucked in a loud breath. “Goddess, Mara, your eyes are beautiful.”
No one had ever told her that. Nor did she believe him. His words hit a shield that had been growing for a lifetime, honed by too many taunts to remember. Besides, compliments weren’t why she’d showed him.
“Being wayward doesn’t mean you’re broken. It shouldn’t mean anything to anyone. Except for the glow, there’s no real difference. The average wayward does fall lower on the FJ power scale than the general population, but I’ve seen your power.” It had been like dipping a cold toe into a warm pool. She’d wanted to jump in and immerse herself. She cleared her throat. “You’re enormously strong. It was almost hard to look at…hard to sense without….” Without reveling in it. There was no other word for it. Remembering, her breath caught in her chest.
She didn’t try to explain further, to convince him that his power was sound. Maybe he too had a mental shield that blocked compliments from soaking in.
For a long moment neither spoke.
“Do you know how dark the forest can be at night?” he asked, his voice soft.
“What?” His change of subject yanked her away from her memories of the feel of his power, a reminder that she shouldn’t have been lingering there in the first place. He was a danger not an ally.
“The trees are darker than the sky. Even if there’s no moon, the trees are the blackest shadows. Their darkness towers over you. But if you’re lucky, fireflies will come along and offer a little light. That’s what you remind me of. You’re my firefly in the darkness.”
She laughed, a sudden case of nerves. “I don’t know what to say to that.” She put a hand against the back of her neck as if she might cool off the embarrassed burn firing over her skin. “Just don’t get any ideas. We’re not having pet names for each other. I’d have to call you thief or something and I don’t think you’d like that.”
Gregor lost count of the hours as he watched her spin. As the fine yarn piled up, he paced to the wall and back; he leaned against the wall; he sat against the wall. Helplessness sucked. Fretting and worry were worse. The first time she’d shut her eyes and then jerked awake, he’d almost pulled her off her stool and carried her to a corner to rest, but she’d shooed him away.
“If I sleep, I won’t finish in time,” she’d protested.
Her fingers cracked and bled. Her shoulders seemed to shrink even as her power clouded through the room, strong and steady. On the eighth time that her eyes closed—he’d counted—she slumped over.
He jumped up in time to catch her, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her into his body. Her head came to rest on his shoulder as he crouched next to her. Her breathing was steady.
“Mara,” he whispered. “You have to take a break.”
She opened her eyes to half-mast. “I’ll just lie on the floor right here.” She turned into him, aiming for the floor, but he didn’t let her fall, keeping her soft curves braced against him.
He looked at the door high above. She was an easy target here in the middle of the floor, and he didn’t trust anyone up there. Not considering how they kept throwing down food, the occasional canteen, and a bunch of straw. Except for the straw, so far, they hadn’t hit Mara. Every time they opened the door, he moved to stand over her, protecting her from their falling objects. “How about under the stairs?”
She didn’t answer.
He picked her up, braced for rejection. But she didn’t open her eyes until he laid her next to the wall.
“Just for an hour. No more,” she said.
He didn’t have a way of keeping time, but he’d try. She curled up around herself. He brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “Goddess, Mara, you’re freezing.” The temperature in the cell was too cool for comfort, but he’d stayed warm. Moving around helped, but the temp regulating spell
s in his clothes did most of the work. “Don’t you have spells in your clothes to keep you warm?”
“Not in the summer,” she muttered. “Only to keep cool.”
Instinct said to cast a spell and warm her, but she’d told him not to cast. Since there was no blanket, he had one viable option. He lay beside her, molding his body to hers. Goddess, if it was wrong to take pleasure in this, then he didn’t care.
“What are you doing?” She opened her eyes. He could tell because the room brightened the faintest amount.
“If I can’t cast warming spells, then you get me because I’m not letting you die of hypothermia. The people I guard stay alive.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” she muttered and then the light dimmed slightly as she closed her eyes.
He had ideas nonstop. He’d spent the last day and a half immersed in her power. It flowed around the room in a never-ending current, tugging at him, whispering against his skin, twining through him. He’d had to fight not to let his power answer hers and brush it gently across the slope of her shoulders, through the curls of her hair, around the curve of her waist.
As he held her, her scent surrounded him. She smelled like nighttime in the forest with a wisp of moonglow blossoms. The flowers had grown in the forest around his school. Their pure white petals pulled the light of the moon, their scent like lemons and sugar.
As he’d watched her spin, he kept thinking about his apprenticeship under the monk mages. He’d thought back to the monastery, the huge stone building on the hill, and the songs and chants that flowed out of it day and night, the pure energy that, after generations of powerful inhabitants, soaked through the walls and the land.
Mara’s power reminded him of that. He’d never known one person to fill a space so completely with her power. It danced everywhere as if each vibe heard its own tune and spread out to fulfill the potential of that space. In the rest of society—in the army, especially—every mage kept his energy to himself. But the monks had been different. They’d let their power sing out and be heard and savored by all. He’d forgotten how that felt.
He shifted closer to her, burying his nose in the soft curls of her hair.
But just like he couldn’t return to the army, going back to the monastery was not an option either. Even the monks wouldn’t welcome him now. Not without the perfection of the Goddess’s power.
He was lost. Where the hell was he going to go now? He’d thought he’d have a lifetime career in the army, that someday he’d hear the vibe song of his mate, they’d get married, she’d be content with the unpredictability of life as a warrior mage’s mate and have his babies and build their home. It was a happy picture. And now it was gone. He had nothing to hold on to anymore. Only things to hide away, an incurable disease that society didn’t want to see.
Mara made them see.
His gut twisted that he wasn’t as brave as the woman in his arms. The damn fairy had aspirated his songs and chants and his courage. Fear and anger curdled through his blood. And hate for the fairies.
None of those was anything he wanted to offer her.
After an hour, or thereabouts, he woke her and she returned to her wheel.
Gregor got to hold her once more after another day had passed, and she slept for another hour. His arms craved more.
She finished the yarn just shy of her deadline and stuffed it in one of the bags the cotton fluff had sat in. She turned to the straw piled haphazardly on the floor and gulped audibly. Her power dried up, leaving the room empty, and his soul emptier yet.
9
Straw was the raw material for spinning gold, and sometime during the last three days, a guard had thrown down a bucket full. It had flown everywhere. Caught in a haze of spinning, Mara eventually noticed that Gregor had gathered it up. She’d sensed his anger burning in his vibes.
She gathered a handful of the brittle material. Straw was next to impossible for a sorceress to spin. Mara suffered much less than most, but this time it hurt like a thousand flames beneath her skin. She was far too tired for this, but finally, the gold wire clanked to the ground. She leaned forward on her stool, reaching for it, moving as if a hundred years had worn into her bones.
Gregor scooped it up for her. He placed it in her hand, curling her stiff fingers around it. “I don’t know what you just did, but until you spun this hay—”
“Straw.” The word hurt. Her throat was dry.
He left her side for a moment and returned with the canteen of water.
She took a drink. “Straw makes gold. Hay makes copper, and white clover spins into silver.”
“Fine. Straw.” The words had bite. “Your vibes were as light and full as a white cloud on a sunny day. They vaporized the moment you spun the straw. I saw it.”
“You were watching? With your mage sense open?” She eyed the gold wire and summoned her vibes. One by one they coalesced, each a sharp sting as her power pulled the wire into a tight weave. Round and round the gold spun until a coin solidified in her palm.
She panted, trying to give her body enough oxygen to stay upright.
“My mage sense has been open for almost three days now.”
She hadn’t noticed, focused only on the rush of power flowing through her as she’d spun dozens of skeins of yarn. She was so exhausted it hurt to breathe. A drop of blood fell to the floor from her cracked fingertips. Thank the lost girls that hadn’t gotten on the white yarn.
“Why in the name of the Goddess are you spinning straw?” he demanded.
“Gold coins are the only accepted fare to cross the Mississippi River and enter the Wild West. It takes two for a round-trip, and though the High Councilor is sending me on this mission, she isn’t paying for it.”
“Then I’ll figure out where to get the gold from. But you aren’t doing that again.”
Lying in his arms had been a warm luxury. His touch had soothed some part of her soul she hadn’t known was rumpled. But it was a delight that would lead to a painful end. She’d had a firm talking to herself while she’d spun the last bags of yarn.
The sooner this ended, the better. And she certainly wouldn’t rely on him to pay for her crossing.
The sound of fabric ripping crackled through the chamber. He took her hand, his shirt missing its hem, and wrapped the worst of her injured fingers, tying off the strip. He reached for another.
“No. I need the others free.” Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to spin as easily. She tried to summon enough energy to create another coin. She pulled the scraps and bits of straw scattered on the dungeon floor to her with her vibes. They swirled through the air, following the circular pattern of sorceress energy, landing in her hand.
And if she weren’t utterly exhausted, she wouldn’t have forgotten to spin something as she cast those vibes…the wheel, perhaps, to continue to hide her odd ability at being able to cast without an outside source of spin. All sorceresses needed to spin something in order to cast a spell…a drop spindle, a wheel, a bicycle, a pirouette on her toes.
But not Mara.
She sucked in a tight breath and glanced at him with wide eyes. He stared at her. She was caught.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done that,” he said.
Her empty stomach lurched. When else had she slipped up? If the government learned how powerful her wayward energy was, they’d never let her out of here. “I don’t suppose you could pretend you didn’t see it?”
Silence fell for a moment. Her hand shook. The straw sitting in her palm slithered around.
“See what?” he asked.
She exhaled, closing her eyes. She couldn’t trust him, but she had no leverage to pry out promises of confidences to be kept. That would have to do for now.
She eyed the straw. Though darkness lay heavy against the room, with her mage power open and her energy spreading around her, she could see every detail in her cell, including the minuscule amount of straw in her hand.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
Above, the
door creaked open. She jumped, nearly toppling backward on her stool as her vibes spun back inside her in a rush. It was instinct, beaten into her from her first day of school to the last.
“Easy.” Gregor steadied her with one hand on her shoulder and kept it there. She leaned back into him without thinking.
“Time to go, sorceress,” the guard yelled. “Move it, freak.” The ugly command shattered against the stone and stung her ears.
Her clear vision had vanished, which meant the bronze glow of her eyes was extinguished as well. She pulled her spectacles from the top button of her blouse and slipped them on.
She lifted her gaze to the door high above. Judging by the number of steps that lifted and twirled against the circular room’s walls, the dungeon had to be six or seven stories underground. Starry vibes, she was never going to make it.
“Listen to me,” he whispered. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to standing, keeping her pressed against his chest. Her muscles ached and burned.
“This is how it’s going to work. I’m going to carry your yarn bag and lead the way up. You’re going to hold my hand the entire way. I need to know if it’s safe to cast spells yet. Will your yarn be damaged? If the asshole up there throws anything down on us, a spell or otherwise, can I cast back?”
Something warmed beneath her skin that he’d asked. “It’s safe. And I can carry—”
“You can barely stand. I’ll carry the bag.” He guided her toward the stairs.
If she’d had the chance, she would have given the spinning wheel one last caress. It didn’t deserve to be banished to the dungeon.
She thought of her wheel in her office, waiting for her, hidden away. It was her source of comfort, of peace. It didn’t judge her glowing eyes or turn away from her abnormal power. It had stood strong and true, a reliable partner against a world that despised her kind.
