by Eva Chase
My mother was awake. The woman who’d given birth to me and raised me the first two years of my life. The woman everyone had thought was killed by the opposing faction of mages, the joymancers, two of whom had been the only parents I’d ever really known. I had no memories of Baron Bloodstone, no real sense of who she was other than scraps of impressions from recordings and photographs and bits of hearsay picked up from my fellow scions.
Fearmancer parents weren’t known for warmth and compassion, and the barons seemed to be worse than most. Malcolm’s father submitted him to intense physical torment when he needed to make a point. Connar’s parents had driven him to a near-deadly battle with his twin brother years ago. Baron Killbrook had arranged Jude’s conception through what amounted to the magical rape of another man and then shunned the false heir he’d brought into this world. From what Declan had said, the Ashgraves were the exception to the rule, at least in recent times.
I didn’t know what my mother would be like, but she’d been friends and allies with Baron Nightwood. He and the other barons had seen her supposed death as a grave loss. That was reason enough to approach what felt to me like our first meeting with extreme caution.
Gathering myself, I walked up to the main doors. There was a desk just inside the foyer where one of the blacksuits monitored comings and goings. He glanced at me and tipped his head—a very different welcome than I’d gotten the first time I’d come here, escorted in magic-suppressing cuffs under guard.
“She’s waiting for you, Miss Bloodstone,” he said. “I’ll have someone bring you up.”
Would they have insisted on an escort if it’d been any of the other scions visiting? I wasn’t sure how much they trusted me after their failed attempt to prosecute me, but I wasn’t going to argue about it.
Almost immediately, another blacksuit opened the locked inner door and beckoned for me to follow her. It was a short walk to the medical wing. At the door to my mother’s room, I paused to peek through the small window. No one was in the room around the bed—Lillian must have had other business to attend to after her initial visit with my mother.
That was fine. I now knew that Lillian had not only carried out the murder of my dormmate and friend that I’d been framed for, but had done so as part of an ongoing conspiracy involving the three older barons and some of the blacksuits. I’d rather experience this first encounter with my mother without Lillian’s alert eyes looking on.
My mother was sitting up in the bed, flipping through a book that she appeared to be skimming more than actually reading. Her hair, the same dark brown as mine mixed with a sprinkling of silver, hung sleek to her shoulders, and her face, though still narrow, had filled out a little from the gauntness I’d seen when we’d first rescued her from her imprisonment. There wouldn’t have been any indication she’d ever needed medical attention if a sudden tremor hadn’t come over her hand as I watched, the page she’d been holding slipping from her fingers.
I drew in my breath and pushed open the door. The blacksuit who’d led the way stayed in the hall outside.
My mother looked up the second I stepped in, her hands going still over the book. Her whole body froze as she took me in with her dark, considering gaze.
It occurred to me with a skip of my pulse that I didn’t even know what her magical specialty was. I bolstered the shield around my mind instinctively, as if she might attempt to prod inside my head before so much as talking to me.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly, my hands clasping together in front of me. A tart, faintly floral scent tickled my nose, though I didn’t see any Get Well bouquets around. The click of the door shutting behind me sounded way too loud in the silence.
A smile crossed my mother’s face, bright and pleased but somehow not entirely warm, although maybe it only seemed that way to me because of my nerves. “Persephone,” she said. “Look at you. I—I’ve missed so much. They couldn’t take the Bloodstone out of you, could they? As much as I’m sure they tried.”
I guessed Lillian had filled her in on what had happened to me after the attack in which my mother had been captured. But not on the name I’d been going by—or maybe she had mentioned that, and my mother was choosing to ignore it. Faced with her, I didn’t know how to say that I felt more connection to a name given to me by the people who’d stolen me from her and imprisoned her for seventeen years than the one she’d bestowed on me at my birth.
I stepped closer to the bed, and she motioned to the chair next to it. “The couple that raised me suppressed my magic and didn’t tell me anything about who I really was,” I said as I sat, “but they didn’t mistreat me other than that. I was okay.”
“More than okay. I hear you’ve impressed all of Blood U right from the start. All four strengths.” She shook her head with the same smile. “My father was the same, you know. I didn’t quite manage it myself, although your father’s specialty was the one area I wasn’t quite impressive in, so you have him to thank too.”
Lillian had filled her in on an awful lot. I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again, grappling for words. It didn’t feel right to discuss my school victories with a woman who’d just been through so much. As far as I knew, my adoptive parents hadn’t been aware that my birth mother was alive, but the joymancers who’d held her captive obviously hadn’t treated her well. When the blacksuits had dragged her from confinement, she’d looked half dead.
“Are you okay?” I had to ask. “I had no idea—no one knew the joymancers had you. What did they want with you?”
The mages who fed their magical power by encouraging happiness had attacked me when I’d gone to them in California to try to negotiate, so I had no illusions about their hostility toward fearmancers. Still, my joymancer parents had not just avoided mistreating me but been actively loving. It was hard to wrap my head around the immense deception and cruelty their colleagues had pulled off.
“I feel much better now.” My mother gave a low chuckle. “I’m embarrassed they perpetuated that scheme as well as they did. There were so many of them, and I think they must have intended from the start to take both of us, so they were prepared… They wore down my magic quickly and were careful not to give me any opportunities to spark more power. Otherwise I’d have been able to reach out to make my situation known sooner.”
She rubbed a forehead with a slight wince. I leaned forward in the chair. “Do you need me to call one of the doc—”
“No, no.” She waved me off. “Lingering effects of the magical depravation and… the rest. Better that we don’t dwell on that. They wanted me as weak as possible so they could keep control, but we Bloodstones recover quickly.”
“So, they just locked you away because they could?” I didn’t want to say this either, but I didn’t understand why the joymancers would have gone to all that effort rather than simply killing her like they had my father and Declan’s mother, the previous Baron Ashgrave.
“They didn’t include me in their discussions on the subject, as I’m sure you can imagine. But from the bits I was able to gather over time, I believe they were hoping to deal a severe blow to our pentacle of barons. As long as there was no Baron Bloodstone to weigh in, any major decision could only be delayed.” Her mouth tightened. “Of course, they only needed you alive to ensure the heart of the family’s power wouldn’t pass on to someone else. But I suspect the joymancers didn’t realize that, and held onto me as well out of caution. No doubt they meant to off me when you’d come of inheritance age.”
At twenty-one. Less than two years, and if the blacksuits hadn’t tracked down my location, the woman in front of me would have been dead after all. “But then I got away from them.”
“Yes. That must have ruined their plans quite a bit.” Her smile came back, but it was definitely cool now. “I didn’t know why at the time because I didn’t know what had happened to you, but in the last few months, they’d become more tense around me. I sensed that they might be re-evaluating my usefulness. But that uncertainty also opened
up a few minor opportunities for me to stir anxiety and fuel enough magic to make some attempt to send out a signal.”
“I helped as much as I could as soon as Lillian told me,” I said.
She shifted her hand on the bed toward me. “I know. I felt you there, once or twice, even if I wasn’t sure I could trust my impressions or whether it was a hopeful hallucination. My mind… was not as clear as I’d prefer for much of that time.” With a rustling of the sheets, she sat up straighter. “But that’s in the past now. They will regret their attempt to crush me and mine. As soon as we’re in a position to turn those tables—”
Her eyes had flashed so fiercely and her voice turned so sharp that I stiffened without realizing it. My mother cut herself off when her gaze came back to me.
I wavered, not knowing what to say. I’d insisted on coming to California and I’d approached the joymancers on my own specifically because I’d wanted to avoid as much bloodshed as possible. Several people had died in the fighting all the same. And my mother clearly wanted more.
Nearly every fearmancer I’d spoken to had scoffed at my pacifistic tendencies. It was already becoming clear that my mother wouldn’t approve of them either.
But even though I kept quiet, she could clearly pick up on my discomfort. She let out a rough, rueful sigh. “There will be time enough for that in the future. We have so much to catch up on. I…” She touched her temple again. The color was starting to leach from her face. “I’m afraid my recovery isn’t quite complete yet. I’m not sure I’ll be the best company right now.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” I said quickly, with a pang of concern. I would send a doctor over here when I left the room, whether she liked that idea or not. “It’s all right.”
She caught my eyes, hers filled with both longing and what felt like a command. “You’ll come back to see me soon so we can talk more? I expect I’ll be back at the Bloodstone manor before very long.”
How could I say no to that? “Of course. As soon as you’re ready.”
I didn’t need to ask for a doctor after all. As I got up, she made a surreptitious gesture that presumably triggered some sort of call system. She sank lower on the bed, and a blacksuit who must have had medical training appeared in the doorway before I’d taken more than a few steps. I left her to his administrations, my stomach balled tight.
My mother wasn’t a terrifying figure at the moment, and she’d acted nothing but happy with me and what she knew of who I’d become. Who knew how much Lillian had told her about the frictions that had risen up around me, though, or the attitudes I hadn’t kept totally quiet during my time at Blood U?
And the fury I’d sensed in her during the locating spells was still there too. I couldn’t blame her for being angry with her captors, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see her lead the charge into wholesale slaughter for revenge.
She was still getting a grip on herself, adjusting to being back. She might have spoken out of more emotion than she’d have allowed herself in her official capacity as baron. The fearmancers had steered clear of any unprovoked offensives against the joymancers for decades, from what Declan had said. To outright attack them now would be a huge change in approach.
That knowledge wasn’t as comforting as I’d have liked, but it did make the uneasiness inside fade as I made the drive back to campus. The meeting could have gone a lot worse; that was for sure. Why not look on the bright side?
I made it back to the university with less than fifteen minutes to spare before my early afternoon seminar. Cursing myself for not having thought ahead, I jogged from the garage to my dorm to grab the reference book I’d need. As I was hustling back down the stairs past the third floor landing, Connar stepped into the stairwell.
He jerked to a stop when he saw me, and I caught myself against the railing before I could stumble in my surprise. His icy gaze cut straight through me. Before he even spoke, I knew whatever his parents had done to him, it hadn’t worn off overnight.
“What are you standing around for?” he spat out. “If you think I’m giving you another chance to mess with my head, you can forget it.”
My stomach knotted twice as tight as it had before. I couldn’t keep my thoughts from slipping back from our last interlude together, out at the Shifting Grounds—the affection that had radiated off him as he’d admitted he loved me, the way he’d lit up even more when I’d told him I loved him too. That had been less than a week ago. How had Baron Stormhurst managed to bury that guy so far?
The love I still felt for that guy wouldn’t allow me to just let go, even for a moment, without trying. “Connar,” I started, “I swear to you—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped, and jabbed his hand toward the stairs. “Go on already.”
I hugged the book to my chest and headed down, my throat squeezing tight. As soon as I’d turned around the bend, out of his view, I pulled out my phone to text the other scions.
Connar’s still not himself. We need to talk—soon.
Chapter Three
Declan
Looking at the four of us assembled in the scion lounge sent a twinge through my chest. It wasn’t that many weeks ago when a different four of us had been making use of the space for similar reasons—all of us but Malcolm working out plans to deal with the murder accusation against Rory while we hadn’t been sure whether the Nightwood scion would help or hinder that cause.
We’d only just found our footing in a new, cohesive status quo with all five of us united, and now we were having to leave out someone else who deserved to be here.
That was exactly why Baron Stormhurst would have taken this tactic with Connar, wasn’t it? Punish him for being more loyal to Rory than to her and rattle the entire pentacle of scions at the same time. The older barons might not know that Malcolm or I were actively working on Rory’s behalf now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they suspected it of one or both of us, and Jude had made his allegiance known ages ago.
Even if we’d been on the fence about Rory, having one of our number verbally attacking her at every opportunity put her in a much more precarious position.
I sipped the bitter espresso I’d made with the machine in the corner, although the shock of caffeine wasn’t making my thoughts all that sharper than they’d already been. Ice cubes clinked as Jude fidgeted with the drink he was mixing at the bar cabinet. Jack and Coke in hand, he came over to the sofa where Rory and Malcolm were already sitting, but after he’d sunk down at Rory’s other side, he simply cupped the glass between his hands rather than drinking.
I stayed standing by one of the armchairs, too restless to take a seat. “So,” I said, because someone had to kick off the conversation, “we can be reasonably sure at this point that whatever’s happened to Connar, it’s not going to fade away without some kind of intervention.”
“I’m sure it’s a spell,” Malcolm said, his expression dark. “I tried talking to him last night, and he didn’t budge on the anti-Rory rhetoric. There’s no way he’d be able to keep it up that consistently if he was forcing himself to act that way.”
“A master thespian, Conn is not,” Jude said, but he couldn’t manage to put his usual wry spin on those words. None of us liked seeing one of our number under this kind of influence.
Rory maybe least of all. It’d only been a few hours since she’d called for this meeting, but her face was as drawn as if she’d been worrying about Connar nonstop for a week. I’d seen the way they were together, the softer side her presence brought out in him, how comfortable she’d become in turning to him for support.
She had the rest of us, absolutely, but hearing those accusing and disdainful words from his mouth had to cut deep. And if he had any normal awareness beneath the spell right now, I couldn’t imagine how much agony he must be in, forced to lash out at her against his will.
“If it’s a spell and it’s not fading naturally, then it must be contained in something on him or at least that he’s near a lot, right?” she said,
tucking her dark hair back behind her ears. “That’s what— When Professor Banefield was sick, whoever put that spell on him embedded it in a mole on his calf that worked like a conducting piece. I had to… break the structure before the spell would release him.”
She hadn’t talked about her attempts to save her mentor in that much detail before, at least not with me. I hadn’t realized she’d needed to go through a process quite that complex. She’d only discovered her magic a matter of weeks before she’d been faced with that challenge—she’d barely begun her education here, and still she’d managed to foil the barons’ first plot against her and those supporting her nearly on her own.
If she’d been prepared for the violent spell that had activated in the illness’s aftermath, she might have foiled them completely, without Banefield needing to take his own life to save her.
I nodded. “That’s what I’d expect. More likely it’ll be on Connar than an outside object, since that would be a greater guarantee of continuing influence and harder for anyone to interrupt. He was gone for a day and a half—they had plenty of time to work a spell that thorough.”
Malcolm leaned forward, his expression turning intent. The sooner we could switch from conversation to action, the happier I knew he’d be. “Then we figure out where they’ve planted the spell on him and unravel it, and problem solved. That shouldn’t be so hard.”
“I don’t know.” Rory frowned. “Professor Banefield was sick, so he wasn’t really in a position to protest. I had to focus really carefully to destroy the enchantment on him. Connar’s definitely not going to let me get close enough to him to check him over for unexpected physical marks. Do you think he’d go along with any of you examining him if I’m not there?”
Jude turned his still-full glass between his slim fingers. “The Stormhursts had to realize that we’ll try to counteract the spell. They might be more on the blunt side than subtle, but they’re not stupid. They’ll have put this construct somewhere on him we’re not likely to get a casual glimpse of, just to make it as hard for us as possible. I don’t relish the idea of finding out how he’ll react if we attempt to de-pants him.”
