by D. D. Chance
Lies that I prayed would somehow be true enough.
“You’re coming into your magic,” I whispered with a confidence I didn’t feel. Because though Aiden was stepping into his power…all I felt was the sensation that I was losing mine. “What you learn from here on out, what you have ever learned, you should be able to wield with greater strength than you ever thought possible.”
“Then we shall wield it together,” he decided, and before I could argue, he pulled me close for another deep and searching kiss.
32
Aiden
We ate in the main seating area of the witch’s chambers. I knew she was relieved about that, but I didn’t do it for her, not exactly. Or at least not entirely. I simply didn’t want to share her, not yet.
I also wasn’t sure of myself at the moment. Something different moved within me, an unsteady force, not so much a sickening of the stomach as a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of my blood. It felt like the run-up to a battle, yet I wasn’t stepping onto the field this morning, moving with my warriors, setting strategy. I certainly wasn’t taking up arms. I wanted to be sure I could control this magic that was welling up inside me, if that’s truly what it was. I still felt like I was standing on the sidelines of a battlefront, ready to leap in at a moment’s notice.
I also felt a growing dread I couldn’t quite place regarding Belle, a sense of movement when I looked at her, an unsought action and reaction that had nothing to do with where she sat at the table at this moment, quietly consuming the fruit, nuts, and light porridge that my silent Fae had stumbled over themselves to bring us, not knowing what Belle might want, not knowing what I ate, for that matter, since I’d so rarely been here while my father still lived.
My hand curled into a fist as I watched Belle rear back, her hands flying up in alarm, only to see her resume her seated position a flickering instant later. I knew she had never actually moved, but I’d seen it all the same.
“Belle, tell me of your magic,” I murmured. By the way she jolted, I knew she had been holding out on me.
“Compared to you, or even to other humans, I don’t have a heck of a lot,” she said a little drily. She believed that, I knew, all evidence to the contrary. But I remained silent until she continued.
“I am a witch worthy of the Hogan name, for which I’m glad. It would have gone far more harshly for me, I’m sure, if you’d brought me here and I had all the magic of a mouse. But fortunately, I put on a good enough show.”
She continued as if talking mostly to herself, her words grim and derisive. “My resurrection of the academy was something, at least, and my restoration of my great-grandmother’s retreat house was passable. I woke the real instructors of the academy, the djinn, and supposedly I can control them, though, news flash, I don’t know how. I even helped the king of the Fae unleash his own magic in an ancient ritual bonding act, the full effects of which we still don’t know. And together, we made fire burn through your chambers, and then we snuffed it out again by force of will alone.”
“But there is more,” I said when she fell silent.
She gave a short, hard laugh. “Oh, there’s almost certainly more. We’ve had sex. Despite everything I’d been led to believe about the way my magic works, and how there’s no need for sex. We. Had. Sex. And now you’re freaking glowing with untapped potential, while I…” She frowned, breaking off.
My gaze sharpened on her. “While you what?” I asked. The obvious continuation wasn’t one that pleased me. “Have I taken your magic from you? Is that how this works?”
She waved a weary hand, but she didn’t dispute my claim. “I don’t know how this contract works, Aiden. I don’t have it. You do. You’re the one who’s supposed to know how this process comes together. Maybe you didn’t tell me because the idea of being stripped of my magic wasn’t one I would agree with, for obvious reasons. Maybe you legitimately didn’t know what would happen, that the magic that I wield was only an illusion, tied up in the wielding of words put in place long ago. And there’s no way to test that now, is there? Not in the castle of the masters of illusion, which the Fae most assuredly are. Tales of your glamour exist even today for that very reason.”
She shrugged, seemingly defeated, and I narrowed my eyes. “Is that all the magic you have?”
“That’s it.”
“You lie,” I said, knowing it in my bones. I reached out, perhaps more forcefully than I’d planned, to capture her hand. She jerked back in her seat, practically toppling it in her haste to get away from me, her hands flying up in alarm. She caught herself in time and returned to her seat, while I could only stare at her.
“I saw you do that,” I whispered. “I saw it.”
Her face came up swiftly, her gaze narrowing on mine.
“Good for you,” she muttered, and there was anger in her voice mixed with resignation—perhaps even a dawning fear. When she looked at me again, her eyes were as cold and hard as those of any rugged warrior.
“So there you have it,” she said. “My own hidden treasure, such that it was, the last private vestige of what was once, I’m told, a full witch’s power. With the skill of precognition, you’ll be able to see the near future for anyone who you focus on. In time you’ll get good enough at wielding the skill that you’ll only bring it to bear when you want. Working in a bar, you learn quickly enough that there are some futures you don’t want to dive into too deeply.”
She gave this little speech in a hollow tone, and I shook my head, wanting to understand more clearly. “But you no longer have this skill?” I demanded. “I’ve taken it from you and made it my own?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice caught. “You’re a Fae, for fuck’s sake. A high Fae at that. I have some facility with other members of the monster realm, but not you people. I’m sure that hearkens back to the roles our ancestors played when you first walked among us and we leveled our power against you, only to find very little worked in that regard. I don’t know if you taking my magic from me was the true nature of this contract with Hogan witches, or if my few paltry skills still work—just not against you.”
I flattened my hand on the table and forced myself to remain calm, though anger boiled up within me. It was absolutely the kind of contract my father would have delighted in, and perhaps even his father before him, but there was a flaw in Belle’s logic, and it was important to me to point it out, even though it pained me to do so.
“Your great-grandmother escaped the realm of the Fae, Belle. She couldn’t have been stripped of all her abilities and still have been able to flee the hall of the High King. She would have needed that strength to escape. And by all accounts, she spent some years with him. We’ve barely spent two days together.”
Fortunately, the words struck home. Belle blinked, and a tinge of color returned to her face.
“That’s…fair,” she said. “And true enough, I do feel stronger when I…” She grimaced, then seemed to force herself to keep talking. “When I touch you. I didn’t feel any drain on me at all when we were touching. It’s only after, when…”
Anger flashed again across her face. “Except, hello, that sucks. It’s totally not fair.” Abruptly, she threw down her linen napkin and shoved at the table. Behind her, the fire leapt in the grate, and I blinked, fighting to keep from smiling.
“It’s not?” I drawled, layering the words with as much sensual promise as I could manage. As intended, I stoked her anger higher.
“No. You aren’t the boss of me or some sort of psychic vampire. There’s no freaking way you could peel away my strength and leave me with nothing.”
I felt it then, a decided tug on my own life force, even as Belle straightened, her shoulders squaring. She looked at me and spoke then, only not in English, but my language. The language of the high Fae. “What is yours is mine as well,” she said, the beautiful words driving straight through me, spoken in her husky tones. “I can take as well, my king.”
She rocked back in her chair, looking stunned.
I leaned back too, feeling better than I had in a long, long time.
“So it would seem this is not as one-sided a bargain as you feared,” I observed. “With enough strong emotion—anger, fear—we become much greater than the sum of our parts.”
“Maybe,” she allowed. “Did you—did you feel my emotions? When you looked into the future, could you sense what I was feeling, or only what I did?”
I didn’t know what made me lie. But I shook my head.
“I only saw your actions,” I assured her. But inside my resolve hardened, because I had felt her panic, her fear, and I knew I would again. I would know whenever Belle was in trouble, swept up in emotion she couldn’t mask. I would feel it. And I would come to her aid in time, every time, whether she wanted my help or not.
I swore it on my life.
33
Belle
The second day of school was exhausting. It started well before it needed to, as we received frantic word from Cyril that four royal family members were standing at the front door to the academy a half hour prior to its opening. That’s how excited they were not to let a second of instruction go by. Aiden sketched a portal that led us to the woods just beyond the clearing, and by the time we reached it, the line had grown to twenty deep.
Not surprisingly, Aiden peeled off immediately for Magnus’s war training. But he shone so brightly now, anyone with eyes to see would know that something had changed. Something profound. I was just too tired to work it out yet.
Now I slumped back in my chair, grateful for the brief respite that lunch would provide. Most of the thirty-strong class of royal Fae would be taking lunch together, while Aiden would doubtless continue work, probably using the time to go over a war plan.
How prepared would he be?
I pursed my lips in annoyance. The truth was, I didn’t know. There was too much I didn’t know about what was going on here, what was possible. My great-grandmother’s ancient bonding rite was now firmly in place, but nothing I’d found yet detailed the additional spells I suspected were surely stashed somewhere within the academy. And as to my own book of spells…
I frowned as I looked at the book that sat unopened at the corner of the table. I’d been so certain that the useful information would be contained in the books of teaching lore. All that my great-grandmother had left for us were the scraps of healing magic that had sustained us for the past three generations, and those spells were still the most numerous in the Hogan Book of Magic.
Had Reagan Hogan lost more than she’d realized when she’d left the Fae realm so abruptly? Aiden was confident that in order to leave, she’d had to be strong, but perhaps that strength was short-lived? My understanding of the arrangement was that all the witches in service to the king had eventually returned home to the human realm—they had to have in order for the line to have continued. So what had made this departure so different, other than her leaving before the king gave her permission?
All of it made my head hurt. I pushed the book of history away from me and reached for my own leather-covered tome. Opening it, I found that new spells had been added after all, but they were all low-level illusion magic. It was easy to see why the High King and his family had developed such a reputation for illusion casting. And why they had kept that skill so much more profoundly than ordinary Fae all these years. It apparently was their obsession. I smiled as I paged past spell after spell, but that smile flattened as I got to the newest section, one I hadn’t seen before.
Glamour and Ruling in the Human Realm.
What was this?
“Well, you’ve been busy, haven’t you?” Lena strolled into the room, as regal as ever in a deep emerald gown cinched at the waist with a golden belt that looked like it weighed easily twenty pounds. Her dark hair was swept back in gold clasps, the effect making her look as young as I was, save for the disapproval in her gaze and the set of her mouth.
I didn’t waste time asking her how she’d found me. I’d been expecting her to show up, given all the royal Fae roaming around the academy. Aiden didn’t want there to be any mystery about the academy building itself. If war came all the way to the castle, it was another warded space to protect his people. I appreciated that. I even appreciated Lena. Now maybe even more, as I felt the emptiness inside me, as if the cup of my magic had been drained and not fully refilled.
That wasn’t anything she needed to know, though.
I looked up at her brightly, as guilelessly as I could manage. “You’ve learned something?” I asked in an excited rush. “You’ve spoken with your contacts about getting me out?”
She blinked, clearly not expecting this. The few words I’d managed to read in the books of magic I’d pulled from my great-grandmother’s cottage were a reiteration of how dumb humans were. Clearly, that lesson had also been passed down through the generations. Lena’s expression immediately evened out.
“I have,” she said cautiously, “though you should take more care about speaking of such things out loud.”
She didn’t include silly human at the end of that direction. She didn’t need to. I waved my fingers and was gratified that the door shut securely behind her. Much like my control over the White Crane, this was a bit of place magic that had less to do with me than with the building itself, but once again, Lena didn’t know that.
She jumped enough to be irritated, while I swallowed my smile and continued. “I know the saying the walls have ears, but this is my place, the place of my ancestors. I’m protected here, even if I’m not as protected in the castle.”
I managed a tremulous expression at the end of that line, and Lena took the bait. She clearly had no idea what had happened with me and Aiden, only what she saw when she entered his burned-out rooms.
“He forced you?” she asked, a little breathlessly. “He forced you to make that magic?”
I’d been thinking about this for some time. What was the better course here, that Aiden appeared strong or that I did? This was no time for pride, either for me or the king, yet I couldn’t present Aiden as anything less than magnificent. It just felt wrong at a deep level, something that went beyond simple loyalty. And a Hogan witch was nothing without her intuition.
“We worked the spells to unlock his magic,” I corrected. “He has deep wells of strength to draw upon. He has to learn control, sure. But he’ll get there.”
“Control,” Lena scoffed, folding her arms. “He’s never been known for that.”
“Still, it’s not the using of the skill that matters. Once he’s developed his confidence and his belief that he can draw upon deep magic, he’s going to rock at it. We already know he has a facility with fire. That’ll strike fear where it most needs to be struck.”
Lena grimaced, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. She was afraid of a king who could throw fire, particularly one who couldn’t completely control it. Good.
“We have to get you out of here,” she said, her tone so earnest that I blinked at her, my hands spasming on the book of spells.
“But how?” I needed to be careful with my words. I knew enough of the Fae for that. The more questions I asked and the fewer promises I made, the better.
“I’m working on that. I just needed to know where you’d be today, all day and into the evening.”
I frowned. “Here, I assume. In the building and on the grounds. The king is taking his lessons here. If he were to leave for the castle, I might need to tag along, but otherwise, I’ll be here.”
“Yes, well, there is some value in tagging along, given your position within the house.”
She stopped short of implying I was some sort of trained bear, and I smiled as blandly as I could. She turned away, not even trying to hide her eye roll. “I’ll work on something, but it will be soon. If, as you say, he has accessed his magic, then you’ve already helped him more than he needs to get back to the battle. The old stories say that Reagan Hogan could see the future. Can you? Do you know what will
befall him?”
I blinked. Tension stirring, I tried to access my signature skill—
And saw nothing. That shouldn’t have irritated me as much as it did, because I’d never had any facility in seeing the future of the Fae.
A knock came at the door. I flicked a finger, and it opened again, the djinn Jorgen flowing in.
“Ah, Lady Lena,” he said with an expansive smile, seeming not at all upset to find her here. My senses were still firing, however, and I blinked in surprise at the images that poured through me. Jorgen running through the halls of the academy, his face a mask of fright. What was chasing him? What could possibly threaten him—
His words dispersed my thoughts. “The king sent me to check on you, Mistress Belle. Is all well?”
“Oh yes,” I said with just enough gush that Lena preened a little bit. “I’m sorry he wastes your time this way, but while you’re here, we can prepare for the afternoon spell work. We have time to at least educate the high Fae in their advanced glamour interactions with humans.”
As intended, Lena perked up at this, clearly willing to be distracted at least for an afternoon.
“Oh, an excellent idea. It has been some time,” Jorgen said. “It will be good to go over where they stand with their skills and where they could improve.”
He turned to Lena. “We have an entire section of the academy dedicated to the study of humans, did you know?” he asked her, gesturing to the door. “I could show you if you’d like, while Mistress Belle prepares the training.”
“Absolutely,” Lena cooed, and I could almost see her mind working. That would keep her and the rest of the Fae busy enough for the next hour, and I needed a break from all of them—and I really needed to locate that blasted Hogan contract.
They walked out the door, Jorgen giving me a meaningful glance before taking in the open book in front of me. “Oh good, you’ll need that,” he said, then he was bustling out the door behind Lena. I glanced down at the book, and saw the note stuck between its pages that hadn’t been there before.
