Reign of Mist: Book of Sindal Book Two

by D. G. Swank

  “Did I stutter?” Arthur asked, raising his voice slightly. “Get them. Now.”

  “But—” the guard spat out, turning wild eyes to his buddy, who was pushing the door open even wider.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the second man said. “We’re not allowed to do that.”

  “Not allowed to do what, specifically?” Arthur asked, his brows shooting up. “Give the poor woman shoes or a coat? I want to see these ridiculous rules.”

  “They aren’t written down,” the first guard said.

  “Then how can they be rules?” Arthur asked. “Do you or do you not have specific rules stating that Ms. Whelan is not allowed to wear a pair of shoes or a coat?”

  “Well no, sir,” the second guard said, darting a quick glance at me. “It’s just that she’s not allowed to leave.”

  “And who said she was leaving?” Arthur asked in a tone as cold as ice. “You’re wearing shoes, aren’t you? You’re not allowed to leave the property either.”

  “That’s different, sir,” the first guard said, not sounding like he’d totally convinced himself.

  “Take off your shoes and hand them over.”

  The guards exchanged perplexed looks before the second guard let out his breath in a long whoosh. “Fine. I’ll get her shoes and a coat, but this is on your head, Arthur.”

  The older gentleman gave them a smug, condescending glare. “I can live with that.”

  The guards shut the door and Arthur turned back to face me. “You better eat up. I need you to have enough strength to tackle this morning’s session.”

  Without even thinking, I took another bite of the pancakes. “What exactly do you have planned?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, but you have no cause to be alarmed or frightened. You’ll set the pace this time. Mark my words, once you discover what you’re capable of, there won’t be any slowing you down.”

  I’d nearly finished the pancakes by the time the guards came back with the shoes and coat I’d been wearing when I’d confronted Donall in the cemetery. Dirt was still embedded in the cotton fibers, and the visual reminder of his attack on my mind sent fear skating down my spine. Why was I trusting this man? Because he’d given me pancakes and spoke in a gentle tone? Because he was better at pretending than Donall was?

  Maybe Arthur really could read my thoughts. When he saw my hesitation, he squatted in front of me and gave me a soft smile. “I know it’s hard to know who to trust, but I promise, you and I want the same thing right now.”

  My anger came rushing back. “I have no desire to read that book for you.”

  My words didn’t seem to bother him in the least. “And I don’t want you to read the book today. We’ll make no mention of it. I want you to realize what you’re capable of, and it’s so much more than simple parlor tricks.”

  “It wasn’t a simple parlor trick when I hid Lester’s body in our family cemetery. It wasn’t a simple parlor trick when I…” I stopped myself from finishing the sentence with when I bound Logan and did a piss-poor job of hiding him from your psycho boss. It was a painful reminder that I was to blame for Logan’s predicament. If not for me, he’d be safe and sound at home, writing parking tickets or whatever cops usually did in Mount Vernon. Why hadn’t I ditched him in the bar parking lot and saved him from all of this?

  “Rowan,” Arthur said softly, his eyes full of understanding. “I know. I understand.”

  To my irritation, my throat clogged with tears. “How could you possibly know?”

  He slowly reached a hand toward me, reminding me of someone trying to approach a frightened animal. His hand rested lightly on top of my hand on the desk. “I know what it’s like to be overlooked. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re not enough.” He beamed at me. “But, Rowan, I’m here to tell you that you are enough—and more. I promise you, there’s a part of you that everyone has overlooked and underestimated, Donall included. Let me show you.” His expression turned playful. “What do you have to lose?”

  I had my doubts, but what did I have to lose except for my pride?

  Arthur got to his feet and reached out his hand. “Come with me, Rowan. Let’s take a walk outside.”

  I ignored the gesture. “The guards won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care what the guards think. I’m in charge, and I’ll be sure to remind them of it.”

  I liked the idea of going outside, if for no other reason than to search out an escape route. “Okay.”

  He handed me the shoes and I put them on, cringing when I realized they hadn’t brought socks. I stood and put on the jacket, giving him an expectant look. “Let’s do this.”

  The look in his eyes told me what I already knew—my portrayal of the eager student wasn’t totally convincing—but he rapped on the door anyway. “We’re ready.”

  The door opened and the guards gave me serious side-eye as I walked past them, falling into step next to Arthur. We walked toward the stairwell, and he pushed the door open, waiting for me to enter.

  I hesitated, gesturing toward the guards. “Are they coming with us?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, but they’ll remain a respectable distance behind.”

  “Define respectable distance.”

  He held my gaze. “Far enough back that they won’t hear our conversation.”

  That statement filled me with hope. Was Arthur engineering my escape? But disappointment quickly followed. It didn’t much matter. There was no way in hell I was leaving Logan.

  We walked up to the first floor, and Arthur produced a key ring from his pocket as we reached the landing. He used it to unlock the door leading outside.

  I sucked in a lungful of fresh air as soon as the door opened, invigorated by how good it felt. It struck me that I’d been in this building for nearly a week. Did Phoebe or Celeste know I was missing? Or were they being held in prisons of their own?

  Had the Dark Set already taken control of Valeria?

  Arthur led me to a grassy area at the back of the building. The exterior was run-down, the bricks pocked and chipped and blackened in places, and there were multiple broken windows. It looked like an abandoned insane asylum in a movie, and the trees surrounding it made it a good place to hide.

  Which brought me back to a point that the guard, Eric, had made earlier.

  The guards followed us, staying at least twenty feet behind.

  “Why’s Donall hiding out?” I asked. “He’s got the book, so why isn’t he large and in charge?”

  He gave me a patient look as we strolled toward the woods, Arthur with his hands entwined at the small of his back. “Don’t play dumb, Rowan,” he said, sounding disappointed. “It’s beneath you. You know exactly why.”

  “He’s waiting on me.”

  Arthur didn’t respond, which was answer enough. Instead, he changed the subject. “Do you know the history of magic?”

  I blinked in surprise. “Every child of Valerian parents knows the history of magic.”

  “They know the simple version—in the beginning, there were no nonmagicals. All men and women had magical gifts, but they fought one another and the Samsites stole the magic of the Brexors.” He gave a slight shrug as he turned back to face me. “The Brexors became the nonmagicals—humans—and the Samsites eventually became Valeria.”

  “Of course,” I said, my eyes darting to the shadows in the trees. He’d stopped about ten feet from the woods. The trees were densely packed together, but there wasn’t much vegetation to impede a traveler on foot.

  Maybe I’d been looking at this all wrong. Maybe I should escape first and send help back for Logan. I could dash inside, lose the guards, then make myself invisible. But I didn’t trust Donall, and I definitely didn’t trust the guards. I wouldn’t put it past them to kill him just so there were no witnesses to tell tales. They were probably going to kill me when they got what they wanted. I’d do best to remember that.

  Arthur turned to look into the trees, and when he shifted back to me, his expr
ession had changed. Not mean, exactly, but shrewder. “You likely didn’t hear the full story. Most of Valeria chooses to conveniently ignore it.” He paused, watching me, as though waiting for me to express interest, but I wasn’t about to give him what he wanted. He’d tell me the story in his own time.

  Sure enough, he only waited a good five seconds before he continued. “The Brexors were led by men. They were a warrior people that oppressed their women. The Samsites were ruled mostly by women and they feared another uprising. They claimed men were more prone to violence than diplomacy.”

  “They wouldn’t be entirely wrong,” I said, lifting an eyebrow.

  He nodded with a small grin. “There is some truth to that, but just as life is not black and white, not all men are bad and not all women are good.”

  “Where are you going with this? If what you’re saying is true, some of the mages at the time must have been Samsites,” I said. “Mages still exist, and not all of them are weak.”

  “True on both counts. Men were part of the Samsite government, but the female leaders kept a close watch on the mages in high-level positions. They didn’t like what they saw, so they created a spell to take a good portion of the mages’ power and transfer it to the witches.”

  This sounded like the kind of slanted story manufactured to make one group hate another. I managed to hold back a snort. Barely. “Why haven’t I heard this before?”

  “The witches controlled everything, Rowan. They controlled what was passed down from generation to generation.”

  I shook my head. “Stealing power from witches or mages is impossible.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “I hear your sister Phoebe had much of her power stolen only days ago, and it now resides in a blue orb in the body of a dead man.”

  He had a point. A strange feeling crept up my spine. Confusion and surprise and dismay. It was like his words were creeping into my brain and making scrambled eggs of everything I had thought I knew.

  “The witches eventually realized what they were doing was wrong, but by then it was too late. Most men had become magically weak, and their weakness was passed down to their sons. So the witches destroyed the power of the orb, and it was lost forever until that witch in Denmark put it in her book of spells.”

  “The Book of Sindal.”

  He nodded.

  “And Donall had one until Lester stole it. He claims Celeste got it out of the book.”

  Arthur seemed to consider his answer before he said, “Donall had the orb. I don’t know the details of how he acquired it.”

  “You mean you won’t tell me if my sister got it for him,” I said a little too harshly, giving myself away.

  Sympathy filled his eyes. “I don’t know, Rowan. I would tell you if I did.”

  “If Celeste opened the book for him, why didn’t he kidnap her again? Why kidnap me?”

  “Because you can read the book.”

  “If that orb of power came from the book, someone had to read it.” Like Celeste, who, according to Donall, had retrieved the spell for him. Doubt gnawed at me again.

  “Again, I don’t know.”

  “Then what do you know, Arthur?” I asked.

  He gave me a patient smile. “I know you’ll be a difficult student, but it will be worth every moment of trouble to see your face when you realize what you can do.”

  “So when do we start?”

  “First, we need to continue our discussion of magic.”

  My brows shot up. “You’re kidding. What else is there to discuss?”

  “Most magicals know their particular talent and use it according to how they’ve been told it works. They don’t understand why it works the way it does.”

  I pushed out a sigh. “I know I have to use the energy of the object or person I’m changing, just like Phoebe gets energy from our dead relatives. Celeste’s expression magic is different, of course. She takes it from anything and everything, which is what makes it so erratic. That’s why it ravages her mind.” That last sentence had slipped out. Truth was, I’d been thinking a lot about Celeste since Donall told me his story of how he’d come by the sphere.

  Concern tightened his mouth. “How bad is she?”

  “Celeste is no concern of yours.” And I hoped to keep it that way.

  His lips parted, but he must have thought better about whatever he’d planned on saying, because he closed them the next instant. He took a breath and started again. “Very few witches or mages understand expression magic. Your father knew that Celeste needed special training, but your mother insisted she knew what was best for your sister.”

  I shook my head, trying to take it all in. How could this man who was working with Donall, who was like the model of supervillainy, have been associated with my parents? “How did you know my mom and dad?”

  “The Whelan family is a long-established magical family, even if most mages and witches don’t know about your role in guarding the Book of Sindal. Your line has commanded respect for centuries, if for no other reason than that it produces children with rare magical talents.”

  Humiliation burned in my gut at the reminder.

  “The long answer to your question is that any witch or mage involved with the Valeria governing body knows the Whelans. The short answer is that your father was my friend.”

  I stared at him in surprise. My family may have commanded respect, but my mother had always insisted on isolation. She’d insisted we only needed each other, that our family, and the book, would be safer if we kept to ourselves. When I was younger, I hadn’t thought much of it—it was simply the way we lived. But as I got older, I started to realize that most witches and mages regularly attended gatherings. Some even lived in secluded all-magical communities where they didn’t need to hide their talents. At first, I’d assumed Mom was worried about protecting Celeste, but later, I’d suspected she was also trying to shield me from ridicule.

  Maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe my parents had carried on lives outside of our family that I knew absolutely nothing about.

  “I know you didn’t know many of your parents’ friends other than Xenya. Your mother was very protective of you girls. She didn’t want you to deal with the politics of being a Whelan.” It all sounded true to my mother, but I heard a hint of disapproval in his tone.

  “But?” I prompted.

  “Your father loved Valeria politics. He wanted to be as involved in the greater community as possible, but your mother thought they needed to circle the wagons around their daughters and shield them from gossips.” He paused for a moment before adding, “In arguments like that, there is no right answer. Your mother wasn’t entirely wrong in her decision, but your father’s need for contact with the magical community wasn’t wrong either. And your father loved you girls with everything in him—especially you, Rowan. He felt a kinship to you that he didn’t feel with the others.”

  “Because we were both weak.”

  “No, because you were so often overlooked, your needs sacrificed for the others.”

  I heard what he wasn’t saying. Mom and Dad hadn’t gotten along toward the end. As a kid, I hadn’t seen beyond the united front they tried to present to the world, but the cracks had grown deeper with time, and I’d matured enough to notice them.

  No matter. The reality of their marriage had little consequence now. “None of that explains why I’m here, Arthur. You and Donall think I’m capable of more, but what happens if—when you realize that I’m not?”

  He slowly shook his head. “Rowan, so much like your father.”

  I lifted my chin. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “His stubbornness was a gift and a curse. You’d do best to learn from his mistakes.”

  That caught me by surprise. “And what were those?”

  “That, my dear, is a story for another day. For the moment, I want to take your magic back to the rudimentary level.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult,” I muttered.

  “A pessimistic a
ttitude will get you nowhere.”

  “And an optimistic attitude will get me nothing but disappointment.”

  I saw his confidence waver for the first time, but I realized it wasn’t because he thought I was incapable of more. It was because he didn’t believe I’d try.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right,” I said, surprised that I meant it.

  His face lit up. “Words I hadn’t expected to hear from you so early in our training.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get too excited. I still have my doubts, but I promise to at least try.”

  His gaze held my eyes, asking for more.

  “I’ll give it my all, but I’m going to hold you to your word—if I’m able to read the text, I’m not bound to tell you or Donall what it says.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “And that is all I ask.”

  “So what now?”

  He leaned down and plucked a three-leaf clover, which he then presented to me on his outstretched palm. “Glamour this clover.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Glamour the leaves so they’re close to invisible, but leave a shimmer behind so I can still see it.”

  That caught me by surprise, but he’d warned me we’d be going back to basics, hadn’t he? This was how my mother had taught me to use my power. With barely a thought, I made the leaf to blend in with Arthur’s palm, but it took more effort than expected to create the shimmer he’d requested.

  “Now fade it out just a little more,” he said.

  “If I fade it out any more, it will be gone,” I complained.

  “Try anyway.”

  It took all my concentration to do as he asked.

  “More,” he said.

  My gaze lifted, but he continued to study his palm.

  “More, Rowan.”

  I focused on the leaf, trying to leave behind the slightest glimmer, but the clover completely disappeared. I tried to squash my frustration. “What was the point of that?”

  “You shall see.” He grabbed his phone out of his pocket, letting the glamoured leaves drop, and placed a call. “Send Marni outside.” Frustration furrowed his brow. “Yes. Outside. Tell her to wear a coat. We might be out here awhile.” He ended the call and stuffed the phone into his jacket pocket. “When did you first discover your gift?”