by Beth Alvarez
Firal crossed her arms to try and stop herself from shaking. After he'd kissed her and left her in the dark, she hadn't known what to say. She hadn't even known what to think, but part of her had remained aflutter, desperate to feel his lips on hers again. Now, the tumult of that memory threatened to make her ill. “And how far was it supposed to go, Ran?”
He grimaced. “Don't call me that. Please.”
“Why not?”
“Ran doesn't exist,” he said, exasperated. “He never has.”
She crossed her arms tighter. He studied her for a time before he spoke again.
“I thought... I thought it would be better that way.” He bowed his head and rubbed his hands together. She hadn't noticed that he held them clasped before him, rubbing his clawed fingers as if to wash them clean of his mistakes. “If you didn't know. If you never saw what I really was. I spent so much time trying to push you away. Teasing you, tormenting you, because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't. And then you found me in the ruins.”
She stared at him in silence, then bit her lip and forced herself to look away. She didn't want to hear it, but she couldn't bring herself to stop him. No more than she could stop the queasy feeling in her stomach.
“I thought I could scare you away,” he admitted. “So I tried. But Brant blight it, you aren't afraid of anything. No matter how hard I tried, you kept coming back. And then I thought that... maybe, if you knew me—the real me, not the disguise I've always worn—maybe there was hope.”
Hope? The word landed like a blow. Yet, looking back, beacons showing just that feeling stood out among her memories. Daemon putting flowers in her hair. The way he twirled her on the dance floor in the king's ballroom. The tenderness and desperation of his kiss. She couldn't meet his eyes. “I don't even know how you do it,” she murmured. “You look so...”
“Different?” He smiled hesitantly. He shifted to free an arm, but his strength faded. He closed his eyes a moment, then nodded toward his armor, stacked against the wall. “Over there. The pouch I had on my belt, get it for me?”
She eyed him distrustfully. “Why?”
“I want to show you something.”
Her mouth tightened, though she complied. She rocked on her feet when she stood, but her hands found the edge of a table and offered some stability. She clung to whatever she could for balance as she crossed the room, her eyes trained on the floor.
The bloodstains had been scrubbed away. She'd have to thank Minna for cleaning up. His armor, too, had been cleaned, as she saw when she reached the stack at the far wall. Firal studied it for a time. What remained of his shirt lay folded inside the hollow of his upside-down breastplate, the pale fabric stained black with old blood. His belt sat coiled beside it. Several pouches decorated the belt and she hesitated before taking the whole thing.
Daemon dragged himself upright, though he clutched his side and gasped for breath. She passed him the belt and perched on the far end of the bed. Her head spun and weakness rose in her like a tide. In the temple, Masters had always monitored her for overexertion when she worked. They had stopped her more than once, though she had been a less practiced healer then. What she'd been through in the temple now paled in comparison to the experience she'd gained in Core. Nothing had ever left her so faint as this.
He opened one of the pouches and removed something. “When we were in the ruins together, waiting out a storm in a cavern... do you remember?” He turned to put down his belt and gasped when the simple motion aggravated his injury.
Firal rose halfway to help him before she caught herself and returned to her seat. As angry and hurt as she was, the urge to help overshadowed her feelings. She fought it down. Why should she care if he suffered? It was the least he deserved for what he'd done. Yet worry gnawed at her, and even seeing him relax into the pillows Minna had propped him up with offered no relief. Firal laced her fingers together in her lap and convinced herself it was her concern as a healer, nothing more.
Daemon's breath steadied and he went on. “While we waited, you said you were looking for your journal because your pendant was in it, and I told you I had something similar.”
She cringed. She recalled their conversation about Ran's bloodline—his bloodline—too, and how she'd thought herself honored by the secrets he'd confided. Now she looked at him and wondered at how foolish she'd been. “I remember,” she said at last.
“This is what I was talking about.” He unfolded the cloth to reveal an amulet on a silver chain. Shades of blue and green swirled to the surface in the dark stone. Candlelight danced within it in streaks and shimmers, and he tilted it to catch the light before he picked it up.
The moment he touched the amulet, his arm seemed to ripple, claws and scales vanishing to leave smooth skin in their place. Firal's hand clapped over her mouth. His hair faded to the tawny color she was used to, the rich violet of his eyes masked with familiar blue. On impulse, she reached for his arm, then hesitated. He didn't pull away, and she drew her fingertips over his forearm.
“I don't understand,” she murmured as she studied the veins in his hands. “This feels like... I mean, it changes you entirely.”
“It's an illusion.” He ran a thumb over the stone. “You feel what you see because your mind would reject anything else. For me, it feels no different.”
“There haven't been any mages powerful enough to create illusions for hundreds of years,” Firal said. “Never mind gems imbued with magic. They're worth a king's ransom.”
“Well, a king's pockets are as deep as his shame. Nothing is outside his reach. Nothing but fixing what's wrong with me.” He turned the amulet between his fingers and rubbed its surface like it was a nervous habit. “So you see, this is the me that never existed. Nothing but a mask.”
Tears stung her eyes and she tried to will them away. “It's not a very good mask. It doesn't change your face.”
A hint of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “This changes enough to convince people I might be Kifel's blood, maybe an illegitimate son he hasn't admitted to siring. But it wasn't enough. Trying to mind the way I moved and the timbre I spoke with while I wore the stone helped, but eventually, the people I know recognize me without it. That's what the other mask was for.”
“So you could hide from me?”
He looked away. “So I can hide from everyone. Even here, I can't be free. The older soldiers know my father. They've been raiding long enough to recognize him, or know him by description, if nothing else. If they recognized me as their enemy's son, they would never follow me. They'd be suspicious of every action, question every motive, even though all I ever wanted was to make a difference.”
“You weren't known as the king's son at the temple,” she said. “No one recognized your face.”
“The Masters did, but they already knew. They were ordered to keep quiet. But the temple is also isolated. Most magelings will never see the king, or the portraits of his adopted son, so they'd have no way of knowing what I looked like. The temple is the only place I've ever been where my face wasn’t known. It's the only reason I kept going back.” He paused, his eyes weighing on her. “Or, one of the only reasons.”
Wordlessly, Firal pried his fingers open and took the amulet from his grasp. The complex magic that held the illusion slipped away and the image dissolved like scattering grains of sand. The power-imbued stone hummed in her palm, prickling like static electricity, older and more terrifying than the Gate-stone she'd held before. She let it fall to the blankets and took his hand instead. He was real, solid, raw and exposed. His scales, smooth and glossy, were familiar and yet somehow now foreign beneath her touch. A deep ache stirred in her chest.
He drew his fingers from her hold and turned away. Pain etched itself in the furrow of his brow and the twist of his mouth. For once, his otherworldly eyes held no light. Firal had to stop herself from probing his energies in search of the cause. It was nothing she could heal.
“I can't imagine how much of a
monster you think I am,” Daemon murmured.
She forced herself to look away. “You're right. You don't know what I think.” The bowls of soup on the bedside table caught her eye and she leaned forward to take one. The clear broth it held was disappointing, but it was better than nothing. She tried to push the bowl into Daemon's hands. “The soup's getting cold. You'd best get something in you, or you'll never heal all the way.”
The soup was not cold. Thin curls of steam still hovered over its surface. Daemon stared at it for a time, then pushed it away and turned toward the wall.
Firal struggled not to sigh. She wanted nothing more than to be angry. After everything that had happened, she deserved the right to anger. Yet the way he curled into himself in the bed beside her wrenched her heart and sapped her will to argue. Hurt as she was, she was a healer, and that empathy shone through at the most inconvenient times. His hurt ran deep, an old wound that festered beyond what she could help. Magic could do many things, but it couldn't mend an injured soul.
She cradled the bowl to her chest and spooned broth into her mouth. “You could have told me, you know.”
He laughed bitterly. “Told you? I've spent almost every day of my life hiding what I am, struggling to be just like everyone else. And knowing that no matter what I do, no matter how I try, I never will be.”
“Because hiding helped you so much,” she muttered. “Even Relythes knew you.”
“Relythes has business with my father's court. Of course he'd recognize me.”
“Which implies you think I have no business knowing. Did you decide that before or after you kissed me?” She raised a brow.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then clamped it shut a moment later.
“That's what I thought.” Firal lifted a spoonful of broth and sipped from its edge.
Again, he curled smaller on the bed, his chin tucked into his chest and his knees drawn up. She'd never seen a man so vulnerable. Truthfully, she didn't feel much stronger.
“You need to eat,” she said.
“I'm not hungry.”
“That wasn't a suggestion.” The broth had cooled enough to drink without discomfort. She caught his jaw in one hand and twisted his face toward her so she could press the bowl's edge to his lips. A glimmer of ruddy light flashed in his eyes. Good; anger was preferable to the miserable wallowing. She forced his mouth open and poured the broth past his lips before he could protest. He managed to swallow once before he choked.
His eyes flared red as he coughed and sputtered, their light vanishing just as quickly. Groans interspersed the coughing and he clamped a hand over his side, his face twisted again with pain. A flutter of guilt occupied Firal's thoughts for a moment, but she brushed it away.
“Drink,” she ordered. She put the bowl before his face again, but this time, she didn't try to force him.
Daemon glowered at her, but guided the bowl to his lips and drank from its edge. When he'd swallowed all he could, he pushed her hands away.
Satisfied, she put the bowl aside and nudged his bare shoulder to encourage him to rest. He sank back into the pillows without much coaxing. His eyes fell closed, and for a moment, she thought him asleep. As appealing as sleep sounded, she was unlikely to rest so long as he occupied her bed. Enough shame needled at her for having woken beside him, though she knew Minna must have tucked them in. Her makeshift infirmary had no beds but her own. When patients were too ill or injured to leave bed, she simply traveled to them.
“Davan will have to move you,” she murmured, more to herself than Daemon, but his eyelids fluttered open just the same. She frowned at him and tugged the blankets upward until they covered his bare shoulders. He was fine to look at, despite the scales and claws that marred his extremities, but she'd seen more than enough of him for one day.
“There are plenty of women who would be thrilled to have me in their beds,” he said.
The attempt at humor should have been reassuring, but it was irritating, instead. Firal huffed. “Then they're welcome to retrieve you from mine.”
“I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.” He paused, and a hint of a sheepish smile flickered across his face. “I mean, you're the healer. I'm less likely to die here.”
She made a soft, skeptical sound and retrieved her cooling broth. It wouldn't have been hard to warm it, but even grasping that much power sounded taxing beyond what she could bear. As it was, she didn't know how she managed to stay upright. So she ate as it grew tepid, and still savored every spoonful.
“Why didn't you let me?”
Firal glanced down at him with a frown. “What?”
“Die.” His brows drew together in a combination of puzzlement and worry. “Why did you heal me? After you saw me?”
“It's my responsibility.” She shrugged. “Regardless of what you've done, letting you die when I have the power to stop it would be terribly inhumane.”
“Duty,” he said, a note of disappointment in his voice.
“And that I was terrified I might lose you.” The thought made her chest clench. “I've never seen anyone so close to death. If not for Davan and Minna, I... I don't know that I could have brought you back. I don't know you anymore. I don't know who you are, what's real, what's lies, but if I'd let you slip away, I'd never find out.”
He slid a hand from beneath the blankets and brushed the backs of his fingers against her arm. “But you didn't.” His hand dropped. “I owe you a debt of more than just gratitude. I owe you my life. And I owe you an apology.”
Firal twitched away from his touch.
“I am sorry,” he said. “And I know my word's not good for much, but I promise you I never lied about anything, except maybe by omission.”
“Dishonesty by any means is still dishonest.”
He made a placating motion. “Which is why I acknowledge you have every right to be angry.”
“You're right,” she agreed. “I do.” She put her bowl aside and pushed herself from the edge of the bed. “You stay here and heal. The sooner you get out of my house, the better.” Though weak and weary, she needed fresh air. And time to think, she added mentally on her way to the open door. She expected eavesdroppers, but to her surprise, the hall beyond her doorway was empty.
“Firal,” he called after her.
She paused with one hand on the doorframe and looked back.
“When you come back, bring me something to wear. I doubt you want me leaving your house like this.” He drew back the blankets just enough to expose his bare hip.
Firal gasped and turned redder than ever before. She darted into the hallway and slammed the door behind her.
17
Returns
Kifel didn't bother trying to hide his exasperation when his office door opened for what seemed the hundredth time. “What is it now?” he all but snapped as his stewardess led in a familiar mageling.
Shymin offered a stiff bow and an apologetic glance as Medreal closed the door behind them. She turned to the older woman as if seeking permission and waited for Medreal's nod before she spoke. “A missive from the border, sire. There's a group of men moving near your territory. The mages stationed nearest the border believe they are either scouts or scavengers. The mages have requested soldiers be sent to aid with investigation and, if necessary, to turn the group away.” The mageling stopped in front of Kifel's desk and held out the letter.
He took it and frowned. Whoever had broken the wax seal had done so shamelessly. “Who opened this?”
“Master Anaide, Sire.” Shymin lowered her eyes. “The missive was sent to her. She asked me to deliver it to you.”
Kifel sighed, leaning back in his chair. He unfolded the letter, skimmed it, and tossed it to his desk. “And Anaide only asked you to deliver it to me because she can't order soldiers to the border by herself, I imagine?”
The girl shifted on her feet and fidgeted with her skirt as she floundered for words. Kifel almost felt sorry for her. He held up one hand and rubbed his eyes with the
other. “No, you don't have to speak, I don't expect you to answer. But everyone wants something, and I find myself very short of help these days.” He drew a fresh sheet of paper from his desk’s drawer and took his pen, tapping it against the mouth of its inkwell. There was no need for a lengthy order; a command for a band of soldiers to move east was enough. He surveyed the note for a moment before he added instructions for the border mages to return to Ilmenhith after the problem was settled.
To say he did not trust the mages would have been an understatement, but it had been impossible to refuse them when half the temple arrived at his doorstep. Backed into a corner as he was, he had allowed them a refuge in the capital, but only after Temar and the rest of his court mages had interrogated each and every one of the Masters. The magelings, too, deserved questioning, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. The magelings would be tested for loyalty in the days to come. For now, that they answered to loyal Masters would have to be enough.
“I apologize for the inconvenience, sire,” Shymin murmured, the fabric of her skirt still bunched in both hands.
“Inconvenience is something I am, sadly, quite used to.” He sprinkled sand across the page to dry the ink. Curving the paper, he jostled the dust back into its bowl. There had been a time when his need to sign and stamp documents had been all but nonexistent. Now, the pounce bowl sat filled with ink-stained clumps and the box of sealing wax in his drawer was all but empty. He folded the letter, sealed it, and stamped it with the royal crest. “That should suffice. Anaide may present that to any officer in the city guard to receive the assistance she needs. And the next time Anaide desires something, remind her that she is welcome to visit me herself.”
The mageling swallowed and offered a nervous smile. “Of course, sire. Thank you.” She took the letter when he offered it and dipped in a curtsy before she turned to excuse herself from the office. Medreal let her out as quietly as she'd let her in.
