Ciaran inclines his head in thought. “Probably an arranged marriage to a warlord, once her rune-sorcery became apparent.”
“After being forced into a brothel,” I say flatly, frustrated over how little control both Wyla and I would have been given over our lives if we hadn’t escaped.
Ciaran nods grimly, and I can see my own outrage mirrored in his green eyes.
“Did Zeymir rescue Za’ya, too?”
He shakes his head. “No, Za’ya rescued herself from the Alfsigr-controlled sublands. She was an escapee from the mines, and she went to work forging runes for an Ishkartan smithery that Zeymir’s family owns. He caught her fabricating weapons to smuggle back west and into the sublands, but he never turned her in. Za’ya convinced him to join her cause instead.”
I let out a short laugh at this, affection for Za’ya lighting in me. “I can believe that. Za’ya’s persuasive.”
Ciaran smiles at this. “They began working for the Resistance together, and Zeymir soon fell in love with her.”
“That’s easy to believe, too,” I say, growing serious, emotion abruptly overtaking me. “Za’ya’s very kind.”
Ciaran is silent for a moment, and his voice breaks when he next speaks. “Zeymir and Za’ya are...some of the best people I have ever met.”
“How did you come to live with them?” I ask hesitantly.
“My family died,” he says simply, a stark grief suddenly in his eyes. He doesn’t elaborate further, and he’s in such obvious pain that I don’t press him.
I lean into him as we hold hands, resting my head against his broad shoulder. I glance up at the ceiling tapestry, filled with the sudden longing to kiss him, like we did last night. I follow the swirl of a circular rune with my eyes as a flush blooms on my cheeks and neck, the unsettling heat his presence sparks refusing to be confined or willed away.
I turn to find Ciaran staring at me, his cheeks ruddy, his eyes full of this longing for each other that seems to have overtaken us both.
“Sage,” he says, his voice filled with emotion.
At first, I almost smile to hear him use the same name my family and friends do. But as I gaze back at him, I’m rocked by a sudden, overwhelming, viciously futile desire to be fasted to Ciaran instead of Tobias.
I hold out my free hand to him, palm up, my skin riddled with fastlines. He looks at them unflinchingly. “I can never be with anyone else,” I tell him, my voice breaking as tears glaze my eyes. “I can never be with anyone but...”
Bile rises in my throat. I can’t do it. I can’t say my fastmate’s name without retching. A nauseous heat burns at the back of my neck.
“You don’t know that.” Ciaran says, his tone defiant. “Spells can be broken.”
“Not this one.”
“No. Any spell can be broken.” His grip around my hand tightens.
“Even if it could...” I extend my arm, the emerald glimmer of my skin catching the rune-light. “I’ll always be Gardnerian.”
“I don’t care,” he says, his defiance unwavering.
Ciaran lifts my hand and presses his lips to the back of it in a slow, gentle kiss right on the fastlines, his eyes closing, his expression overcome with feeling. His breath shudders against my hand, and I inhale sharply. Then he kisses the bend of each finger with deliberate slowness, one at a time, his warm mouth gentle, his rebellious eyes lifting to mine as his lips brush over my knuckles in a feather light line.
He’s nothing like Tobias—he’s what my dreams of my future fastmate were. My heart thuds hard against my chest as Ciaran reaches up to lightly caress my cheek before threading his fingers through my hair and bringing his lips to mine.
I fall into his ardent kiss, his loving, gentle touch filling my heart even as the awareness of my fastlines breaks it.
* * *
I’m awakened late in the night by Ciaran tossing and turning on the other cot and frantically calling out in fluent Smaragdalfar.
“Ma’mya! Ma’mya! Ohn! Ohn!” I’ve picked up enough Smaragdalfar in these past few days to understand these simple words. Mama! Mama! No! No!
“Ciaran!” I sit up as he moans, his face distraught, the blankets wrapped chaotically around his long limbs. I tap the rune-lantern beside me and it sparks to life, casting the room in its soft, multicolored glow, hoping the light will wake him from his nightmare.
“Ma’mya! Fav’ya! Ohn’a’yir!” Mother. Father. And something else I don’t understand.
Why is he dreaming in fluent Smaragdalfar? And what happened to his parents?
“Ciaran.” I go over to him and take hold of his shoulder. He cries out, tears streaming from his eyes, struggling as if the blankets are restraining him, kicking at them like he’s trying to escape. I grip his shoulder more firmly and shake him, my heart going out to him. “Ciaran. You’re dreaming.”
He inhales sharply and flinches, his eyes flying open, glassy and reddened. He blinks around, wildly disoriented, his mouth opening and closing, wet with tears. He’s breathing hard as his gaze locks onto mine, and for a brief moment, I see it all. How he lost everyone.
His hand clamps down on my hand, his eyes tight on mine. Holding on to me as I’ve held onto him.
“Stay with me,” he rasps out, seeming still half in the nightmare. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” I promise.
I stay there for a long time, holding onto him, his hand grasping mine as his hard breathing shudders and then slows to a more normal rhythm. Eventually I lie down beside him and soon drift off, my arm draped over his chest, his hands clinging to me all night long.
Chapter 10: Secrets
I’m awakened by a high-pitched scream, followed by my sister Clover’s voice.
“Sage! Sage!”
I jolt up, my heart lurching, and scramble to peer through the slit between the shutter and the window.
Mother Eliss is dragging Clover over to a waiting carriage as she angrily hisses something at my sister. Clover’s feet drag against the cobbled street, trying to gain purchase as she’s dragged forward.
“No!” Clover cries out. “I want Sage!”
Gentle Retta emerges from the inn, red-eyed and looking traumatized. Father’s hand is tight on her arm, firmly guiding her to the carriage as well. Still childish at twelve, she’s hugging one of the cloth dolls I made for her.
Clover yanks free of Mother Eliss, fists balled, and glares hard at her as Father all but pushes Retta into the carriage, my gentle sister quickly cast in shadows. Retta’s terrified, distraught eyes soon appear at the carriage window, blinking out, miserably searching.
Searching for me, I sickeningly realize.
“I won’t go!” Clover yells at both Mother Eliss and Father. “I won’t go without Sage!”
Father lunges forward and grabs Clover, but she continues to scream. He rears back and slaps her face so hard that she falls to the ground, weeping and calling my name. I jolt back from the blow, as if struck myself, covering my mouth in horror.
Mother Eliss’s face is twisted in fury as she glares down at rebellious, eleven-year-old Clover. She turns her back on my youngest sister and gets into the carriage as Father jerks a now limp, sobbing Clover up and forces her into the carriage, slamming the door shut. He stalks back toward the inn, where a knot of Mages and Verpacian soldiers are gathered. Gwynnifer is there with them, talking with earnest concern, pointing down the road, toward the smithery, toward the University.
Gwynn. Pain twists inside me as Ciaran’s hand comes to rest comfortingly on my back. I want to run to my friend. To open my heart to her and tell her how everything went so horribly wrong. How everything we’ve been told is full of lies. But I know her all too well—she’s so strictly Gardnerian, she’d never believe me. Anguish slashes through me as I realize beyond any doubt that Gwynn would fully reject me if she knew where I was right
now. If she knew how I held Ciaran through much of the night. How I ran away from my fasting.
The carriage lurches to a start and drives away.
I want to throw myself straight through the wall. Run after them and save my sisters. Pull out my wand and force back anyone who dares stand in my way.
“Sage...”
“They’re going to lock them up,” I rage, knowing this to be true with crushing certainty. “That’s what Father did to my brother Shane when he rebelled. Clover will rebel, too, and they’ll beat her into submission. Then they’ll fast them both, as soon as possible. And they’ll be trapped in that family of monsters.” A vision of gentle Retta, of skinny little Clover being controlled by Tobias’s family slices through me. The possibility of my beloved sisters being attacked and then blamed for it, and belittled like I was, is too terrible to bear.
I turn to Ciaran, reckless outrage overtaking me. He’s watching me with deep concern in his eyes, his hair a wild mess from sleep.
“I’ve got to get them out of there,” I say vehemently, sliding around him to get up from the cot. I buckle the belt-sheath around my waist and shove my rune-blade into it, my wand already stowed in the side of my boot.
Ciaran rises, his hand coming to my arm. “Sage, you will save them. But not yet. You have no spells. No training. But there’s time. You told me your sister’s fasting is still a year away...”
I rake my hand through my hair as furious tears well in my eyes. “It kills me to see them treated like this. And they won’t know what became of me.”
“No, they won’t.” Ciaran reaches up to caress my shoulder. “I’m sorry. Resistance is a long game. A long one. You’ll go to a safer place, and you’ll get hold of a grimoire. You’ll learn light spells and rune-sorcery. And then you will save them.”
I struggle to breathe normally, swallowing back the tears. Ciaran pulls me gently into his arms for a long moment, and my body slowly melts into his, comforted by the contact of his long form against mine. I slide my arms around him as he caresses my back, a shudder passing through my affinity lines.
My eyes are briefly drawn to his long neck, the collar of his tunic askew, giving me a shadowed glimpse of his muscular chest. There are tattoos of multiple chains holding small, emerald runes running all over the skin under his clothing.
I reach up and brush the edge of his collar with my thumb. “Ciaran, what are those tattoos on your chest?”
Ciaran stiffens and pulls slightly away, his previously open expression abruptly closed.
THUD THUD THUD
Both our heads jerk up as someone slams against the front entrance door to the smithery.
“Open up!” a rough voice demands. A voice I know. The blood drains from my face.
“Father,” I whisper, meeting Ciaran’s eyes in horror.
Outside the room, a door slams open. Bootheels thud through the smithery and then down the spiraling stairs. Za’ya’s shriek comes from below us. Then a crash.
Ciaran bolts toward his bedroom’s curtained entrance, peering out. He turns and motions for me to be quiet, then reaches out to grab my arm, pulling me toward the curtain, toward him.
“Get down!” Father growls from the downstairs living space. The demand is echoed by several other men. There’s another crash, followed by Za’ya’s screech.
Na’bee cries out, “Ma’mya!”
“We’re searching the premises for my daughter, Mage Sagellyn Gaffney,” Father’s voice booms up from below. “You have a Kelt here. Where is he?”
“Please, Mages,” Zeymir’s deep voice tries to reason, “this girl is not here...”
A sharp thud. Za’ya and Na’bee crying out in Ishkart.
Outrage blasts through me, and I move to push through the curtain, to do something, but Ciaran holds me firmly back.
“Mages, please,” Zeymir tries again, his words slightly muffled this time.
“Shut up, heathen,” Tobias’s cruel voice snarls.
Shock explodes through me as it all floods back. Tobias holding me down, restraining me with magic, forcing me...
I can barely rasp the words out. “That’s him.”
Ciaran’s eyes widen, then narrow with lethal calm. “Do you trust me?” he whispers.
I lock onto his emerald glare and nod, terror crackling through me.
He pulls me out of the bedroom, through the smithery and out its rear exit as Father yells at Zeymir and Za’ya and Na’bee. There’s another crash as Ciaran pulls me out the back door, the gloomy gray sky above spitting a chilled rain.
There’s a huge, gray-skinned Elfhollen man standing at the head of a heavily loaded wagon and holding the reins of two black workhorses, seeming ready to flee. Surprise flashes in the Elfhollen’s silver eyes as he catches sight of me. He glances in the direction of the angry voices and gives Ciaran a look heavy with warning. “Ciaran. No.”
“We’ve got to get her out of here,” Ciaran snarls in a whisper. “There’s no other way, Kol.” He finishes his thought in a rapid stream of Ishkart.
I can make out the edge of a slatted crate just underneath the canvas that’s tied down over the wagon’s back with heavy twine. Weapons, I frantically realize, the glint of blades visible through the crate’s slats. I’ve spotted one of these crates ensconced in Ciaran’s room under his cot, filled with rune-blades..
They’re smuggling weapons out. Today.
Oh, Ancient One.
Ciaran doesn’t wait for Kol’s response. He pulls me toward the back of the wagon and lifts the edge of the cloth. “Get in,” he whispers, eyes adamant, his dark red hair deepened to russet in the gloom. “They can’t find you here in the smithery.”
Na’bee cries out from below ground. I can hear Za’ya pleading, and I realize how much danger they’ll all be in if my family does find me here.
I scramble, half-pushed, half-lifted by Ciaran into the darkness under the cloth. He pulls the edge of the canvas higher for a moment, and in a brief flash of illumination, I realize the crates aren’t the main cargo of this wagon. They only line the very edges of the sheltered space.
The wagon is filled with people, most of them children, lying tightly pressed against each other on their sides. Smaragdalfar like Za’ya, their skin patterned with gleaming emeralds, eyes like stars, ears coming to swift points. All of them are silent and still as death, their eyes wide and brimming with suppressed terror. I slide down between the close-packed bodies and Ciaran replaces the canvas. The stench of wet wool and fear swamps me as the glowing emerald shimmer of my skin becomes apparent in the darkened light.
I pull on my affinity lines, brightening my surroundings. There’s an old woman in front of me, her hair white as snow. She’s got her arms around a little girl who looks to be about six years old. The child is completely still, clutching a worn cloth doll with skin of emerald fabric, pointed ears and green yarn for hair, the doll’s eyes glinting with silver thread. Despite the toy in her hands, there’s a gravity in the little girl’s fear-stricken eyes that belies her young age.
I glance over my shoulder. There’s a young Smaragdalfar woman behind me. She’s around my age and glaring at me with blistering hatred. All around us, the silver eyes of children blink at me, like small animals in the woods around a forest campfire.
I can’t stop trembling, and I struggle to get hold of my fear with the steadiness these small children are managing. I realize, in a searing flash, exactly what Ciaran, Zeymir and Za’ya are involved in. They’re not smuggling spirits or pit dragons or young women or illegal elixers, like my people accuse them of doing. They are smuggling rune-weapons for the Resistance.
And they’re smuggling refugees.
The carriage gives a sharp lurch and sets off bumpily, the young woman’s elbow shoving painfully into my back, our bodies jostling against each other. Father yells an unintelligible command from far
off, and I flinch at the sound.
“Search out back!” Tobias’s hard voice calls out.
A wave of terror hollows me out as the wagon bumps along, my cheekbone jarred against the hard wood beneath me. I’m trembling as the men’s voices grow fainter, but I know they could catch up with us in an instant—we’re a heavily loaded wagon, and they’re Mages who can travel swiftly on horseback.
If they find us, they’ll take me back. I’ll be forced into captivity by Tobias’s family and beaten until I break. I’ll never learn to use my magery, and I’ll never save my sisters.
And who knows what terrible things they’d do to all these refugees.
The yelling fades, the rain increasing, heavy drops now pelting the canvas. I’m so scared, I’m shivering violently, and I feel like I can’t breathe. Then a gentle hand comes to rest on my arm, and I look into the old woman’s starry eyes. She murmurs something to me in Smaragdalfar, her voice coarse, but her tone warm and kind.
The young woman behind me hisses something in their language, but the old woman ignores it, her silver eyes locked on mine. She pushes a stray strand of my hair back behind my ear as she murmurs to me softly, and I’m touched by her kindness. My trembling lessens as I hold her compassionate, rock-steady gaze. The child reaches out and puts her small hand on my arm, light as a butterfly, and tears sting at my eyes.
The other woman won’t let up her ceaseless protest, her elbow periodically jabbing painfully into my back and the old woman’s voice briefly rises into a stream of strong censure. The young woman doesn’t stop hissing her stream of hate into my back, but she does stop hurting me.
The old woman and the child hold onto me as we ride for what seems like a million years, the smell of sweat and grime a sharpening tang on the damp, rancid air. Eventually, the child nods off, her small hand sliding down to fall onto mine, and I tenderly grasp it, steadied now and flooded with thoughts of my sisters and wanting to protect this little girl.
Why is this child here? In a wagon? Is she running from the Alfsigr?
Father and Mother Eliss have talked about Snake Elves escaping from underground, like demons slithering up from the bowels of the earth. Dangerous Evil Ones, ready to align themselves with the powers of the Shadow Wand to wage war on the Blessed Mages.
Light Mage (The Black Witch Chronicles) Page 17
