by Anise Rae
“I was aiming for the Non. You stepped in my way on purpose. The law doesn’t care about mages foolish enough to get killed defending a Non. If you’d died protecting her, no judge would do anything about it.”
“His family would do something about it,” Bronte said.
Masset ignored her. “I’m gonna get a warrant. I’m coming back for her.”
Bronte peeked out.
Masset stared as if his eyes could pin her in place until he got that warrant. “This country never should have let weaklings like you in.”
Bronte stepped beside him and faced the chief. “Take it up with the goddess! I was born here!”
His syphon had a spitfire button detrimental to the state of her health. “It’s alright. I’ve got this.” Someday she’d be able to stand up to fools like the chief all on her own, but it wasn’t today.
“It most certainly is not alright!”
Footsteps crashed through the woods. Vincent heard them long after he should have sensed the person’s vibes. He needed to get out of the gyre before someone else crept up on them, although if another enemy walked onto Rallis land, massive security overhauls would be top priority for everyone on the estate.
“Sir!” Gerald’s voice came from right. The former lieutenant was Vincent’s right hand man around the estate. Edmund was right beside him.
“Sir, are you alright?” The ex-soldier’s eyes went wide at the destruction of the white trees.
“I’m fine. Have the sentries escort Chief Masset all the way to the property line. He went in the wrong direction as he was leaving.”
“Yes, sir!” The young man saluted yet again, despite Vincent’s continued orders to cease. Gerald relayed the command into the amplifier wired to his throat. The man had little mage power left. Even sending sound waves was difficult for him. “We’ve been combing the estate when he didn’t exit through the gates.” He bent down to the chief, flung the older man over his shoulder, and stomped off. Gerald’s mage sense may have been permanently fried on his first mission out, but he was stronger than an ox.
Edmund surveyed the scene. His hands in his pockets, he nodded absently. “I like what you’ve done with the place. You two have added your own touch to the gyre. Your first undertaking as a couple. Makes a statement. Even the goddess approves. We can use this. She’s definitely one of ours now.”
“I am not one of yours. And Masset is coming back to arrest me! Why?” Her voice lost its strength with the question. “Does he know…what I am? How could he know?”
Edmund shook his head. “Who knows what he thinks? But Masset will never be able to arrest you.” He squinted and took a step back, his hand squeezing at his forehead. “How can you stand it in there? You two are alright, aren’t you? Because if you need help, please tell me you can get out on your own. I’d rather not come in.”
“We’re fine.” Vincent was quick to reassure him. “Get out of here before you get sick.”
Edmund nodded and jogged off through the trees.
He squeezed her hand, though he wanted to put his arms around her. The scared, prickly anger in her tight brow and flat lips told him such a touch was unwelcome. “Trust me on this. Masset cannot go up against my family and win.”
“You want me to trust you? Then get me out of here! I should never have come in the first place.” The tipsy, happy effects of the gyre’s energy on her were long gone. Another charge to lay at Masset’s feet.
“I should have told my mother no for once in my life. Masset is going to realize what I am!”
“He can’t get you here.”
“But I’m not staying here forever.”
He slipped his hands toward the nape of her neck. “He’s not getting you. Period. Do you think I’m going to let him—anyone—take you away?” He swallowed hard against the regret burning in his gut. She had suffered for thirteen years because he’d been too weakened to protect her. “I would have come after you. But I didn’t even think you were real. When we met, I was…”
“Hurt. By a spell.” She nodded. “I wondered. Afterwards.”
Not quite right, but close. “You were here and gone before I could wake up enough to realize you weren’t a dream. If nothing else, then trust that I’m not going to let anything happen to my only lifeline to living without pain.”
Her gaze dropped to the ground.
He dared to pull her into his chest.
She went willingly.
He wrapped his arms around her small frame.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she muttered against his chest. “Masset is coming back for me.”
He sighed. Bronte was a practical girl. She wouldn’t have survived otherwise.
“And we’ll stop him again.”
Obtaining a warrant would keep Masset occupied. He’d never find a judge who would sign an arrest order for a Non residing within the senator’s estate. But she was right. Outside the boundaries of the estate was another matter, though Edmund would be whispering in every judge’s ear the moment he got back to the big house.
Because of the chief’s bigotry, Vincent needed to act faster than planned. But he’d make it work. Quietly though. Bronte was sure to object to his plan. He’d spring it on her as gently as possible. Now wasn’t the time.
He’d change the world for her.
* * * *
The trek back through the woods hurt. Her feet wobbled and blistered inside her grubby heels. The hike out was impossibly longer than the trip in. After the duel between Vincent and Masset, the mass of energy inside her weighed her down. How could something as ephemeral as mage vibes weigh so much? She didn’t want to take another step, not in these shoes, though Vincent had retrieved them for her.
They passed a fallen tree; its long trunk lay parallel to their path. She halted. Tree after tree clogged any hint of the horizon or her car. With no end in sight, she would at least have satisfaction for her feet. Right now. Bronte plopped down on the log, jerking Vincent to a stop with their connected hands. She hadn’t let go of him. She’d kept her promise.
The rough bark snagged her skirt. She shifted and a few threads popped. She toed off one shoe with an achy grimace. Vincent knelt, dropped her hand, and pulled off the left shoe.
He looked up at her, his hand firm on her ankle. She turned her head the other way. It would be so easy to fall into the rhythm that existed between them. And impossible to stay.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him reach up to her hair. He pulled back with a small stick in his hand and tossed it into the brush. He leaned in and scooped her off the log. It happened so quickly that her arm automatically went around his shoulders.
He held her high against his chest, their eyes inches apart. They spent a silent moment studying each other. She supposed he was giving her a chance to object. Though she had many protests bottled up inside, being denied a chance to walk all the way to her car was not one of them. She was the sensible sort.
With exhaustion as her silent excuse, she relaxed against him. His sigh of relief pressed against her body. At the same moment his mage energy released with a gentle, controlled push. The complete opposite of the way his energy worked against the chief, this was a gentle stream, not to deflect a spell but to deflect her weight. She wrapped her other arm around him, her head falling naturally into the crook of his neck. He continued through the forest, carrying her as if she was no more burden than walking out by himself.
His scent filled her. It was all Vincent, no hint of cologne, just a trace of sweat that wiped away the sophisticated veneer that had surrounded him in his family’s home. The short whiskers on his jawline grabbed at a few strands of her hair from the top of her head. She let them cling, the rest of her hair already a sweaty wreck.
Vincent’s steady rhythm gave her a touch of peace and allowed her to think. Her choler unwound thread by thread. She took a breath and lined up her thoughts. If she disappeared from Rallis Territory before Chief Masset could return, he couldn’t follow her hom
e to Locke Territory. There was little cooperation between founding families. No Southern Alliance family would assist the enforcer of a Central Coalition territory. For once, mage politics were on her side. She just needed to get home.
To keep her here, Vincent had crimped every pseudo-freedom she’d enjoyed for the past thirteen years. Though his vibes made her feel like she finally fit in her own skin, it wasn’t worth dying over.
The edge of the woods came into view. Her car waited in the middle of the gravel road. She took another breath of him, one last inhalation of his essence.
He stopped in front of the old Volvo and reached for the handle of the passenger door. She slid out of his arms and into the heat of her car.
She grabbed his wrist as he started to back away. “You have to let me go before he comes back. You know this. Get my pass changed. Let me leave.” She looked into his blue eyes as he crouched down before her. His broad shoulders took up almost the entire width of the door’s opening. Even if she had his strength, she would still be afraid to take on Masset.
“Masset can’t win against a Rallis. The family rules this territory.”
She tilted her chin. “It seems Chief Masset and I are in the same boat. I can’t win against you either.”
“Bronte, you and I are on the same side. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He reached under her knees and tucked her legs into the car, shut her door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“I am not being stubborn,” she began as soon as he sat down behind the steering wheel. “Case in point, I am letting you drive. I just want to be free to go about my life.”
“Hiding isn’t much of a life.”
“Neither is having your choices taken away. Vincent, you have all the power. I have none. I’m stuck following your commands.”
He dared to smile. “Sweetheart, going into the gyre was not following my commands. You are freer here than you ever have been. You don’t have to hide who you are. Not here. You have choices. You just have to find the courage to make them.”
“I’m not that brave. Nor am I that stupid.”
“You stood up to Masset in the house and in the gyre. That was brave.”
“Do you think that was the first time I stood up to an enforcer? Besides, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to let him arrest me over a leaf.”
“Not then. Not ever. Not for any reason.”
She couldn’t hold his gaze. He was too intent, too powerful. Too magnetic. She looked away and smoothed her fingers over the rip in the upholstered seat. “Promise me you’ll let me go tomorrow. No more pulling strings to keep me here.”
“I can’t keep you safe if you’re not here.”
“You are the biggest threat to my safety. No one knew what I was until I came here. If Senator Casteel knew why you wanted me, I’m sure he would refuse to extend my pass.”
“There is no Senator Casteel.”
“Thanks to the Rallises there will be soon enough,” she retorted.
“Then the new Senator Casteel will be grateful for what we’ve done and he’ll let me keep what’s mine.”
“Maybe I should tell him that I’m a syphon.” She thrust the words like a sharp sword, but her threat held little power. She was too tired to do anything more than talk big. She glanced at the clock. 3:02. She rubbed her gritty eyes. She’d been here for a little over three hours and she was drained, a combination of driving all night and having the foundation she’d built her life on explode to bits. “That would get me out of here.” And tied to a flaming stake.
“Tell them.” His hard voice held a battle-ready anger she didn’t share. “Tell your parents. I’ll stand behind you. Beside you. In front of you. Wherever you need me.”
She shook her head. A disbelieving laugh that held no humor bubbled out of her. “No. My mother would do the lynching herself. Especially if she knew I helped…” She waved her hands around, searching for a word. “Grow the gyre. That was a lot of power. A scary power. We could have hurt someone.”
“Someone did get hurt. Masset.” He glanced over at her. “He would have killed you, Bronte. What should we have done? Let him?”
“If anyone else had been around, they would have been crushed. What if your brother had arrived sooner?” Her voice cracked.
His hand landed on her head like a big paw. It was reassuring in a gruff, silent way. He started up the car. The keys were still in her purse. He guided the car over the gravel path. The gyre’s energy faded with the distance until it was too faint for her syphon power to pull any longer. She touched the passenger window, hanging on to the sensations as long as she could.
“This part of the drive is rough. Mage power doesn’t work here.”
Sure enough, they hit a huge pothole and then bumped through a meadow. A one-story house sat in the middle of it. Four stone columns supported the roof’s broad edge. It hung over a long porch accessible by three stone steps. The natural wood siding on the house blended with the meadow and surrounding forest. The double front doors were black with a thin strip of windows near their tops.
“No driveway?” Her voice hiccupped in the middle as they hit another bump in the field. She rolled down her window and stuck out her hand, letting the tall, thin weedy stalks that dotted the field brush against her as they drove past. They were crisp and brown with fuzzy tops that protected seeds.
His jaw hardened. “I let it grow over. Since Double-Wide’s been so damn active, I’d rather no one came here anyway. Lately whenever I’ve been here, it’s to recupe. I can’t have people around for that.”
“Does it work?” she asked as he turned right in front of the house and parked the car. “Does not having a driveway keep your family away?”
He shook his head with a vexed laugh and got out. Bronte stepped barefoot into the weeds and pulled her violin from the backseat. He hauled her battered duffel bag from the trunk. She’d packed it with the bare essentials, planning only for a few hours’ sleep in a motel on the drive home. He waited by her side, his expression hesitant, hopeful. She couldn’t imagine he looked vulnerable very often.
“I’ll take the couch,” he offered. “Or you could…if you wanted to…you could sleep at the big house.” He fumbled over his gentlemanly offer.
The big house contained at least four Rallis mages plus their mage servants. She’d take his cabin. She climbed the steps and stopped in front of the doors. She met his eyes despite the nervous flutter in her gut. Her body was more alive, more awake than normal. She wanted to sing it back to sleep. This moment held a significance she didn’t want it to have.
He set her bag on the stone porch, reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a long key, with jagged, uneven teeth. She raised an eyebrow at it.
“There were days when using a key was much easier than using energy.”
There were days…past tense…as if those days were over thanks to her.
He opened the door, picked up her bag, and waited. She set one foot over the threshold and then the other. With three paces into the cool, dark space, she found herself in the kitchen. A long table dominated the open room. Even through the dim light she could see the eight empty chairs that lined the rectangular table, as if a large pioneer family gathered around it for supper.
The room brightened as a collection of lanterns came on. They dangled from the ceiling over the table. A large fireplace and chimney took up a quarter of the wall to her right. A doorway before it led into a bedroom. There was no door to the separate room. She could see the bed pushed against the front wall with a quilt draped over it, an artistic smear of greens on a white background.
On the other side of the table, the kitchen appliances and wood counter stood. Shelves instead of cabinets lined the walls and held a minimal number of plates, bowls, and pans. The stove was chrome with rounded edges, the shape reminiscent of another era. But it was the refrigerator that grabbed her attention. She pointed a finger it, her palm facing up to convey a bit more politeness, though nothing
could soften her baffled curiosity. “Your refrigerator is pink.”
“Yeah.” Vincent shrugged. “Edmund’s idea of a joke.” His voice held weary acceptance. He set her bag on the bed and then came to stand behind her. “When this house was almost complete, I got called out on a mission. I came back to find the place all done. With a pink fridge. Stuffed with food, thanks to Cook. But the color is all thanks to Edmund.”
Her smile widened at the thought of Vincent returning to his brother’s surprise. It was apparent even to her that Edmund strived to anchor his brother to the lighter side of life. Vincent needed that…although Bronte hardly approved of Edmund working to keep her anchored to Vincent.
She resumed her exploration of the small house. Another doorway stood down from the refrigerator, but she couldn’t see where it led. Along the rest of the wall in the living area, books stood at attention on floor-to-ceiling shelves. A couch and a fat leather chair sat facing the back window.
The house was sparse. Lonely. She didn’t need to ask why he’d never gotten rid of the pink refrigerator. She drifted over to the books and scanned their titles.
Mages of the New World Colonies: Power and Partnership
Mage Settlement of New England 1641 - 1775
Women’s Mage Power and Life in Plymouth Colony
“Is this what you read for fun?” She reached for one, the impact of the title like a hot fist to her chest. “Deadly Mages: Sirens, Syphons, and Necromancers,” she read aloud. Her throat clogged up like it was stuffed with cotton. The binding creaked a warning as she opened it to its middle. She stared down at a rough illustration of a beautiful woman cradling a withered man in her lap. A syphon sucking a mage dry, Bronte guessed.
He took the book from her, folded it shut, and put it back. “That one’s not pleasant reading.”
She turned back toward his shelves to search out other gems. One book had no title. She slipped it from its spot on the shelf. It was heavy in her hands. The leather cover was plain on the front as well.
“What’s this?” She opened it and darted a glance at him, daring him to stop her.
