“No, you idiot!” Alaina looked up at him. “I never said that I didn’t want to marry you. But it isn’t right to enter a holy union without reason. You certainly don’t …” She couldn’t say the word.
August looked shocked before realization dawned in his eyes. “I’ve been treating you like some kind of business partner, haven’t I? You get this. I get that. Simple. But that’s not what you want, not what any woman wants—certainly not what you deserve.”
Finally, he got it. They could go their separate ways. She would figure some way not to get herself killed. Maybe find a craftsman somewhere … No. Marrying someone wouldn’t be fair to the man. Alone. Forever.
“I’ve been a child. No more.” August dropped to his knee and held the engagement ring out to her. “Alaina, will you marry me?”
She scowled at him. Again? Really?
“Not for safety and convenience,” he said. “In the short time I’ve known you, you’ve stolen my heart. I didn’t face down Emar out of a sense of obligation or to win a bride. I dueled him because your death would have meant mine anyway. Marry me because I couldn’t imagine going on without you. Because I love you.”
Those words could not be true. Yet, the hand holding the ring shook. Was he nervous? Could he actually be afraid that she’d say no?
Was it somehow possible that he told the truth about loving her?
Tears leaked from her eyes. “That is a reason to get married. Thank you. But I can’t.”
“Alaina …”
“Milord … August … Auggie, you’re offering me everything I’ve ever wanted. A good man. Safety. Security … Love. But I don’t deserve you.”
He stayed on one knee, swaying, looking really uncomfortable. Losing blood. But he made no move to get up. “Didn’t you hear what the tender said? You’re allowed to be happy. You deserve happiness.”
Why wouldn’t he just let her go? She knew what people thought of her, and it wasn’t that she was worthy of anything other than a noose.
“You’re not evil,” he said. “You were born with power that threatens the king’s rule. Put away that power and promise never to use it again. All will be forgiven. It’s the Holy One’s wish.”
Sunlight reflected off the sparkling diamond in his hand. So tempting. So, so tempting.
“It’s what you want,” he said, “and it’s what you deserve. Think about it. Have you ever done anything actually bad? And you saved my life and another if you count that jerk you made me let go.”
She touched the ring. Real. But it couldn’t be.
Auggie nodded. “Go ahead.”
Alaina slipped the ring on her finger. It looked good there, like it belonged. “Yes. A thousand times, yes.”
She threw her arms around him, and her lips met his. He rose and lifted her from her feet.
When they finally broke their kiss, Auggie looked at the smiling faces of all who watched. “Let’s get us married.”
“Now?” she said. “Wouldn’t you prefer to have a huge wedding with your father present?”
“Oh no,” he said. “I’m not taking any chance on you getting away.”
“On one condition.” Alaina broke his grip and faced him. “I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If I’m really not a horrible person, then neither are the other people who are being executed for the same crime. That’s not okay. Make this situation right.”
“Alaina! There’s a reason for the laws. Remember the Wizard’s War? The devastation?”
“That doesn’t make it okay to kill people for something beyond their control. There’s got to be another way.”
Auggie closed his eyes for a moment. “It’s the law of the three kingdoms. A duke alone can do nothing.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You have more power and influence than any besides a king. You can do something.”
He sighed. “Very well. I’ll do anything within my power to change it, though I don’t think my efforts will be terribly effective.”
She hugged him, and Auggie organized the wedding party, as he put it, “before they suffered any more doubts or interruptions.”
When the tender finally pronounced them married, he kissed her again. “Now I truly can call you my lady.”
She looked in wonder at the second ring on her finger. “I’m Alaina Asher. It’s hard to believe.”
He winced, and her eyes narrowed.
“After all that, you’re having doubts?” she said.
“No! It’s just that … you have to understand that my family has this really stupid tradition of giving all the children names that start with ‘A.’ Bad enough that generations have inflicted this too-cutesy crap on their kids, but my grandfather, Alton, married Adalyn.”
“Okay,” she said. “So?”
“Then my mom, Alexis, married a man named Gabe, and he promptly changed his name to Abriel. Abriel Asher. How nuts is that?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s insane!” Auggie said. “Now that I’ve married Alaina, I’m continuing the precedent. I will not allow our heirs for the next hundred years to force their spouses to change their names all for some stupid tradition. It ends with me.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I like it.”
“No! Absolutely not. So let it be heard that I hereby decree that no Asher child will ever again be saddled with an alliterative name.”
Alaina grinned. “We’ll see.”
Auggie groaned.
THE END
Auggie and Alaina’s daughter, Ashley, appears in my epic fantasy novel, Rise of the Mages. (Sneak Preview follows!) If you enjoyed this novella, you’re going to love that book. It will be available on Amazon October, 1, 2015.
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Sneak Preview of Rise of the Mages
Strange dreams of a beautiful young woman leave journeyman apothecary Alexander “Xan” Conley exhausted. That’s not good since a single mistake could kill a patient. To complicate matters, he’s afraid that finding a way to end the nighttime meetings would mean never seeing the girl again, a horrible thought considering she’s the closest thing to a love life he has.
His existence radically changes when a tenacious catcher bent on capturing and executing Xan forces him and his friends to flee their homes. As Xan quests to rescue his dream girl from the same fate that awaits him, he discovers that the catcher is part of a deadly conspiracy.
Xan’s sole path to safety is to become a mage, thereby embracing forces that nearly destroyed the world during the Wizards War. He must choose between two terrible options—saving the lives of those he loves or risking everyone by ushering in a new age of magic.
1.
Xan jolted alert as the shop door slammed open and a huge figure burst inside.
“Where’s Rae?” a man’s voice shouted.
Xan’s sleep-blurred eyes couldn’t bring the man into focus. “M-master Hess? Master Rae’s out at the Simpson farm—” The hulking blacksmith carried something. A boy, his son Ira, slumped in his arms. “What symptoms?”
“Huh?” Hess said.
Xan rushed across the room. “What. Are. His. Symptoms?”
“Are you blind and daft? He’s out!”
Ira’s forehead felt like his father’s forge. “What happened?”
“Stupid boy ate a mushroom he found in the forest.” Pain etched Hess’ voice.
“What did it
look like?”
“Like a mushroom!”
Xan’s mind raced. What did he know about fungi? So hard to think through the fog of sleep clouding his mind. Was it twenty-two types that grew near Eagleton? No. Twenty-three, and two of those types could kill.
Hess turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Xan said.
“To get help at the apothecary over at Rarytown.”
“That’s half a day’s ride. Your son might be dead by then.”
“What else can I do? Rae’s not here!” Panic danced in Hess’ eyes. His fists clenched and unclenched helplessly.
Making potions was a lot different than diagnosing patients, but Xan didn’t have a choice. If he did nothing, Ira would probably die from the poison. “I can treat him.”
“You’re a blasted kid.”
Really? Xan was seventeen! When were people going to see him as something other than a child? “I’ve been a journeyman apothecary for a year and mix almost all the potions that come out of this shop.”
Hess glanced at the door. “I should have paid more attention to where he was going. If something happens to him …” He let out a long breath. “What do I do?”
“Trust me. I can do this.” Xan hoped that wasn’t a lie. He rubbed his eyes. If only he could think straight.
Without a description of the mushroom, he didn’t know which poison to counteract. What if he chose wrong?
After a few moments of concentrating, the answer came to him. First, induce vomiting to get the mushroom out of Ira. No further damage would be done, and, maybe, Xan could figure out which it was from the undigested remains.
Xan turned to the shelves behind him and selected three jars, quickly mixing the contents in correct quantities and dumping the resulting liquid into a vial. “We’ve got to get this into Ira. Hold his mouth open.”
Hess laid the boy on Xan’s worktable. Ira’s shirt rose in the process, revealing red splotches on his stomach.
A rash? That didn’t make sense. Neither of the poisonous mushrooms created a rash.
Unless poison wasn’t the problem.
Xan hadn’t even considered the possibility that the symptoms were due to something else. What kind of blasted, rads-infested idiot was he?
Fever. Passing out. That rash. The ailment had to be Ezeal’s Curse. And Xan had been about to treat it with ground sarro root. That would have killed Ira for sure.
The vial slipped from Xan’s grasp and tumbled to the floor. It hit and burst into shards.
“By the Holy One!” Hess shouted. “What happened?”
Xan’s heart pounded. Should he admit what he’d almost done? But then Hess would never trust his judgment. Probably wouldn’t even believe the real cause of Ira’s symptoms.
“Sorry. My mistake. I’ll whip up another batch.”
Xan turned back to the shelves and tried to shield his work from view. Hopefully, Hess wasn’t paying attention to the use of different ingredients. When Xan finished—including adding some coloring to make it look more like the original potion—they forced Ira to down the medicine.
“It wasn’t the mushroom that made him sick,” Xan said.
“What? But—”
“Ira will be just fine with treatment.”
Hess clenched his meaty hands into fists. “Why should I trust—”
“When you come back tomorrow for another dose, Master Rae will verify my diagnosis.”
“Boy, if anything happens to my son, I’m going to kill you.”
“I understand,” Xan said. “But look.”
Ira’s eyes flitted open. “Dad?”
“Your son is going to be just fine,” Xan said.
Hess ruffled Ira’s hair. “If you’re sure … I guess … The boy does seem better.” He reached for his coin purse.
“No,” Xan said. “Tomorrow.”
Hess picked up his son. “Well. Thanks, then.” He mumbled something else as he walked out of the shop.
Xan shut the door behind him and leaned his back against it. His breathing quickened, forcing him to suck in air to calm himself. He’d almost killed a little boy. What a ridiculous, blasted, idiotic, ridiculous rads-infested thing to do!
He couldn’t make mistakes like that.
“That’s it,” he muttered. “I’ve got to do something.”
He had to gain a respite from the dreams.
Not that he hadn’t tried to find a solution. Not that he had any idea how to proceed. Not that he could even think straight.
Xan glanced at a bag stowed near his feet. There was one sure way to clear his thoughts.
No. He’d allotted himself two seeds per day and had already had three with the entire afternoon left.
But did he have a choice?
Xan pulled a costrel from the bag and worked out the stopper. Such a bad idea. He tilted the leather container toward his open hand. And hesitated.
Neat rows of glass canisters and dried plants stared at him, each a little representation of Master Rae’s teachings and each full of reprimand for what he was about to do. Not to mention that anyone walking by outside could see him through the window. The door could swing open at any moment.
“Get a hold of yourself, man.”
Keeping a close watch on the door and window, he tossed a licuna seed into his mouth. The world brightened, giving him—hopefully—an hour or two of clear thinking.
So how to cure an ailment when you have no idea as to the cause?
Simple. You asked Master Rae—the best apothecary in the duchy of Vierna, maybe even in the entire kingdom of Bermau—to help. Which was exactly what Xan should have done after the first night of dreaming. But it was too late. He just knew how that conversation would go.
“Hey, Master Rae,” Xan said, “how can I get rid of these dreams I’m having?”
“Dreams?” Xan mimicked, lowering his voice and injecting a phlegmy quality. The result came out sounding absolutely nothing like Master Rae. “How long have you been having them? What are they about? Why do you want to get rid of them? Who—”
Xan put his hands up to escape the torrent. “Just me talking to a girl in a meadow. They’re nothing unusual except that I have them every night. For twenty nights. And I recall them more vividly than any dream I’ve ever had, like they’re more real than anything else in my life. And that they leave me feeling like I’m not sleeping at all.”
“You haven’t gotten any sleep for twenty days!”
“Staying in bed pretty much all the time on the weekends helps,” Xan said in his normal voice, “and I’ve been chewing shaved variegation bark.”
“That would work for a while, but, if you’re really as tired as you say …”
Xan stared at the floor. He couldn’t even face the imaginary specter of his mentor. “I’ve been taking licuna seeds for the last week.”
“Seeds! Are you insane? You’re fired.” Xan paused from speaking in the deep voice. “Tarnation boy! Didn’t I teach you better than to mix medicines while impaired, even simply by the lack of sleep? And you did it while taking a dangerous drug? Forget just being fired, I’m having you arrested.”
Xan wouldn’t be able to bear hearing that condemnation, that disappointment, from the real Master Rae. And what would he do next? Being discharged before receiving his letter meant no other apothecary would take him on.
He’d risen to journeyman faster by a year than anyone he’d ever heard of. The best apothecary around trusted him almost like an equal—some of the time, anyway. His work helped people.
All that ruined.
“Why didn’t you ask me for help sooner?” he said as Master Rae, stroking an imaginary beard.
“Because I thought it wasn’t a big deal? Because I thought I could handle it myself? Because I thought you would tease me about wet dreams?”
“No. I don’t think that’s quite it.”
Xan stared at the floor. “It’s because I’m a complete fool. You see, the girl is pretty—really pretty
—and I like being with her. And I was afraid you might end the dreams permanently.”
How could he be such a complete, blasted moron? Was he so desperate for a girlfriend that he’d risk his health and, worse, patients’ lives for an imaginary one?
He rubbed his temples. Unfortunately, yes, he was. And she wasn’t even a real pretend girlfriend—he’d never even kissed her!
Ridiculous!
His hands shook, and he steadied them against his legs. If he could get just one night of pure rest, he’d be okay. There’d be no more mistakes—no more almost killing a patient. He just needed to find the right potion.
Not that he hadn’t pored over every book in the shop already. How was it that Master Rae’s references held cures for everything from toenail fungus to balding hair but not a single mention of stopping dreams? No help for it but to figure something out himself.
Xan had never heard of a report of a patient dreaming when knocked out with Wizard’s Beard. Lord Oxley’s Bane suppressed mental function. Either of those could work, but, if so, wouldn’t there be a potion listed in the literature? Perhaps a mixture of the two?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Was he really considering, without any testing, trying a combination of two powerful herbs on himself? What were the chances the mixture wouldn’t make him sick? Not much higher than the chances it would actually help.
But better that than no chance at all. Right?
Xan groaned. Reasoning like that was sure to cause a journeyman apothecary to spend the next three days expelling the contents of his stomach from both ends.
After an hour researching, mixing and muttering, and tossing out results that didn’t seem quite right, he capped the bottle of murky green liquid and closed up the shop.
He stumbled through his long walk across Eagleton and halfway up the mountain to the Diwens’ house. In his room, he held the potion in front of him. Its ugly color and floating brown chunks did nothing to inspire confidence.
Xan swirled the liquid and removed the cork. Sniffing, he waved it under his nose. “No noxious fumes.” He brought it to his mouth and closed his eyes. “One. Two. Three.”
Abuse of Power (Rise of the Mages 1) Page 8
