by Kat Howard
“Fine. Sort of anticlimactic. Like, I was expecting the Mages’ Club to feel, more, I don’t know, magical. Instead, it was just boring and out of touch. The whole thing felt like a college interview.”
“So no big offer of alliance or anything like that?”
“Not even close. I’m glad—I’d rather make my own choices. Like you always say, if tradition holds us back, we need to think outside of it.” They came to a stop, and Laurent bent down to fix a loose shoelace.
“We should talk about that sometime,” Grey said. “There’s all sorts of things that could be done, ways to strengthen magic, to make the Unseen World more powerful, that people aren’t even thinking of yet.”
“We’re the future, right?” Laurent said. “That’s the point of the Turning. Clean out what isn’t working, bring in what could. Speaking of, when’s your next duel?”
“Two days from now,” Grey said.
“Why don’t you stop by after? We should discuss our own strategy. We don’t need Merlin in order to make an alliance.”
“Exactly,” Grey said. “I’ll text you later, set it up.”
Laurent waved goodbye, and Grey headed for the subway. After the debacle with Miranda, he hadn’t told anyone how he supplemented his power. Maybe it was time. It wasn’t like Laurent had any great attachment to Unseen World traditions, and he might be able to see the potential in what Grey was doing. He’d decide after the next challenge.
• • •
Outside the Mages’ Club, Miles waved off his car and driver and walked home in the wind-tossed night. The air smelled like the promise of snow, and the damp soaked into his joints.
They ached.
It had been that sensation years ago—waking up with pain in his joints, the reminder of his own mortality sitting on him like a smog—that had made him realize what was happening. The small spells that he’d come to think of as background noise, the ones he used constantly, that should have kept him from feeling the minor aches and pains of age, were failing. And there was only one reason for such basic spells to fail: He was losing his magic.
Unacceptable, of course. No one could hold a House if they didn’t have magic.
Once he had realized what was happening, he had taken steps, made changes. So much magic came out of Shadows, and the Angel of the Waters was the perfect conduit. It hadn’t taken that much to set some aside. To collect the magic and store it against need. His need.
But lately he could feel the signs again in his body, in his magic. He knew them. The slowness, the aches, the tremors, all returning. It seemed that what he had thought of as a permanent solution was merely a stopgap.
There had been a failure of magic today. Not in a duel. And so it was impossible to comfort himself with the idea that magic had halted in its path because of the words of a spell spoken out of order, or a magician’s failure of nerve in a moment of pressure. It had been a dishwashing spell, at the Mages’ Club. The kind of spell that had been cast thousands of times, a spell that barely even required thinking about. Instead of clean glassware, there was a shattered heap of useless fragments, still stained.
Magic was breaking.
The wind picked up, tossing plastic bags and fallen leaves with abandon. The temperature dropped, and rain—hard, angry rain, just on this side of ice—spat from the sky.
Here, where no one could see, where no one would know, Miles gestured, his hand hidden in his coat pocket. He spoke a word under his breath, the will mattering more than the sound.
The rain parted, and fell around him.
He exhaled. He had enough magic. Today, he still had enough.
But.
His joints ached.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Grey leaned against the rough brick wall of the building and pulled his illusions closer to his body. The thing that mattered right now, more than the jagged press of brick into his side, more than the rot rising from the uncollected trash bags on the corner, more than the thousand potential distractions and annoyances sharing the sidewalk with him, was that no one notice how badly he was hurt, especially not here in the mundane world. Someone actually seeing his wounds would mean things like doctors and hospitals and explanations that wouldn’t be believed anyway. Better to stay hidden, even if being hidden made things like walking more difficult.
The duel had gone poorly. No. The duel had been a fucking mess. It was the heir to House Morgan. Violet, her name was. Or Daisy. Something like that. All the girls in that House were named after flowers. He hadn’t thought anyone there knew anything about his relationship with Rose, but someone must have suspected because what should have been a fairly easy challenge had turned bloody. Marigold or Peony or whatever had wrapped him in a Briar Rose illusion—a forest of thorns he’d had to fight his way out of. He’d been able to do it, but they’d sunk in and cut deeply before he’d finally broken free.
Plus, the last girl hadn’t had as much magic in her bones as he had thought, and so he’d gone into the challenge weak. Hadn’t had enough power to heal himself after casting his spell, so he had forgone healing and done his best to hide the weakness, the wounds, as much as he could so no one would know how bad it was.
He took another step and gritted his teeth against the pain. He pressed his hands harder against the wounds in his abdomen, winced as blood flowed over them, as he felt the soft edges of opened skin. He thought maybe the bleeding was slowing but didn’t want to look back to see if there was a trail of blood visible behind him—sometimes looking too closely at an illusion could be enough to break it.
Two blocks away from Laurent’s building. He could get there. He pushed off the wall, felt his legs threaten to go out from under him. Forced them straight and steady. Steadyish.
He would need to replenish his stores of magic. He would need to do that soon. He’d wait to tell Laurent about where he was getting it—he couldn’t afford to share this time.
Grey stumbled through the sidewalk crowds like a drunk, arms wrapped tight around his abdomen, as if that might keep the blood in. He kept his gaze down, locked on his feet, one in front of the other. He was shaking when he walked into Laurent’s lobby, but he hadn’t fallen.
“I’m afraid you can’t be here,” the doorman said, moving toward Grey as if to herd him back onto the sidewalk.
Perfect. Some idiot new guy. The day just kept getting better. “I’m Grey Prospero. I’m on Laurent Beauchamps’ approved list.”
“I’m quite sure you’re not.” The doorman puffed himself up, indignant.
“Send me up.” Grey spent energy he didn’t have charming the doorman into calling the elevator for him, rather than wasting time fighting with the man. He sagged against the elevator’s walls and let himself fall, hard, against Laurent’s door.
Laurent heard the thud. Looked through the peephole, then yanked the door open. “Shit. Shit. Grey, wake up.”
Grey’s eyes rolled open as Laurent pulled him in the door. “Challenge. Hurt. Don’t tell.”
“Yeah, I can see that you’re hurt. The blood everywhere was my first clue. What do you mean, don’t tell? How did no one notice this?”
“Illusion.” He coughed and blood spattered his mouth.
“You cast an illusion to—you know what, later.” Laurent pulled back the other man’s shirt. Swallowed hard. It looked like Grey had been flogged with a whip made of razor blades. “Okay. That’s . . . that’s not so bad. I can help. But I think you should let me call someone. This is maybe a little beyond the healing magic we were taught in school.”
Grey shook his head, regretting the movement even as he made it. “No calls. They’ll know I’m hurt.”
“Yes. And they’ll fix you. Better than I can.” He spoke slowly and clearly, as much to calm himself as in the fading hope of making Grey see his point. He knew the basics, of course, but the mess of blood and skin was a far cry from the precise cuts and supervised spells he’d been taught.
“No. They’ll tell.”
“T
ell who? Don’t be an idiot.” Laurent’s hands were sticky as he tried to clear away the blood, to see the extent of the damage.
“The next House that challenges me.”
“Sydney, then. At least let me call her.”
Grey reached up, wincing, his hand leaving a bloody print on Laurent’s arm. “She’ll know. She’ll remember. If you challenge me.”
“I won’t.”
“Said it wasn’t as bad as it looked.” His voice fading, the words half-whispered.
“I fucking lied, you idiot.” Arguing wouldn’t help, wouldn’t stop the blood washing over his hands in time with Grey’s increasingly erratic pulse. He wasn’t sure they had time to wait for someone to get there. Laurent breathed in and out, regulating the flow of air in his lungs, slowing his own heartbeat from galloped panic into something that approximated stability. He wished very specifically and succinctly not to fuck this up, hoping his affinity for luck would cancel out his lack of practice with major healing magic. Then he spoke the words that would slow blood leaking, would draw severed veins back together, would drive out infection. He bent his fingers into shapes that would have hurt if he’d been thinking of anything other than keeping his hands steady, and bit by bit, he healed his best friend.
Sweat stung his eyes and Laurent was shaking like a man gripped by fever when he had finished, but Grey’s skin was knit, the bleeding had stopped, and his eyes were clear.
“Did you,” Laurent asked, his voice a rasp, “at least win your challenge?”
“After all that,” Grey said as he sat up from the floor, “I better have.”
• • •
Later. After Laurent cleaned the blood from the floor of his hallway, after he washed the red handprint that ended in a smear from his door, while trying very hard not to think that it was Grey’s blood he was washing away, Grey’s blood on the clothing he was changing out of, that the blood had gotten there because of magic, and he was so angry at the very idea of magic at that moment that he didn’t even want to use basic spells to clean up, and so here he was, scrubbing like a mundane.
After his apartment almost looked normal again, and not like someone had performed surgery in his front hall. After the blood was gone from everywhere except his memory. After he washed his hands one more time.
After things were clean, he could start thinking about what had happened. Maybe then he could look at it straight on.
He had known the Unseen World could be harsh, knew the Turning carried risks, potentially fatal ones. But these people seemed to treat death like it was a fencing match. There were weapons, sure, but everyone would salute and go home after the ritual was completed. He’d watched it happen, when Sydney had been stabbed at her last challenge and then walked out of the room as if it were a paper cut. He’d let himself get swept up in that—let himself see the idea of death as a possibility, but one they would all shake off at the end.
It wasn’t. It wasn’t that at all.
He washed his hands again.
After the takeout Laurent had ordered arrived—because this was a thing he could do; he could order warm styrofoam containers of hamburgers cooked rare and covered in mushrooms and caramelized onions, thin French fries with some sort of truffle sauce, and he had to do something. After he had poured them both glasses of whiskey, Laurent said, “You could have died.”
“It wasn’t a mortal challenge. It just got a little out of hand.” Grey shrugged and kept eating. “Man, I’m starving.”
“A little out of hand.” Laurent put his burger down, half-eaten. “Speaking of hands, I’m pretty sure I had mine on your small intestine. That seems like more than a little.”
Grey drank. “These things happen. I’m fine. It’s no big deal.”
Laurent stared. “What do you mean, it’s no big deal? This was a nonmortal challenge. I thought there were rules. Precautions. Fucking safety measures, I don’t know.”
“Look, maybe you didn’t understand what you were getting into. Maybe you still don’t—it’s not like you’re the one taking any risks out there. But the Turning isn’t about precautions and safety measures. It’s about power, and about making sure you’re strong enough to claim it.”
Laurent set his glass down on the marble countertop. A big magic duel. Competition for power. He loved those things. Thrived on them—they had bought this apartment, his parents’ house. Every material comfort he wanted. He had thought he would love the Turning as well. “Just because Sydney’s in danger and not me doesn’t mean I think this is a joke, Grey. I know what the Turning is. I’m just trying to decide if I still think it’s worth it.”
“If it’s worth it? Worth it? Establishing a House means the difference between having actual power in this world and being nothing. Nothing else is worth as much. If you weren’t so fucking lucky, you’d get that.”
“Lucky,” Laurent said.
“That is what you’re best at, right? Luck?” Grey shrugged. “Some of us have to work.”
“Right. Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up,” Laurent said.
Grey pushed his plate away. “Look, I’m sorry. Pain’s making me say things I shouldn’t. But this might be my only chance to get back into the Unseen World, to really be a part of it again. And that matters to me.
“I hate the way these people look at me now, like I’m nothing now that I’m not standing behind Miranda’s skirts. Like they’re wondering if maybe I don’t belong here. I was born in this world—I was the heir to a House! No one belongs here more than I do, and I’m sick of being looked at like an object of pity. This is how I change that.”
Grey had never told him why Miranda had disinherited him—he said he had agreed to be bound to secrecy. At the time it had happened, Laurent had understood Grey’s decision not to fight his disinheritance. He would have had to prove that Miranda was incompetent to lead Prospero in order to overturn it, a thing that seemed impossible. But he wondered now whether it would have cleaned some of the poison from his wound if Grey had fought back then. “Sure. I get it. Just remember I’m on your side in this.”
“As much as you can be, anyway.”
Laurent thought back to his conversation with Sydney, when he had very carefully laid out the circumstances under which Grey could be challenged, and said nothing else.
• • •
A diner this time, early enough that pieces of the sky were still sunrise pink. Even so, Sydney had gotten there before Madison and was halfway through a plate of French toast drowned in syrup when the other woman slid into the banquette across from her.
“So, how’s your shoulder—wait, seriously, that’s what you’re eating? Are you secretly twelve?”
“I like syrup,” Sydney said. “And from the first part of your question, I gather you heard about the Blackwood challenge. It’s fine—all healed. Have you heard anything about what will happen to Colin?”
“Happen?” Madison asked, and flagged down a passing server for coffee.
“For altering the duel. Trying to make it fatal. Whatever he did.”
Understanding crossed Madison’s face. “Sydney, nothing will happen.”
Sydney set her fork down. “He was trying to kill me. In a nonmortal challenge. Which breaks the rules that were sent out at the beginning of this. Rules set by the Unseen World. And nothing will happen.”
“Right. Okay. I forget that you haven’t been through one of these before, and Laurent is new, too, and so no one has told you how things work.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Sydney said.
“Nope. You’re not. First of all, it was during a sanctioned challenge. There is a lot of leeway over what’s considered proper behavior in the course of one, and people don’t like to interfere. Fortune’s Wheel, blah blah blah. And the thing is, you were the better magician, and so you’re fine. His loss is considered punishment enough—he’s out of the Turning now.”
Sydney poured more coffee. “And second?”
“Special Projec
ts doesn’t have a criminal division.”
Sydney’s face went blank.
Madison sighed. “What I mean is, even under normal circumstances, the Unseen World doesn’t have a criminal justice system. What they have is a bunch of people with extraordinary power who take matters into their own hands. When the Unseen World decides that someone has crossed a line, there’s either social and economic sanctions—disinheritance being a popular one—or there’s the equivalent of vigilante justice. And this is a Turning, which means it’s not normal circumstances; it’s an entire event presaged on the ideas of upheaval and change. The fact that Colin is out of the Turning is enough. And if it’s decided that it isn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he has an accident in the next week or two. But there won’t be any formal consequences. Now or later.”
Sydney stabbed at her French toast. “These people.”
Madison held up her hands. “No argument. But happy as I’d be to spend the morning talking about how they all suck, I’ve got to run soon if I don’t want to be late to the office, so maybe I should answer the question you asked me here to talk about.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“No problem. So, you asked if House Prospero was doing anything out of the ordinary. Which, turns out, it is. Miranda has our office running two different financial scenarios—one where she shifts her investment portfolio very heavily into only Unseen World concerns, and the other where almost every investment is mundane.
“Now, that could be just caution or curiosity on her part, and I’m going to check Prospero’s files to see what the House has done in past Turnings, but it’s definitely odd.”
“You’re going to need to explain why this is out of the ordinary. Aren’t there usually financial rearrangements during a Turning?” Sydney asked, pouring more syrup over her plate.
Madison shuddered. “You’re doing that just to make my teeth hurt. I can tell. And yes—participation in the Turning tends to be an expensive endeavor, even if you’re not paying the big bucks for a champion. Plus, business alliances tend to change when magical ones do, so the fact that she’s running scenarios makes sense.
