“They aren’t after the others. They are after you.”
Cynder pulled me onwards ignoring my protests. I could barely keep up with my one heeled foot and one bare.
A black stallion was waiting for us.
“I can’t go with you,” I cried. “Whatever the danger is, I need to tell Luca’s family.”
A noise rattled past my ear.
“Gunshots!” hissed Cynder, picking me up and practically throwing me on the horse. Knowing we were being shot at was enough to bring me to my senses. I moved back to give Cynder room to jump on. Within seconds we were riding at breakneck speed into the night. I heard another gunshot, but it missed. We were too far away.
“Turn around!” I shouted loudly after ten minutes had passed and we were well out of view of the gunman.
“No can do. You might have made a promise to marry the prince, but I made a promise to protect you. If I turned around now, I’d be breaking that promise.” His voice was whipped up into the howling wind, and I had to strain my ears to hear him. I had no choice but to cling to him and see where it was that we ended up.
We rode like the wind for what felt like hours. I clutched onto Cynder’s waist tightly, afraid that if I let go, I’d fall. Despite the shawl, I was freezing. The wind whipped my hair and rain that had begun to fall was drenching my face. My bare foot felt like ice, and even though my other shoe would probably be useless wherever we were going, it was still better than none. Losing my shoe on the palace steps took me back to last year when Cynder had done the exact same thing. Dropping my shoe at the ball when a bomb went off. It was that action that had made him the prime suspect. No one had ever traced the shoe back to me. They would this time though. I was gone, but my shoe would be still sitting on the steps of the palace, waiting for someone to discover it.
The horse slowed down slightly, so I took the opportunity to look around me. I’d spent most of the journey with my face buried in Cynder’s back and my eyes closed. The lights of Thalia’s capital city twinkled below us, Luca’s parents’ castle easily recognizable in the center. The moon shone out between the grey clouds bathing it in a dull light. I recognized where I was. I’d been here not long before. Cynder had brought me to the mountains between Silverwood and Thalia. This was where I’d been so fearful of my life just days before. How ironic I was back here for my safety. Cynder veered off the road onto a rocky track I’d not seen on the journey here. A sheer cliff fell to one side into a canyon so deep I could barely make out the bottom in the darkness. Eventually, we stopped at a rocky outcrop. Behind a couple of bushes, I could make out the mouth of a cave. Cynder waved his wand, and a fire appeared. The light from it illuminated the cave. It was shallow but had ample cover from the elements. There were two thick blankets and pillows near the front.
Helping me down from the horse, he led me to the cave. Once inside he waved his wand again. My dress transformed from the beautiful gown into a plain green tunic and pants and on my feet were the warmest pair of slippers I’d ever encountered. He picked up a large fur-lined coat from the floor of the cave and wrapped it around me. Immediately I felt warm and dry.
“People are going to wonder where I am,” I said. “I don’t even know myself. Why are we here?” Cynder sat beside the fire and waved his wand for a third time. A couple of sandwiches appeared out of thin air. He handed one to me as I sat beside him.
“I can’t make food, but I can transport it here. Someone close by must have made these. I’m sorry I don’t have anything better.”
“You shouldn’t have taken me. What if there was a bomb?” I asked, ignoring the sandwich.
On his face, he wore a look of resignation.
“I had to take you. They wouldn’t stop until they found you and then you’d be dead. There was no bomb. I already told you that they are after you, not the Thalian Royal Family.”
“Who are ‘they’? Why do they want me dead?” My stomach growled, but my sandwich went uneaten. “Is this something to do with the MDS?”
Cynder sighed. “There is a lot you don’t know.”
I sat up straight now. I could tell by the way he was looking at me that this was going to be important. I was ready to hear the full truth.
He began to talk, his voice low and even. “I’ve always been a big supporter of Magi rights as you know, but I’m very involved in certain groups.”
“I know that you attended demonstrations,” I replied.
“I didn’t just attend. I organized some of them, back before it all got so dangerous and before I had to go on the run. There is a group of militant anti-Magi, and we were working to overcome them.”
“Everyone is anti-Magi in Silverwood it seems,”
“It seems that way at the moment,” Cynder replied with a sigh. “I should start at the beginning.”
I noticed he twiddled his thumbs as he spoke. It reminded me of my own habit of fiddling with things when I was nervous. “My parents grew up here in Thalia. My mother was the head chef at a hotel, and my father was the pastry chef.”
“So that’s where you learned your cooking skills,” I interjected.
“Yes. I’d often go into the kitchens and help them. I loved it there, but when I was seven, a job opportunity came up in Silverwood. There was a restaurant for sale. It was cheap because the previous owners weren’t very good at cooking. My parents snapped it up and bought one of the apartments above it. The restaurant was just outside the palace making it a prime spot.”
I knew where he was referring to. I’d been in his parents’ apartment a couple of times. I’d not noticed a restaurant on the ground floor though. Not that I’d really been paying attention. I’d always been too eager to get to Cynder.
“The restaurant was a great success. Word began to spread quickly, and within a few months of opening, we were fully booked every night. Things couldn’t have been better. Even at my young age, I was allowed to help out in the kitchens, and I loved it.”
“It sounds like quite the exciting childhood.” The only thing I’d been doing at seven years of age was climbing trees and scraping my knees. To think that we had grown up just a few hundred feet from each other, with only a wall separating us.
“It was except for one thing. Anti Magi feelings were high even then. My mother reminded me every night that I was not to tell anyone that I was a Mage. I was forbidden to use my magic anywhere except in the apartment. For a few years, everything was great, but I got careless. We were so busy in the restaurant, and I was just a kid. I thought it would be ok to use my magic. I chopped up some carrots using my wand. The door between the kitchen and the restaurant opened, and someone saw me. Instead of keeping it to themselves, they told the local newspapers. People stopped coming to the restaurant. The people that we considered regulars just stopped coming back. The rumors started. People said we conjured up all our food and it wasn’t even real.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I interjected. I’d seen Cynder cooking on enough occasions to know he was an excellent chef.
“It’s what the people thought. No one believed that we did it all by hand. Things just got worse. We were targeted for attacks. People threw eggs at us, smashed our windows, that kind of thing. A couple of months after the newspaper went out we had to close the restaurant. It was our last night of opening. My parents had long since stopped me working there.”
“They blamed you for what happened?”
“No. They never blamed me. It just wasn’t a safe environment anymore. We were threatened all the time. I don’t know why my parents kept it open as long as they did, but I think they were trying to close it down with some dignity. They were also trying to save just a few more pennies to move back to Thalia where it was safe. That night, there was a fire. The fire brigade managed to evacuate the apartments above, but the restaurant was gutted. My parents never got out. The official cause was a fire in the kitchen. A magical fire the newspapers reported. I saw the truth though. Someone had barricaded the exit. I could smell petrol.
Someone had done it on purpose. My parents were murdered for being Magi. Next to the door, someone had painted the letters MDS.”
My hand flew to my mouth “Oh, Cynder!”
I desperately wanted to comfort him, but I sensed he wanted to keep talking. My heart went out to the little boy watching his parents die in the most horrific way.
“The MDS,” I said, remembering what Frederick Pittser had said to me on the day of my coronation. “Frederick Pittser is one of them.”
“It stands for Magi Death Squad and basically means death to Magi. They’ve been around for a long time, but since your father died, they have been a lot more open with their actions. You are right about Pittser. I’m pretty sure it was him shooting at us back at the castle. If not him, it was one of his lackeys. They probably heard about me sniffing around for information and decided to kill the pair of us in one go.”
I took it all in. From the little I’d seen of the MDS, my death was becoming a priority, probably thanks to my public work on behalf of the Magi.
“What happened to you after your parents were killed?” I asked.
“The authorities wanted to take me in. I was ten years old.”
I slipped my hand in his, but he barely noticed. He was lost in the past. The best thing I could do was listen, so I did.
“I was shipped from foster family to foster family. Basically, anyone willing to take in a Magi, but I never lasted very long. Most families took away my wand and told me not to use magic as it was against the law. The last family I was with were the opposite. They pretty much made me their slave. I spent every hour of every day cleaning their house with magic. They were important and powerful enough not to have to worry about getting caught by the law. I guess it was good training to become a dishwasher. At fifteen I finally had enough and ran away. Luckily, I was found living on the streets by a Magi family. They lived in a rundown shack, constantly starving because they were not allowed to use their wands. Even then, jobs were incredibly hard to get for people like us.”
I thought back to the magi family I’d met when out with Leo. They’d lived in the most horrific conditions. I could imagine quite well how he lived.
“Many people visited the house,” Cynder continued. “It was always full. At first, I didn’t understand who they all were, but as I got older, I realized they were fighting a war. A war against the MDS… and your father.”
The Cave and the Truth
I could see how hard it was for him to tell me that he was in a group fighting my father although I could hardly blame him after everything my father had done. I squeezed his hand lightly to encourage him to continue. “I thought the Magi weren’t fighters.”
“We aren’t as such. Not that we would stand a chance if we were. There aren’t enough of us to openly fight. If your father had found out about us, we’d all have been locked up years ago.”
“So what did you do if you weren’t fighting?”
“We fought in our own way. Secretly. Our successes were small but undetected. We spent years recruiting new members. There are more Magi in Silverwood than you know, or, at least, there used to be. Most are masquerading as non-Magi and have been for years. We recruited from Laidys and Thalia. It was the beginnings of a group we named the Freedom of Magic.”
“But what have you actually done?” Recruiting people and hiding them in plain sight was one thing, actually doing something was another entirely.
“Actually, the last few years have been wasted somewhat. We’d spent years getting our people into your palace, thinking if we overthrew the king, the MDS wouldn’t have anyone to hide them. A lot of the Magi that worked there were part of our group.”
I stared at him open-mouthed. “You had a part in the riots last year?”
“No,” Cynder assured me. “In the end, your father’s own actions prevented us from having to do anything. I already told you that we didn’t want to use force. The riots happened exactly as you were told. At the time of your wedding, I was still on the run, but I know we had nothing to do with it. A lot of Magi were killed in the riots too. It wasn’t what we wanted at all. We only ever wanted peace. What last year taught us was that our plans and intelligence were severely lacking. We didn’t know about Xavier, and we didn’t know what your father was planning. All that time we’d spent getting access to the palace, and we realized we knew nothing.”
“My father had most of the palace bugged,” I told him. “If there were talks to overthrow my father, he would have known.”
“We were discreet, although there is every chance your father found us out. Not that it really matters now. Your father had already managed to fire all the Magi by the time of the riots.”
My brain was going double time, trying to wrap itself around everything Cynder was telling me. They’d spent so long trying to infiltrate the palace only to all be fired at the same time.
“If you weren’t planning to hurt him, what exactly were you planning to do?”
Cynder laughed without any humor. “Through years of spying on him, we’d managed to find out quite a few things. We planned on telling the media and exposing his secrets. We were almost set to do it before the events of last year unfolded.”
“What secrets?” I asked. I could well imagine my father having a few. He’d managed to keep the fact he had a cousin a secret.
“The fact that he was a member of the MDS, or, at least, he knew about them and actively encouraged their activities. My parents weren’t the only Magi to die at their hands during your father’s reign, but none or the murders were ever investigated.”
I didn’t know what to say. I should have been more surprised, but for a man who thrived on lies, it wasn’t the shock it could have been.
I had so many questions, but I couldn’t decide which to ask first. Eventually, I spoke again.
“So what now? I’ve opened up the palace to the Magi, but no one is interested. If you want to overthrow the monarchy, why are you even telling me this?”
“We don’t want to overthrow the monarchy. Not anymore. We want to work alongside you.” Cynder shifted his position so he was looking right at me instead of the fire. His face was pink with the heat.
“How?” I asked.
“Our main objective at the moment is to keep you safe. We still have a member of staff who has access to the palace. He’s there almost every day watching over you.”
I racked my brain to think who was left. My father had succeeded in emptying the palace of all magi, and despite my best efforts at recruitment, none had come back.
“There are no Magi left in the palace.”
“There is one. Daniel is a Mage.”
I’d heard a lot of crazy things over the course of the past six months, and I’d heard a lot more in the last ten minutes, but this was something I couldn’t comprehend.
“Daniel can’t be a Mage.”
“He can be, and he is. He’s been protecting you ever since things began to get bad at the palace. He wanted to tell you a number of times what he was, but we asked him not to break his cover.”
“You don’t even know Daniel!”
“Daniel is one of the Freedom of Magic. I wouldn’t call him a close friend, but I do know him.”
I thought back to my friend. He’d been spending a lot of his time at the palace, but he’d never actually lived there. Unlike the other bachelors, he had his own place in town. Could it be true? Not once, had I seen him use magic. He’d kept truths from me before though. I only found out he was gay when we were going to announce our wedding. I wondered if Cynder knew about that. I guessed not.
“No Magi were invited to the ball,” I said, feeling confused. “My mother said so in an interview.”
“Your mother believed so. Actually, there were quite a few, thanks to me and my magic wand. We hoped you would pick one or more of them out. It was a gamble, but with a little help and pushing, you picked him. The others left after the ball. A couple were injured in the explosion.”
I thought back to my reason for picking Daniel out of the hundred men at the ball. He was good-looking for a start, but that wasn’t it. He’d made me laugh. At the back of my mind, I knew there was another reason, but it took me a few moments to realize what it was.
“Jenny told me to pick him. Don’t tell me Jenny is a Mage too?”
I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else I trusted keeping secrets from me. First, there was my father, then Cynder, then Daniel. Was no one who I thought they were?
“Jenny isn’t a Mage, but a friend of hers is, not that Jenny knows that. This friend told Jenny that Daniel was her son and asked her to push for him a bit. Jenny thought she was doing her friend a favor, that’s all.”
I remembered now. I don’t know how I’d not noticed before, but Daniel never spoke about his mother. It was always his father.
“What about Leo and Luca?” Could my own fiancé be lying to me? It seemed everyone else was.
“No. I’ve never met either of them, but when we found out who you picked, we looked into them. Leo has helped a lot with Magi rights. You already know that. At one point we thought about telling him our secret but decided it was too risky. Luca is exactly who he says he is. An all-around good guy.”
Cynder said the last few words as though it was a bad thing. I suddenly felt very defensive.
“Luca has been good to me, and he’ll be good for the kingdom.”
“I’m sure he has,” answered Cynder with the same disdain as before.
“What is it? What do you have on him?” I suddenly worried that I’d find out something I didn’t want to know about Luca.
“I don’t have anything on him,” replied Cynder testily. He stood up and began to pace the cave floor. “It’s what he has that bothers me.”
“Oh,” I shouted, suddenly feeling annoyed. “and what is that?”
“He has you.”
Cynder pulled a hood over his head and stepped out into the storm. A second later and he was swallowed by the thick rain. I stood up and ran to the mouth of the cave. I could just see him heading off down the mountain trail.
Lucky Charm Page 7
