Scorched by Magic (The Baine Chronicles Book 7)

by Jasmine Walt

  “I think I will retreat to the library,” Fenris said as he, Iannis, and I rose from our seats. “I’ll dig up some of the more relevant spell books, and draw up a list of the most effective protection spells that will help us secure the city.”

  “That is a good idea. I may well join you—” Iannis began.

  “Excuse me,” a servant said, opening the door. “Lord Iannis, I apologize for the intrusion, but you have visitors.”

  “Yes, and we come on urgent business,” said Garrett Toring, the Director of Federal Security. Iannis stiffened and the hair on my nape rose as Garrett entered the room right on the heels of the servant, a younger mage dressed in dark grey at his side. He looked around the room as we stared at him in shock, and my stomach dropped as his glance lingered on Fenris for a long moment.

  “Good to see you again, Chief Mage, Sunaya. Pity you’ve already finished dinner. I don’t suppose there’s any left for us?”

  6

  “Director Toring,” Iannis said coolly, recovering from the shock well before I did. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Garrett said, a faint smile playing on his lips as he held Iannis’s gaze. The two stared at each other for a fraught moment, tension crackling in the air. Despite Iannis’s deadly calm façade, I knew he was very displeased Garrett had showed up without so much as a phone call beforehand. Garrett gestured to the other mage, who looked around thirty, with dark brown curls and an air of superiority. “This is my assistant, Harron Pillick. I apologize for not sending word of our arrival, but the Minister and I agreed that for security reasons, it would be best not to do so.”

  I clenched my jaw at the lie. Garrett might have been on some urgent mission, but there was no sincerity in his apology—he had meant to arrive without notice, to throw us off balance. What was he here for? Did the Minister really know and choose not to tell Iannis? My mind instantly went to Fenris, standing on my right. I couldn’t see his expression, but panic and rage rolled off him at the sight of his deadliest enemy, in a way that deeply unsettled me. Fenris was always so even-keeled, but I could sense his fight-or-flight response kicking in, and the urge to flee was intensely strong in him right now.

  Garrett turned to him, his hazel eyes gleaming with interest and calculation. “You must be Fenris,” he said casually, eyeing Fenris up and down like a wolf might a particularly juicy steak. The irony wasn’t lost on me that of the two of them, Fenris was the actual wolf in the room. “I have heard much about you.”

  “Surely nothing of interest,” Fenris said calmly, and I was both astonished and proud to see that he was smiling cheerfully, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. That would piss Garrett off for sure. “I am a mere shifter, after all.”

  “Ah, but you are being too modest,” Garrett said, and his own smile didn’t waver one bit. “A shifter who studies magical theory is quite rare in Solantha, or even the entire Northia Federation. What prompted you to delve into an esoteric subject that is useless to your kind?”

  “Director Toring,” I interrupted, sparing Fenris from having to respond. “Surely you didn’t take the trouble to come out all this way—”

  “Trouble,” my ether parrot squawked. He materialized between Garrett and me, his glowing blue wings throwing off sparks of magic as they flapped in the air.

  “What is that thing?” Garrett snapped, moving out of the parrot’s way.

  “A little experiment of mine,” I said breezily—no way was I going to admit to Garrett that Trouble had been the result of an ether pigeon spell gone wrong. “His name is Trouble, and he appears every time I use the word. I’m still trying to smooth out that particular quirk.”

  “Quirk,” Trouble squawked, and he sounded highly offended. The parrot turned his back on me and sailed over to Garrett, settling his glowing, feathered body onto the Director’s gilded head of hair.

  “Well, I really must be getting back to the library,” Fenris said, stepping past Garrett, who was unsuccessfully trying to shoo the bird off his head. Trouble wasn’t corporeal, so no amount of shaking or swatting affected him. “I will come find you later, Lord Iannis, if I learn anything pertinent to these quakes.” He flashed me a grateful smile behind Garrett’s back before slipping out through the double doors.

  “Quakes?” Garrett demanded, abandoning his attempts to dislodge the parrot from his head. “What quakes?”

  “I fail to see why I should answer that, when you’ve yet to tell me the reason for your visit,” Iannis said, letting some of his annoyance seep into his voice.

  “Oh, how rude of me,” Garrett exclaimed, and I nearly rolled my eyes. “We are here about Thorgana Mills. My office has been working around the clock since the day of the prison fire. We now have proof that not only did Thorgana survive the conflagration, but her confederates are the ones who caused it.”

  “Shit.” I’d known that was a possibility, even strongly suspected it. But to hear confirmation… Dammit. I’d really hoped she was dead. “So she’s on the loose again? What is she planning?”

  “We don’t know,” Garrett admitted, displeasure coloring his voice. “But we did catch one of the arsonists. After a lengthy interrogation, he confessed that he overheard she might be heading to Solantha. Something about ‘squaring accounts’.”

  A chill went down my spine at that. Was I one of the “accounts” Thorgana intended to square away? She had every reason to want me dead, and Iannis as well—we’d thwarted her plans at every turn, and were the ones who had finally taken her down. I tried to catch Iannis’s eye, but his shimmering violet gaze was firmly fixed on Garrett.

  “Not now,” he said to me in mindspeak. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  Aloud, he said to Garrett, “While I do appreciate you taking the time to relay this information, I don’t see why you had to come out all this way. A simple phone call or telegram would have sufficed. We are more than capable of handling Thorgana, as we have proven in the past.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Garrett said, sounding thoroughly unimpressed, “but I am under strict orders from the Minister to find and capture her myself. Her compatriots killed dozens of mages during the breakout, never mind her other crimes. He will not be satisfied until she is back behind bars, and if she happens to be killed while resisting arrest, so much the better. Besides,” he added silkily, “if Solantha is about to be hit by an earthquake, I imagine your hands will be full with preparations to secure the city. You could use my eyes and ears, Lord Iannis. I am very good at what I do.”

  There was a long silence, and even though I hated the idea of Garrett being here, I couldn’t find any flaw in his argument. We really were stretched thin right now, and Thorgana needed to be taken down. It would be just like her to use the commotion of an imminent earthquake as a cover while she cooked up some plot to hit us hard and take down the Mages Guild in Solantha.

  “Very well,” Iannis finally said. “I cannot argue with your logic, though I will bring the matter of your jurisdiction up at the next convention. But as you say, we are very busy preparing for a possible big quake, and I will not be able to spare significant manpower to assist you with this search. Now is really not the best time for a manhunt,” he said ruefully, and I knew then that he really would have preferred to go hunt for Thorgana himself, if only so that he could get Garrett out of here as quickly as possible.

  “I’ll help,” I said, drawing the gazes of both men my way. “There will be little time for my usual magic lessons, and I have a personal stake in finding Thorgana. I’m not going to sit on my ass while waiting for her to come and kill me.”

  “Perhaps we can devise a plan to draw her out, with you as bait?” Garrett’s assistant suggested, his eyes gleaming eagerly as he studied me. From his expression, his mind was no doubt racing, chewing on calculations, studying all angles.

  “It might be worth considering,” Garrett agreed. “Although—”

  “Absolutely not,” Iannis snapped, his eyes blazing. �
��Sunaya is my fiancée, Director Toring, not a tool for your personal use.”

  “She’s also right here in this room,” I said irritably. “And although I don’t love the idea of being bait, I wouldn’t be opposed to it in the right circumstances.” Iannis opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “That’s not going to be my first plan of attack, and I definitely will not do anything like that without discussing it with you first. But I’m a trained enforcer with intimate knowledge of this city, including possible allies and suspects,” I pointed out. “I even knew Thorgana before we identified her as the Benefactor.”

  “Did you really?” Garrett asked, sounding intrigued. “In what capacity? I can’t imagine a wealthy, pampered socialite like her rubbing elbows with an enforcer.”

  “I did a couple of security gigs for her,” I said coolly, not appreciating the insinuation that I was riffraff. Garrett flinched slightly, as if realizing how offensive his statement was, and I wondered a little at that. Did he actually care about my feelings? I’d scented interest from him once or twice during our return trip from Garai, but lust didn’t necessarily translate to affection.

  “I don’t like this,” Iannis said in mindspeak, simmering with ire. “However, someone needs to keep an eye on Garrett while he’s here—to make sure he doesn’t go poking into things he ought not to.”

  “No kidding.” I held in a sigh. “I’ll do my best to deflect any questions about Fenris, and keep his focus on Thorgana.”

  “Sunaya makes valid points,” Iannis said to Garrett. “She would be an asset in this search, and I can think of no one better to assign as your liaison. The two of you will work together to find Thorgana, but you will keep me informed every step of the way.” His eyes narrowed, and his voice turned dangerously soft. “I will not overlook another slight, Director Toring.”

  “Understood.” Garrett said stiffly, his scent changing subtly—he was wary of Iannis’s power, if not outright fearful. I wasn’t sure how powerful Garrett was, but clearly, he did not want to provoke an actual conflict. “Shall we meet for breakfast tomorrow to discuss our plan of action, Miss Baine?”

  “Yes.” I paused for a moment, considering my options, then said. “We’ll meet back here, in the Winter Garden room, at eight.” I didn’t want to invite him into my suite for breakfast, nor was I interested in going to his—that would be all kinds of inappropriate. “In the meantime, let’s get you settled in for the night.” I rang a bell, summoning the Palace staff.

  “Excellent.” Garrett smiled, his hazel eyes glinting. “I look forward to seeing what we might accomplish together.”

  I don’t, I thought as I handed Garrett off to a servant who would show him and his assistant to appropriate guestrooms in the East Wing. By Magorah, we didn’t need this. But I met Iannis’s eyes again, and they were surprisingly steady.

  We’ll find a way through this, his gaze said. We’ve been through worse.

  Nodding, I slipped my hand into his, and we hurried down the hall to find out where Fenris had gone off to.

  7

  Unsurprisingly, Fenris wasn’t actually in the library. We checked there anyway, but I figured he wouldn’t want to risk Garrett seeking him out. His scent lingered near the entrance, as if he’d been here recently, so he must have stopped by to grab some books to continue his research elsewhere.

  “You’re back faster than I thought you’d be,” he said by way of greeting as we entered Iannis’s suite. Fenris’s room was farther down the hall, but I’d smelled him right outside Iannis’s door, so we didn’t bother going any further. He was settled into the wing-backed chair by the fire, a thick leather tome in his hand and several more stacked on the side table by his left elbow. “How was your chat with Director Toring?”

  “Unsettling,” Iannis said, sitting down on the end of the couch closest to Fenris. He snapped his fingers, and the scent of magic tickled my nose as the eavesdropping wards he’d set into the walls were activated. I kicked off my boots, then stretched out on the remainder of the couch and settled my calves across Iannis’s lap. “Thorgana survived the fire, and Garrett strongly suspects she has fled here.”

  Fenris sat straight up in his chair, setting the book aside. “That woman is like a blasted cockroach,” he growled, his yellow eyes narrowing to slits. “How did she survive?”

  Iannis relayed to Fenris what Garrett had told us—that the fire had been orchestrated to break Thorgana out, and that one of the arsonists had heard she was headed to Solantha for some payback.

  Fenris’s bearded face was drawn so tight by the time Iannis was done, I half expected his tanned skin to start cracking. “I wish there was some way I could be of more help,” he said, “but with Director Toring here, I am severely limited.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I assured him. “You just need to lie low until he’s gone. I’m going to be working with him to apprehend Thorgana, and I intend to find her quickly so that we can send him on his way.”

  Fenris nodded. “As soon as he is gone, I shall be on my way as well.”

  Iannis stiffened, and I stared at Fenris in shock. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Fenris admitted. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and my heart began to ache—he looked so brittle, as if a well-placed blow would shatter his soul and send it scattering to the winds. “But it is clear that I can no longer stay here. My shifter nose has much improved since you came to the Palace, Sunaya—I could smell Garrett’s ill will quite clearly during his brief interrogation attempt. He will not be content to focus his energies exclusively on Thorgana, and I believe Thorgana may only be an excuse. Now that he and Iannis are contenders for the Minister’s position, he will use any means at his disposal to eliminate the competition. I may well be the perfect weapon. If not for the fact that it would confirm Toring’s suspicions, and my guilt, I would leave right now.”

  “I concede the point,” Iannis said reluctantly, looking troubled. “If I could, I would simply tell Garrett to his face that I care nothing for the position, and that he is welcome to it. But he would not believe me, and besides, he will not be satisfied until he solves the mystery of how you slipped from his grasp as Polar ar’Tollis.”

  “That’s all well and good, but Garrett doesn’t have any proof that you and Polar are the same person,” I argued. “We don’t even know that is what he suspects—we only know he sees a mystery in Fenris.” Anger bubbled in my chest—I wasn’t going to accept this! Fenris had been my only friend when I’d first come to the Palace, bridging the gap between Iannis and me with his calm, compassionate manner. If not for him, I might never have become Iannis’s apprentice. “We’ll just have to make sure he walks away empty handed.”

  Fenris shook his head emphatically. “Director Toring will not suffer to be made a fool of twice,” he growled, his yellow eyes gleaming as the fire in the hearth reflected off them. “He and his assistant will be watching me very closely, and questioning the servants and staff about me. He is very intelligent and highly motivated, so there is a distinct chance he might discover the truth before Thorgana is apprehended. Even if he doesn’t, he will find another excuse to come back and keep searching. No, I must not tempt fate. As soon as he leaves, I will depart.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Tears stung at my eyes. “You can’t go back to Nebara.”

  “No,” Fenris agreed. “I would not endanger my parents by returning there, just as I will not continue to put you or Iannis in danger by staying.” His rugged features softened—he must have seen the anguish in my face. “I may have been the one who escaped a death sentence, Sunaya, but Iannis did not just help me get away—he also used forbidden magic to turn me into a shifter. If Garrett finds out the truth, Iannis’s life will be forfeit as well.”

  “If worst comes to worst, we could all leave the country,” Iannis suggested, but I shook my head.

  “No. You’ve fought too hard for your people, and have made more progress uniting the three ra
ces than any Chief Mage of Solantha has before you,” I said firmly. “We can’t abandon them now, especially not with this earthquake on the way. As much as I hate to say it…” A lump swelled in my throat, and I had to force it down. “Fenris is right. The easiest thing is for him to go.”

  But it’s not fair! A voice in my head howled. He’s family. He was supposed to be the best man at our wedding. To be the godfather to our future children. How could Fenris do any of that, if he was on the run?

  “I will not miss any of the important events in your lives,” Fenris said, seeming to read my thoughts. He met my tearful gaze with a valiant smile. “Even if I have to do it in disguise, I will be there when you two are married, and when your children are born.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. My heart brimming with emotion, I stepped over Iannis, then knelt in front of Fenris’s chair and threw my arms around him. “You must tell us where you’ve relocated to,” I whispered fiercely as I squeezed him tight. “I want to be able to come and visit you, to meet your own wife and children when you have them.”

  Fenris started a little at the mention of wife and children. “I don’t know about that,” he said, a wry smile in his voice as he embraced me in return. “But I will send messages as I can, so that you know I am still alive.”

  “You’d better.” Pulling back, I wiped my sleeve across my teary eyes. “And I have no doubt that you’ll meet a fine woman someday and have a whole brood of children. You deserve to live a full life, Fenris, with all the joys and pitfalls that go with it.”

  “Yes,” Iannis agreed, wrapping his arms around me as I returned to sit next to him. “And while we will miss you, I fear that staying here in the Palace has not truly done you any favors.”

  “No,” Fenris agreed ruefully. “I have appreciated the opportunity to lie low and absorb as much magical theory as I have been able to these past few years. But living in a Palace, surrounded by mages, has not prepared me for life as a shifter. If I am to truly become Fenris, and make the most of my new existence, I must go seek my fortune in humbler surroundings. I have a good bit of gold saved up, and I will be able to settle comfortably wherever I choose, so do not worry about me.”