“Don’t go,” I murmured as he stepped back.
His pale eyes shimmered with sadness. “You know I’m needed back at the shop,” he told me. “And besides, I’m reasonably sure the Chief Mage would not be pleased to find he has an additional houseguest.”
I scowled. “Fuck the Chief Mage.”
He arched a brow. “That would be an interesting way to escape your death sentence.”
I sputtered. “I’m not –”
“I know,” he said, squeezing my arm gently. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you took advantage of his interest in you. Think what you want, but there is a reason he hasn’t killed you yet.”
“Yeah, because I’m a puzzle he hasn’t had the chance to solve yet,” I muttered. “As soon as he cracks me, I’m gone.” But I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not there was any truth to Comenius’s words.
Comenius only smiled and shook his head. “Stay safe, Naya.” As he left me alone in the room, my head and my heart were swirling with so many thoughts and emotions I thought I would burst.
Chapter Nine
I spent the rest of the day caught up in a maelstrom of confusion, guilt, and anxiety that made me envy humans for their ability to drink their problems away. I was worried about Noria, worried about Rylan, worried about the shifter murders and my complete inability to do anything about them.
And on top of it all, I was also worried about the Chief Mage’s intentions toward me.
What if Comenius is right? I thought as I flopped down onto my bed, my belly full of beef stew and bread – yesterday’s leftovers by the smell of them, but at least I was getting fed. What if the Chief Mage’s interest is more than clinical? I thought about the fact that even though he was cold and dispassionate, he’d also shown me some kindnesses. I was out of those magic-suppressing shackles, he’d expended his own magical energy to heal me, and he was going out of his way to find my father.
Going out of his way? Are you kidding me? Finding your father is part of his investigation… he’s definitely not doing it for you.
A knock on my door derailed my train of thought, and I sat up as the scent of the visitor reached my nose – it was Elgarion. My heart rate sped as I crossed the room to answer the door – what did the Director’s apprentice want with me now?
I opened the door to see him standing in the hall with a candle in his hand. Ice filled my veins as I caught sight of the two guards standing behind him.
“What do you want?”
“The Chief Mage commands your presence,” Elgarion said stiffly. His dark eyes glittered in the candlelight, and I knew he was still thinking about the way I’d embarrassed him back in the storage chamber the other day. But I could hardly hold onto that thought – I was still stuck on the fact that the Chief Mage had sent for me in the evening, far earlier than I expected to see him again.
“Where?” I demanded as I reached for my jacket. My makeshift crescent knives and stakes were still in the pockets, and I was not going anywhere near those guards without them. “And why?”
“To his quarters,” Elgarion told me. “As for why, I cannot say. But he does not like to be kept waiting.”
As if I give a fuck about that, I wanted to snap, but I kept my mouth shut and followed Elgarion. He led me past the Chief Mage’s study and further back through a maze of corridors until we reached a door near the end of the West Wing.
“The Chief Mage will join you shortly,” Elgarion said, opening the door to reveal a large sitting room.
“Wait.” I hesitated, my foot on the threshold. “There’s no one here?”
“The Chief Mage insisted that this be a private meeting.” Disapproval was stamped all over Elgarion’s stony face.
“Then why did you bring these guards along?” I asked, incredulous.
Elgarion stiffened, then drew his robes around him. “Good night, Miss Baine.”
I gaped as he swept back down the corridor with the guards in tow, as the truth suddenly dawned on me. Elgarion, the apprentice to the Director of the Mage’s Guild, was afraid of me. Feeling smug, I grinned after Elgarion’s retreating shadow before I sauntered into the room.
The smugness faded as I looked around the large, empty chamber, which, while decorated in the Chief Mage’s colors, was cozier than I expected. The wall to my left was lined with bookshelves, and the one on my right was dominated by a large bay window that offered a beautiful view of the Firegate Bridge stretching across Solantha Bay. Couches made of dark, heavy wood and upholstered in blue and gold were grouped around a marble hearth where a roaring fire crackled. The flames illuminated the gold threading woven through the plush blue carpeting covering the floor, which sank under each step I took.
As I wandered over to the window to look out at the view, I realized that there were very few smells beyond the Chief Mage’s own scent and Fenris’s. He probably didn’t invite visitors here often. The realization only made me even more uncomfortable. What was so urgent that he had to call me in the middle of the night to his private chambers, that couldn’t be said in front of the guards?
The thoughts that question sparked caused my cheeks to flush and my palms to grow uncomfortably warm. Which was great timing, because the door to my left, at the far end of the room, opened, and Iannis stepped through.
“Sir.” I turned on my heel to face him, feeling incredibly off-balance. He was still dressed in the same robes from this morning, but his cherry wood hair had been freed from the confines of its queue, flowing freely around his oblong face, the ends flowing over his broad shoulders. The loose waves gleamed in the firelight, and I fought down a sudden urge to reach out and touch them. Was his hair as soft as it looked?
If that’s not the fastest way to get yourself incinerated, I don’t know what is.
“Sir?” He arched a brow as he came to stand next to me. The firelight behind him cast his features into shadow, making him look even more enigmatic and mysterious than usual. “Could it be that your time in the palace is actually teaching you some manners?”
I flushed. “My apologies,” I quipped. “I should have addressed you as Almighty Dictator.”
He frowned, not at all amused by my sarcasm. “I don’t understand why you aren’t fearful of me.”
I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Do you want me to be afraid of you?”
For the first time, hesitation flickered over his features. “I demand respect,” he said firmly. “Respect and order are the only means to ensure a functioning society.”
“Maybe,” I snapped. “But respect still has to be earned, and force alone isn’t enough for you to get it. Perhaps you should try actually empathizing with your people.”
The Chief Mage was silent for so long that my skin started prickling beneath the weight of his stare. What the hell was I doing, telling the Chief Mage how to run his city? Was I trying to get my head chopped off? A bead of sweat rolled down my spine.
“I’m leaving tonight,” he finally said, “which is why I summoned you. I won’t be able to meet with you tomorrow as I originally anticipated.”
“Leaving?” Dread pooled in my stomach at the thought of being cooped up in this palace for who knew how long. I knew I should probably be excited – my chances of escaping increased tenfold with the Chief Mage gone – but the truth was I wanted him to wrap up his ‘investigation’ of me, and if he left that would only drag things out. “Leaving where?”
“That isn’t really any of your business,” he said mildly, “but I’ll only be gone for a day, so you needn’t worry that your stay will be extended too long.”
“Oh.” I let out a sigh of relief before thinking better of it, then flushed as he arched his brow at me again. “So, what’s it gonna be? Are you going to try and turn me into an ice sculpture again?”
“Hardly. Now give me your hands.”
I hesitated as he offered his own, palms up, just as he had last time. With my conflicting hormones and emotions growing stronger by the day, I wasn’t c
ertain that touching him was a great idea. But I also wanted to get this over with, and if that meant he had to hold my hands like we were two toddlers playing a rhyming game, then so be it.
I placed my hands in his, and my pulse sped up as his long fingers curled around them. That same warm tingle spread through me, just as before, but this time it was accompanied by a familiar heat pooling in my lower belly that could only be described as attraction. I struggled against the feeling as he circled his thumbs across the insides of my wrists – didn’t the man know that was an erogenous zone? – and tried to clear my head.
“You need to relax,” he murmured.
My cheeks burned. Did he know? “I d-don’t think I can.” By Magorah, I sounded like a schoolgirl all over again, squirming under the attention of my first crush.
“Close your eyes,” he suggested. “Focus on the magic flowing through you, rather than me.”
I did as he suggested, doing my best to ignore the feel of his skin against mine and his scent, which seemed to grow more intoxicating the more time I spent inhaling it. It took me a moment, but eventually I zeroed in on the current of magic humming through my veins, and began to mentally trace its path through my system.
A sudden shock jolted me from my trance, and I gasped, my eyes flying open as power surged through me. It crackled through my nerves like lightning, and rippled down my arms. Cold fear shot through my veins as our joined hands began to glow, and I braced myself for the Chief Mage to explode into a cloud of ash as the rhino had done.
Iannis’s face tightened, his eyes glued to our hands with fierce intensity, and he sucked in a sharp breath through his nostrils. The glow from our hands dissipated, and the air began crackling around him instead, the way it had when I’d riled him up before.
I took a step back, shock and relief mingling in my veins. “Did… did you just absorb all that magic?”
“For now,” he said through gritted teeth. His voice was edged with pain, and suddenly I was filled with guilt. He shouldn’t be suffering like this, not as a result of helping me –
I paused mid-thought as he grabbed a potted plant sitting on a side table and released the surge of magic he’d taken from me into it. The tiny shrub instantly exploded into a full-blown tree, unfurling rapidly, the roots spreading across the parquet and the tree branches making scraping sounds as they spread across the ceiling. I gaped, open-mouthed as white flowers bloomed from the branches right before my eyes.
“Well.” The Chief Mage regarded the tree wearily. “The servants are going to have an interesting time removing this.”
I gaped at him. “Was that an actual attempt at humor?”
He frowned. “I’m a mage, not an automaton, Miss Baine.”
“Coulda fooled me. I wasn’t aware there was a difference.” I folded my arms, but I didn’t have it in me to glare at him the way I usually did. I couldn’t deny that I’d seen flashes of humanity peek out from beneath his cold exterior, though I’d go to my grave before I’d admit that to him.
“I sometimes wonder whether or not you truly have a death wish, or if you simply can’t help but insult anyone who you perceive as stronger than yourself, in an attempt to make yourself feel less inadequate.”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you accusing me of being a coward?”
“On the contrary. A coward would never dare to insult and defy me the way you do at every turn.” He advanced on me with a scowl, and I took another step back. My shoulder blades brushed against the wall, and I stiffened. “If not for the fact that you direct so much animosity towards me, I could almost admire it. But it does make me wonder how you’ve managed to survive this long with your attitude. You appear to give very little thought to consequences before you jump into action.”
“Can we move on to the part where you tell me what the point of this ‘experiment’ was?” I was not at all comfortable with his analysis of my personality. “Why exactly did you feel the need to siphon enough magic from me to create a tree in your sitting room?”
“The tree was an unintended side effect,” the Chief Mage admitted. “I should have foreseen the magical surge and brought a more appropriate receptacle for the excess. As it is, I was not ‘siphoning off’ your magic, Miss Baine. I was releasing it from its bonds.”
My eyes widened. “You… you freed my magic?” I mentally groped for that glow of power in my chest, and nearly toppled over in surprise when I actually felt it this time. “By Magorah. You really did!”
“Only partially,” the Chief Mage warned. “So that you can learn to control it.”
I frowned. The glow was weaker than what I experienced during the rare previous outbursts, but I’d chalked that up to the fact that I wasn’t supercharging myself to deliver a death blow to anyone. “Why not give me access to the whole thing?” I protested. “It’s my magic.”
“Again, I want you to be able to control it. If I give you access to all of it at once, you may find yourself overwhelmed, especially since there is no one to teach you how to direct it. With the small amount I’ve given you, you should be able to grasp some rudimentary basics.” His features tightened momentarily. “I did not want to leave you entirely defenseless while I was gone, in view of the incident in the kitchen.”
I softened a little at that, before I remembered that I’d still seen those same guards around the palace, shooting me death glares that promised retribution. “Are you even going to discipline those guards for trying to kill me?”
“Director Chartis is taking care of the matter.”
I rolled my eyes. That meant the guards were going to get away with their outrageous behavior. “I want my weapons back.”
The Chief Mage blinked. “What?”
“My weapons.” I tapped my foot impatiently, though it didn’t have the intended effect as the toe of my boot sank noiselessly into the thick carpet. “They were taken from me when I was arrested, and I want them back so I can defend myself.”
The Chief Mage frowned. “I don’t know anything about your weapons. In any case, that is what I gave you the magic for, so you can defend yourself.”
I growled. “It’s hardly going to be very helpful, since I’ve never been given any instruction on how to use it.”
“And that is only because you haven’t stopped talking long enough to allow me to give you some basic instruction.”
I snapped my jaw shut. He was going to teach me to use my magic? Now?
“I still want them back.”
He regarded me for several seconds as though he were weighing the pros and cons of allowing me access to sharp, deadly implements. “I will consider it. Now, give me your hands again. Time grows short.”
Chapter Ten
Sweat poured down my face as I held my hand palm up in front of me, concentrating with all my might. It was after midnight and I should have been asleep, but instead I sat cross-legged on my bed and focused on the spell the Chief Mage had taught me earlier. Moonlight spilled in through my tiny window, illuminating my palm as I stared at it – I was determined to master this thing before I fell asleep tonight.
Find your center, Iannis had said, and I drew in a deep breath, focusing in on the tiny glow within my chest. I touched the glow, and exhilaration raced through my veins. Magorah, but it felt so good to finally be able to do that! To be able to reach for my magic whenever I wanted –
The magical connection severed.
“Damn it!” I snatched up the pillow on my bed and flung it across the room. This happened almost every time. I got so freaking excited about using my magic that I lost my focus, and then it would disappear.
This wouldn’t happen if Iannis gave you access to all your magic.
I sighed. There was no use thinking about that. Fact was, it was probably better that he didn’t, because I seemed to have a knack for conjuring flame. Iannis said it was because of my fiery disposition – each mage had a natural bent towards certain types of magic based on their personality
. Of course, when I’d asked him what his was, he’d told me that if I focused more on my magic and less on him then I might actually conjure a decent flame.
Cantankerous bastard.
Determined to prove that I could conjure a flame without the Chief Mage’s help or the threat of mortal danger, I focused my attention inward again, closing my eyes so I could search for that tiny glow inside my chest. It winked into existence in my mind’s eye, and as I connected with it, I channeled my thoughts into a single idea.
Fire.
Heat exploded above my palm. My eyes flew open, and I laughed at the sight of the dancing red flame. How fucking cool was that? I had a ball of fire bouncing around my hand. Talk about a killer weapon!
“Here, little flamey-flame,” I cooed. The flame seemed to grow even bigger in response – though that was probably just a reaction to my thoughts as I doubted the thing was sentient. Grinning, I bounced it back and forth between my hands, marveling at the fact that though there was heat emanating from the flame, it wasn’t burning me.
Headline: BURNED BY MAGIC: SUNAYA BAINE FOUND DEAD IN SOLANTHA PALACE AS THE RESULT OF UNSUPERVISED EXPERIMENTS WITH MAGICAL FIRE.
I snorted. Both the Herald and the Shifter Courier would have a field day with that one. But Iannis probably knew my own fire wouldn’t burn me, or he wouldn’t have given me this particular spell to practice on.
“Naya!”
Shock burst through me at the sound of my cousin’s voice in my head. The flame in my hand winked out instantly.
“Rylan? What’s going on?” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Was he already here?
“Look outside your window.”
I turned to the window and peered out into the darkness, trying to spot him through the bars. At first I saw nothing but the gardens below and the bay stretching beyond the property, but then I spotted two huge condors heading our way… and there was a small, human form atop one of them.
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