by Izzy Shows
“‘I’m sorry’ barely covers it,” I sighed. Why was I talking to this imaginary creation? It wouldn’t change what had happened. “You hurt me.”
He closed the distance between us, grabbed my hand and held it tightly. This I allowed as well, though his touch sent fire running through my veins just as if this had been the real Malphas. “I know that. I know you’ll never forgive me, and that’s OK too. There’s nothing I can say that will undo the way I’ve treated you of late, but still, I had to tell you. I needed you to know that it isn’t what I wanted.”
“Then why did you do it?” My heart was breaking all over again, and I hated that he could do this to me. Damn him.
“There are things I cannot discuss with you,” he said, his long lashes sweeping down to hide his eyes from me.
I stepped away from him and tugged my hand away. Then I hugged myself and turned my back to him. “I don’t know how to feel right now. Everything hurts so much.”
He made a tortured sound. I looked over my shoulder at him, my eyes watering with unshed tears.
“I never meant to do this to you,” he said, shaking his head and looking down at the ground. “I didn’t know this was the outcome we would reach. I would never have marked you if I had known this was where we were headed.”
“I wouldn’t be here to hurt like this if you hadn’t,” I said, and laughed roughly. “Isn’t that just the best? There was no other way this could have happened. If you hadn’t marked me, I’d be dead. London would have fallen, Deacon would be reigning supreme, and neither Emily nor I would be here even to witness it. It had to end like this.”
“I don’t want it to end at all,” he said, and I could see that he was pleading with me.
“It has to,” I said. “I’m sorry, too, that this is the way it has to be.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. I don’t want you to be sorry for a damn thing.”
I shrugged. “You can feel that way if it makes you feel better.”
“What are you going to do now?”
I inhaled, then let the breath out in a frustrated rush. “What do I always do? I’ll move on, keep fighting the monsters as they come, and soon this will all fade into a slightly painful memory.”
His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, and damn it if my gut didn’t clench at the sight. My gaze was riveted on his lips, and in that moment, I forgot all my rules.
I just wanted to kiss him. One last time. I raised my eyes to his and saw that he understood.
He shook his head, backing up a step. “That’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“It will only encourage the pain you feel.”
I shrugged. “This,” I said, sweeping my hand around to take in everything around us, “is nothing but a figment of my imagination. So are you. I fail to see how indulging my imagination is going to harm me.”
He hesitated as if he wanted to say something but had thought better of it. “I don’t want to hurt you again,” he said at last, his tone turning husky.
He wanted me just as much as I wanted him.
I took a deep breath and closed the distance between us, then laid a palm on his chest. He inhaled harshly, locking his gaze with mine.
“It’s a bad idea,” he said again.
“Funny, that’s what I kept saying to you. But this is just a dream,” I whispered, then lifted myself up on tiptoe to brush my lips against his.
He groaned, wrapping one arm around my waist and tangling the other hand in my hair. He deepened the kiss, his tongue thrusting past my lips and plundering my mouth for all that it held. I was powerless to do anything other than enjoy that moment, the electricity that leapt between us, the intense and almost painful pleasure that came from being in his arms again.
I had wanted this kiss for so long, and it was everything I had dreamt of.
After a long moment, he pulled away from me, sadness in his eyes. Tears had somehow slipped down my cheeks. He kissed my forehead and stepped away from me.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
I awoke in my bed, my cheeks as wet as they had been in the dream. I clutched at my stomach; the emptiness I felt inside was so painful that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I gave in, sobbing out the pain.
I don’t know how long I sat like that, holding myself and crying until there were no more tears and I was choking on the pain in my throat.
Never would I have thought that I would miss the mark waking me up in the middle of the night, burning hot against my skin. I’d never thought I’d miss it at all, but I did just then.
I missed its presence.
Damn it.
It was a connection to Mal, and now there was nothing linking the two of us. Lilith didn’t need me anymore, I didn’t have the mark, and I didn’t need him to teach me how to live with it.
We had nothing, now that he had severed what friendship there had been between us.
I threw myself back onto the bed, curled up and held on to my pillow as if it was all I had.
Just before I slipped away to sleep again, I had the thought that this wasn’t the last I would see of him, and that comforted me somewhat.
I didn’t dream again that night.
Thirty Eight
I woke up the next morning just as empty as I’d been when I woke in the middle of the night. There was no changing the fact that Mal had hurt me more than words could say, but it was time to pack it in and get over it. I didn’t have the luxury of moping about in bed all day. I had to get on with my life, one way or another, and I was going to start that now.
Today was the beginning of a new chapter, and I was going to make sure I lived it to the best of my ability.
I threw the covers back and leapt out of the bed, determined to make the best of a bad situation.
And how bad was the situation, really? I had got rid of the mark, and I was going to pass the aura reading with flying colours. Nothing to worry about, after all.
I got ready as quickly as possible and was just finishing my tea when the First Hand’s knock came at the door. I arched an eyebrow and smirked to myself. Déjà vu.
This time, I was fully dressed, boots and jacket and all. I put the cup in the sink and walked to the door, opened it, and flashed a cheerful smile at Gregor, whose hand was lifted as if to knock again.
“I’m going to assume you’re here to actually collect me today, not just to tell me that the trials have been cancelled yet again because of your investigation?”
“We are here for you, yes,” he said, his face as grim as ever.
Tight-lipped. He wouldn’t tell me a thing.
I nodded and stepped out of the house, shut the door, and passed a hand over the wood to lift the newly placed wards. They would do what they could to protect the house while I was gone, and Fred had his orders on what to do if anything nefarious came calling.
I had left it up to him to decide what counted as nefarious and what didn’t.
“Let’s get this show on the road, then,” I said, walking towards the car.
Gregor walked a step behind me and opened the door for me when we reached the car. There was no one else inside again; it was just me and Gregor. As soon as I was seated, he handed me my blindfold. I blinked, confused, for a second. Diego had allowed me to remove the blindfold on our drive home last time, but even with that incident aside, given everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, I had forgotten all about the blindfold and its irritations.
With an annoyed sigh, I put the blindfold on. Gregor shut the door, got in on his side, and started the car. The long ride went on in silence, and for once I didn’t have the energy to joke around and try to get a rise out of Gregor. Normally, I would try to get him to show me some sort of emotion, but today I was drained.
I missed Mal. It hadn’t been even a full day since I’d last seen him, but it felt like an eternity since I had truly seen him as his old self, as the man who had understood me and had been my partner in more than
one difficult fight. The man I had sparred with, the man I had trusted with my life, as stupid as that decision now seemed.
No, we’re not going down that road, I told myself. This is a new day, and we’re putting all that nonsense behind us.
Right. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If Gregor noticed, he gave no indication.
I settled in for a long ride and hoped the day wouldn’t be difficult.
Thirty Nine
I was standing in front of the High Council. They were all intent on something lying on the long desk in front of them, not paying me any mind. I tried not to be annoyed at that, as I was sure they didn’t even consider it rude. They were probably accustomed to Wizards waiting patiently for them to get around to something, but I wasn’t used to being ignored like that. Being told to get out? Sure. Being told that I was an annoying little shit? Absolutely.
But flat-out ignored? Not in this lifetime.
I chewed hard on the inside of my cheek, focusing on the minor amount of pain to keep myself focused. There wasn’t anything else to do, and I didn’t want to fidget in front of them. That might prove I wasn’t capable of being a Wizard, so I abstained.
“Ah, yes, Miss Blair,” the Chancellor said at last. “The trials today will test what kind of Wizard you are capable of being.”
How cryptic. I waited, not patiently, for him to elaborate on that.
“First, you will craft a focus in front of us.”
There was no way in hell they made fifteen-year-olds do this. Crafting a focus was difficult magic and something that required instruction. Fred and I had gone over it a thousand and one times before I was able to make the simplest tool, and there had been countless failures before that.
These trials had been designed for me, I suspected, to push me as hard as possible in the hope that I wouldn’t be able to do even one of them.
Well, the joke was on them, because I had made several foci already, so I was very familiar with the process.
I bobbed my head. “With pleasure,” I said, smiling at them.
The Council members didn’t look amused, although a few of them did have the decency to look surprised. I relished that I had been able to surprise them, that they had underestimated me. Hopefully, that would be the case with all of the trials today, that they would be easy enough for me to get through.
“What kind of focus am I making?” I asked. “Or is it up to me?”
“That, we have left up to chance,” the Chancellor said.
And then, to my great surprise, he lifted a deck of cards and began to shuffle them. They were rather large, likely the size of tarot cards, and I could only imagine what was printed on the front of them. The Chancellor kept shuffling them for several minutes while I did my best not to tell him to hurry the hell up, already.
At long last, he drew a card. Did I detect a smile on his face? I couldn’t quite tell.
“You will be crafting a combat staff,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “And what kind of combat magic am I supposed to be infusing it with?”
He looked displeased that I had asked the question. Maybe he’d thought I would just start on it, and he’d be able to discredit whatever I made, saying that it wasn’t the right type of combat magic.
“Whatever you see fit,” he said. “We leave that up to you.”
Good. At least I’d got him to admit that and hadn’t just left it up to chance.
The Chancellor gestured behind me, and when I turned around, a table was just finishing materializing. Lying upon it were numerous ingredients, a long wooden staff chief among them.
I frowned. “I need a knife,” I said. I didn’t see that on the table.
“The staff is already cut.”
“Not for me, it isn’t,” I said. “Someone else carved this, which means I need to change it.”
I turned back to them in time to see a knowing look being passed among the thirteen Wizards. Another test passed, it seemed. But anyone who knew the first thing about crafting foci would know that you needed to personalise them, that not just anything would do.
How dare they assume I didn’t know what I was doing? I thought I’d made it plenty clear by this point that I wasn’t a hedge witch, and that I had been studying as hard as I could with what materials were available to me.
Maybe they didn’t know about Fred. Only Diego had really reacted when I had mentioned him. Maybe they thought I didn’t have any tools at my disposal to learn without their great and powerful library.
I resisted the desire to snort derisively. They were too stuck-up to realise that there were other avenues available to mages. True, not everyone had a Fred at their disposal, but… Gods, I hoped no one else had someone like Fred available to answer questions for them. That would make the world a truly dangerous place to live.
A knife was brought in for me, and I set to work carving down the staff until it fit my height and was a good weight for me to carry. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the staff once these trials were over; using one had never really been my style. I had always used my wands, which were light and portable and got the job done without much fuss. After I had taken sandpaper to the entire staff, I carved intricate designs into the top of it. I lost myself in the process, unaware of what, exactly, I was creating but enjoying it immensely. The sigils and characters I was creating were probably nonsense; I doubted very much that they were anything other than perhaps things I subconsciously remembered from my childhood.
Time passed without meaning as I put my all into carving the staff. I forgot about the High Council behind me, watching my every move, and did my best to create the best focus I could. I had to get the staff just right before I could set about pouring my magic into it. You don’t pour water into a bowl until you know for certain that it can hold it.
Sure, you can buy a bowl at the supermarket, but you know someone else has made it to standard. And you know what? It’s a poor bloody metaphor, because you can use and refill a bowl made by someone else. You can’t do that with foci. You can use a focus that was created and filled by someone else, but once and once only. You can never refill it.
And even if you can use a focus made by another person, you really shouldn’t. The focus has to understand the person it’s responding to, else you run the risk of the magic coming out wrong. It’s abnormal to be using someone else’s power like that; Fred had explained that it was a very intimate thing, something you would do with a family member. A father would give such a thing to his child, or a lover might pass a charm on to their beloved. But you didn’t do that with just anyone, which was strange, because that was exactly what Aidan had done for me. He had given me a focus that he’d made all on his own, and its shell was still hanging around my neck.
It was further proof that he’d felt the same bond I had, and it warmed my heart even to think that.
At last, the staff was ready to receive my power.
The only problem was, I still hadn’t decided what power to put into it. I didn’t want to recreate my ice and fire wands, and I already had a focus to use for wind. I supposed I could craft it to focus the Earth for me, a creation that could bring forth earthquakes if I so willed it. But, no, that didn’t feel right.
I grasped the staff with both hands and closed my eyes, meditating on what to do next. I knew the answer would come to me before long. I didn’t want to rush it.
“Aolin ne shifocan, ansolete ma leske.” The words flowed out of me before I could even think of what they meant. They were gibberish, but they had the same ring to them as the words I’d used at Tyburn Tree. I began to chant in that gibberish tongue, the words forming in my mind of their own accord and disappearing from my memory as soon as they had been spoken.
I couldn’t recall a single word I had said.
My body swayed as I chanted, allowing the power to rush from me to the staff. Strangely, it didn’t hurt to use my magic now. There was no familiar ripping sensation tearing through me. There was no p
ain setting my nerve endings on fire.
It was a pleasant, warm sensation, and I allowed myself a moment of peace. It felt as if everything was going to be OK, and I enjoyed that thought. I enjoyed the peace.
My eyes snapped open. The chant was complete. I looked down at the staff and discovered that the sigils I had carved into it were aglow with a pale blue light. I wondered what in the world I had created. I didn’t know what it was or how to use it, what would come forth when I called on it, but the moment of creation had been such a pleasant experience that I couldn’t feel like I had wasted my time.
I turned to face the High Council, holding the staff upright beside me. They were all watching me. Diego’s eyes were narrowed as if he was concentrating fiercely on me. The Chancellor, of course, had no expression whatsoever on his face.
“You’re finished,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
I inclined my head, approving his statement. Whatever I had created, it was done.
“Bring it forth.”
I forced my expression to remain calm. I didn’t want to let go of the staff, didn’t want to pass it into his hands. He didn’t deserve to touch it. He wasn’t worthy.
What the fuck?
Where were these feelings coming from? I couldn’t identify their source, but they reverberated so strongly within me that I couldn’t ignore them.
I had to do my best. I pushed them down, strode confidently forward, and placed the staff on the desk in front of the Chancellor. My mind was screaming at me not to let go of the staff, but I didn’t let that show on my face. I couldn’t let them know how much I cared whether they touched the staff. It was imperative that they not know I cared. If they knew, they would take the staff away from me.
And make no mistake, it was my staff.
The Chancellor placed his hand above the staff and let it hover there while he frowned down at it. I didn’t know what he was doing—probably testing to see if it had any power. He lowered his hand and brushed the pad of his palm against the wood—then wrenched his hand back as if he had been shocked.
