by R. L. King
He does the pillow-roll head shake again. This time he doesn’t try to laugh, but he does smile. “No, no. I’m dying, and I know it. That’s…all right. I’ve had a good life. And now I’ve gotten the last thing I wanted.” His gaze meets mine, and I can’t miss the love in it, even without magical sight. “I only wish I could have had more time to get to know you.”
I don’t want to let it go at that. It’s something I have in common with Alastair, and maybe one of the reasons we understand each other so well: both of us, when we see a problem, our first instinct is to try to solve it, to fix it, to make it right. Neither of us has ever been any good at letting things be. I swallow hard. “Please. Let me try. I’ve got magic…I’m really good at healing. Maybe I can—”
“No.” This time when he squeezes me, it’s got some strength behind it. “Please, Verity. Let’s not waste our time together worrying about what might have been. I’m at peace with it.”
I don’t want to agree. I don’t want to give up my chance to do something—anything—to keep this man from slipping away. I glance at the machine again. His heartbeat is fast and erratic, his breathing uneven and hitching. I don’t have any formal medical training, but based on what I learned during my time with Edna Soren, I know he doesn’t have much longer. He probably won’t last the rest of the day. I bow my head.
“Now, come on,” he says. “Don’t be like that. People die. It’s the way the world works. Tell me about yourself. I want to know about your life. You have magic—I can see that. Did you go to college? Are you married?”
I swallow. So many things I want to tell him. Suddenly, I want to sit here on this bed and pour out my whole life to him, but that won’t be possible. Elena and Miles are waiting outside the door, standing guard in case Lydia decides to show up, and I don’t want them to have to face her alone. They’re right—I need to get away from them before she figures out where they are. Then I can deal with her on my own, without worrying about anybody else getting hurt.
“I…I’ve had a good life too,” I say at last. “I have another half-brother, Jason, and we’re really close.”
“Lenore’s husband never knew?” He searches my face, his pale brow furrowing.
I shake my head. “No. At least if he did, he never gave any sign of it.”
“Such a shame…” he whispers, shaking his head, then fixes on me again. “I know what Lydia did to your mother. Josie didn’t want to tell me, but I got it out of her. It’s my greatest regret that I didn’t do anything about it. Such a coward…”
Part of me wonders if he’s right. I try to put myself in that situation, or anyone else I know. Would Jason have let such a thing pass? Would Alastair? I don’t think so. But this isn’t the time for blame, especially since I don’t know all the details. “Don’t talk about that,” I say, patting his hand. “You didn’t do it—she did. And I’m going to do something about it.”
His pain-filled eyes grow fearful. “Oh, no. Please, my dear, don’t do that. I can’t stand the thought of that woman hurting you.”
“She won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know how strong she is.”
Everybody keeps saying that. I wonder if it’s true—or if they just aren’t used to the kind of power I’ve dealt with. A brief twinge of self-doubt grips me, but I push it aside. “I’ll be all right. I apprenticed with one of the strongest mages in the country. I think she’ll be in for a surprise if she tries to go after me.”
He gives me a faint smile. “How wonderful. So your magic is strong? That doesn’t surprise me—your mother was stronger than I was. She might even have been stronger than Lydia. I don’t know. But I’m so glad you were able to get proper training.” He coughs again, and his heartbeat increases.
I spot a glass of water on the nightstand and offer it to him, holding it to his lips while he takes a couple of weak sips.
“Thank you…” he breathes, and slumps back on the pillows. “Oh, Verity, my dear, there’s so much I want to know about you…to tell you…”
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. “I know…I do too…”
“I want to have hours…days…years with you…enough time to earn your forgiveness for everything I’ve done to you.”
I take a deep breath, the word Dad sticking in my throat. I can’t say it. Even now, I can’t say it. “I…”
On the other side of the room, the double doors slam open, smashing into the walls with a sound like twin gunshots.
13
After everything I’ve been hearing about Lydia Kilgallen, I subconsciously expected her to be a tall woman, filling any space she occupies with her imposing and commanding presence. So I’m surprised and almost caught off guard to see the tiny, slim figure standing framed in the open doorway.
“I thought I’d find you here,” she says. “The bastard child returning home to her dog of a father.”
For a moment, I admit I’m taken aback. I got the size wrong, but the rest is all there. She’s barely more than five feet tall and less than a hundred pounds soaking wet, but her sheer presence—her aura—dominate the room to the point where they almost seem to draw the air out of it.
Physically, she’s not particularly frightening. With her pale blonde hair, trim figure, and perfect makeup, she looks like one of those rich old society ladies you see hanging out at fancy clubs and running charity drives for orphan puppies.
But then I get a look at her eyes, and shudder.
This woman is not all there. I don’t even need magical sight to tell me that.
“Lydia,” I say coldly. I keep an eye on her, but my body chills as I try to look past her. What happened to Miles and Elena? Did she kill them? Am I going to lose all four of my newfound family members because of this horrible woman? “I thought you might show up.”
“Did you?” Her voice drips with contempt as her dark-eyed gaze moves up and down my body. “I’m not surprised you might expect me to protect my husband from a murderer.”
“Lydia—” Sebastian begins weakly.
“Shut up, you pathetic waste of air,” she snaps without taking her eyes off me. She looks me over again. “So…here you are. You never should have come here.”
I stand, still trying to get a look behind her. “What did you do with Miles and Elena?”
She snorts. “That should be the least of your concerns, dear.”
I switch to magical sight, and I can’t help gasping. I’ve dealt with the auras of a lot of physically ill people before, and even some who were mentally ill, but never have I seen anything like this. Lydia Kilgallen’s aura started out a rich gold, but barely any of that is left now. It almost makes me sick to look at it, rolling and sparking with ugly red spikes of a lifetime of jealousy, hatred, and envy. I wonder how long they’ve been building, because they’ve obviously become an integral part of her now. Most people’s auras can heal from such a thing with time, but this is like a cancer, dug in so deep I doubt anything could touch it.
She obviously mistakes my shock and disgust for fear, and a smile spreads across her thin lips. “Yes, dear. You’d be wise to back away now. I’ll call the police, and if you return to your cell and behave yourself, I might be willing to overlook your little jailbreak.”
I glare at her, and it takes everything I have not to blow her into the wall with my biggest concussion spell. “You don’t get it, do you?” My voice shakes. “You killed my mother. You murdered my mother because you couldn’t handle your jealousy. And you know what, Lydia? Maybe you should have killed me back then, too.”
She waves me off with all the concern of a woman shooing flies. “Don’t try to intimidate me, child. Your mother deserved to die. She was nothing but a worthless whore, and Sebastian knows it.”
My whole body erupts with sudden rage at her words. Magical power sparks around my hands.
“Verity, please—” Sebastian says from the bed. “Don’t—”
I’m not looking at him, but I can hear the wheeze in his voice. It’s
getting worse.
“Yes, don’t,” Lydia says mockingly. “Tell her, Sebastian. If you don’t want your precious little spawn turned into a pile of ashes, tell her.”
My chill intensifies. A pile of ashes? Of course—she’s got to be a black mage. That’s where she got all the power—probably pulling it from servants and all the other townspeople too scared to stand up to her. That’s got to be why everybody in Los Robles is terrified of disappearing without a trace if they cross her.
Oh, God, did she kill her own children? Are Elena and Miles nothing but ashes in the hallway?
“No…” Sebastian says. “Don’t become…like her…”
I’m breathing hard, my mind racing, my hands still flickering with magical power, but still his words touch me. I think of Mathias, back in Vegas. I could do the same thing to her—the same thing I’ve had nightmares about doing again. I could let myself lose control and nobody would blame me.
Nobody would know.
Sebastian will be dead soon, and if Miles and Elena already are, then—
Lydia’s gaze locks not on me, but on Sebastian behind me. Her jaw is trembling, and her eyes are open so wide I can see the whites all around them. I’ve never seen one human being show that much insane rage before.
“How…dare…you?” she hisses. “You sniveling coward, how dare you? You never once had the balls to stand up to me, and now you’re claiming the moral high ground?” She snorts a laugh. “You’re pathetic, Sebastian. Everything that’s happened is your fault, not mine! You’re the one who couldn’t keep it in your pants!”
I take a step forward, standing between the man in the bed and the raving woman in the doorway. “Shut up.” This time, my voice comes out even and deadly cold. “I promise, Lydia, if you say another word, you’ll regret it.” My body shakes with tension, but it’s not fear. It’s the effort of holding myself back.
I expect her to freak out and attack me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she subsides a bit, still eyeing me with her cold, hard stare. “You don’t understand,” she says in the same even tone I used. “You don’t understand anything. If you did, you wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him. You—”
“Look out!” Sebastian’s voice comes from behind me. It’s high and wheezy, a voice that wants to be a yell but doesn’t have the breath for it.
I spin sideways in time to see him bucking up in his bed, raising his hands.
I act instantly, just as Alastair taught me to. My shield flares around both me and Sebastian—but not before his own, larger, weaker, shimmering with effort, pops up in front of it.
Lydia’s surprise attack slams into his barrier first, and I hear his gasp of pain and shock from behind me as it goes from white to pink to red and then winks out under the onslaught.
Mine doesn’t buckle. I bear down as the remainder of the energy hits it. She’s strong—Sebastian wasn’t kidding about that—but my gritted teeth turn to a bared, feral grin as her best shot, her murderous ambush, bounces off and dissipates into the air. I make a defiant ‘bring it’ gesture—I can’t help it. I want to kill her and I won’t do that, so I settle for the next best thing.
My gesture hits home. “Enough!” Lydia screams, and there’s something unhinged in her wild-eyed stare, in the way her lips twist into a rictus of hatred. Her face is the mottled red of fresh bricks as she gathers energy to fling another attack. “Die like your whore of a mother, you worthless little bitch!”
My rage rises again, white-hot and unstoppable. How dare she speak like that about my mother?
At that moment, all I want to do is wipe her from existence. My rationalizations don’t matter. Sebastian’s pleas don’t matter. Nothing matters except destroying this woman who’s taken so much from me. My magic surges up, boiling, refusing to be controlled.
One more time, I remember Mathias.
It would be so easy.
I’ve done it before—I can do it again.
And like Mathias, she deserves it.
So easy…
The rage bubbles, and with it the magic, threatening to engulf me until my last shred of control ebbs away…
But at the last moment, I call it back.
Lydia definitely deserves it. There’s no doubt in my mind about it. But that doesn’t matter.
That might be the kind of person Lydia is, but it’s not the kind of person I am.
I back up, bolstering my shield again, bracing for another hit.
The hit doesn’t come.
Instead, Lydia takes a staggering step back, her thin hands rising not in anger, but in terror. Her eyes bug out even further, so far they look like they might pop out of her head, and her red face goes pasty pale. She pulls in a wheezing, gurgling breath and stumbles backward, crashing into the wall.
I stare at her, shocked, keeping the shield up in case she’s faking again. But even as I do that, I’m sure she’s not faking.
Something’s wrong with her.
Her hand flies to her head, pressing against it while the other one scrabbles at the wall. Her tongue darts in and out of her mouth, her expression changing from rage to horror. She drops to her knees and then to all fours, reaching out toward me, toward Sebastian, her eyes pleading with us to do something. Her mouth opens, but all that comes out is a long, desperate moan.
Then she crashes the rest of the way down, lying splayed and twitching on the floor.
For a second I can’t do anything but stand there, looking down at her, my brain stuck in neutral. I keep the shield up as I shift to magical sight, but then drop it when I see her aura.
She’s still alive, but that’s all she is.
I don’t know what happened—I won’t know without closer examination—but I do know that she’s no longer a threat.
Breathing hard, I turn back to Sebastian, expecting to find him dead. Tears spring to my eyes again as I realize that, even as sick and near death as he was, he managed to find the energy to try to protect me from Lydia. Never mind that my shield probably would have stopped her attack on its own—that doesn’t matter.
He fought for me.
My father fought his worst fear for me.
He’s not dead, but it won’t be long. Magical sight reveals a faintly flickering aura, but even in the few seconds I watch I can see it fading.
There’s nothing I—or anyone else—can do.
I take his hand and squeeze it. “Sebastian…” I murmur. When he doesn’t answer, I swallow hard. “Dad…” It’s still hard to force it out. I feel like I’m betraying Carl Thayer by even saying the word.
His eyes flutter open, full of pain. “Verity…”
“I’m here. Just hold on, and I’ll—”
He smiles, and for a moment pride overshadows the pain. “Verity…I’m so glad…I got to meet you.”
“Please—just hold on. I’ll call the—”
“No.” He shakes his head. I’m not even sure he’s seeing me anymore. “You’re everything…I hoped you’d be. Your mother was…a dear woman. Please don’t blame her for what happened… Please don’t…”
His voice breaks into a cough. His hand goes limp in mine, and an instant later the light leaves his eyes. I don’t need to look at his aura to know he’s gone.
Slowly, carefully, I stand back up. I squeeze his hand one last time and lay it across his still chest. I stand there, looking down at him, memorizing his features. Tears crawl down my cheeks and I don’t do anything to stop them.
I have no idea how long it is before I hear another soft voice from the doorway. “Verity?”
My head jerks up and I spin, magical energy once more popping up around my hands, but it fizzles when I see Miles standing there, swaying, gripping the doorway to steady himself. His face is as pale as Sebastian’s.
“Miles!” I throw a quick glance at Lydia, who’s still twitching weakly on the floor, and run to him, gripping his shoulder. “Are you all right? Where’s Elena?”
“I’m—all right,” he says. I can see by his
aura that he’s still weak, and obviously took some kind of hit. “Elena’s out there—she’ll be okay too. Knocked out, but her aura’s steady. I’m sorry—Mother caught us by surprise. I think she killed the nurse…” He looks down at his mother on the floor, and then at Sebastian on the bed. “What happened? Dad—”
“He’s gone,” I say gently. “He…died trying to protect me.”
He gives a sober nod, like he expected that—at least the part about Sebastian being dead. “And…Mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you—do that to her?” He drops to his knees next to her, rolling her over. She’s still twitching faintly.
“No. I wanted to, but…no. I think she lost it there at the end, when Sebastian finally stood up to her. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” I don’t really care, to be honest, but I crouch opposite Miles and shift to magical sight, studying her aura closely the way Edna taught me.
To my surprise, it’s stronger than I expected it to be, but that doesn’t mean she’s in good shape. A lot of the angry, discordant red spikes are gone now, replaced by a weird, billowing fog mostly centered around her head. I’ve never seen anything like that before, but I remember Edna telling me about it once. I rock back on my heels with a sigh. “We should probably call somebody.”
“Yeah.” He sounds reluctant, but stands. “This is going to change a lot of things.”
Maybe for the better, I think, but I don’t say it. I don’t think it will do any good.
Before I leave the room, I return to Sebastian’s bedside and look down at his body. He’s still got the little smile he had when he died, his face peaceful and pain-free. I pick up his hand again and squeeze it one last time. Then I turn and follow Miles out of the room.
14
“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?” Elena asks.
It’s lunchtime the next day. She, Miles, and I are all sitting at Croney’s in Fairbreeze, steaming cups of coffee in front of us. “I shouldn’t,” I say with reluctance. “I’ve got things back home I need to deal with. But I’ll come back, I promise. For Sebastian’s funeral, definitely, and I hope a lot of times after that. I don’t want to lose touch with you two now. And you can come visit me if you want to. I’d like to introduce you to Jason.”
