by Gail Dayton
If it took setting Jax free of the blood bond to . keep the kidnappers from killing him, then that’s what she would do. That meant she had to allow the kidnappers to take her, and that meant she couldn’t take any of her defenders along. But they could follow.
Amanusa scrawled a quick note, telling Elinor what she was doing. Then she offered her hand to Crow, who cocked a beady eye at her and climbed daintily aboard to be lifted to her shoulder.
She didn’t want to be separated from Crow for one second, for fear she wouldn’t be able to distinguish him from all the other crows of Paris. In the hotel lobby, the few patrons and employees awake at this hour looked at her strangely when she crossed it with a crow on her shoulder. She didn’t care. She was a sorceress. Sorceresses were supposed to be odd.
Outside, Crow took to the air and she cried out, afraid he’d fly off and leave her. But he only flew to a window box above a storefront at the street corner, where he perched and waited for her to catch up. Flight by short flight, Crow led her across Paris, returning to caw at her when she did not follow fast enough. Past the Palais Royale and the library to the Rue Montmartre and into the steep streets of the Faubourg itself.
Many of these streets had not yet been made over into Louis Napoleon’s broad avenues, but they were not the narrow, crooked streets of the medieval city either. Crow led her to a tidy square of tree-shaded grass surrounded by neat houses, and perched on the pediment over a black-painted door. This time, as Amanusa neared, he didn’t flutter away to another balcony railing or lamppost. He crouched where he was, watching her approach with one glittering eye, then the other.
“Is this it?” she asked. “Is this where the kidnappers have taken him?”
Crow opened his beak and let out a single raucous caw.
Amanusa lifted the brass knocker on the ominously colored door and banged until someone came to open it. A young man answered, big, beefy, and blond, dressed in trousers and unbuttoned undershirt, with his braces dangling around his hips and a snarl on his round, ruddy face. As the moments ticked by, the snarl transformed into a goggling stare.
“Good morning,” she said. “I am Mrs. John Greyson. I’m looking for my husband. Is he here?”
The wizard, for such he was, took one barefooted step out the door to scan the square suspiciously.
“I am quite alone. Is Jax here?” Amanusa hid her fears. She had plenty of practice at it.
With an oath her translation stone forbore to translate, the young wizard grabbed her by the arm and dragged her over the threshold, slamming the door behind her.
“Who is it, Oleg?” a man called from upstairs, footsteps drawing closer. “Who could be calling at this ungodly hour?”
“It is her, Mikoyan! The witch.” Oleg gave her a little shake.
“What?” The man—alchemist—Mikoyan came flying down the stairs two and three at a time, dashing into the front parlor to peer out the windows as he pulled his braces up over his singlet.
“I came alone,” Amanusa volunteered.
Oleg slapped her so hard her head bounced off the wall behind her and she tasted blood. Her lip split inside and out, on her teeth and the ring the wizard wore. “Do not speak,” he growled. “A woman does not speak in the company of men.”
Innocent blood already. Perhaps this would be easier than she thought.
“What are you doing?” Mikoyan, a mature man with dark hair falling in his face and an overlarge mustache, strode from the window in two steps to take custody of Amanusa from the younger man. “Are you mad? She is a sorceress. Her magic is based on innocent blood.”
“Her blood is not innocent,” another man said from the shadows beside the stairwell. “It is black with evil, tainted with the lives of those she has murdered.”
Two more young men had appeared upstairs, peering over the railing, one of them still buttoning up his trousers. Five magicians, as Jax had said. She wished she could reach Jax, know more than simply that the bond between them still held.
“I would feel better if no blood at all is spilled,” Mikoyan retorted. He gripped both her arms, his fingers digging in painfully. “What are you doing here? What is your game?”
“No game. I came to find my husband.” Amanusa kept calm on the surface. There was already too much emotion clanging about for her to pour hers into the mix. “Is he here?”
“As if you do not already know.” Mikoyan dragged her to the stairway. “Do you wish to inspect your property? See whether we have damaged him?”
“He is my husband, not my property.” It was difficult to speak while the alchemist hauled her roughly up the stairs, but she managed. “Nor am I his property, but his wife.”
“Lies,” the voice from below hissed up at them.
She tried again, but feared it was useless. “Men and women were never made to be enemies, one subject to the other.” She was having trouble catching her breath as they mounted the third staircase to the attics on the fourth level. Her shins and arms were bruised from all the stairs and walls and banisters they’d been banged into and from Mikoyan’s grip.
At the top of the house, in a hallway with a ceiling so low the alchemist had to stoop and Amanusa almost did, they stopped in front of a door closed with an iron bolt and a padlock. One of the dark young men pulled a key from the watch pocket in his trousers, and opened the lock. Mikoyan shoved her through the door so hard she fell to her knees.
It didn’t matter. Jax was there, asleep—or unconscious?—on the narrow bed.
“Where a woman should be,” Oleg crowed. “On her knees before men.”
Amanusa gathered her skirts, got them out from under her knees so she could crawl forward and reach Jax.
“Shut up, Oleg,” one of the other young ones said. “You’re a crude bastard.”
“Jax?” Amanusa hovered her hands over his dear, beautiful face, afraid to touch him, though his face was still beautiful, still unbruised.
“I’m the one whose parents were married,” Oleg retorted. “You want me to shut up, Esteban, you make me.”
“Both of you shut up,” Mikoyan snarled.
She had to know how badly hurt he was, even if it might hurt him when she touched him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Sorry for hurting him with her touch. Sorry for losing him. Sorry for not loving him sooner.
She laid one hand feather soft on his cheek and slipped the other through the unbuttoned neck of his shirt to rest on his naked chest over his heart. Only then could she touch the magic inside him, slide in to spread through his bloodstream and see what they had done to him.
The contrast in his condition with her previous visits inside him was dramatic. His blood vessels leaked, blood beginning to pool in places it shouldn’t—his abdomen, around his heart, in his brain. Crushing her dismay, Amanusa went to work, shooing the blood back where it belonged, sealing up the leaks and reinforcing the walls of his bloodstream with magic. Jax coughed, spraying his shirt and Amanusa’s dress with blood—the blood she hadn’t been able to put back.
“What are you doing to him?” Mikoyan threw her across the tiny room to slam into the corner of a chest she hadn’t noticed.
“Repairing the damage you caused.” Amanusa wiped her face with her sleeve. The white poplin was already bloody. A few more smears wouldn’t hurt.
“Oleg.” Mikoyan jerked his head toward Jax, who had coughed again and now lay collapsed on his side.
The wizard gave a quick nod and crossed the room to touch two fingers to Jax’s neck. He used Jax’s cleanish shirttail to wipe the blood from his bare chest and pressed his ear there to listen. “He is breathing better,” Oleg said, sounding surprised.
“Of course,” the whispery voice came spilling from the shadows. “He is her slave. She needs him healthy to serve her.”
“He is my husband.” Amanusa stayed on the floor, on her knees, watching the magicians as she crept back to Jax. “I need him healthy because I love him.” She couldn’t stop the tears in her voice, hard as she tr
ied. “He can’t die before I tell him.”
“How very touching, very romantic,” the man in the hallways hissed. “How very false. You do not know the meaning of love.”
“I didn’t until he taught me.”
“You love me?” The croak of his voice brought all heads snapping round to stare at Jax.
Amanusa’s knees burned as she hurried across the last bit of space to her husband. She laid her hand along his face, now she knew it wouldn’t hurt him. “I wasn’t sure. Someone explained it to me. Love is caring more about the other person’s welfare than your own. It’s wanting to be with him and… and make love to him, and feeling as if your own heart will stop beating when you lose him.”
He covered her hand with his and brought it to his lips. “You love me?” he whispered, his mouth brushing her fingers.
Amanusa shivered with sudden emotion as she nodded. “Oh, how I love you.”
She leaned forward and touched her lips to his, stained with his blood, trying to convey all she felt with the kiss.
“This mawkishness will turn my stomach,” the hidden man said, shattering the moment. “Particularly since it is nothing but a show and a sham, performed for our benefit.”
“I love you too,” Jax whispered when Amanusa ended the kiss.
“I know, darling.” She trailed her fingers along his cheek, savoring this last touch with her magic inside him.
She stood and faced the watching magicians. “I don’t want you to kill him with your attempts to break our familiar’s bond. I always intended to set him free, but that information was riot included with the knowledge Yvaine of Braedun packed into his brain before her death. We planned to travel to her workshop to consult the volumes there and find a safe way to do it. I don’t suppose you will allow us to continue with this plan.”
“We do not trust you,” Mikoyan said, before the man in the hallway could.
“Amanusa, no.” Jax tugged at her skirts—her hands were out of his reach. “I don’t want it broken.”
She smiled at him. “I know that too, my darling. But even if the binding spell is broken, our love cannot break if it is truly love, and I believe it is. Love binds what magic cannot.”
“I may retch,” the shadow man growled.
She looked up at Mikoyan, resisting the urge to take Jax’s hand. If she touched him, she would not be able to break what had to be broken. “You understand that I am new to the practice of sorcery. I do not know exactly how to do this. I believe I can do it without harming him further, but I am not certain.
“I will tell you, however, that none of your efforts, nothing you could try would break this binding between us, short of death.”
“That is still possible,” the alchemist said. “Your death, rather than his, since you have so foolishly placed yourself in our possession.”
She inclined her head. “That is acceptable to me.”
“No.” Jax struggled to sit up, pulling on her skirts to assist him. He climbed up her body to stand, wrapping his arms around her. “No, Amanusa. It is not acceptable to me. I won’t lose you.”
She leaned her cheek against his. “Nor do I wish to lose you, Jax, darling, but it’s not up to us, is it? They are the ones making the decisions here.”
Amanusa drew back to gaze into the clear, bright, deep green-blue of his eyes, her hands cupping his face. Desire rose inside her to swirl with the love. He was injured, barely able to stand, but she could feel his arousal finning against her hip. He wanted her too, in this moment when death tried to catch their eyes and stare them down.
She forgot about their captors, forgot about magic, about anything but her love and desire, her need for this man in her arms. She kissed him. Her mouth opened under his as he kissed her back, hauling her, tight against the hard ridge of his flesh. She kissed him as if she could drink him down, as if she needed him in order to breathe, to move, to live. Perhaps she did.
“Enough.” Mikoyan grabbed her arm and jerked her away from Jax, who collapsed onto the cot.
Amanusa scooped up all the magic she could find and stuffed it inside her head.
“Bring him.” The Russian gestured for the younger men. “This room is too crowded. We’ll do this downstairs in the parlor.”
Open to me. Amanusa hoped she could still speak in Jax’s mind as she had yesterday. As long as you are able, please open. I need the magic you just stored.
Yes. And that quickly he was there, a warm presence inside her, more than just an anchor point. Him. Jax. Holding magic.
“Could we have tea?” Amanusa asked as she stumbled down the stairs in Mikoyan’s wake, his hand tight around her arm, as the mystery man faded away ahead of them. “Perhaps some croissants or brioche? Something to break our night’s fast? Or, if there is anything in the kitchen, I could cook something.”
“Why should you lower yourself to a womanly task?” Mikoyan shook her as he spoke.
Amanusa sighed. “I did not realize reading a person’s mind was a part of alchemical magic. If you already know everything about me, about what I think and how I truly feel, why don’t you go ahead and break the bond yourself?”
Mikoyan growled and she remembered she didn’t want to antagonize these men any worse. “My husband is in poor condition because of all you put him through. A little food will help him endure what lies ahead. And I haven’t eaten since—”
She thought back. She’d eaten breakfast yesterday when Elinor insisted, but hadn’t been able to choke down any of the food brought to her during the search. “It has been awhile. Food will help me properly perform the magic.”
They reached the ground floor and she stumbled again from Mikoyan’s jerking her about.
“Sorcery—blood magic—is more closely tied to the condition of one’s body than other magics,” Amanusa said. “If I am hungry, the magic is hungry.”
She hadn’t noticed so close a correlation, in truth, but she wanted Jax fed. It would help him.
“I’m starved,” Jax said, sounding a bit more like his cheeky self. “This lot hasn’t fed me since I got here.”
“Then I’d say it was time.” Amanusa scowled at Mikoyan. “Or did you intend to starve him, rather than magic him to death?”
The alchemist growled again, but he reached into his pocket for a handful of coins. “Paolo, go buy bread. And coffee with cream. Maybe some sausages. Go. And hurry back.”
Paolo, the third young man, an alchemist like Mikoyan, took the coins and ran upstairs. Mikoyan shoved Amanusa roughly into a large chair while the others eased Jax down on the sofa pushed against the far wall. A few moments later, clad in jacket and a shirt he was still tucking in, Paolo dashed back downstairs and out the door.
“What instruments do you need to work this magic? To unbind him?” Mikoyan paced the room, stopping to peer out through the front window every time he passed it.
Amanusa reached into her pocket for the lancet, but it wasn’t there. How could she have remembered the translation stone, but forgotten her lancet? “I will need a knife,” she said. “Very sharp. The sharper the better.”
“Will a razor do?” Esteban asked. The other magicians turned their horrified eyes from Amanusa to him, apparently appalled by the mere thought of bloodletting. Though the idea of killing one or both of them didn’t seem to disturb.
“Do not trust her.” The man still stood in the shadows of the hallway, keeping his face hidden. Because she might recognize him? Or because he wished to ensure she never would? “She is evil to the core.”
“You know nothing about me,” Amanusa said, “and a knife. With a razor, it is too easy to slip and cut too deep. And before you flap and moan about the evil, wicked sorceress getting her hands on a sharp object, Jax will use the knife on his own flesh. He knows how deep to cut. We will also need rags, to catch the blood, and a fire to burn them afterward.”
She would call her blood from him, but would she be able to keep that part of him that flowed through her? She didn’t want to give it
up, but she would if it proved necessary to break the bond. Did it actually have to be broken? “How will you know the binding is gone?”
“We can tell,” Mikoyan snarled.
“The binding is similar to that binding spirit or animal familiars,” Esteban volunteered. “Any wizard or conjurer has spells to sense the familiars of others.”
“Good.” Amanusa nodded, satisfied. She settled back in her chair to watch Jax, who was watching her, silently pleading from across the room for her not to do this thing.
“Good, why?” Mikoyan stalked toward her, suspicion in every line of his body.
“Because you will know it is done and there will be an end to it. You won’t keep trying and trying endlessly.” Amanusa never took her eyes from Jax.
“Paolo is back.” Oleg opened the door to admit the young alchemist. He carried café-au-lait in a thick stoneware carafe and brioche in a knotted napkin.
The sausages in their paper wrapping were stuffed in his pocket.
Esteban brought cups for the coffee and poured while Paolo passed around the food. Amanusa took only bread and coffee. I will eat, she whispered to Jax’s thoughts, if you will eat also.
What if the breaking of the bond leaves me a three-hundred-seventy-year-old corpse? Jax took sausage and bread and coffee.
It won’t. The condition of your body isn’t tied to the magic. The magic has kept you young, but it has done it by sweeping the symptoms of age from your body. She’d looked, when she was inspecting what they had done to him. The breaking of their bond shouldn’t in itself kill him, though he would begin to age normally again. The dead zones would still likely have their deadly affect on him, but outside the zones, he ought to be fine.
When we are free of them… His thoughts were fierce, insistent. You must bind us again. I am your husband, and I will not be less than I am now.
As you will it. It was easy to be the submissive wife when her wishes coincided with her husband’s.
