He hadn't been able to resist. She looked so defenceless as
she slept. None would have known her as the stubborn WildMage. The man who
usually slept beside her, or swept her away for a night of star gazing, was
suspiciously absent, but that didn't worry him. The time would come soon enough
when the two would meet again.
The knife was his faithful companion through everything. Idly, he wondered what
tales it would have to tell, if it could speak. It would remember the first
death, that mage student, then his lovely impostor's mother, then those
wonderful years with the Tortallan princess. It would recall tasting her flesh
again as he killed her and the Gallan. This knife had journeyed with him since
the beginning, and it would travel with him until the end.
She awoke, long lashes beating against her lower lid as she focused on the
figure. Suddenly, her eyes rounded with fear. "You," she choked.
He came to sit beside her, ignoring the mask of disgust that rippled over her
beautiful features. "Did you miss me?"
Fury intercepted any other emotion. She whipped around. "No," she
hissed. "You're not real." She still had that wonderful foreign taint
to her Common tongue.
"I beg to differ. Perhaps a little pinch to convince you it's not a
dream?" He had to prove his point. He hadn't wanted to hurt her, but she'd
given him no choice. He considered pain to be a beautiful emotion, raw and
natural. It was displayed on her face now, as she tried to fight the screams
from erupting out of her throat.
*
"He's going
to catch you."
"We're not going to let him," Veralidaine shot back at me, crouching
behind the table. "Not until I decide that he can."
Commoners. They thought that they ruled the world. Honestly, I'd never met more
stubborn people. I thanked the Gods that I had landed among royalty, so I
wasn't often forced to mingle with the riffraff of the country. She refused to
believe anything I said, and we had to do everything her way. Mithros, the word
'compromise' didn't feature once in her vocabulary.
I grumbled something that should have been undetectable, but the stupid woman
had ears like a bat. Literally. Damned Wild Magic. She crept over, and grabbed
my arm. "If he catches me before I say so, I will make sure that you
suffer for the rest of your life. I mean that." The menace in her
blue-grey eyes told me that she did indeed intend on my agony, and I was not
one to disregard the word of a mage.
"Fine," I said huffily, acting as though it didn't matter to me one
way or the other, though we both knew it did. "I won't give you
away."
"Good," she said, satisfied, and returned to her hideout not a moment
too soon, for a blast of incandescent light bathed the room in a fiery green. I
wished that he wouldn't insist on dramatic openings. It left a blur on my vision.
I curtsied to him. "Master."
*
Out of the earth, he came, like something out of a dream.
The girl stared at her hands in amazement. Her pulse raced and her eyes were
wide with shock. "I didn't mean to," she whispered. "It wasn't supposed to
work." Tears shot to her eyes, and she tried to push him back. "It wasn't
supposed to work," she repeated desperately. "I take it back!"
It had started as a joke, to see who was the most powerful. She had been happy
to join in, because in jokes, nobody got hurt, right? Right?
Ahmose had died first. She had tried to turn their potions teacher into a tree,
like that Master Salmalín had supposedly done to Tristan Staghorn. All that was
left of her was a small acorn. Next had been Datri, then Amir. Explosions,
creations that had gone out of control, Words of Power misused… She knew that
she would die trying, but still she tried to follow Lord Thom of Trebond,
because she had been there when Kadeem had refused to go any further. She
closed her mind against the image of burning flesh.
A large iridescent stone sat before her. It was supposed to enhance her magic
enough so that she could cope with the force required for such a complex spell.
She still didn't believe that she could do it, opal or no opal. Master Thom
hadn't actually raised the insane Duke, that had been a fable. Or so she had
once believed. It was impossible not to believe what lay before her eyes.
"It was just a game," she wept. "Nothing was supposed to come of it."
He turned his head, stiffly, as though awaking from a long sleep. "You… did –
this?" he asked haltingly.
She nodded. "Oh, but I didn't mean to! Go back, I take it back!" Her youthful
face was twisted with regret, and guilt. He took her in with one glance, and
decided that she was of no worth.
"A life for a life, young one," he murmured.
She frowned in confusion. Of course she didn't understand; she was too simple
to. She understood well enough once the steel penetrated her flesh, though. The
first life had been taken.
"Just a game? I think not."
*
My eyes flickered over his figure as it shaped in front of me. He had obviously
been a good-looking man in his prime, but there was no telling what a year or
so in a Stormwing body and death would do to you.
"Princess!" he greeted, a smile wrapping around his unpainted lips.
I kept the scowl from my face with an effort. He called me 'princess' because
he had forgotten my birth name, the name given to me by my mother. But I didn't
forget. I couldn't. "You're late," I accused, standing straight and
locking my hands behind my back. "You went somewhere else, didn't
you?" I knew he had. It was just fun to play with him, fun to watch the
guilt fly across his expression.
He hesitated, forming a lie in his mind quickly. I watched him steadily,
faintly amused by this so-called powerful man's attempts to keep in the favour
of an eighteen-year-old child, whose only claim came from stealing somebody
else's place in the world. "I was... detained," he came up with,
deciding that I would not dare to question him.
"Where?" I asked coolly, determined to drag this out. So long as it
kept his attention from his precious Veralidaine, it worked for me.
He shifted from foot to foot, eyes skipping across the room, trying not to
connect with mine as he searched for an excuse. Inevitably, they landed on the
crouched WildMage, and I cursed silently.
"What's this?" he asked, tone stern. I didn't answer, just plastered
my face with pretend shock. He strode over, and pulled out the Gallan.
She had been prepared for something like this. "Master," she
whispered reverently. "Master, what can I do to serve you?"
He dropped her arm, a smirk crawling over his features. "You want to carry
out my wishes?"
"Oh yes," she lied, blinking up at him innocently. I hated her then,
hated that she won his trust so easily, and crept into his mind without
question. I despised her for knowing what to do, and for getting away with it,
when I had to work so hard and he still questioned my every action. "I...
I only hid so that your sight would not be tainted with my worthless
presence." She dropped her gaze, and brought a faint blush to her cheeks.
I swore at her in my mind, viciously, and begged for looks to kill.
Arrogance twisted his face. She played on his pride, made him feel omnipotent. But
he still had doubts, thank the gods. "How did you know I was here?"
I felt a dim sense of foreboding uncurl in the pit of my stomach, as she
pointed at me. "She wants to betray you, Master. She thought that I would
help bring you down."
As his amber eyes fixed on mine, I gulped down fear. He would see through her
transparent act. He had to.
