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.