He was standing far too close to her now. Close enough that she knew from his scent that he’d been out riding today. She picked up the familiar aromas of worn leather and warm sandalwood.
She stepped back from him, knowing she would think much clearer with some space between them. Her hair slipped from his fingers. “You smell like a horse.”
“I suppose there are worse things to smell like.” He raised a brow before narrowing his gaze. “Very well, I’ll send for Nerissa if you feel she’s so valuable.”
Cleo regarded him with surprise. “Just like that? No argument?”
“Would you prefer I argue?”
“No, but I . . .” When one has gotten what they want, one should stop speaking. Cleo’s father used to say that to her whenever she’d continue to make her case for something he’d already relented to. “Thank you,” she said now, as sweetly as she could.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I must wash the scent of horses from myself. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone else with my stench.” Again, he turned toward the door.
Stop being a weak little fool, she told herself. “I’m not finished.”
His shoulders tensed. “Oh?”
Her teeth had begun to chatter from the cold, but she refused to go back inside yet. “The message you sent to your father. What did it say? You didn’t tell me.”
He blinked. “Should I have?”
“It concerns me as well, doesn’t it? I’m the one whom you helped escape execution. So, yes, you should have told me. What are his plans? Will he come here? Are we safe?”
He leaned against the balcony doors and crossed his arms. “We, princess, are mostly certainly not safe. I told my father that I’d learned you had specific information on Lucia’s whereabouts. I wrote that Cronus was so steadfastly loyal to the king’s commands that he refused to delay your execution until after I could get this information out of you. So I took matters into my own hands.”
Cleo exhaled the breath she was holding during this entire speech. “And has he replied?”
A shallow nod. “I received a new message this morning. Apparently he’s traveling abroad, and he looks forward to seeing me again upon his return.”
“That’s it? So he believes you?”
“I wouldn’t say that. His reply could mean anything—or nothing. After all, he knows that messages sent by raven aren’t exactly guaranteed to stay private. But I plan to stick to the story I’ve told until my last breath. If I can convince him that I only acted out of love for my sister, he may be lenient with me.”
“And with me?”
“That remains to be seen.”
Cleo hadn’t expected him to make any promises to keep her safe and alive, so she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. His silence was just more proof that the boy she’d seen intimidating and humiliating Kurtis was the real Magnus.
“Now, let me ask you a question, princess,” Magnus said, locking gazes with her. He drew so close to her that they were nearly touching and she moved backward until her spine was pressed up against the balcony railing.
“What?” She tried to inject the single word with as much defiance as possible.
“Have you managed to send word to Jonas Agallon and his trusty rebels informing him of your current whereabouts? Perhaps he can chase after Amara and bring you back the water Kindred.”
The name Jonas Agallon was a sharp slap back to cold reality.
Cleo pressed her hands against Magnus’s chest and pushed. “Step away from me,” she hissed.
“Did I strike a nerve? Apologies, but some subjects need to be addressed—even if they prove unpleasant to you.”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t and have never had anything to do with Jonas Agallon and his followers.” The belief that she’d colluded with rebels was what had led to her imprisonment and the king’s command for her immediate execution.
But it was the truth of course—she had conspired with him. But she’d never admit that out loud. Especially not to Magnus.
“Well, regardless, might I suggest Jonas as an archery tutor instead of Kurtis? Kurtis is skilled in the sport, I suppose, but Jonas—now there’s someone who’s killed Auranians and Limerians alike with his arrows, while Kurtis has only aimed at painted targets.”
“Kurtis will do nicely, but thank you for your opinion.” She shoved past him, then glanced over her shoulder as she left the balcony. “Good day, Magnus.”
He watched her leave the balcony with narrowed eyes. “Good day, princess.”
CHAPTER 4
LUCIA
PAELSIA
He’d asked her to call him Kyan.
He didn’t look much older than twenty years of age. He had dark blond hair, sparkling amber eyes, and was taller than any man Lucia had ever known.
Immortal and indestructible. Omnipotent and fearsome. Able to end a mortal’s life in a flash of fire and pain with a mere thought. He was the elemental god of fire, previously imprisoned within an orb of amber for countless centuries.
And now he sat right across from her, slurping barley soup in a small public house in northern Paelsia.
“This,” Kyan said as he signaled to the barmaid for another bowl, “is absolutely delicious.”
Lucia regarded him with disbelief. “It’s just soup.”
“You say that as if this isn’t a miracle contained within a wooden bowl. This is sustenance that feeds both the body and the soul. Mortals could live off unseasoned meat and plucked grass and yet they choose to make concoctions that smell and taste divine. If only they applied their minds to everything in this manner, rather than wasting their time squabbling about mundane topics and killing each other for petty reasons.”
When they’d first met, she’d expected him to lay waste to Mytica immediately in his quest to assassinate his enemy—a Watcher named Timotheus who, according to Kyan, was the only remaining immortal who had the power to imprison him again.
At the time, she’d been so numb with grief she hadn’t been able to think straight. Her pain was so great that it was the only thing she’d wanted to share with the world.
Lucia wondered what her father and brother might say if they could see her now, sitting in a tavern, across from the soup-eating fire Kindred. The thought almost made her smile.
“Eat.” Kyan pointed to Lucia’s bowl.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Do you want to wither away and die?” He raised a pale brow. “Is that what you’re doing? Starving yourself so you can be reunited with your beloved Watcher?”
Whenever Kyan said the word Watcher, his expression darkened and his amber eyes flashed bright blue.
Anger. Hatred. The need for vengeance. They simmered just beneath the otherwise genteel exterior of this powerful being.
It was much the same whenever Lucia heard Alexius’s name. The pain of having learned that he, too, had used her for his own gain had faded in the days since she’d lost him. The scar tissue that wound had left behind had grown thicker, tougher, as protective as a plate of armor.
No one would ever use her like that again.
“No,” she replied. “Believe me, I want to live.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
Lucia stared down at her bowl and brought a spoonful of soup to her lips. “This is watery and tasteless.”
Kyan reached over and took some for himself to sample. “To you, perhaps. But that doesn’t make it less of a miracle.”
The miracle Lucia wanted to come upon most of all was a witch—the older and more knowledgeable the better. They needed one who knew where to find a very special kind of stone wheel used as a magical porthole leading directly to the Sanctuary, the legendary world of the immortals, where the Watchers had stood guard over the Kindred in their crystal prisons for millennia.
Lucia had wanted to know why neither she nor Kyan—as powerful as they both were—could sense this magic without outside help. He explained that there was no magic to sense, that such magic h
ad been hidden to protect the Sanctuary from outside threats.
Therefore, they didn’t need a witch’s magic to find these stone wheels, they needed a witch who’d seen one with her own eyes and knew what it was.
Once they found one, only then could Lucia use her magic to yank Timotheus right out of his safe haven.
Lucia realized Kyan was watching her and she looked up from her bowl.
“You still want to help me, don’t you?” he asked, his voice softer now.
She nodded. “Of course. I hate Watchers as much as you do.”
“I highly doubt that. But I’m sure there’s no love lost between you after all that’s happened.” He sighed. Suddenly, he looked very mortal to Lucia. Very vulnerable, and very tired. “Once Timotheus is dead, perhaps I can finally find peace.”
“As soon as he’s dead, we’ll find your family, and then you can find peace,” she replied. “And anyone who gets in our way will be very, very sorry.”
“My fierce little sorceress.” He grinned at her. “You remind me so much of Eva. She protected us, too. She was the only one who understood what we wanted—what we needed—more than anything else.”
“To be free, and to be a real family.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t common knowledge that the Kindred weren’t just magical forces trapped within crystals. They were elemental beings, with hopes and dreams and goals. Yet all who believed in their existence, including Lucia’s adoptive father, King Gaius, thought them to be nothing more than shiny treasures that would bring ultimate power to their possessors.
Once she and Kyan had summoned Timotheus from the Sanctuary, she would drain the Watcher of his magic until he became mortal.
And then Lucia would kill him, just as she had Melenia.
She had taken such pleasure in the death of that beautiful immortal—a woman who’d corrupted Alexius to the point he’d nearly murdered Lucia. She’d used Lucia’s blood to escape her own prison and awaken Kyan, her former lover.
But the pain in Melenia’s eyes, just before her death, when she’d realized Kyan had never loved her back . . .
Such sweet, sweet vengeance.
“What if we find a witch and she refuses to help us?” Lucia asked. “Will we have to torture her?”
“Torture?” He frowned. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Your magic will be sufficient to help get us what we need.”
She knew her magic was more powerful than a common witch’s, but she’d only started to scratch the surface. She yearned to know more. “What do you mean?”
“Eva had a golden dagger, which she would use to carve symbols into people’s flesh—both immortal and mortal alike. The wounds would ensure obedience and truthfulness in any subject she chose.”
This dagger had to have been what Melenia had used on Alexius to manipulate his mind, force him to do her bidding, and try to kill Lucia. Her greedy act should have ended with Lucia’s death, but instead, Alexius had taken his own life.
Lucia wanted so badly to forgive him, knowing that he’d been manipulated. But so much damage had already been done, and she didn’t have the strength to muster up any more compassion.
“So Eva had a fancy magical dagger,” she said now, shrugging. “How does that story help me?”
“Eva could compel truth and obedience from mortals even without the dagger. It was a combination of all of her magic, blending the elements together to create something new—something beyond what anyone else could do. Manipulating one’s very will and molding it into a different shape. Drawing truth from a reluctant tongue. The same magic that the dagger had been infused with at its creation was the magic she possessed naturally. You possess it, too, little sorceress.”
Lucia regarded him with awe at the sheer number of possibilities this presented. “Honestly, I’ve never experienced anything like that. It sounds far too good to be true. I mean, I have Eva’s magic, but I’m not immortal like her.”
“Mortality has nothing to do with it, really.” Kyan polished off what was left of his third bowl of soup. “However, you are correct that you’re sixteen years old and Eva was ancient and ageless. You’ll need a lot of practice before you’ll be ready to wield this power without any serious difficulties.”
She frowned. “Difficulties? Like what?”
“Best to show rather than tell.” He nodded at the approaching barmaid. “Try this new gift on her. Capture her gaze. Will your deepest magic into her as if it’s a substance she will breathe in, and have her tell you a guarded truth.”
“That’s about as clear as mud.”
He spread his hands. “I can’t do it, myself. I’ve only seen it done. But I know it’s within you. You should be able to feel it rise up and flow through your every pore.”
“Well . . . I can light candles by just looking at them.”
“Like that simple magic, yes. But more. Deeper. Bigger. More epic.”
More epic? She rolled her eyes, equally exasperated and fascinated by everything he said. “Fine. I’ll try.”
The ability to pull the truth from anyone’s lips was a skill far too tempting to ignore. It would be so useful in countless ways.
The barmaid arrived at their table and slid another steaming bowl of soup in front of Kyan. “There you go, handsome. Can I bring you anything else?”
“Not for me. But my friend has a question for you.”
The barmaid looked to Lucia. “What is it?”
Lucia took a deep breath and locked eyes with the woman. It had become effortless to use the magic she’d grown accustomed to, but this had to be different.
Show me the way, Eva, she thought. Let me be like you.
While the amethyst ring she now wore on the middle finger of her right hand helped control the more beastly and uncontrollable parts of her elementia, she still felt that swirl of darkness down deep inside of her. An endless, bottomless ocean of magic, all contained within her. It was as if she could see that magic—a magic whose surface she’d only skimmed.
Awakening the Kindred had meant tapping into this swirling ocean. Lucia had dove into it so deeply she’d nearly drowned.
She needed to go there again, to that deep, dangerous place. This was not lighting a wick with a flame. This was not levitating a flower or healing a scratch or turning water to ice.
The deep, dark magic within her blended together and formed into the shape of a dagger. Lucia envisioned pressing this black dagger to the barmaid’s throat.
“Tell me your darkest secret—the one you’ve never told anyone else.” Lucia spoke the words, a whir of echoes all around her, and forced them into the woman’s mind.
“I . . . uh . . . what?” the barmaid sputtered.
Lucia inhaled deeply and pressed that invisible dagger closer to the woman’s throat. “Your darkest secret, speak it now. Don’t resist.”
A violent shudder shot through the barmaid, and blood began to trickle from her nose. “I . . . I killed my baby sister when I was five years old. I smothered her with a blanket.”
Stunned, Lucia fought to hold on to her concentration. “Why would you do that?”
“She . . . she was sickly. My mother spent all her time with her and none with me. I was ignored. So I got rid of her. I hated her and never regretted what I did.”
Lucia finally broke eye contact with the barmaid, disgusted by the confession. “Leave us.”
The woman absently wiped her bloody nose, then turned and quickly scurried away without another word.
“Well done.” Kyan nodded. “I knew you could do it.”
“The magic causes them pain,” Lucia observed. “Not me.”
“Only if they try to resist. Eva had such great control over the power that no one resisted, and no one was harmed. You’ll grow stronger in time.”
A little blood wasn’t anything to get squeamish about. This ability was worth the price that had to be paid, but Lucia decided right then that she’d use her truth powers sparingly. Some truths were
not meant to be known.
But some most certainly were.
“What she confessed to us,” Lucia said, her thoughts swirling. “It reminded me of a secret of my own.”
“What?”
“When I was a baby, I was stolen from my cradle by a witch working for King Gaius. I know my birth mother was killed, but I know nothing about my real father.” She hesitated. “If he’s still alive, I want to find him. And I want to know if I have any sisters or brothers.”
Just considering the possibilities of having her real family back gave her new life, and an oddly giddy sense of hope.
Finished with his meal, Kyan stood up from the table and offered Lucia his hand. “I will help you find your family. I promise I will.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she couldn’t stop the smile that began to stretch across her face. “Thank you.”
“It’s truly the least I can do for you, my little sorceress, after all you’ve already done for me.”
Lucia reached into her cloak, pulled out a bag of coins, and placed a silver one on the table to pay for their meal, her mind still reeling from this new and powerful discovery.
A bald man with a short black beard approached their table, smiling. “Good evening to you both.”
“Good evening,” Kyan replied.
He rested the edge of his dagger on the table. “I’m not one for formal introductions, so let me get right to the point. I’m very interested in that pretty bag of coins you were just waving about. How about you give it to me, and then all of us can leave this public house unharmed?”
Lucia regarded him with disbelief. “How dare you insult me,” she hissed, lurching up to her feet.
He laughed. “Sit down, little girl. And you too,” he said, looking fiercely at Kyan.
“Lucia,” Kyan said calmly, taking a seat again. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not.” In the space of a heartbeat, Lucia had grown ready to peel the skin from this loathsome thief one inch at a time for this insult.
“Oh, you’ve got some fire in you, don’t you?” The thief’s loathsome gaze slid over her open cloak as he nodded with leering approval. “I like pretty young girls with fight in them. Makes it more interesting.”