Xin Li sat at the foot of the oversized bed, waiting.
It was a skill he had perfected in the past half millennium. Rising to fifth level, the apex of mage power, had taken centuries of study and practice, as well as a strong desire to live. More than one rival had died simply because Xin Li had out-waited him in the spell circle, finding victory through self-control.
Now his patience was gone. Evaporated into the stormy night and replaced with an eagerness that he’d never felt before.
“Mia. Come back to me, elgri. I’ve been looking for you for so long.”
The beauty in his bed didn’t answer. Her long, black hair stayed still against the snowy pillows, the tangled strands inviting his fingers to straighten them. Her eyelashes were heavy shadows on the pale cream flesh of her cheeks, hiding the brilliant blue depths he remembered every night in his dreams. The twin arches of her lips were a pale pink bow, the perfect fit for his own.
He tried not to notice how still her body lay in comparison to how he’d last seen her. His hands itched to touch her, to reassure himself that her slender, firm body still surged with life.
The passing of a single year might seem only a drop in a bucket to one who had lived 544 of them, but every day that had passed since he’d been ripped away from her had seemed to last a decade. How many times had he cast the foreshadow spell, searching for the woman he’d been torn apart from? Never seeing more than a shadow in the crystal, enough to let him know that she lived, but not enough to even sense what part of the world—or on which world—she had disappeared into.
Those shadows when he searched for her made more sense now. A year ago, she’d been human. Breathtaking, sensual, unforgettable, and human. Not the slightest flavor of magic had clung to her skin last year. He would know; he had tasted every delicate inch of it. Her mind had been as innocent of deception and beguilement as only one who had never experienced the allurement of sorcery could be.
The Mia who had stood outside his door tonight had been a whirlwind of power, hidden behind an almost perfect shield. It was that near perfect ward that had given her away. His defenses had sensed a void where there should have been none, an astral gap that had set him on alert. The spell had been on his lips even as he opened the door. How close he had come to casting the spell of draining, instead of a spell of sleep. Only by shifting the subtleties of tone and syllabics had he kept from taking her life.
Who the hell was playing him? Humans did not just “become” mage. Not in a night, and not in a year. A mage was born, not made. He came to his feet, fingers ruthlessly combing his hair as he paced the length of the bed.
And snarled as the revelation struck.
“Father! Damn you, you meddling old man.”
Raiji. With the simple spell, a wide wall of windows that had opened on the expansive view of the Vegas Strip became a mirror to the great library in Xiayang. The province had been his family’s seat of power for generations. As he expected, his father was transcribing one of the many parchments that covered his desk, taking on the time-consuming work of transcribing ancient scroll to modern bytes.
“Father.”
“Xin Li.” The men studied each other, neither giving away his thoughts. Xin had learned his patience at the foot of a master.
Unlike his father, Xin didn’t have all night to sit in silence. “Is there something you’d like to tell me about Mia Tarone?”
“There are many things I could tell you about Miss Tarone. Is there something in particular you wish to know, or shall I start with her birth? It is an especially interesting birth,” his father told him calmly.
Xin turned to check on the woman still sleeping behind him. “Explain.”
His father chuckled. “Mia was born in a little Texas town nearly twenty-five years ago. Her very human mother had run off to Vegas, sure she could be one of the best showgirls on the Strip.”
He tensed as his father paused expectantly. He could read his father well enough to know that he was enjoying telling this tale.
“Mia’s mother was a beautiful woman, and a talented dancer. Unfortunately for her, she fell in love with the wrong man—or should I say, the wrong mage.”
“Who was he?” It wasn’t unknown for a mage to father a child with a human. It was unheard of for that child to be left to be raised as human.
“Beniamino Carlesi.”
“Damn. Carlesi was the last mage in his family. And he was killed—”
“Killed before he even knew that Mia’s mother was pregnant.” His father paused a moment, letting that sink in.
“So no one in the council knew he had fathered a child?”
“And there was no family to step in and raise her.”
“Mia’s mother?”
“Seems not to have known anything about who the man she loved really was. Mia lived with her mother in Texas until her mother died three years ago. Soon after, she moved to Vegas, and the fates landed her at Dunvegas within weeks.”
“The fates or The Fates, Father?”
The older mage shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure myself. I sent you to Dunvegas last year based on a rumor, nothing more. But since your visit to Dunvegas last year, word about a new rogue mage in Vegas has spread like wildfire. She’s got a fiercely defensive natural ability, stronger than her dad’s was—it is all that’s kept her alive.”
A self-mocking laugh escaped from Xin Li. “So somehow I brought her mage powers out last year when I met her?”
A whisper of power along his back was the only warning he had before his body was encased in a sheath of heavy metal, immobilizing his body and making even breathing a bit difficult.
“Met me? Ruined me, you mean. You asshole. You’re the one that did this to me. What the hell are you going to do to fix it?”