by AJ Sherwood
They had to split into two vehicles to drive back up to the castle, and Alric made sure to keep Cameron in the back seat with him. They didn’t discuss a great deal, too lost in their own thoughts to make much in the way of conversation. The one thing they truly wanted to know, they knew too little about.
Someone had called ahead, as by the time they reached the inner courtyard of the castle, it swarmed with activity. Alric saw two of his mages enhancing the ward around the castle, beefing up the level of security. Lisette and Dieter awaited, barely waiting for Baldewin to stop the car before Lisette opened the door and attempted to pull him out of it.
“How bad?” she demanded of him, thankfully in German. Lisette looked like one of those regal silver film stars, the aging beauty who played anything from the good witch to the evil stepmother. Her white hair was bobbed, which flattered her face, and she moved lithely as if age had never touched her.
Alric grimaced in pain, trying to move gingerly. His entire body flared in pain, radiating from his injured side. “Not good. Cameron’s chosen to stay with us. Baldewin, will you help him get settled?”
“Of course, Hoheit.” Baldewin immediately went around to the other side of the car. Cameron shot him an anxious look, and Alric squeezed his hand reassuringly before letting go, giving him over to Baldewin. Alric kept an ear trained on the two as Baldewin encouraged him to come out and follow him into the castle.
Assured that Cameron would be seen to, Alric moved cautiously out of the car, catching one of Dieter’s shoulders to help balance him. He felt almost nauseous under the pain.
Lisette looked him over and clucked her tongue. “Sasha reported what you did. I can’t chide you, considering you were rescuing Cameron, but I don’t like the pain I see on your face, either. I think you’ll need more than the pain-relieving salve.”
Alric’s mouth screwed up in a sorry semblance of a smile. “I won’t say no.”
Cameron tipped his head back on the chair and breathed. Just breathed. God, what a whirlwind of a day. Baldewin had shown him into this room, and then less than subtly dropped the info bomb that he just happened to be in the same hallway as Alric’s bedroom. Not that Cameron wanted to think about that. For now, he was resting and unwinding.
It was a beautiful room, tamer than most of the castle, as it didn’t have gold filigree on the walls or the huge murals. A few tasteful seascapes, a thick rug on the floor, and a picture window facing outwards that let him see the full breadth of the mountains. The view especially helped, more than the tumbler of whiskey in his hands. He felt strangely exhausted by it all, emotionally drained after the intense scare, the adrenaline rush, and the worry over Alric.
It warmed him that Alric had dove in immediately to his aid, not thinking anything of his own safety in order to rescue Cameron. As much as Cameron hated seeing him hurt, it was beyond flattering that Alric thought so much of him that he’d jumped straight in.
But why was someone after Cameron to begin with?
He needed to talk this through. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he Facetimed Cassie. It wasn’t until he started the call that he remembered the time difference. Oh hell, she was probably asleep right now.
Before he could hang up, Cassie answered with a groggy, “Whazzit?”
“Sorry, Cass. I forgot the time difference. I’ll call you again later.”
“Yeah, cool—wait, what’s wrong? You look like someone tap-danced on your grave.”
“Heh. Not a bad overall description.” Cameron ran a hand over his face. He shouldn’t have called her. Now she’d just be worried. Why didn’t he think of that? “Sorry, I’m alright, it’s just that something weird happened earlier.”
“Good weird? Bad weird? Magic weird?”
“Bad weird. I was out with Alric—”
“Wait, hot dragon king Alric?”
“Only one Alric, sis, focus. So I was out with him at the festival. I have a lot of questions still, and he agreed to talk with me there. He went to stand in line for food, and then bam! Four guys appear out of nowhere and grab me.”
Cassie’s voice rose to crescendo heights, expression incredulous. “YOU WERE ALMOST KIDNAPPED?!”
“Stop yelling,” he pleaded. “I’ve got a low-grade headache as it is. Yeah, almost. I put up a fight, Alric heard me and came immediately to help. We fought them off, they bailed and drove off in a van. They were using magic to try and blind me, kind of like a flash grenade. Let me tell you, very weird to see magic in action. I felt like I was on a CGI set for some urban fantasy movie. I barely ducked that one before they threw another spell at Alric, which he thankfully dodged, as it was kind of like an acid attack. Acid! They were going to melt him! Seriously, bad news. Sis, it was weird. Alric doesn’t know who they are.”
Cassie frowned fiercely, her eyes focusing on the air just past the phone. She was in comfortable sleep clothes, a loose shirt revealing one shoulder, blue hair sticking out on one side. She’d definitely been fast asleep. He glanced at the time on his phone and winced. It would be about four a.m. on the East Coast.
“Cam. Where are you now?”
“Their castle. Alric gave me the choice between guards at my hotel or coming here. I chose here.”
“Safer, yeah. I don’t imagine many people will beard a dragon in their own castle. Is he investigating?”
“The whole clan might be. They’re pretty upset, mostly about Alric getting hurt protecting me.”
“How bad is he?”
“Not bad. Baldewin said something to Alric in German, so I caught none of it. Alric shut him up pretty quickly. I gathered he was more hurt than he let on. I think he’s got some kind of old injury? I’ve seen hints of it. Anyway, their mage Lisette is seeing to him right now.”
Cassie’s brows twisted together. “He has an injury despite magic?”
“Yeah, magic isn’t the cure-all you’d think it is. His injury is not obvious, if that’s what you’re wondering. You can see the trace of a scar on his left hand, but that’s about all I’ve noticed. And the man can move like lightning when the situation calls for it.” At a cost. Alric’s three bodyguards now made more sense. If their king wasn’t fighting-fit, then of course they’d have bodyguards assigned to him.
“So…what are you going to do? Come home?”
“No.” The answer was instinctive, and it wasn’t until she asked that Cameron realized he’d already made up his mind.
Cassie’s head tipped, her expression intense. “Really.”
“Cass, I’m…god, this is hard to put into words. But I feel like I’ve just stepped through one of those magical portals you see in books and movies. I’m literally there, on the edge of wonder and enchantment. But because I’ve stepped through it, I can not only see everything on the other side, but everything there can see me. It’s a dual-edged sword. I can’t take it back now, either. It’s too late for that.”
“You’re pretty sure the guys that tried to grab you did it because you’re of the Noh Clan, aren’t you?”
“Well, let’s add this up, shall we? I’m ignored for twenty-three years, then I meet the Fire Dragon Clan. Fire Dragon Clan discovers I’m from magical family. I smell like magic. All within the space of three days, and for the first time in my life, someone tries to kidnap me. Coincidence? I think not.”
“Laid out like that, I see your point.” Her lips pursed.
“Be safe and keep your guard up, okay? I think life just took a plot twist.”
“About freaking time. I was getting bored.” She pointed a stern finger at him. “Be safe, stick with the dragons, and don’t get kidnapped.”
Cameron gave her a sloppy salute. “Will do.”
With the call ended, he set the phone aside and let his head drop back again. He did feel a little better after talking with his sister. Food needed to happen, though. His stomach was rumbling petulantly.
There was a light knock at the door. Turning his head, he called, “Enter!”
A white-haired w
oman named Lisette stepped through with a covered tray, a hopeful expression on her face. “How are you?”
“I’m alright.”
He’d met Lisette very briefly when they came in, but her focus had been on helping Alric. He’d barely gotten more than her name before Baldewin was ushering him away to this room while Alric was shooed in the opposite direction under the woman’s watchful eye. “Alric?”
“Will be fine. He’s resting at the moment. His old wound never healed right, and if he over-exerts himself, this happens.”
Cameron felt a little guilty. But he was glad to hear Alric was fine, or would be.
Lisette strode in, the hem of her green skirt swirling around her as she moved. She put the tray on the little round table near his chair, but her crystal blue eyes remained largely on him. “I’ve brought you Kartoffelpuffer.”
One deep breath was all it took for his taste buds to send up signal flags. That. Yes please. “It smells amazing, but I don’t know what that is.”
“Potato pancakes,” she translated with a smile, lifting off the cover. “I thought some comfort food might be in order.”
“God, yes, and thank you.” Cameron dug in with a sigh of bliss. They were warm and perfect on his tongue, with lovely flavor. He could eat his weight in these. “Please tell me you live off these here.”
“Some dragons try.”
Lisette turned to sit in the other wingback chair. She had a slight smile on her face that still somehow hinted at calculation. “Well, young mage. You’ve had quite the day.”
Cameron’s mouth was full, so he couldn’t protest her descriptor, but he frowned at her. It was a frown that relayed disapproval. And frustration. And many other things because he could frown with the best of them. He’d learned it at his father’s knee.
The frown did not have its desired effect. She smiled in return, as if he’d said something particularly amusing. “I think you’re under the wrong impression about magic. Many are if they don’t grow up around people who actually practice it. It’s not a matter of waving your wand, speaking a spell, and poof! Things happen.”
Cameron felt his brain grind to a halt. Swallowing, he demanded, “Wait, that’s not how it works?”
“No, no. Perish the thought. Books and movies often make it sound as if you have a well of magical energy in you, and with the right talent and intent, magic will leap to obey you. But really, most mages have very little magical power to call their own. We have the talent, certainly, but our magical core is more like a conduit.”
“Like the grounding wire to a battery?” he asked slowly, wrapping his head around this new information. Alric had mentioned something about this too. He hadn’t elaborated on it much, though.
“Something like that. Although, we channel power.” She crossed her legs, hands resting on a slim book in her lap as if they had all the time in the world to discuss this. “Mages actually require quite a bit in order to do any working. I’m sure you’ve wondered why mages were always willing to partner with a dragon?”
“It did cross my mind. Alric said something about it, but he didn’t really elaborate.”
“I imagine he, as a dragon, doesn’t really understand it well enough to explain. But you see, when a mage forms a bond with a dragon, we gain access to all of their magical power. It’s readily at our use, and it boosts our own abilities by at least fifty percent.”
Cameron did and didn’t follow this. “So…you have to have something magically powerful to work with?”
“Forgive me, I’m not explaining this right. It’s been so long since I’ve taught a young mage, I think I’ve forgotten how.” Lisette took a moment, breathing in and rephrasing things. “Mages require magical elements in order to do any working. We build our spells, enchantments, and potions much like you would build a machine. It all has its own design, its own elements, and it has to be a cohesive force in order for it to work. Our magic is used to tie it all together and put it in motion.”
Cameron ate the last bite of potato pancake, chewing on both her words and the food. “So, say that I want to build a vehicle. I’d design it, gather the materials for it, and then I would use magic to assemble it?”
“Precisely. And drive it, presumably, but you take my point. We use many, many elements in order to build spells. Some elements don’t work with others. Some do. Build too lopsided of a spell, it will collapse and backfire. Or just fail to function.”
Cameron had always felt that because magic had never come to him before, because he’d never felt anything else but human, it wasn’t his. He’d often tried yelling made up magical incantations or mixing random things together as a kid, waiting for something magical to happen. Even in his make-believe, he’d kept hoping. Until hope couldn’t stand in the face of no results. It was why he’d gone the more practical route of engineering.
But from what Lisette said, it only made sense he’d been unable to do anything. Or feel anything. Of course he hadn’t, he hadn’t been in the right environment for it. Hadn’t possessed the necessary tools.
But it also harkened back to a time when he was very, very young. The memory was hazy, a little golden and fuzzy around the edges, worn by time and a youthful mind that didn’t comprehend what he was seeing. But it was there, half-recalled.
“When I was about six, I was at my great-grandmother’s house. It was the last summer before she died. I remember sitting in the kitchen with her, and she was mixing something at the table. In a bowl, the bowl she used for kimchi, though it didn’t smell like it. I asked what she was doing. She winked and said she was making something for her old bones. And she kept putting in strange things—drops from stoppered glass bottles lined up on the table. One of them glowed, softly, like the light from a firefly. There were pristine snowflakes in the other, despite the fact it was high June. The last was so bright I couldn’t look at it directly and it felt warm, like I was standing in a sunny spot. She drank it after she mixed it.”
Lisette’s expression lit up. “That was a working. She was potion-making, and it sounds like something for arthritis.”
“Oh. Yeah, her knees were bad by that point. Her hands, too.”
“So magic was practiced in your house?” Lisette asked intently, leaning forward.
“No, not at all,” Cameron denied with a shake of the head. “It was rare to see anything like that from my great-grandmother. She was nervous about doing that kind of thing in front of people, rarely let even anyone in the family see it. She was a touch out of it at the end of her life. Eomma…er...my mother said she had Alzheimer’s. I think she wasn’t as cautious that day. But my grandmother was never taught anything by her mother. My parents don’t really believe we have magic at all.”
Lisette winced. “Knowledge is so quickly lost in a family. It only takes three generations.”
“That’s what Alric said. It certainly did in mine.” Cameron set the tray further aside, freeing up his hands and lap. It bought him a second to think. Lisette’s explanation made sense of things, sure, but he didn’t really feel it yet. Feel connected to what she was saying. Didn’t magic require at least some belief? Cassie, yes, he could see his sister working magic left, right, and center. Halmeoni would be right there with her. But him?
Frankly, if proving he was a mage depended on him working a spell, they were all screwed. He had no faith he could do it.
“Lisette, is there some way you can prove if I’m a mage or not? I know the dragons smell magic on me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can work magic, right?”
“Fortunately, I anticipated you’d ask this question. Baldewin and Alric both said that you’re struggling with this.” She pulled her vest around and dipped her hand into a pocket. “I have here a device we use to detect magic in people. We use it for children so that we can readily discover the ones who need to be taught. It’s incredibly easy to use and one hundred percent accurate.”
“A magic litmus test?”
“That’s a good way to think o
f it. You’re either one or the other, young man. Magic or not. There’s no in-between on this.” She pulled out a small, triangular-shaped stone wrapped in three different types of wire. It hung from her hand on a leather thong. It looked like a cross between a steampunk fashion accessory and something a hippie would wear, as the wire didn’t just cross but had curves and designs in it much like a schematic would. And it glowed softly, a light all of its own.
“So how do I use it?” Cameron stared at it intently. He’d seen this very thing before. It escaped his immediate memory of where, though. Recently. Here, in Germany. Was he at the festival…? No, that didn’t sound quite right.
“Just put it into your hand.”
He reached for it, and she dropped it into his open palm. It barely touched skin before it flared a bright green, as bright as any LED flashlight. Cameron almost dropped it in surprise. “Whoa!”
“Well now. I think that’s a pretty definitive answer.” Lisette had the gall to look smug and not at all surprised.
Cameron stared at the stone in his hand, and he had to swallow twice before he could find words. Wha…no, seriously? The person who didn’t believe magic was a real thing anymore, who would have sworn three days ago it was a thing of the past, was a mage? “Seriously?!”
Lisette threw her head back and laughed, the sound a little scratchy but warm. “Ah, I should have taken a picture of your face. Such a Kodak moment!”
“No, but…seriously?!” Cameron felt his view of himself turn in a dizzying spin off to an angle. It wasn’t that this was upsetting—far from it. Part of Cameron was absolutely delighted. And incredulous. Possibly a little shock mixed in there. All of those childhood dreams rushed back, and it set up something of a dissonance. Cameron’s mind kept flipping between elation and skepticism.
“Adjust, Cameron. You’re a mage. You’re quite obviously a mage.”