I shook his hand from my cloak, unable to hide my trembling. “I’ve come this far. I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I crossed the bridge to find you at the hunting lodge because of the children,” I admitted, “and I’ll cross this flameblasted bridge, too, because of them.”
“I know you did, Alex, but—”
“But Anders is evil, and to spite him, I’ll do it. And he knows it. I’ll do it,” I repeated, storming toward the bridge, adding over my shoulder, “without killing myself just so I can rip out his heart when I get to the other side.”
Anders kept his distance as I let the Ardenna captain secure a rope around my waist, and then test it, his determined expression indicating clearly he’d get me across to safety no matter what happened. Gwynn was in front of me, nimble as a monkey, Jules behind to steady me. Odd that Jules’s presence comforted me, despite the tricks he and Elena played on me eons ago. But he knew I wasn’t joking, he’d been an eyewitness to my fear as a child.
My heart pounding so loud I feared Rosanna would hear it in Port Alain, I wiped my sweating hands on the sleeve of my woolen tunic and prayed fiercely to the lords of the sea. We inched across, shifting our weight with extreme caution. Perspiration drenched my tunic despite the morning chill, and I couldn’t stop shivering.
The holes were gaping, the rushing river surged below, and the bridge supports were nearly nonexistent. Every step felt as though it were my last. By the time I reached the other side of the river, my shaking feet safe on firm ground, I realized something I hadn’t considered in my panic. A truth that enraged me until I feared my mage power would escape unwittingly and harm my so-called lover.
“You could’ve used your mage talent to harden the wood to stone,” I accused Anders, pointing a finger his way the very minute I could speak with any semblance of calm. “It would have helped. Why didn’t you?” I snarled, reaching for his throat, forgetting I was roped to Gwynn and Jules until my body jerked backward.
Anders edged away, hands upraised, as Jules reached out to stop me from stumbling on my backside.
“Why didn’t you?”
Anders shrugged. “To prove a point.”
“To prove a point? I could’ve been killed.” I fumbled for the knots around my waist, slapping Gwynn’s hands away as he tried to help me untangle myself.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Anders said, his eyes unreadable. “Gwynn and Jules wouldn’t let that happen. You dishonor their ability.”
“You dishonor our relationship.” Finally free of the restraining rope, I strode across the ground between us, and slapped Anders hard, the sound echoing in the heavy stillness.
The blandness in his eyes turned swiftly to surprise, and just as swiftly to hurt. He caught my hand as I raised it again. “That’s enough.”
“Not for me.” I blinked back tears. “You proved a point with my mother’s pendant, and I never forgave you for that.” Recalling his deception days before the duel to save Elena’s throne, in which Anders hid my mother’s mage pendant that I used for confidence and luck, I pulled my hand free. “I’ll not have you do this to me again. Not ever.” I turned away from the sorrow in his eyes and went to find my gear, shoving Jules’s anxious hands aside.
As I reached my traveling pack, gathered into a pile with all the others, a man-height wall of flame surrounded the pile, and abruptly sputtered into a trickle of running water, and then back to flame. Then nothing, but a low echoing noise that might have been laughter.
Gwynn darted to my side. “Alex!”
“Hush!” I snapped, straining to hear, not daring to breathe. Nothing, not a sound. “She’s gone.” I hoped so, because I didn’t think I had the strength or even the wits to fight a crazed mage. Not after the trauma of crossing that bridge and venting my rage on Anders, who kept his distance when Jules rushed to my side.
“Are you all right?” Jules put a hand on my shoulders and peered into my eyes, studying every inch of me.
“I haven’t been ensorcelled, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“I was afraid you’d been burned,” he said, with a gentle shake of reproach. “When that wall of flame shot up, you were so close.”
“I was burned, but not from the mage.”
“We’d better move from here,” Gwynn suggested, an unfamiliar troubled expression in his young face at my bitter words.
I didn’t answer, but reached for my gear and slung it over my shoulder. With the horses left behind on the other side of the river, I’d packed only as much as I could carry and followed Gwynn into the dense forest, all senses alert and my heart aching.
* * * *
“What’s the matter with you?” I nudged Gwynn’s dirt-stained boot with my foot, after we’d stopped a quarter mile within the woods and settled down for the night, startling him from his reverie. “Your mind is on the far side of Tuldamoran, daydreaming.”
The boy shrugged and hugged his knees to his chest.
Concerned, I knelt beside him on the soft undergrowth. “What is it?” I brushed the rebellious lock of hair from his eyes.
“You and—” He lowered his head, flushing to the roots of his thick hair, and took a deep breath. “And Anders.”
Ah. “Anders toyed with me when he shouldn’t have. I wasn’t being funny, Gwynn. I was truly frightened on the bridge, terrified.”
“I know. But—”
I arched a brow in query. “But?”
“You were so mad, Alex,” he blurted in a whisper.
“I still am.” I sat back on my heels, studying Gwynn’s handsome face. “Listen to me. Anders was wrong to play with me like that. And,” I admitted, “I was probably wrong to slap him.”
“But he loves you.”
My arms folded against my chest, I stared at him. “That doesn’t give him the right to do what he did. So—”
Gwynn’s face wrinkled in distress as he met my cool, calm gaze and hugged his knees tighter. “I do not like it when you fight with him.”
“I don’t particularly like it either. But I’m not ready to forget about it just yet.” I put a hand on his head and leaned on it as I struggled to my feet. “Nuisance. Go to sleep. It’s late.”
“Alex?”
“Hmm?”
“Where will you sleep?” Gwynn flushed a deep, betraying shade of scarlet, caught between reacting like a boy and a young man, knowing too much more than was good for him and too little to appreciate what he didn’t yet know. His eyes were so full of dismay I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Don’t worry about me. Go to sleep.”
I found my bedroll, stretched out and ready, gear stacked to the side. Anders’s doing, I assumed. Well, his courtesy wasn’t going to help him. Pushing all thoughts of my lover aside, I fell asleep, only to wake screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of the night, waking the entire camp. Port Alain and Ardenna troops scattered, searching for something to explain my bloodcurdling shriek. Gwynn and Jules leaped to my side, Anders right behind.
“Sorry,” I mumbled in a shaky voice, embarrassed at being the center of unwanted attention. “I’m all right. Just a dream.”
Jules exchanged a studied look with Gwynn, and the two of them disappeared to reassure the guards that I hadn’t been attacked by a renegade mage. Anders crouched on the far edge of my bedroll, watching me.
I turned my head away. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I tried to yank the bedroll free of his body, found it impossible, but kept a death grip on the coarse material nevertheless.
“You mean you don’t want to talk to me about it.”
“Whatever.” I nearly fell over as the bedroll jerked free.
“It’s not very good for morale when two of the primary parties are not being civilized with each other,” he scolded, running a hand through sleep-rumpled black hair as though he wasn’t sure what else to do with me.
“There’s not a shred of civility in what I’d like to do to you right now,” I said
, ice in my tone, meaning every word. The nightmare echoed in my head with memories of the bridge, and I wasn’t quite ready to forgive Anders. “Go away.”
“So you’ll stay angry?” He held out an outstretched hand, an offer of apology and peace, but I turned my back on him.
“My choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“She must know we’re here.” Jules propped a dusty booted leg on the fallen log I was resting against the next day. Green eyes, dull with fatigue and worry, were unsure of my unstable mood. Well, so was I, with good reason. “I keep feeling eyes on my back. It’s eerie. Bad enough she’s a renegade mage, Alex, but the fact that she’s mad—” He shivered and pulled his heavy cloak tighter around his broad shoulders.
“We have to lure her out of hiding.”
“Is that wise?”
I shrugged, my thoughts in turmoil. “If she keeps on vanishing, as she did with Kerrie weeks ago and then with us yesterday, it means she’s tracking us. If we knew where Khrista and the boys were stashed away, if she has them, we could lead her or trap her there, or come up with some kind of plan. But we don’t know if they’re with her.”
Or alive anywhere in Tuldamoran.
“I don’t like it.” Anders spoke quietly from across the clearing, holding my gaze. “We have no control over her.”
“We do if she falls into our trap.”
“Still,” he hedged, brushing a twig from his cloak, “it’s dangerous.”
“Then think of a better idea! Every moment we waste sitting here places Khrista and the twins in more danger.” I bit back more angry words when I caught the troubled frown Gwynn tried to hide from me.
“We should be prepared to track the mage the moment she appears and vanishes.” Jules ignored the open hostility, finger-combing his bedraggled hair. “Alex is right about Khrista and the boys. But how do we lure a mad mage?”
“With mad tricks.” I kicked some pebbles away from my feet, throwing out the only plan that made any sense or had the most chance of succeeding. “If I show her what I can do, perhaps she’ll be intrigued and come closer.”
“What about Anders and me?” Gwynn interrupted with a fair amount of hesitation, eyes shadowed from lack of sleep.
“You’re the surprise.” My voice held bitterness, though none of it directed at my innocent brother. “We’ll see if Anders can manipulate a renegade mage with as little effort as he manipulates me.” I stood up, hardened my heart against the regret on Anders’s face, and went to find the Ardenna captain. “Tricks and deceit,” I muttered under my breath. “We’re very good at that.”
* * * *
And we were. Not very long after I’d spoken to the captain and explained my plan, I planted my backside on a rotted tree stump in the middle of our campsite. I coaxed the sting of ice and fire awake, gently merging them to the familiar cool warmth. As it spread through my body, I stilled my thoughts, pushing aside anger, worry, and fear. I thought only of mage talent and deception, ignoring the tension of the guards nearby, Jules to one side, Gwynn to my other, Anders at my back, waiting; his own Crownmage talent ready. With tremendous difficulty, I squashed the urge to release the fire and ice in a numbing, earth-shattering vengeance. Rosanna would’ve been proud, but I was shamed by the overwhelming hunger for release.
Instead, I put on a small demonstration of power, setting the pile of dirt and dry undergrowth a little distance in front of me to blazing flames. I let the flames crackle, slowly changing them to water as the hiss of steam filled the eerie silence. Back once more to dirt, and then to flame.
And waited, though not for long.
I felt the brush of potent raw talent on the fringes of the dense forest beyond Gwynn as an uncomfortable tugging at my own talent. Turning my head with measured slowness to avoid any sign of threat, I saw the renegade mage, much younger than I’d imagined. Pretty perhaps, but rough living and harsh conditions had weathered her appearance. Her eyes, bright blue, were mad, and, more than mad, greedy.
The renegade raised her arms in a slow movement that chilled my spine, and I braced for the release of raw and potent power. The flames on the ground before me turned to mud, and then flames, and then empty air. Not what she planned, apparently, if the frustration in her mad eyes gave any sign by which to judge. And over and above the frustration was pain. She shouted in a rough voice, clutching her body as though it were ravaged from within.
And it was. As was my mother’s body when giving birth to me.
“Fire!” She screamed, angry and anguished at once, tears of agony falling down ragged, scarred cheeks, adding words in a language I couldn’t understand. “Burning.” She sank to the ground in pain. “Ice. No more. Fire. Ice.” Panting, trying to control her mage talent, she screamed the words over and over, and over yet again.
I started to shake and whimper like a bruised child. “No. Please, no,” I whispered, falling forward on my knees, hugging myself hard, looking for shelter from her savage magic and the pain she was suffering.
“Help me,” she pleaded, untamed talent ravaging her body, ravaging the camp as flames, debris, and chaos ran rampant. Noise, unbearable noise, drowned all else but her anguished pleas for help.
I was suffocating, shouted something incoherent over the rushing noise of the whirlwind she’d created, and locked my hands over my ears to drown out her cries.
Fire and ice.
Fire and bloody ice that had killed my mother.
Jules ran to my side, crouched beside me, as Anders and Gwynn together tried to restrain her madness, but the poor woman had vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared. Deathly silence fell over the camp, the only sound my uncontrolled, heartbroken weeping. My arms wrapped around Jules’s legs for support as he stroked my hair with surprising gentleness, whispering over and over that I was safe.
Anders knelt at my side. At the familiar touch of his hands, I released my grip on Jules and sank into Anders’s arms. He rocked me with gentleness as he had that night so long ago when I first met my father, grief-stricken then, as now. After what seemed like endless hours, my breath grew less ragged, and I pushed myself upright. Anders didn’t stop me, waited to see what I needed, unconditional love and affection shining clear in his eyes. Humbled, I whispered quiet thanks as he touched my face with a tentative caress, searching for what was in my heart, as he knelt still at my side.
Gwynn hovered nearby, flask in hand.
“Water?”
“Alex.” He threw me a wary grin. “I know better.”
“Good boy.” Grateful, I took a long sip of the cool Marain wine and sat back on my heels, staring at Gwynn, compelled to explain. “The renegade was so very much like my mother. The fire and ice she screamed about in childbirth, Gwynn, was me. It was my raw magic lashing out at her, and she couldn’t do anything to stop me.” His deep brown eyes widened in sympathetic understanding right before he threw his slender arms around me in a fierce hug. I started to cry again, but this time it was Gwynn who rocked me until I quieted. “Lords of the sea,” I complained, finally pushing him away. “If word of these ridiculous tears gets out, Rosanna will think I’m human.”
“Not to worry.” Jules nudged my knee. “She knows better.”
* * * *
“They were able to track her.” Jules sat opposite me after dismissing the Port Alain scout some hours later. “There’s a cave not too far from where the foothills of the Bitteredge Mountains start to rise. It’s an odd cave, inaccessible except by a rope ladder she guards with care.”
I pushed aside my hopes, afraid of disappointment. “We’d better take a look. There may be some clue to lead us to the boys and Khrista.”
“I will go now.” Gwynn sat up quickly, leaving my side for the first time since my tearful outburst.
I placed a heavy hand on his head to keep him seated beside me. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“But Alex, I am the smallest and stealthiest. You always tell me so. I will climb up the ladder before she knows I ha
ve been there,” he pleaded, tugging at his hair. “You know I am right.”
“Listen to me.”
“But Alex—”
“Flameblasted nuisance.” I grabbed hold of his forest-hued cloak and dragged his handsome face close to mine, shaking him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “You listen to me, Master Keltie.” Eyes wide, he nodded, slanting a sidelong glance at Anders. “You can go and spy to your heart’s content tomorrow when she’s gone from the cave. Chances are she’ll probably be back here, watching us again, waiting to see if I’ll do any more mage tricks for her. Besides—” I sliced into the protest ready to leap out of his mouth, “if you go now, and the renegade grows suspicious, she may harm Khrista and the boys.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.” Heaving a melodramatic sigh, I rolled my eyes skyward. “You can’t possibly be my brother. You don’t think.” Releasing his cloak, I shoved him away.
Gwynn smiled in open relief at my sarcasm. “At first light, I will go.”
“All right. Yes. Fine. Just so we understand each other. Now go to bed.” I struggled to my feet, shocked at the fatigue in my body as I stretched and yawned. “You, too,” I said quietly to Anders.
Cool seagray eyes questioned me. In answer, I stretched out a hand. Anders grabbed hold as I pulled him to his feet. As we settled our bedrolls down side by side and slid beneath the welcoming covers, Gwynn watched from the far side of the camp, a satisfied smile on his young face before he turned away.
“Anders?”
“Hmm?”
I ran my hands under his wool tunic along his back. “Gwynn seems to think we need privacy.”
Moonlight shone on gray-streaked hair. “Do we?”
“I think so.”
* * * *
“Alex! Anders! Duke Barlow!” Gwynn flew into camp, sliding to a halt beside my bedroll, scattering dry dirt and pebbles in my face. “I found them!”
I woke, sputtering and brushing dirt from my cheeks, as Anders sat up beside me. “In the cave?”
“Yes.” The boy’s smile was huge when Jules struggled out of his own bedroll and fumbled his way to our side, brown hair tousled from sleep.
Mage Resolution (Book 2) Page 16