Cold Burn of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

  “Listen, lady,” I snapped. “I had no idea that Devon was your son when he came into the Razzle Dazzle. Even if I had known, I still wouldn’t have cared.”

  That was an outright lie, but this was the only way I could save my own neck, so I sucked down another breath and started spinning more lies.

  “As far as I was concerned, he was just a guy from some rich Family, trying to get a little thrill by slumming it in the town shops for the afternoon.”

  Devon’s jaw clenched, and his gaze met mine. Pinching hurt flashed in his eyes. That shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I hated him. I’d hated him for years, and I was determined to hate him now, along with the rest of his stupid Family.

  Despite the soul-crushing guilt I’d seen choking him from the inside out.

  “Given your obvious disdain for the Families, at least for this particular Family, why did you help my son?” Claudia asked, her voice even colder and sharper than before. “Why not let the men take him with them?”

  I frowned. Take him with them? It had been an assassination attempt, not a kidnapping. The mystery man had definitely wanted Devon dead. I’d seen it in his eyes.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I snapped again. “Okay? I don’t know. I just did it. I tend to get concerned when people pull out swords and start swinging them in my direction.”

  I didn’t tell them how I’d seen that mix of cold sorrow, hard strength, and warm goodness inside Devon’s heart. How I’d been so drawn to him, despite myself. And I especially didn’t tell them how I thought it would have been a shame for that little spark of light buried so deep inside him to be snuffed out so brutally. Nobody needed to know that, not even Mo. He’d think I was going soft, and he would be right.

  “So you put yourself in danger and killed two men out of the goodness of your heart?” Claudia’s voice teetered on a sneer.

  I shrugged. I was tired of talking, especially when nothing I could say was going to convince her. She was going to kick me out any second now. I’d be lucky if Reginald came back with my sub before Claudia had some guards shove me and Mo out the front door. And that would be just fine with me. Because I wanted to leave here and never set eyes on her again.

  And I especially never, ever wanted to see Devon Sinclair again.

  Claudia studied me another moment, then got to her feet. I sighed and did the same, knowing what was coming next. No free food for me, after all.

  “Well, then, Miss Merriweather,” she said. “If you are as smart with a sword as you are with your mouth, then you won’t mind a demonstration of your skills.”

  A shocked realization zipped through me. This wasn’t an interrogation at all.

  It was a test.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ten minutes later, I stood in the center of a large training room, holding a sword. Thick mats stretched across this part of the floor, with several treadmills and weight machines off to one side. Swords, daggers, and knives were also lined up in neat rows on two of the walls. Metal grates hung over some of the weapons—the black blades—locking them away from greedy, grasping hands like mine.

  The air smelled of sweat with a faint, coppery tinge of blood. Behind the grates, a few dull stains gleamed on some of the weapons, although I doubted anyone could see them but me. A glass partition stood along the curve of the third wall, with rows of padded seats behind it, as though this was a hockey rink.

  The spectators had already arrived. Claudia, Reginald, Grant, and Mo sat in the seats, while two guards armed with swords acted as sentries next to the doors—I supposed to stop me if I did something crazy, like try to make a run for it.

  Mo flashed me a thumbs-up. I resisted the urge to reach down, grab one of the throwing stars attached to my belt, and send it hurtling in his direction.

  My opponent was here as well. Felix stood on the far side of the mats, clutching a sword. He gave me another wink, followed by a slow, sexy smirk.

  Devon was here, too, leaning against one of the grates, his arms crossed over his chest. I ignored him.

  Behind the glass partition, Reginald rose to his feet. “This is to be a demonstration only, so no drawing blood, no debilitating blows. The first person to disarm the other wins. Do you understand?”

  “Crystal clear,” I sniped.

  “Felix?”

  He nodded. “We’re good.”

  “All right then.” Reginald held his arm up, then abruptly dropped it. “Begin!”

  Felix raised his sword high, let out a fierce yell, and charged. He was trying to scare and surprise me, but it didn’t work. If we’d been fighting for real, I could have easily moved forward and run him through before he even realized what was happening. But I decided to be nice, so I sidestepped him instead. He whipped around and charged at me again. This time, I engaged him.

  Felix was decent enough with a sword, but he fought in an exaggerated, reckless fashion, like someone who was trying to copy the flashy maneuvers he’d seen in the movies. I could have disarmed him in three moves, but I decided to be nice again and drag it out to seven.

  He swung at me. I stepped forward and grabbed his arm, bending his wrist back far enough to make him yelp and drop his weapon. He tried to jerk free, but I drove my elbow into his stomach and slammed my sneaker into his knee. A second later, he was down on the mat, my sword pointed at his heart.

  Felix’s face creased into a smile. “Have I mentioned that I dig bad-ass chicks? Seriously, you are, like, a total hottie right now.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. I reached down, offered him my hand, and pulled him up onto his feet. Felix winked at me and stepped off the mats.

  The training room was silent. I looked over at Reginald.

  “Anything else?” I sniped. “Or can I go now?”

  “Not just yet,” a low voice sounded.

  Even before I turned my head, I knew what I would find. Sure enough, Devon shrugged out of his black suit jacket and tossed it over to Felix before rolling up the cuffs of his shirt, revealing his brown, muscled forearms.

  He grabbed Felix’s sword from where it had landed on the mats and snapped it up into an attack position. I sighed and raised my weapon again. I wondered how many people I’d have to fight before Claudia and the others grew tired of this pointless display.

  Reginald repeated the whole drill about fighting clean before starting the match. Instead of attacking me, Devon started twirling his sword in his hand in a slow, easy motion. So I mirrored his movements, just to mock him.

  “I hope you’re better with a sword than your boy Felix. He wasn’t even a challenge.”

  Devon’s green gaze flicked to Felix, who had taken a seat with the others behind the glass. “I know. It was cruel of you to toy with him like that.”

  “I wasn’t toying with him so much as I was letting him lose with a little bit of dignity.”

  “Well, please, don’t do me the same favor,” he drawled.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that—”

  He charged at me, trying to take me by surprise, and the battle was on.

  Devon was a far superior fighter to Felix. Stronger, smarter, more careful with his blows, and always thinking about his next move.

  But I was still better.

  I knew it instinctively, the same way I knew I should always pay the lochness toll. I knew it because my mom had trained me to be the best, and I’d spent the last four years honing my skills on the streets. I knew it because I was just like her deep down inside, no matter how hard I tried to pretend otherwise.

  We broke apart after a quick exchange and circled each other, going around and around on the mats.

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re almost fast enough to have a speed Talent.”

  Devon grinned, the effect far more charming than I would have thought possible, given how much I hated him. “Almost,” he agreed. “But sadly, I don’t have any speed magic. But if you’re ready to give up, just say so. I’ll let you lose with a litt
le bit of dignity.”

  “Never—”

  He raised his sword and came at me again, but I blocked his blows by following the steps, moves, and positions I’d memorized long ago. Then it was his turn to counter every move I made. Then my turn again. In a weird way, it was almost like we were dancing.

  But this was way more fun.

  Devon grinned again, enjoying this as much as I was. That hot spark I’d sensed in him before burned much brighter now, warming his eyes and softening the sharp edges of the guilt and grief that weighed down his heart. It was almost as if he found a certain freedom in the fight, or at least a distraction from the worrisome emotions that constantly ate at him.

  He might be enjoying the fight, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him win. I was never that nice.

  Determination blazed through me to beat him, and I had no qualms about using my magic to help me do it. So I studied Devon, using my sight to bring everything about him into supersharp focus, from the honey highlights in his dark brown hair to the flecks of black in his green eyes to the small quirk of his lips. But most of all, I focused on his hands and feet, watching how he adjusted his grip on his sword and rocked forward onto his toes.

  He attacked just the way I thought he would, so I wrapped both hands around the hilt of my sword and put everything I had into parrying his blow and striking back with another, harder one of my own. Devon’s sword spun out of his hand. Before he could recover, I had the point of my blade pressed up against his heart.

  “What did you say about losing with dignity?” I mocked.

  He tipped his head, accepting the loss with far more grace than I expected. Certainly more grace than I would have.

  Devon backed away from my sword. I let him, even though part of me wanted to surge forward and stab him, just so he would feel the same sort of pain I did whenever I looked at him. But he didn’t deserve that—or my hate. Not really.

  Devon stepped off the mat, leaving me alone.

  “Anything else?” I mocked, staring over at our audience. “Or can I leave now?”

  Instead of answering me, Claudia looked at Mo. “I’m satisfied. She’ll do.”

  “I’ll do for what?”

  She turned her cold gaze back to me. “Why, to be my son’s new bodyguard, of course.”

  Me? Be Devon’s bodyguard? Protect one of the most important members of a Family? Of the Sinclair Family?

  I was so stunned I simply stood there, holding the borrowed sword and wondering how it had ever come to this. Then the reality of the situation slapped me across the face, and I whipped my angry glare over to Mo.

  He shrugged. So this was the deal he’d made, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he’d been crowing about. Of course, it was once in a lifetime. Because I wouldn’t survive for long if I agreed to this nonsense. Someone had already tried to kill Devon once; it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think they’d try again. And if I was the one standing between Devon and more assassins, well, it wouldn’t turn out so great for me.

  Mo, Claudia, and the others got out of their seats and walked around the glass partition. I stalked over to Mo the second his flip-flops touched the mats.

  “Are you out of your greedy little mind?” I hissed.

  “What were you thinking, offering me up as a bodyguard ?”

  “Well, it was better than them throwing you in the dungeon here, which is what Claudia originally wanted to do,” Mo murmured. “Just trust me on this, okay, Lila? Please?”

  There was that stupid please again. If Mo kept doling those out, I wouldn’t know what to do when he returned to his usual greedy self and stopped using them. Still, the please made me hold my tongue. For now.

  Devon started speaking in a low voice to his mom. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he didn’t look happy. Probably insisting that he didn’t need a new bodyguard, and rightly so. From what I’d seen, Devon Sinclair was more than capable of taking care of himself.

  But he finally sighed and nodded, giving in to whatever order his mom had given him. The two of them approached me and Mo.

  “Devon,” Claudia said. “Why don’t you take Mr. Kaminsky and everyone else to the dining hall and see if they’d like some refreshments? I would like to speak to Miss Merriweather alone.”

  “But—” Devon began.

  Claudia gave him a pointed look, and he sighed again and walked past her toward the doors. She gestured to Mo. He gave me a sly smile and hurried after Devon. So did Grant, Reginald, and the two men standing guard. Mo pulled the doors shut behind him, leaving me alone with Claudia.

  I raised my chin, not giving her any inkling of the uncertainty chewing through my gut like a chainsaw. I didn’t know what sort of game she was playing, but I was nobody’s fool—or pawn.

  “I know all of this has been upsetting,” Claudia said. “Perhaps I should have done things differently.”

  “No. Really?”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “But several threats have been made against my son’s life in recent months. Threats that have already resulted in the loss of several of our most trusted guards, including Ashley.”

  Her lips pinched together, and her green eyes darkened, almost as if she felt genuine sorrow over Ashley’s death, but she turned away before I could get a lock on her emotions.

  “In the past, it has been a great honor to serve as one of the Sinclair guards, but Ashley is the third person this year to die protecting Devon,” she murmured. “Because of that and some other matters, there have been some . . . defections from the Family recently.”

  I finally understood what she was getting at—and why I’d been brought here.

  I snorted. “Let me guess. Nobody else in the Family wants to get killed protecting Devon, so you’ve decided to strong-arm me into doing it, right? Because who will really care if some random girl off the streets dies as long as your precious son lives?”

  Claudia shrugged, not even trying to deny it. “Something like that.”

  “Wow. You are arrogant.”

  Coldhearted bitch was more like it, but even I wasn’t going to be rude and stupid enough to say that to her. She could always summon some guards to throw me in the dungeon, like Mo had said. Or have me killed where I stood.

  “Not arrogant. Practical,” Claudia countered. “No one likes it when a Sinclair dies, especially protecting someone like my son from the other Families and their plots.”

  Someone like her son? What did that mean? Was there something wrong with Devon? Some evil lurking inside him I hadn’t seen?

  “Oh, my heart bleeds for y’all,” I sniped. “Did you ever think that maybe things might be better if you guys, the Draconis, and all the other Families tried to, oh, I don’t know, just get along?”

  She laughed at the absurdity of my suggestion. Yeah. I would have laughed, too.

  Claudia put her hands behind her back and started pacing back and forth. “My son went on and on about how you saved his life. But even more than that, he seems to have taken an odd liking to you. He was the one who pushed me to find you.”

  Devon had wanted to find me? Why?

  “You have my thanks for saving my son and Felix,” Claudia said. “Never doubt that.”

  She stopped pacing and peered at me, taking in my well-worn clothes and the sword I was still clutching. Her sharp gaze dropped to the star-shaped sapphire glinting on my finger, and her mouth pinched into a hard, thin line. She probably thought I’d stolen the ring. Let her think what she wanted. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest.

  “I was rather skeptical when Devon told me that you killed the men. Ashley was an experienced fighter with years of training. If anyone was going to save them, it should have been her. So you can understand why I was suspicious and puzzled that it was you instead.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  “Watching you fight today . . .” Claudia’s eyes grew distant and dreamy with memories before she blinked them away. “Your skills are quite impressive. Yo
u’re just the sort of soldier this Family needs, just the sort of bodyguard my son needs.”

  Me? A Family bodyguard? It boggled the mind. I was a thief, plain and simple. I lied, cheated, and stole to get by, to get what I wanted, and protect and further my own interests—not anyone else’s. Definitely not a Family’s interests and especially not the interests of this particular Family.

  Still, I couldn’t help thinking of my mom. She would have considered it an honor to be Devon’s guard, just as Claudia had said. But more than that, Mom would have thought of it as her duty to protect Devon, someone who was already so wounded inside. Someone so unlike the rich snobs and dangerous Families that she usually ended up working for, with all their sinister ambitions, blood feuds, and treacherous plots.

  “I’ve already lost too much to the other Families. I will not lose my son as well,” Claudia said. “Your friend Mo suggested it, and now I am formally offering you a proposition, Miss Merriweather. Agree to become my son’s personal guard, keep him safe, protect him from all who would do him harm, and you will be richly rewarded.”

  Now she was speaking my language, although I still eyed her warily. “How richly rewarded?”

  She named a figure that was much higher than I expected. Even Mo would have been pleased with the amount. Actually, he would have been over the moon about it. With that kind of money, I could do whatever I wanted. No more squatting in the library basement. No more doing odd jobs for Mo. No more counting every penny and dime just to make sure I had enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and change to pay the lochness tolls. With that sort of money, life would be . . . easy. The way it had never, ever been easy before. Not even when my mom was alive.

  For a moment, I let myself daydream about what I could do with that kind of money. The house I could live in, the clothes I could wear, the cars and jewelry and other pretty things I could buy. With that much money, I could have the sort of things I always stole from other people.

  But then reality hit me, the way it always did. Because first, I had to live long enough to spend the money.