‘Kai?’
His head turned towards the sound of her voice and he tried to focus on her. He was awake, thank the divinities, but the effort it took him was palpable. His mouth tried to form her name but the next wave of pain silenced him, leaving him breathless. His eyes snapped wide open, eyes that spilled light down his cheeks like tears. Inhuman, mageborn, lost.
‘Great divinities, what have they done to you?’ She edged towards him, reaching out a hand she couldn’t stop from shaking. He was Kai, her Kai. And he would never hurt her.
‘I wouldn’t touch him if I was you,’ said a new voice, deep and warm, soothing, cultured. Instinct got the better of her. Still fuelled by adrenaline, forgetting where she was and thinking only of this new threat, she spun on her foot, instantly ready to attack whoever had just entered the room behind her. Knives leaped to her hands and she went low, the better to engage this unknown assailant.
‘No, Grace,’ Kai sobbed at her. The pain in his voice – and the sight before her - froze her.
A man stood just inside the door, tall, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, clad entirely in black. Just a glance told her that every scrap of clothing was worth more than she’d probably ever earn in her whole lifetime, even if she took every bribe offered and extorted the rest. But she wasn’t looking at the clothes, not for longer than the second it took to process the information. That would have been foolish in the extreme. She took everything in instantly: hair black as crow feathers, curling softly against the gold-kissed skin of his neck, features fashioned like one of the statues which lined the Royal Promenade. Most shocking, though, were his eyes, as black as obsidian, so dark they barely looked real. There was only one family with eyes like that and she’d never seen one of them quite so close up before. Why would someone like her be allowed anywhere near a royal Larelwynn?
The man gently closed the door and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest: effectively blocking her escape and keeping any help out.
‘You appear to be between me and my patient.’
His voice sent a shudder through her, deep and rippling with power. It was surprisingly soft, lyrical, almost kind. She hadn’t expected that.
‘Your patient.’
‘Yes.’ He took a step forward, and another, and impossibly, Grace found herself retreating, backing up towards Kai as if she could defend him still. But she couldn’t. She knew that. ‘My name is—’
She’d be an idiot not to recognise him – Bastien Larelwynn, the Lord of Thorns, first cousin to the king, and seneschal of the mageborn, the one who oversaw them, protected them and punished them, someone that no one wanted to cross. All his forebears had been the same, his ancestors stretching back in the royal line, a constant companion to the king of Rathlynn, the strong arm of the crown as well as the wielders of magic. The title came from his family home, Thorndale Castle, and his crest, but most people cited his personality instead. From somewhere, Grace found her voice. ‘I know who you are. I’m not letting you take him.’
He studied her for a moment, his head tilting to one side as if he could get a different view of her, as if she was a thing to be examined.
‘Letting me?’ That tilt again, the other way this time. Then his lips quirked up into a smile that begged to be punched off his starkly handsome face. ‘How do you think you’re going to stop me?’
If she attacked, she’d probably be held up on charges of treason. If she was lucky. The stories about him, about magic, about the days of homage that all law-abiding mageborn paid, about the things that went on in that dungeon of his… She’d have to be very lucky indeed.
But the mageborn sent to him for judgement were the worst of the worst. People like the Gore this morning. That was where he’d been headed, where Ellyn had delivered him. What happened to them Grace never asked, never wanted to know. No one did. They were never seen again. The Lord of Thorns dealt with the same people she hunted, but his was the final judgement.
But people like Kai…
He was meant to help people like Kai. That was what they said. Except… except… Kai was hollow now, mad with magic. And Grace knew that there was no coming back from that terrible brink.
Panic seized her like it never had before. She felt like a rat in the mouth of a terrier. She needed to get control of herself, and fast. She needed to think. ‘He’s one of mine, my squad, he’s our mageborn. He’s good, he’s loyal. He does his days of homage, more than his share. He serves the Academy. His fealty is absolute. He’s sworn. Look.’
She turned around to point out the sigil in the leather collar, and the Lord of Thorns was on her seconds later. The heel of one hand struck a nerve in her right arm and the knife in it fell from her suddenly numb grip. The other grabbed her left wrist, twisting it with a practised ease so it was behind her back and she was pinned against him. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t have dropped the second knife even if she tried. He held her against the hard warmth of his body, immobile and helpless. She could feel him breathing, every hitch of his chest. She could almost believe she could feel his heartbeat.
And his grip, while firm and implacable, wasn’t painful at all.
‘He’s one of mine now.’ His voice was a whisper against her hair, every syllable a threat. ‘Stand down, Officer, or you’ll regret it. Now and for the rest of your life. Not to mention your extremely short career. Understand?’
She nodded. Not like she had a choice.
He released her and she stumbled forward. She looked back at Bastien Larelwynn, hoping to see a flicker of… concern, or something, anything in his features, but he wasn’t looking at her now. He was studying Kai’s face. What he saw there, she couldn’t say, but she recognised the grief reflected in the prince’s eyes.
‘What are you going to do with him?’
‘What I do with all mageborn who go hollow. What I must do. Now, I need you to leave, Officer.’
Grace froze, staring at Kai, at the pain etched in his features, at the light spilling out of him, burning him up from the inside. He was in agony, lost. ‘He’s a good man,’ she tried, one last time.
Kai tried to reach for her but the restraints held him back. His hand went wide and she slipped hers into his grip without thinking.
Bastien lurched forward in alarm, but paused when all she did was smooth Kai’s sweat-drenched hair back from his face. He stilled beneath her touch, just for a moment. But his hand tightened on hers, in a crushing grip.
‘Kai?’ she whispered. ‘Kai, are you all right? Talk to me.’
A hiss escaped his mouth and she could see his clenched teeth behind the taut lips. His hand tightened still further, grinding the bones in her palm against each other. She sucked in a breath of alarm, of pain. And that something in her, that wild instinctive response rose in her blood.
No, not here, not now. Not with him so close.
Her vision blurred, her breath catching in her throat. And a shadow moved past her. The fire inside her died, as Bastien Larelwynn stepped right up behind her, almost cradling her as he reached past her, for Kai.
The Lord of Thorns pressed his hand to Kai’s forehead, his cool touch making Kai sink back again. His other arm wrapped around Grace’s body, holding her safe. The air chilled, and something like an echo of Kai’s power rippled through the air around them, just a faint memory of that vacuum, that ill wind which stole the power from the mageborn. Bastien drew in a breath and his chest moved against her back. She studied his long elegant fingers, his perfectly manicured nails, the veins beneath his skin. He wore a ring, a simple gold signet ring embossed with a circle of thorns. His skin seemed to glow as her eyesight swam back to normality.
Kai went limp, his glowing eyes closing, the light consuming him fading. Air rattled out of his throat and his hand slipped from hers.
Grace stared at him, waiting for him to move again, for his chest to lift, for his eyes to open. Nothing happened. Kai was gone.
She tried to step back but was blocked by the too-tall, langu
id frame of the Lord of Thorns. Kai… Kai was… Her strength went but he caught her before she could fall, holding her up in strong and sure arms.
Kai. Kai was dead. Her breath caught in her throat, choking her and a dark hole opened under her, sucking her down. Kai…
‘You really shouldn’t be here,’ Bastien Larelwynn said again, his voice softer, calmer now. It eased her senses in an unexpected way, rippling through her, but steadying her, reminding her where she was. And who she was with. ‘I know you only want to help your friend, but he’s beyond your help now.’
Mortification spread through her. What was she doing, standing there, pressed up against him? What was she thinking? She didn’t stand this close – this intimately – with anyone, and not with a member of the royal family. Especially not him.
Not a monster like Bastien Larelwynn.
‘You killed him?’
The words came out before she could stop them. And it wasn’t her imagination. The moment she said it the Lord of Thorns flinched and pulled away from her.
‘I’ve killed a lot of people,’ he said, all gentleness bleeding from his voice until it was cold again, cold as the winter winds. ‘He’s just mageborn, after all. You hunt them every day, don’t you?’
Hunt them? Yes. Mageborn who broke the law, who threatened others. But not people like Kai. Never people like—
Sometimes they hunted ones who had gone hollow. Some were just evil, like the Gore, sick or perverted, bullies and thugs. But the ones who went hollow… they were always the worst. They didn’t know what they did. They were empty inside. And when something was empty, something rushed in to fill it, something darker and emptier than anything else. When a mageborn went hollow, they were gone. That had caused the Magewar, all those years ago.
Bastien’s voice hardened to steel. ‘He had to be stopped. You know why you hunt the hollow. No one wants another Hollow King. Now, get out of here. And forget about him.’
Grace didn’t pause. She was free of him and she had to take advantage of it. The first order she could obey.
But the second? Never.
Grace Marchant didn’t run from anything or anyone. She prided herself on that. She never had and she never would.
She drew herself up to her full height, shook her red hair back from her face and began to walk away.
The king was a kind man, just and fair. They called him Marius the Good. He was blessed by the higher powers, beautiful in body, nature and spirit. But every light had to have a shadow and his shadow was Bastien, his cousin, the nightmare behind the throne.
‘I’m sure they’ll assign you someone else,’ said the Lord of Thorns, standing over her dead friend.
Assign someone else? Another mageborn to take Kai’s place? The very idea.
But they would. Of course they would.
She reached the door and wrenched it open, aware already that a sob was working its way up inside her, a sound threatening to be so violent and painful that she couldn’t let him or anyone else hear it. She needed to get away. She needed to run. Kai was dead. It was her fault. He’d used his power one time too many and it had devoured him. Because he had needed to save her.
True, it could have happened at any time. True, the sigil set in the collar which helped earth his powers only put off the inevitable. The day of homage, paid by all mageborn to Bastien as representative of the king, secured the wild magic inside them, stopped it running out of control, as it had during the Magewar hundreds of years ago. Some went only once a year, but others needed to go more often. Like Kai. He’d made his way to the palace every other month now, it seemed, where he’d sworn to obey the king as he knelt before the Lord of Thorns. And Bastien Larelwynn had laid his hands on Kai’s head and rummaged through his mind, doing whatever was necessary to ground the magic, make it manageable again.
But Kai had always been back on duty soon after. Always ready to use his gift in service. He had chosen this path, even if his choices were limited. He was only a mageborn.
But he had been hers. One of her squad. Her friend.
As Grace stood in the doorway, she glanced back. A part of her didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help herself. The Lord of Thorns stood over Kai’s still, peaceful body. He’d taken off his collar and held it in his hands, staring at it, his head bowed.
‘Rest well,’ he murmured. ‘You honoured us with your service and your fealty is cherished. The Larelwynns thank you. Return home to the light of the Maegen and be at peace.’
The urge to vomit at the hypocrisy of it all sent her blindly running from the Healers’ Halls.
Chapter Three
Bastien hadn’t expected anyone to be in the room with the stricken, hollow Academy officer. Certainly not the soldier’s squad leader. Most of them were happy to keep a distance, to remain apart from the mageborn assigned to them and live their own lives. Who wanted the taint of a mageborn near them? They were a necessary evil. A tool.
In his experience, many quotidians – those born without magic – didn’t care to socialise with a mageborn any more than you’d befriend a knife.
Maybe she did, red-haired little fury that she was. The rules in the city were different from those in the palace. Simpler. Harder. The knives had been out in an instant, clearly familiar in her hands, and she’d moved faster than anyone he’d ever seen. If he didn’t know better he’d call her a spirit and banish her. There had been no sense of magic about her, but perhaps an echo, a memory. A burnout, maybe, just a little magic, used up too soon in childhood.
He definitely hadn’t expected her to try to defend poor doomed Kai Albren.
No one had stood up to him like that in… years. More years than he cared to remember. Not that he could remember too many years. The irony of the phrase struck him. Ten years, perhaps, since the accident had jolted his memories out of his head. He wasn’t sure how much time had actually passed. It seemed longer. Marius had filled in his past for him, his cousin, his friend, his king. Simona and Lyssa occasionally let things drop. Even Asher sometimes had a tale or two of their childhood. Despite the privilege of royalty, it wasn’t a pretty picture. But that was true of most of his life.
As his marshal, Simona Milne was his right hand, and the voice of his conscience should he need it. Her hereditary title didn’t belie her efficiency and determination. She was older than him by perhaps ten years, trained for her role like her father before her. He relied on her more than he cared to admit, especially to remember the things he couldn’t. Her father had served his. He’d known her all his life. She was his shield at court.
He wondered what she would make of Grace Marchant. She’d probably tell him to steer clear at all costs. And now the mageborn was dead. The warrior woman was gone and he had been left on his own in a room with a corpse.
Where he belonged, perhaps.
That’s certainly what the court would say. And half the city. Most of them wished he was the corpse.
‘Your highness?’ Merlyn, his sometime assistant, opened the door and peered inside. ‘My apologies, but there’s a messenger from the king requesting that you attend him.’
A flare of fear rushed through him, black and terrible, barely controllable. Bastien turned on him and Merlyn shrank back, while desperately trying not to do so, or not to be seen doing so. He’d discovered Merlyn Hale about a year ago, a young man, gifted but thankfully not mageborn, so very clever, with an innate talent for healing. More than a talent. A vocation. But so many here did. Merlyn understood more than healing. He understood the body, and the dead, and what they could tell the world about how they died. His family were upper crust, but couldn’t be called noble. They’d made sure he had the best education possible and hoped he’d pull them all up the social ladder behind him. Bastien wasn’t so sure.
‘Thank you Merlyn. I’m finished here.’
Merlyn frowned as he looked past him at the body. ‘And the patient, your highness?’
‘Too far gone, unfortunately. Hollow. There was no con
taining it, no bringing him back. Have him taken to the morgue. We’ll see what he can teach us. Then a burial with full honours.’
‘But he’s—’
Some instinct stopped Merlyn finishing that sentence. Or perhaps it was the glare Bastien shot his way.
‘What?’
Merlyn swallowed and from somewhere he dredged up his courage. ‘He’s mageborn, your highness. There are laws.’
The law does not bend, and cannot break. That was what the Academy taught, wasn’t it? Something like that.
Bastien knew all about the law. He just chose to ignore it. Bastien’s cousin’s law. Or perhaps their grandfather’s. There were so many laws and they bound everyone up for very good reasons. That was what vassalage was for the mageborn. The day of homage was only meant to be one day a year, and many people made a fuss of it – a day up at the palace, followed by a party – but there were countless other rules and regulations, so many other ways they could be bound. Some found their skills more in demand than others. Some found it more difficult to control. Some needed to be grounded, their magic realigned, and only Bastien could do that. Mageborn could be compelled to serve, they could die in service, they could be cut apart like meat if he so desired, but the heavens forbid that they should have a decent burial. No matter what. Not if the crown was paying for it.
It was forbidden to bury mageborn in royal ground. Cremation was the only way. But Bastien wasn’t in the mood. He pointed at Kai’s body. ‘Do you see a collar on that man’s neck?’
Merlyn’s gaze locked on the scrap of leather which Bastien still held in one hand. Then he dutifully averted his eyes. He studied the intricate tiling on the floor instead. ‘Um… no?… your highness.’
The last two words were spoken hurriedly enough. The healer would probably go far, if he managed to survive the palace. He was ambitious. Even the Halls of the Healers played a role in the political games of the royal court. That was exactly why Bastien had decided to keep an eye on Merlyn. Of course, it might just mean that he got him killed even faster.
Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1) Page 3