Grace Marchant sank to her knees in front of him, still gazing up into his face with those eyes that saw far too much. Where his eyes were dark, hers were almost golden. Where his hair was the colour of night, hers was fire. Everything about them was a contrast. And yet something inside him reached for her.
And he sensed something in her reach back. Every time they came close to each other.
A mystery. A wonder.
That was why he couldn’t help himself. That was why he kept trying to connect with her, and to drive her away at the same time. This was dangerous. For both of them.
‘Grace,’ he whispered.
‘I know. You’re fine. Where does it hurt?’
He laughed, a short and bitter laugh. He couldn’t help himself. ‘Everywhere?’
A smile ghosted over her lips. Such beautiful lips. He had kissed those lips. It had been like touching heaven.
Powers above, what was wrong with him? He shouldn’t be thinking about her lips, shouldn’t be staring into her eyes, shouldn’t be so captivated. Whatever it was in her that called to him, he needed to shut it out.
A shiver ran through him and he felt the light inside him build uncomfortably again. The wires of agony twisted further, tightening on each other. The light was running out of control. It shouldn’t have been this fast.
‘You look like Kai did,’ she said, concern making her voice shake. ‘What can I do?’
‘I need a jar.’
She looked so confused it was almost comical. Or would have been if the situation weren’t so serious. ‘A jar?’
‘Hale will be able to help you.’
She shook her head. ‘Hale’s not here. I don’t need help finding a jar… your highness.’
‘A special kind of jar.’ The pain made him speak through gritted teeth. ‘In my study. There’s sealing wax and red string too. But the jar is what matters. They’re round, like globes.’
‘Don’t try to get up,’ she told him, the tone of command very clear. Not that he would have obeyed her if he needed to move. But still, when she left, he stayed seated as directed.
It was definitely not because he feared he lacked the strength to move right at the moment, let alone stand. His vision swam and he forced himself to focus on his breath, to control his pulse, and force down the rising surge of power inside him. It was wild, out of control, and like a cresting wave it would swamp him in an instant if it had the chance.
Magic. He hated it. He needed it. He had no choice but to subdue it and transmute it. Not if he wanted to live.
A moment later she was back, quicker than he expected, so she saw him bent forward, his head in his hands.
‘Are you going to throw up? Do you have concussion?’
He looked up through the black shadows of his hair and saw her freeze, the jar in her hand stuffed with a ball of the red string and a block of blood-red wax.
‘No. I’m fine. Did Hale help?’
Grace set the jar down carefully on the floor in front of him and removed the contents. Oh, she really did think he needed something to throw up into.
‘I don’t know where he is. I found them inside, with the others.’
She looked like she wanted to ask more, if he did this regularly. Throwing up into jars. Sure. His favourite pastime. But she had excellent survival instincts, Captain Grace Marchant. Better than most. He admired that.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he replied and took the jar in his hands, lifting it to his lap, picking up the thread and wax from where she’d placed them on the floor, and staring down into it. He ought to send her away. Tell her to fetch Merlyn Hale. He could pass it off as something the healer needed to attend, couldn’t he? But he didn’t. The last person he wanted here was Merlyn Hale. Or maybe not. Maybe the last person he wanted to see him like this was really Grace Marchant.
This was not something he shared with others, not something he wanted an audience to see. But he didn’t have the time or the strength to say anything.
Perhaps he didn’t want to. Stupid man.
He should have sent her for Hale.
For a moment the magic in him resisted. It always did.
He needed it, coveted it, but it hated him. Of course it did. He was the thief, the one who tore it from its home and trapped it. If he could transmute it, or tame it, he did. But in this case… in times like this…
He wrapped his will around the seething mass of light. His chest constricted, burning with the effort. It hurt. Powers above, it hurt every single time and he never got used to it. He sucked in another breath, thin and cold in his lungs.
He wasn’t going to throw up. It just felt like it. He closed his eyes tightly and, behind the lids, the light glowed even brighter.
Hands touched his shoulders, soothing. Her hands. Her gentle caress. So much for his royal dignity.
And the magic twisted inside him, suddenly compliant. It purred through him and tumbled from his eyes like tears, flowing into the jar. He could no longer see. All was the light of raw magic. It burned like acid, etching lines of agony down his cheeks. He couldn’t help it. A sob escaped him.
And Grace pressed her fingers to the place between his shoulder blades, the pressure releasing the tension, the touch sparking something else inside him. That need. The one he really didn’t want to acknowledge.
Was she watching all of this? Studying him? Pitying him?
The last of the glowing power inside him fell away, swirling in the round confines of the jar. He held it carefully.
‘The lid,’ he said, his voice harsh and broken. She scooped it up and handed it to him. He fitted it expertly and then set to work with the string, binding it as his mind ran through a ritual he knew better than his own names and heritage.
‘Wax,’ he barked and she gave him that too.
‘I’ll get a candle to melt it.’
‘No need.’ He snapped his finger and a small flame appeared in the air. Grace flinched. The wax dripped like blood, covering the string. The pool took only a moment to begin to harden. The signet ring on his finger was all it took to complete the ritual, its imprint forming the seal in more ways than one. The sigil, his sigil in the form of a signet ring, a circle of thorns closing the trap. Shadows clung to it, making the thorns black as night in the imprint.
Finally he could breathe again.
He still hurt, everywhere, as if he’d been crushed in a vice. Only her touch had brought comfort, but now she withdrew. She circled him again with awe on her face that could not be denied.
Not horror.
She knelt in front of him. When she spoke, her voice was hushed with wonder. ‘There’s more magic in you than I’ve ever sensed. More than should be possible. More than should even be safe.’
‘I… I’m sorry.’ He didn’t know what else to say. He couldn’t help it.
‘Are you… are you all right? Can I fetch you anything else? Should I get the healer?’
The tenderness was too much, as if she had seen his need and pitied him. He didn’t need her pity. He didn’t need anyone’s pity.
And he didn’t deserve to have anyone look at him like that.
‘No. But… thank you.’
‘Do you want me to take it? Put it with the others?’
He should have said no, that he could do it himself.
‘Please.’
She took the jar from him, and paused. He knew what she was feeling – the warmth, the way it moved, the purring sensation that rippled through the skin against the glass. He knew it intimately. His fingers itched to touch it again. That was the risk. The need, the addiction. Like his need for her.
Grace didn’t move. She just stood there staring into the light.
‘Bastien, show me your hands,’ she said at last.
‘My hands?’
She gave an impatient snort. He almost laughed. No one but Grace would make such an unladylike noise to a prince of the realm.
Abruptly, she turned away from him and went back into the study.
She came back out without the jar, hunkered down in front of him and took his wrists in her hands, turning his palms upwards. He didn’t resist her. He couldn’t. Her touch was so gentle but his skin shivered with sensation at the contact.
Not his palms though.
They were red and raw. Burned. Marks spread from the centre of the palms, out like an explosion. They would heal in time.
‘It happens,’ he told her. ‘I have a salve. Hale makes it for me. It’s just in there on the—’
But she interrupted him. ‘Does it happen every time? Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘Yes, but not as much as… as the light inside.’
‘Bastien… I’ve seen burns like this before.’ So had he. He’d read the reports. Hale had told him what he found. He had examined bodies with those burns, not least the Leanese girl. But he had never put it together.
‘I know of no one else who can transmute power as I do.’
‘I didn’t say they could transmute it. But they might have tried. I saw them on the Leanese Zephyr, Losle. And the others. The file describes them. They were on the hands of all the dead mageborn.’
His hands shook in hers. He pulled them away and she released him without a struggle. He couldn’t bring himself to look into her face so he stared at her hands instead. She still held them out, her fingers curling slightly over the palms. The palms marked with faint white scars. Scars which, apart from the colour, didn’t look too dissimilar to the red starburst burns on his own.
‘Where did you get them?’ he asked.
For once she didn’t recoil and try to change the subject. She stared at her hands and then dragged her gaze up to meet his.
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I told you, I don’t remember anything before coming to the Academy.’
‘Not even who you are?’
‘I know who I am,’ she told him solemnly. ‘I’m Captain Grace Marchant.’
‘Who you were, then?’
She tried to smile. It wavered on her face. ‘No. Just… just the name Grace. Just flashes of memory, my mother calling me Gracie, her red hair. I… I could be a long lost princess for all I know.’
She tried to laugh at her joke but he didn’t join her so she fell silent.
He forced himself to speak into the silence. ‘I don’t think we’re missing any princesses unfortunately. Not to my knowledge.’
‘No, of course not,’ she smiled as she spoke. Not the smile he expected. Gentle and just a little sad.
‘Do you wish you were?’
She laughed then, a brief, dismissive laugh. ‘Every orphan in the Academy wishes they were a long lost royal. It’s what all the old stories revolve around. Sometimes it’s all that keeps them going. I know what I am, Bastien. Don’t worry about it.’
All the same, he felt like he’d said something terrible, that he’d somehow trampled on her dreams.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ he said softly.
‘For what?’
‘For helping. For being here.’
‘I’m doing my job, remember? Besides, according to our king I have to be here. And according to our queen we have to go to dinner tonight, isn’t that right?’
He nodded. ‘And preparation for that takes time, I am afraid. Lyssa will help you. She knows everything.’
‘And I know nothing.’ There was an undercurrent to the words. He almost missed it. She got to her feet, straightening and standing in that semi-formal way she did with her hands folded into the small of her back and her eyes fixed on some vague distance behind his head. Like that, the intimacy was gone. The soldier was back.
Bastien swallowed hard and pushed himself up off the priceless seat. ‘Well then, we should be getting on. I’ll send Lyssa to you shortly.’
He left her standing there, and headed for the study and sanctuary. She created havoc in his life. Just as he did in hers. He closed the door behind him and leaned on it, tilting back his head and closing his eyes. All around the walls of the study little jars of magic flickered, throwing their light up onto the ceiling, washing around him like water. She’d seen all of this, he realised, seen this and she didn’t seem to care. The jar she’d brought in sat in the centre of his desk. The light inside it moved slowly, like a young rose, its petals unfolding. He sank into his chair and fumbled in the drawer until he found the pot of sweet-smelling salve Merlyn Hale made for him. He rubbed it into his hands as if the action was a ritual, a soothing, calming rite to banish the last traces of the magic from his skin.
The burns were the price of transmuting the magic and trapping it. A price he was willing to pay. What if other people were trying to do the same thing? With the jars, magic could be transferred. It could heal or harm. It could be put to terrible uses. And it could be stolen from the weakest to feed the strong.
To his knowledge only two people could syphon and transmute magic, store it like this. He was one, his sister the other. He’d tried to make it work, tried to teach Hanna, or so Celeste had told him. If she was to be believed. She’d said he was besotted. He didn’t know. Another lost memory…
What if he was wrong? What if this had happened to Grace as a child?
And yet he had never met her before this week. He had never touched her before, even though that was all he wanted to do now. Touch her, kiss her, love her.
‘I will find out what happened to you, Grace. I promise.’
Chapter Sixteen
It felt good to punch something. Even an inanimate object like the punch bag in the guards’ rec room, which was nothing more than a storeroom off the kitchen when you got down to it, two floors above Bastien’s study. Simona had taken one look at her and suggested a workout. But at least she hadn’t looked at her like she’d wandered in from a bar and thrown up on the floor.
Such a look from a man who’d just poured a jar full of magic out of his eyes. Who let it burn his skin but didn’t feel it.
Like that was normal. Any of that.
Grace punched the bag again, imagining it was him, imagining it bore his superior, snide look, his too bloody handsome face, that perfect nose which she was breaking, his freakish black eyes which she was turning into actual black eyes.
The feeling of his muscles under her hands, the tightness uncoiling, the strength in him, the warmth, the magic, that kiss…
Damn it, she had to stop picturing that. Touching him. Why had she even done it? What had she been thinking? And why had she allowed him to kiss her?
But he’d been in pain, lost and helpless. And she’d wanted… to make it better. Just for once. As she had for Kai.
Grief, pain and that humiliating rejection made the next punch stronger than ever and something else coiled behind it. It came from inside her, deep and endless, burning.
The bag flew from the hook and slammed back against the wall with a thundering crash.
‘Woah!’ yelled Daniel, dodging aside as he entered the room looking for her. ‘Careful. You could kill someone with that jab.’
‘Sorry,’ she said and wiped sweat from her eyes. ‘Here, I’ll…’
He was already lifting it for her. But it was weighted and too much for anyone to lift alone. She grabbed the end and helped haul it up.
‘Look,’ he gasped. ‘How did that happen?’
Grace almost dropped it. A round mark, black as soot, a burn in the leather. Right where she’d punched it.
She cursed under her breath. But she couldn’t let him see that she recognised it.
Damn it, she hadn’t lost control like this in years. Bastien Larelwynn was a disaster for her to be around.
She thought of him in pain, the desperation on his face.
No, not that. She didn’t want to think of that.
‘It must have hit something,’ she said, aware even as she said it how feeble an excuse it was. Daniel shrugged. He didn’t care and didn’t seem to realise what he was seeing. And Grace found herself breathing a sigh of relief. ‘It’ll scrub out,’ she said.
‘Please, if th
at’s the worst mark it ever gets it’s not the end of the world. Just hang it the other way around. No one will bother. So, you’re not wearing that to this command dinner with the queen, are you?’
She glanced down at her sweat-drenched workout clothes and gave him a withering look.
‘Yeah, I hear it’s all the rage.’
‘Well, the prince is going to love it, I’m sure. They all will. The Academy will be delighted that you’re representing us all. Craine will probably give you a commendation, just for this.’
Sarcasm didn’t suit Daniel, she decided. The prince wasn’t going to love anything about the way she looked at the moment, an angry, sweaty savage who just wanted to damage something.
She wanted to believe that might account for his behaviour, that she was just an embarrassment, that being near her shamed him. But she didn’t. Not really. He was a prince and she expected it of him. She was a… a what? A glorified guard. For all the talk of the Academy, they were still just orphans and street kids. They still carried the taint of magic around them whether they wielded it like Kai or not. They chased monsters and everyone knew if you got too close to the monsters you became just like them.
And the Lord of Thorns wanted to find out what had happened to her. Like she had never tried.
Grace flexed her fingers and stared at them, at the scars that had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. She’d never wanted to be special. She’d never envied the mageborn. What was there to envy? It was a short life of servitude and danger. But of course that wasn’t so different from her own.
She had found her own people – Helene, then Kai – and now they were all gone. She’d known that she’d lose people, of course, that it would happen. It happened to all of them in the Academy, mageborn or not. She still had Daniel and Ellyn, but for how long? When you chased monsters they tended to notice. They chased you back. Grace remembered the Gore’s face, maniacal with glee as he’d tormented her. He hadn’t been the first and he would not have been the last, even if she’d stayed in her normal life at the Academy. He still wouldn’t be. Perhaps now she was in more danger than ever and not just from Bastien.
Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1) Page 20