Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1)

by Jessica Thorne

  ‘Come here, Prince Bastien,’ the queen said, her voice suddenly sharp. He froze, staring at her, suspicion writ large across his face. ‘Sit by me. Lord Kane, please change places with the prince.’

  A shocked silence fell over the riotous table. All eyes turned to the man sitting by the queen’s side. His handsome face had frozen, hiding a rush of anger behind the mask of a diplomat. The general was her favourite. Or used to be.

  ‘Your serene highness, I go at your command but with every regret.’ As Bastien reached the seat Asher offered no bow to the prince. He stepped back, waiting, his mouth a hard line. ‘Your highness.’

  ‘Lord Kane, my thanks for your sacrifice.’

  Kane looked down the length of the table at Grace and his expression turned predatory. ‘At least I am blessed with your charming companion. I didn’t think you were the kind to share.’

  Grace picked up one of the knives. It was heavy, silver, and sharp. The balance wasn’t bad either. She smiled her coldest, most calculating smile, and looked up to meet Lord Kane’s eyes. She tried to ignore the grin that Bastien couldn’t hide.

  Before Kane could join her, a flurry of servants arrived, whisking away the food already on the table and instead serving fragrant roast meat and delicately seasoned vegetables. Grace waited, watching the way they moved, the careful, determined way they worked, unobtrusive, never once making eye contact.

  ‘Lamb again,’ Kane sighed. Grace started and turned to look at him, seated beside her as if he had never been anywhere else. She looked back at the slab of meat on the plate in front of her, more food than she’d normally see in a week, sometimes longer. Beans, cheap cuts of unidentified meats and dubious sausages were more her usual fare.

  She cut off a mouthful and ate it, savouring the rich flavour and the strange things it did to her taste buds. It was like nothing she’d ever eaten before. The pleasure must have shown on her face – how could it not? When she opened her eyes, Kane was watching her in amusement.

  ‘Should I leave the two of you alone?’ he asked. She just stared at him and he lifted his wine glass up in salute. ‘You’re quite the talk of the court, you know, Captain. Everyone wants to know all about you. And here you are, beside me.’

  ‘Here I am,’ she agreed. Not that she was planning on agreeing to anything else. At the far end of the table, sitting next to the queen herself, Bastien looked like a dark cloud. He hadn’t touched his food or the wine. That was good at least. Aurelie couldn’t drug him if he didn’t. Grace met his gaze and tried to smile but Bastien didn’t react. He was watching them both with an unwavering gaze. The queen was speaking to him, her hands moving like fluttering birds.

  ‘Have you known Bastien very long?’ Grace asked, absentmindedly.

  ‘Bastien, is it? He doesn’t let just anyone call him by name. But I suppose that gives you a lot of leeway.’

  For a moment she thought Kane was indicating her chest with the nonchalant flick of his hand. Then she realised it was the coin, the king’s warrant which she wore in lieu of jewellery. Lyssa hadn’t been too happy about that, but Grace didn’t feel comfortable taking it off. The sigil hung alongside it, just in case. Because she had never felt more unprotected than she did now.

  ‘That’s what he said to call him,’ she replied as blandly as she could while at the same time resisting the urge to pull the silken shawl a bit more firmly around her. It wasn’t much of a shield but it was all she had. That and her own determination. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.’

  He downed his wine and waved the glass in the air to have it refilled. ‘All my life, I suppose. You can’t live here without knowing the family and Bastien is the most notorious of them. His father was the same. When he rode off into battle no one ever knew what was going to happen next. Completely unpredictable. But then, that won the Great War, didn’t it?’

  Did it? Grace didn’t have a clue. Bastien’s father the war hero wasn’t something that people really mentioned. Not where she came from. Except for Zavi.

  Too many of the Academy had died in the Great War. That was why the current contingent were so young.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Up to his neck in dead Tlachtlyans, I believe. His mageborn powers meant he could deal out death like no one else. Add his military training and complete lack of morals… well…’

  He downed the wine and held out the glass. The boy with the decanter hurried forwards to fill it again. Grace figured he had just taken up residence behind Asher Kane’s seat.

  Up at the head of the table, Aurelie was leaning against Bastien, one long pale arm draped over his shoulder. He couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he tried.

  ‘What age was he? Bastien, I mean.’

  ‘When the old man died? I don’t know. I was three and Celeste was about ten, I think, so… seven, maybe eight?’

  ‘Celeste?’

  ‘His sister. Didn’t anyone tell you about his sister? Beautiful girl. Went completely insane. Dangerously so. Sent off to the Temple…’

  She’d heard the rumours about what happened, of course. Another person who had been taken from Bastien. His sister in the temple. Locked away because she lost her mind.

  ‘And their mother?’ Grace hardly dared ask.

  ‘She died when Bastien was born.’ Of course she had. Grace felt like a fool for asking. Everyone left him. Everyone. Or, to be precise, was taken away from him. ‘Lyssa Arenden raised them. Poor old Lady Lyssa. Can you imagine? A house full of Bastien and Celeste as children?’

  ‘It… it can’t have been easy.’

  ‘Easy? Two mageborn of their pedigree and power? No. Definitely not easy. To be honest, they probably should have been separated far earlier. Bastien alone would try the divinities themselves. Marius used to tell us all kinds of stories about the things his mageborn cousins got up to. Goddess, we laughed. Well, we laughed then. It became… less funny over time.’

  ‘Less funny how?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer but Asher Kane hardly flinched.

  ‘Has no one told you that they killed my big sister yet? The rumour mill is really slowing down around here.’

  ‘They?’ Her voice almost broke as she said it.

  Asher grinned wolfishly and drained his wine glass. ‘Celeste then. Poor old crazy Celeste. Not happy about my sister Hanna shacking up with Bastien. Like a grown woman didn’t know her own mind? My sister understood exactly what she was doing and Bastien wasn’t complaining. Don’t know if it was jealousy or the age gap, but oh Celeste didn’t approve. All those years ago.’

  But Bastien had just been a boy then, surely. What had a grown woman been doing with him? It must have shown on Grace’s face.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that. It would have been a wonderful match.’ He called for more wine again and drained that too. There would be none left at this rate. ‘Nobility always do things differently. Bastien was besotted. King Leonis would have bent eventually and accepted it.’ He lifted his glass in salute towards the head of the table, where Bastien was. ‘Not Celeste though. Crazy bitch.’

  Hanna Kane… Grace hadn’t heard that story in years. Not since most of the family had been carried off by some plague or other. Everyone said they were cursed. Pieces clicked into place. Asher was the younger brother by ten years of the eldest daughter of the Kane family, rich and influential, the society darling, who had died in the palace. No one knew how or why… but clearly her brother had a theory. Bastien and Celeste? But why hadn’t they been charged? She frowned as she realised exactly why, disgusted at her own naïvety. They had been children, sure. But more than that, they were Larelwynns, that was why.

  She’d been even younger when she was dumped at the Academy. Only she couldn’t remember anything before that. The Academy had become her home, the people there her family. People like Craine and Childers. Like Daniel and Ellyn. Like Kai.

  If she hadn’t ended up there, with those people around her, what would she have become? A bitter drunk
like Asher Kane? Or a lost soul like Bastien Larelwynn? Or a corpse like Hanna…

  Grace didn’t want to push too hard, not yet. But how much wine had Kane already drunk? He was talking, already saying much more than he should. But she needed her attention off the distant past and on the here and now. She needed to distract him.

  Turning towards him she drew the shawl slowly off her shoulders and his eyes plunged into her cleavage. He licked his lips and she had to suppress a shudder.

  ‘Do you know a man called Arlon Griggs?’ she asked suddenly, artlessly, or so she hoped, watching his response with interest.

  He paused, just a hair’s breadth too long, and stared down into the wine. He wasn’t drunk enough yet. Damn. ‘Of course. You met him too. You arrested him on false charges.’

  She straightened in her seat, cursing inwardly. ‘They were not false charges.’

  His cold smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘No? And yet they released him shortly afterwards. Of course, he didn’t have a lot of options when you hauled him out in front of the troops and accused him of being a mageborn.’

  Interesting. Could be a deflection of course. It could be an outright lie, but one they should be able to check easily enough.

  ‘What else does he do?’ she asked.

  ‘Now? Oh, he does very little now. He’s dead.’

  She bit back a curse. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Took his own life. The disgrace, you understand. And his young wife left a widow. It’s a tragedy.’

  Was Asher trying to stoke her guilt? If so he was trying the wrong tactic.

  ‘And when did this tragedy take place?’

  ‘Yesterday.’ He put down the glass and began to tear into his food again, stuffing his face with the lamb.

  Grace looked away, slightly sickened by the sight, just in time to see the queen consort all but climbing into Bastien’s lap. Aurelie ran her fingers through his hair, fussing at him, and he sat there like a statue, staring into nothing.

  This wasn’t right. He looked dazed. Was he getting through this by zoning out completely, or had someone managed to slip him something after all? Grace looked down at her own cup and deliberately tipped it over with her fingertips.

  ‘Oh no, what a shame. More wine over here,’ Asher called without hesitating.

  The music played on and the dancers pirouetted overhead. People around her ate too much and drank too much and laughed too loudly. She had little idea who most of them were. Royal favourites, no doubt, scions of the great houses of the kingdom of Larelwynn, Rathlynn’s noble sons and daughters. The young, the rich, and the inbred.

  Grace thrust the plate and the drink away from her. She needed to get Bastien out of here, that was clear, but she had to be careful. The queen was not going to give up her prize easily. Grace pushed back her chair, ready to leave the table, when another woman entered the room and clapped her hands.

  The music stopped, and the dancers floated down to the ground. The servants turned abruptly and left the room, followed by the entertainers, although some of them lingered by the doors, watching. A strange hush fell over the room, pregnant with expectation. Bastien frowned, confused, and Grace’s feelings of concern deepened. The woman standing inside the door was not a stranger.

  They’d seen her in the Temple, interviewed her, been attacked as soon as they left. She wasn’t in her robes now though. She wore a satin gown and her hair was as elaborately arranged as anyone’s there.

  ‘Mother Miranda?’ Grace murmured.

  But she didn’t look like the Mother of the Temple now. She looked like someone else… someone…

  Memories stirred. Painful, terrible memories. Dreams of fire and pain, of misery and desperation. Memories Grace had pushed deep down and thought lost.

  Strength deserted her. She slumped back into her chair, staring.

  ‘Ah, our last entertainment,’ said the queen in delight. ‘And our final course, as promised.’ She jumped up from her seat and held out her hands like a child expecting a present for her birthday. ‘Mother Miranda, what have you brought us?’

  ‘Gems from across the city, your serene highness,’ said Miranda. That voice. It jerked Grace upright as if a wire had hooked into the top of her head. She knew the voice. It haunted her nightmares. It taunted her. Why hadn’t she recognised it before? ‘Fire, wind, earth, water, song, and the flesh itself. All the wonders. All there to taste and enjoy. To make you giddy with delight. The Little Goddess provides.’

  Memories she couldn’t quite grasp twisted in her mind. They slid from her fingers like ice.

  She looked for Bastien, and found him still sitting in his seat, staring at Mother Miranda, confused and appalled. This was wrong, so very wrong. What was she doing here?

  They needed to go. She knew that. They needed to get the hell out of here and never come back. Panic rose up inside her.

  ‘First a demonstration,’ said the woman from the Temple. ‘Asher, if you will.’

  Asher Kane nodded and made for the doors. He was gone only a moment. When he returned, the guards came with him, dragging a chained, collared and sigiled man. He looked as dazed as the musicians, but far more dangerous.

  ‘No,’ Grace hissed between her teeth. Her eyes met Bastien’s, locked onto them as she tried to warn him. She made to get up but he raised a hand, stopping her. What was going on? Did he know about this?

  It was the Gore, the one that had caused Kai’s death. He was meant to be rotting in a dungeon under the palace, his powers stripped away. Grace was never going to forget that face, even though now it was thin and gaunt, those vicious little eyes a million miles away.

  ‘We know some mageborn cannot be controlled. We are fortunate to have Academy officers like Captain Marchant here to track them down and capture them, removing them from the general population whom they threaten.’

  There was a light smattering of applause as all eyes turned briefly on her. Grace felt horribly complicit. In what, she couldn’t say. But she didn’t like the feeling.

  ‘What then?’ Miranda went on. ‘In the Temple we try to offer sympathy and comfort to their victims and their families. But that is all we can do. What happens when they are captured?’

  ‘Bastien removes their magic,’ Aurelie answered, in bored tones. Perhaps this was all taking too long for her. Perhaps she simply wanted to get on to her entertainment, the final course as she said. The thought of what that could be sent chills down Grace’s spine.

  And then the Gore fixed his gaze on her, tilted his head to one side as if trying to recognise her. He looked so puzzled, she knew he had been broken. In body and mind.

  She refused to feel sorry for him. She knew what he was. But this… no one deserved this.

  Asher had joined Aurelie and he hushed her gently. He really doted on her. Grace doubted the feeling was returned. Not in the same way.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miranda. ‘His highness performs his duties with admirable dedication. But he is only one man. Even his powers don’t stretch that far. And so… Behold.’

  From her neck she lifted one of the many necklaces that hung there. Suspended from the chain was a small glass globe. It looked like nothing more than a keepsake holder, into which one might put dried flowers or a lock of hair.

  One of her assistants handed her another globe. When she touched the two together, both began to glow with a faint, throbbing white light. She offered the larger one to the Gore.

  Bastien surged to his feet, reaching an understanding that was beyond Grace’s capabilities.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ he shouted, much to the shock of everyone around him. ‘Where did you—’

  Miranda held up one elegant hand, her long nails glinting in the red light. Grace flinched, an unknown instinct or memory firing like an explosion in her brain. A punch. A kick.

  There’s been a war. Everybody’s hungry.

  ‘I think you know that, your highness. Why, this is your work, isn’t it? And what I offer completes it.’

  ‘It
isn’t safe,’ he went on. ‘For either party.’ Grace pushed her chair back and stood quietly, trying to make her way to his side. This felt dangerous. She couldn’t say why. But her instincts were rarely wrong.

  ‘Bastien,’ Mother Miranda said with an admonishing tone, one friend to another. Like equals. ‘No progress is without risks.’

  She touched the necklace to the globe in the Gore’s hands. Both of them blossomed with light, vibrant and terrible, red like blood, like the bodies he turned inside out. It pulsed more strongly than before.

  The Gore gave a soft groan and fell, caught by his guards, but the jar was still held firm in his hands. His fingers were clenched around it, fixed, as if rigor mortis has set in.

  ‘Now,’ Miranda purred. ‘He is no threat to anyone, but his power on the other hand…’ She held up the necklace. ‘Lord Asher, if you will.’

  ‘Asher, don’t,’ Bastien murmured but the general didn’t spare him so much as a glance.

  Miranda smiled as Asher Kane joined her and bowed so she could slip the chain over his head. As the pendant touched his chest, he drew in a shaky, uneven breath. His eyes widened. Grace was sure she saw his pupils dilate with pleasure.

  Bastien was still on his feet. But he didn’t try to stop anyone.

  ‘You, come here,’ Miranda snapped at one of the musicians who still lingered by the doorway. Startled and uncertain, he blushed and tried to back away. When he did, two guards seized him and thrust him forward. ‘No need to be shy, dear. Hold still. This will only take a moment. Here Asher, break his arm.’

  ‘What? No!’ The musician tried to pull away. ‘No, mistress please. You… you can’t. This is my livelihood. Please…’

  Asher smiled. ‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ he murmured. ‘Again.’

  And he reached out, pressing his hand on the man’s arm. It only took a touch. There was a terrible crunch and the musician howled in agony. A jagged bone tore its way through his golden-brown skin and blood splattered up into his face.

  ‘Now heal him,’ Aurelie snarled.

  Asher rolled his eyes. ‘Really?’