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

by Jessica Thorne

  Bastien smiled. ‘Are you declaring independence?’ There was a strange edge to his voice.

  Kurt’s face went oddly still and the wheeler-dealer act fell away. Grace saw a man who had a community to care for and protect, by any means necessary. Much like Bastien.

  ‘It won’t be long before they come for us. I’m not a fool to think we’re safe here. Eastferry’s tough enough to get into but throw enough arms at it, especially if they have magic too… well…’ He raked his hand through the scrappy dark hair. ‘It’s still my home, your high and mightiness. I don’t like people interfering with my home.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Bastien said.

  It was as much of an agreement as they were likely to express outright. Kurt just nodded. ‘There’s rooms down here, not a lot of space but enough for a night or two. Beds, somewhere to wash. Hide out here and Danny and I can sort out passage for you out of Rathlynn. We’ll need to go through Belport, but don’t worry. It’s in hand.’

  Grace glanced at the closed doors they had passed. ‘Why do I get the impression you do this a lot?’

  Kurt laughed and slapped his brother on the shoulder. ‘Many times, Duchess. Many times. Danny’s idea. He’s the mastermind.’

  ‘And I presume you’re the money man?’ Grace said.

  For a moment he actually looked offended. ‘People pay what they can. If they can.’

  Ellyn slung her arms around Daniel’s neck as he turned scarlet and tried to splutter out an explanation. ‘I always knew you were devious, Danny. Now, this one is mine. I could sleep for a week.’ She flung herself into the nearest room, not much bigger than a cupboard, and with a pirouette kicked the door shut in their faces. ‘Night!’ she called.

  Daniel left with Kurt, presumably to do something with the guards upstairs and make plans for their escape. Grace could hear their voices fading, something about Misha’s note, something about who dropped it off.

  Which left one room remaining, and one bed, narrow and unmade but with worn sheets folded up at the foot of it. Grace and Bastien both stared at it and she swallowed hard on a suddenly dry throat.

  ‘Might as well…’ She started unfolding the sheets, because it was something to do, something other than talking to him about everything that had happened, to them, between them. She didn’t even know where to start.

  His magic, and the darkness that came with it, Marius’s death, the moment he saved her life, the massacre at the Academy and Craine’s last words, being on the run with his oldest friend hunting them. Or the fact that the last time the two of them had been this close to an empty bed, they’d slept together. They’d made love.

  It was only last night. Exhausted, dead on her feet, shell-shocked – Grace stared at the worn white material in her hands, trying to work out what to do next.

  His hands, gentle and dexterous, took the other end of the sheet from her and spread it out over the lumpy mattress. They worked together, silently, making the bed – the sheets, the pillows and pillow cases, a grey blanket. He even straightened everything when she stepped back. The room was spinning just a little and she still didn’t know what to say.

  It ought to be easy. She should make a flippant comment, or flirt with him as if he didn’t matter, as if what had happened was just a one-night thing. Which it had to be, really. She was nothing to him. He was… he ought to be king.

  ‘Sit down,’ he told her.

  Alone together, she obeyed as if he held the warrant rather than her. As if she was the sigil-bound mageborn. She was too tired to argue, exhausted by even the idea of being in charge any longer.

  ‘I should be dead.’ The words came out suddenly. She didn’t know where from, just that it was true and she couldn’t hold it in any more.

  ‘No,’ he murmured gently and unbuckled her baldric. He placed it reverently on the stool in the corner. Her knives went next. And she just let him. She didn’t know why. She just…

  Divinities, she was still wearing his shirt, the rich sable material thick with sweat and blood, grey with dirt where once it had been the colour of the finest jet. The costliest material she’d ever had against her skin and she had to ruin it.

  Just as she had ruined everything with him. She’d used the sigil against him. She’d promised she wouldn’t and then, the first time he didn’t agree with her, she’d forced him to obey her and leave his sister behind.

  ‘Bastien… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had to get you out of there. Kane’s magic was just—’

  ‘It isn’t his magic. He’s using mageborn, stealing their magic.’

  ‘It’s different from a syphon.’

  He unbuckled her belt next and slid it off around her waist slowly. ‘Tethering. It’s slower than a syphon. But far more stable. We saw them in that room. Miranda’s experiment. With my sister’s help, no doubt, and Hale to supervise. They have more than one mageborn, if I’m any judge, all tethered to Asher.’

  ‘It doesn’t kill them.’

  ‘It will eventually. It’ll burn through them. They won’t last.’

  ‘How did you come up with such a thing?’ she asked, leaning forward.

  He glanced back at her over his shoulder and his expression had turned bleak. Then he looked away again, staring back at the sigils on her belt as if they could provide absolution. ‘Celeste gave me the idea, I suppose. It was something she said, the way the Maegen runs through me, through us. I thought… I thought it would help people. Make it easier and make life less restrictive for the mageborn. They could donate their services for a time. Imagine, skilled healers with the abilities of a Curer or even a Gore, that power put to good use instead of ill. A blacksmith with the powers of a Flint. Our navy with the power of a Zephyr on each ship, and not a conscripted one but an experienced sailor in his own right, or every field producing food for the city tended by a Loam.’

  ‘If they agreed to be power sources?’ Her stomach twisted as she spoke.

  Bastien turned back to face her, lifting his hands as if begging her to allow him to explain. ‘Marius thought… he thought it was a terrible idea. I called him old-fashioned and repressive. Said he wanted to keep each mageborn indentured for all their lives. I was so caught up in how to make it work…’

  ‘That you didn’t ask what others would do with it when they found out. And of course, they found out.’

  His shoulders slumped. Hale had betrayed him. He must have been working for them all along… Miranda and Asher, the Queen… She could see the horror of the realisation on his face. ‘They have to be using Celeste to do it…’

  ‘You can’t go back for her, Bastien.’

  He crossed the room suddenly and dropped to his knees suddenly. ‘Please, Grace. You don’t understand. She’s all I have now. And if they are using her to do this then we can stop them. We just need…’

  ‘You need to leave Rathlynn. That was Marius’s last command, wasn’t it?’ Grace stroked his hair, thick and silky, so dark against her skin. He closed his eyes in resignation. Or maybe in exhaustion that mirrored her own.

  ‘You should rest,’ he told her, as if he felt her body aching for sleep.

  ‘So should you. You must be exhausted.’

  He shook his head beneath her touch. ‘My magic sustains me.’

  Too much of it, she wanted to say, recalling the brightness in his eyes, the way he had looked, lost and half mad, the darkness in him.

  There he was, kneeling in front of her. He wrapped his hand around her calf and lifted her foot so he could start to tug off her boot. Then he set to work on the other one. The caress of his hands did funny things to her. Things she shouldn’t be thinking about right now.

  When he looked up again, when his gaze trapped hers, she suddenly couldn’t think of another question. His hands came up to frame her face, cradling her, and a sad smile kissed the corners of his lips.

  Her mouth parted by itself and she leaned towards him. No command this. No coercion. She wouldn’t do that to him. The first kiss was tentative, a
n uncertain question. Last night could have been just an aberration, a moment of madness and stress spilling into sex. A mistake. He was a prince – no, a king, albeit one without a crown. She was no one. Nothing.

  But his kiss said something else.

  She pulled back, trying to focus, knowing that she had to speak, she had to explain. ‘You don’t have to do this, Bastien.’

  ‘Yes I do.’ His lips brushed against hers as he spoke, and his fingertips buried in her hair, caressing her neck, pushing back the neck of the shirt to reach her skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  His mouth brushed her jaw, tilted her head back, nuzzled at her throat.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘For using the warrant and the sigil… I never meant to.’ Tears started in her eyes, trailed from the corners, and he looked up, startled. Then he kissed them away.

  ‘And I’m sorry too.’

  The response almost startled her back to lucidity. ‘For what?’

  Bastien smiled, that brittle, heartbroken smile she had come to recognise as his. ‘This.’

  He dragged her mouth to his, kissing her more completely than she’d ever been kissed. It ought to have been bruising and desperate, a clash of teeth and lips, but it wasn’t. He filled her, his tongue caressing her, teasing her. It was a kiss that seared promises onto her soul, a kiss that would winnow its way into her moth-eaten memories and every dream from this moment on. She gasped against him as his hands continued their teasing exploration. He eased her back onto the bed, taking control completely. The fire roared up inside her, demanding that he touch her more, that he make love to her, that he sink into her and be hers forever. The magic in her, so long denied, grew wild this close to him and he was making it worse with his tenderness.

  But still, he kissed her, his tongue tormenting her until she gasped for breath, her body trembling, her hands clutching his shoulders, pulling him to her. She couldn’t think. All she could do was feel.

  Bastien made a sound deep in his throat, a groan or a moan smothered by desire, a sound of need as desperate as hers, but threaded with a taint of regret and loss. Like he knew something she didn’t.

  A warning thrummed at the back of her brain. She opened her frantic eyes and saw his, open just a slit, but beyond the lids they were endless and bright, filled with the radiance of a thousand stars, the eyes of a man consumed with magic from the deepest places in the pool, lost in its depths.

  A wave of sleep swept over her, coupled with the shock of betrayal. He was doing this. It wasn’t natural. He was making her go to sleep, stealing her consciousness.

  She cried out, struggling to escape, to tear herself free, but it was already too late. The spell had her wrapped in its web and it was too powerful. Bastien caught her in the gentlest arms and slowly guided her back onto the pillow, settling her on the bed. Her mind struggled against what was happening.

  He’d said he’d never use magic against her. A promise he had already broken. Using it to heal her was bad enough but this… this… he’d sworn…

  But she was tired. So tired. Her body wouldn’t obey her any more. Her voice wouldn’t work.

  He gazed down at her and she adored him, even as she hated him for doing this to her.

  ‘I’m sorry, my love. But I have to go back. It’s the only way.’

  He placed a brief, tender kiss on her forehead and sealed his spell. Unable to fight any more, she slid into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He hated himself. Nothing else came close to expressing it.

  If he ever made it back to her, he’d be lucky if Grace didn’t kill him. But what choice did he have?

  He couldn’t leave Celeste behind. He couldn’t let her be used like that. She trusted Asher. She’d known him all her life. Of course she’d trust him.

  She was like a child. He couldn’t abandon her.

  He should never have left her in the Temple. The moment he found out about Miranda… he should have believed her, the things Celeste said. He should have listened.

  And he should never have used magic against Grace. Not once but twice. Saving her life might have been a reasonable excuse but this? She’d never forgive him for this.

  In spite of that hellish sigil she had used… Where had she even found it? He’d never come across one as strong as that, strong enough to hold him. No matter how much grief it caused Grace, something in him was glad its creator was dead in the Academy.

  He slipped back through the concealed door and found himself in the hallway of the inn. The taproom was quiet, the guards still there, drinking with a bleak determination while Kurt kept pouring cheap ale and hard spirits. What he planned to do with them, Bastien didn’t have time to find out. There was no sign of Daniel, which was probably for the best. He wasn’t sure how Grace’s friend would take what he had just done to her.

  No one was going to understand. If he made it back, if he could get Celeste and make it back to Eastferry… he’d spend every day trying to make it up to her. He’d do everything in his power to make amends. If she’d even deign to see him again. If he even made it back in time.

  But for now… now…

  He balled his hands into fists. He had to focus. He had to stop thinking about Grace, if he ever wanted to see her again. Celeste was what mattered now. If they didn’t have Celeste, Aurelie and Miranda couldn’t access her power, or use her brilliant mind to solve their problems stealing the magic of the mageborn.

  All he had to do was get into the Temple, and get her out. With magic, he could do that. And now that magic was his.

  A heavy black cloak hung by the end of the stairs. He grabbed it as he went by, opening the narrow door and stepping out into the night.

  ‘Where do you think you’re off to?’

  Daniel stood a little way down the alleyway outside the inn, his expression dark with suspicion.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘For your sister? Where’s Grace?’

  The flinch of shame he felt inside him was a stab of pain. ‘She’s… she’s sleeping.’

  Daniel looked levelly at him, disbelief written all over his face. ‘Sleeping…’

  ‘I promise, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ve heard your promises, Lord of Thorns.’

  ‘On my honour then. She’s safe. She’s sleeping.’

  He didn’t mention how she’d fallen asleep. Daniel didn’t look like he believed him anyway.

  ‘If you’re caught…’

  ‘I won’t be. And even if I am, they can’t make me tell them where you all are.’

  ‘High opinion of yourself. I’ve seen the kind of things they can do. I felt Asher Kane reach into my head and make me believe him. What’s to say he won’t do the same to you?’

  Bastien let his magic flood him again. It was easier each time, sinking into it, calling it to hand. Daniel took half a step back.

  ‘He won’t. I’m the Lord of Thorns, remember? The king of the mageborn.’

  Stiffening his resolve, Daniel didn’t look impressed. ‘I thought the point of all of this was to avoid a mageborn king. Do you want to be another Hollow King? Doesn’t sound like the best idea, does it?’

  ‘Would you trust me if Grace kept the warrant?’

  But Daniel didn’t relent.

  ‘And what’s to stop something happening to Grace?’

  The very thought. Bastien’s anger surged and his magic with it. His voice came out thick and dark with menace. ‘Me.’

  Daniel lifted his chin. ‘And what if you are the something?’

  ‘What would you have me do, Daniel? Return to her? Stay here? Go now and never return?’

  ‘You’re going to get captured. She’ll be so angry with us.’

  That one word caught him. ‘With us?’

  ‘Well I’m not letting you go on your own.’

  The streets were deserted. Everywhere they looked, doors were locked and windows shuttered. Royal Guards roved in packs but they did
n’t seem to be using the powers of the mageborn now. Just the threat of it was enough to subdue the city.

  Cloaked and hooded, Bastien and Daniel walked in silence. There was nothing else to say. Daniel was protective of Grace, whatever scheme he and his brother had with the mageborn. Bastien knew he was a spanner in the works of that.

  He’d used magic on Grace. Twice. She was never going to forgive him anyway. And neither was Daniel Parry.

  The Temple square was empty too. The doors were firmly closed. High above them, the tower taunted him, the only lights in the upper rooms, where Celeste lived.

  ‘Has she always lived there?’ Daniel asked, staring up at it.

  ‘As long as I can remember.’ That was a joke, wasn’t it? Bastien didn’t know what he remembered and what he’d been told, didn’t know the difference. ‘She was… difficult as a child. So was I, I suppose. But she became dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous, how?’

  ‘Someone died.’ Someone. It was easy to just say someone. A woman. A lover. A sister. But he didn’t want to talk about Hanna. Not now. ‘ I… find it difficult to remember.’

  ‘Difficult to remember?’ It wasn’t a taunt exactly. There was an element of disbelief, an element of disgust. ‘No one too important then. Doesn’t it matter when someone dies?’

  ‘Yes, Daniel. It matters.’

  But his memory was hazy. Most of his memories were. The accident when he was eighteen or so, a blow to the head and much of his childhood was knocked out of it. That was how it had been explained. He’d tried to stop Celeste. He’d been too late. Hanna was already dead.

  You tried, Bastien, Marius had said, his voice as gentle as a breeze through rose petals. The powers know that you tried. You loved her so much. But it wasn’t to be.

  He didn’t owe anyone an explanation. Least of all a nosy Academy brat dragged out of the worst slums of Eastferry with an attitude problem.

  Daniel snorted and dismissed it. Somehow that was worse. ‘Doesn’t look like it matters to you. How do you plan on getting in then?’