by Anise Rae
“It’s just another addition to the equation. One fissure was right outside your shop, where we found him waiting. One was by your house. He admitted he’d walked there.”
She tossed up her hands. “Why admit such a thing if he’d done the dirty deed?”
He shrugged. “Taunting us. Tell me, does he know about your connection to the elephant fountain?”
She swallowed hard. That was answer enough. She drooped, from her vibes to her shoulders. “Are you going to kill him?”
He wrapped his arms around her in a sideways hug. “That’s my job to worry about. Not yours.”
For a moment, she fell silent, then she lifted her gaze to his. “Does it bother you…killing?”
He tightened his arms around her. It didn’t bother him at all…not when someone had threatened her, pulling her into his evil. But she wouldn’t want this to be about her. “Not when someone has targeted my territory. For the sake of the mages who live in Rallis, the bond must stand. Whoever’s doing this is threatening not only my family and you, he’s jeopardizing everyone who lives here and the peace of the Republic.”
“But—”
“If the Rallis bond is destroyed, no one will be able to reclaim the land. There are just too many mages living here, too much power emanating from the land for anyone to grab control of it again. Gwyn, your little Lily, her grandmother, the junkyard gang…everyone you know and love…will get sense sick.”
Aurora reached her hand over the toaster, her power ready, but still she hesitated. “Just make sure he’s guilty before you....”
“Of course.”
She searched for the mark’s power and pulled. Two slices of perfect toast popped from the appliance, poking their edges from the slots. “This doesn’t make sense.” She shook her head. “There’s no way the fissure was here all along. I would have noticed. You would have noticed.”
He bent down and kissed her forehead. “Let me take you home. I’ll wrap you up on the couch and make you a cup of tea. You can rest and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She shook her head. “I’ll go out of my mind waiting. I’ll stay here and work.”
He’d expected that. He went into the front room and picked up her coffee cup. Still warm, thanks to Izzy’s spell. He brought it to her, bent down, and kissed the top of her head. “There’s a guard outside the door. Do you have your calling charm?”
She patted her pocket.
Still, he didn’t like leaving her alone. “Do you want Gwyn to come wait with you?”
She shook her head again.
He didn’t know who else to offer. He knew so little of her life. One step at a time, he reminded himself as a familiar grain of frustration shook in his heart.
“I will be back,” he leaned down and whispered in her ear. She turned to him, put a hand around his neck, and brushed his lips with her kiss.
“I know.”
He wrapped her certainty around him, a tie that would hold her heart to his, and went out to hunt.
Chapter 15
With a foolish glance left and right—the guard kept everyone away—Aurora crouched beside Gwyn’s wrapped up present. She’d spent the last three hours worrying until her own glitter had driven her out of her workshop. She’d accomplished nothing despite her overflowing shelves of waiting appliances. Desperate for a distraction, she slipped her hand beneath the cloth to touch the present, seeking a friendly vibe. But Gwyn’s frustration and bitterness was all she could sense.
“I need to talk to her!” a woman cried from outside.
Aurora jumped up.
“Edmund sent me! It’s a chain of chaos out there,” she screeched. “A ripple of it is flowing right down the city!”
“Lady Allison, slow down. Take a deep breath.” A man’s command broke the rush of the woman’s words.
Aurora rushed forward and opened the door to see Edmund’s cousin, the woman she’d met in the bathroom at the ball.
“Oh, you!” Allison was so overcome with relief that she fell into Aurora’s not-waiting arms for a hug. Beside her, the guard stood alert wearing a black coat bound by a variety of straps with small attachments, and black pants with an equal number of attachments. Considering the gun holstered at his side, she could imagine what was in those compartments…defensive spells and potions.
She’d seen him before. He’d driven the coach and horses back to the junkyard after her sailing trip with the High Councilor.
Boyishly cute despite his hulking size and intimidating costume, the soldier held up a hand and turned back around to face the road. “Lady Enchantress, I’m Captain Gregor Whitman, at your service. Don’t step outside. Three reporters hide down the street.”
“Forget the reporters!” Allison howled. “Aurora, you have to get in the car. Edmund’s chasing after”—she bobbed her hand in the air—”whoever he’s chasing. The energy is a mess. It’s all like….” She stuck her tongue out, spread her lips at a diagonal, and shook her hands in the air. “It’s horrible.” Then she dropped her head in her hands. “I need to breathe. Breathe. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. I can’t find my happy thoughts! Just get in the car! I’ll find them on the way.”
“I have to go out there?” Aurora shook her head, horrified.
“It’s an emergency!”
The desperate urge to hide battled with the need to help Edmund. But there wasn’t a choice. She had to fix the fissures. She stepped out, a slow step, feeling her way. “No one will see me, will they?” Her stomach knotted. She wasn’t sure her knees would get her to the car.
“Get your coat,” the guard ordered.
“She doesn’t need a coat! She can just warm herself!” Allison cried.
“She could, but she doesn’t. They don’t do that in the Drainpipe, apparently.” He jerked his chin at Aurora. “Coat.” He turned to the crazy cousin. “Lady Allison, you get in the passenger side and navigate. I’ll drive.” He escorted her around the car. “Coat,” he ordered again over his shoulder.
Aurora stumbled back inside on lurching legs and grabbed her coat with its frayed edges and a hole in the sleeve. She smashed her gold cap over her curls and tottered back out.
“Gloves.” The guard stepped in front of her and she nearly crashed into him.
“I don’t need them.”
“Please, go get them.” He blocked her as she tried to get to the car door. “I once escorted Bronte from the Rallis estate when she wasn’t wearing shoes. Not to mention a coat. And I got beat up by the colonel, who’s now a general. I don’t want his brother to do the same.”
“I don’t have any gloves.” At least not here. She was hardly going to tell him they were at the water tower. “I won’t let him beat you up.” She couldn’t imagine Edmund winning a fight against him. Though they were of similar builds, the guard must have had years of training that Edmund didn’t.
He sighed hard and then gestured toward her shop door, a doomed frown on his face. “The lock spell on the door, please, enchantress.”
She didn’t argue, just cast as ordered and slid into the backseat of the fancy sedan. The guard took the wheel.
“Are there people where we’re going?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“Oh, yes! Adoring throngs.”
Aurora shrank in her seat, her gut curdling.
“We’re going back to the elephants,” Allison answered from the front seat. “Though I doubt your picture will be as pretty this time.”
* * * *
A slew of mages shuffled down Goodale Street blocking the road. Some looked back at the car but continued bumbling along as if they were too shocked to react to the vehicle behind them.
Allison threw a spell at her window. The glass disappeared and cold air flooded in. She stuck out her head. “Move aside! Make way for the Rallis enchantress. Make way!” Her high voice sparkled with energy through the gray atmosphere. She turned to Aurora with an earnest nod. “I’ll be your herald.”
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“No, thank you.” Aurora spelled the glass back in place.
Outside, a small group spun around and stumbled over to the curb, but too many people still lingered in the road for the car to make much progress.
Allison knocked on the glass with her knuckles. “Excuse me, Madame Enchantress, but kindly remove the glass. You need to get out there. Edmund said you’re the only person who can fix this.”
“I will. But let’s park the car and I’ll walk.” With her hat so far down over her face, her own eyes wouldn’t be able to see a single soul. “No need to herald our arrival.”
“The moment calls for some efficiency,” Allison cried.
“Why are there so many people here?”
“They were gawking at your early morning work. It was quite a crowd. I was there, too. Those statues are so beautiful. I could have stayed all day. And then it all turned ugly.”
Captain Whitman stopped the car again, having caught up to the next mass of mages blocking their progress down the small, residential street. Energy shimmered through the air. The horn blared. The group in front of them jerked with surprise, as did Aurora. The horn continued with short pulses of annoying honks.
Aurora wanted to sink down into her seat and hide from the attention they were garnering. Instead, she leaned forward to the driver. “I’m sure they’ll move. You can stop now.”
He glanced at her in the mirror. “It’s not me.”
“If you won’t let me herald, then the horn will.” Allison’s blue eyes were wide with determination.
Two small flags rose from the innards of the car to stand a foot high at the edges of the hood. The crowd smashed against the sides of the road.
“Nice.” Aurora rolled her eyes at the flags. “Must be handy when you need to double-park.”
“You bet your glitter it is. Now punch it, guard.”
The damage came into view as they turned onto Park Street and drove a slow three blocks.
“Oh, goddess. What happened?” Aurora’s breath stuck in her throat at the long chain of fissures with energy so warped she could see it without her mage sense on. It shimmered through the air like a mirage.
Allison gestured out the window, turning her face so that Aurora could see her profile. “One minute the crowd was happy and laughing. They were admiring the fountain even though the ones closest were getting wet from the blowing mist. The next minute that horrible fissure appeared!”
“Did anyone catch the person?” Aurora asked, swallowing back tears. Her park was damaged yet again.
Allison shook her head. “There were so many people. It happened in a blink. Dozens of them are sense sick, those who were standing next to it. The chaos starts at that sidewalk.” She pointed at the middle of the block. “Whoever did it is ripping fissures in the bond all over the city. Edmund keeps whispering about it to me.”
An odd streak of jealousy spun through Aurora’s chest like a mini tornado. She pressed her hand to the ridiculous sensation.
Allison twisted in her seat to look at her. “Don’t be jealous. I was there when it happened and when Edmund showed up.” She wriggled her wrist and her calling charm bracelet rang with a delicate chime. “The only reason he’s calling me is because he didn’t want you to come alone. He wanted you to stay with the guard, but he didn’t think you’d be comfortable with the military mage alone. That’s all I know. He tries to tell me something and then he starts gagging. He’s grossing me out.”
Aurora squinted at the cousin. “How did you know how I was feeling?”
“I’m a dark aurist mage. You may be the lightest of the light and I may not be able to see your energetic aura, but I can sense the aura of your emotions. The dark ones anyway.”
Aurora shook off her jealousy—it had no place here—and her surprise that the Rallises had more than one dark mage in the family. She had work to do. That awful rip down the peaceful energy of the territory shook her vibes to her core. She wanted to close her eyes against its ugliness. Allison was right—parking in the middle of the street was perfectly acceptable. She reached for the door handle, her fingers shaking with such a mix of emotions she wasn’t able to identify them all.
The lock clicked. The door stuck.
“What now? Don’t you want me to fix it?” Aurora’s impatient words snapped with more harshness than she’d intended.
Allison’s glacier blue eyes sparked from within. “Yes. But you will step out of the car confident and composed, head held high. That’s what these people need. And that’s what you’re going to give them.”
“I don’t have anymore composure, Lady Allison. It disappeared when the entire Republic saw me naked.”
Allison raised an eyebrow. “You mean when you stunned them with your beauty and your power? Because that’s what they saw. A woman, one of their own, who is a conduit of the goddess’s power. And that, Aurora Firenze, is a gift. You go out there with your chin up. You show them that a metallist’s daughter carries a blessing the rest of us can only dream about.”
A metallist’s daughter. Those were magic words. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Allison had thought to say them, though. The Rallises always knew how to move the game in their direction. But it was a point that Aurora couldn’t deny.
“Calm and poised. Don’t scare them with your own worry. Or mine.” Allison’s voice wavered with the last words.
Aurora took a breath and tried to channel some calmness. “You’re right.”
Allison took her own deep breath. “Aunt Helen is much better at this than I am. I try, but I have issues.”
“I’d rather be sitting here with you than her.”
Allison tilted her head and pressed her lips together as if she might cry. “Why, thank you, enchantress. Now go get ’em.”
Captain Whitman dashed out to open her door. Aurora stepped from the car to whispers and stares. Her coat was little protection for the curves and lumps of her body against their knowing gazes, but she didn’t cower. For the sake of the people here, she couldn’t afford to.
Circling around the guard, she strode to the sidewalk where the fissure began. The damage strung in a line above the sidewalk that bisected the north half of the park in a diagonal before it veered toward the fountain. It wasn’t hard to guess where the fissure ended.
The crowd stirred like a bubbling cauldron, poking their heads up and around for a better glance at her. She tried to ignore them. With a purposeful stride, she pushed the bond’s energy before her and touched it to the fissure. The messy, dangerous chaos refocused, as easy as making Lily’s crown of flowers, though Aurora much preferred privacy when she cast. And if she had to be around strangers, she preferred ones who hadn’t seen her naked.
Behind her, Allison cleared her throat. Aurora straightened her shoulders and moved on, pushing the Rallis bond and reattaching the disordered energy. It was the longest walk of her life. Finally, she reached the pond, where the fissure ended. She turned around to face the crowd.
Applause and cheers broke around her in a wave. The car was now a gauntlet of gawkers away.
“Say something,” Allison whispered.
“I can’t.” The vow of silence weighed on her, its presence unforgettable.
“Yes. You. Can.” Each word poked at her back like the end of a sharp wand.
The crowd fell silent as if Allison had shared her expectation of a speech over them all. Their eagerness threatened to steal every word Aurora knew.
“Come on now. Deep breath. There are lots of dark mages here, you know. You seem to like that kind.” Allison spoke into Aurora’s ear. “Focus on them...the poor, beleaguered ones who need an ally...though each member of this crowd is scared right now—light or dark, rich or poor. Help them. Just speak from your heart.”
With no other choice, Aurora took a breath. “My father used to bring me to this park.” Her scratchy voice took a few words to even out. It flowed over the crowd though she spoke too softly
for it to carry beyond the first few people. Allison was fulfilling her offer as herald and projecting her words.
“Every Saturday, we’d walk this path to here. We watched people play games and laugh. He was adamant that we’d only watch, that this park was for the light to enjoy but it would be frowned upon for him, for the dark, to do the same.”
Ripples of movement spread through the crowd as the meaning of her words echoed around the park. She hadn’t given much forethought to revealing that her father was a dark mage, but compared to being naked on the front page of the paper it really wasn’t much.
“I realize now that this was merely an excuse. He wasn’t hiding his own darkness. He was hiding me, keeping my power secret before I could stand on my own. Like a parent should.” She gave a soft smile. “Nevertheless, that excuse planted a longing inside me that this park, this Republic, would be for all…dark or light mage. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, at the light end or the dark or somewhere in between, it is a gift, a blessing. It’s what you do with that gift that matters.”
She held her hand in front of her, gently pointing down the diagonal walkway. “This was wrong, done only to hurt and stir fear and worry among us. I was here that day…the day of the explosion.”
The sad sigh of the crowd floated around the park. “I saw things…” She closed her eyes. This was not where she wanted to go. “But the wrongdoers were caught. Today’s culprit will be, too. Edmund…” She shook her head. “Lord Rallis is hunting—” Her throat tightened. The vow threatened to steal her words. She took a breath as the crowd chuckled softly at her misplaced familiarity with Edmund’s name, simply not done when discussing the first family.
“I’m going help him. And by finding grace and joy here, among each other, you can help, too. To do anything else is to let evil smother the goodness that dwells within this land, within everyone of us…dark or light. It’s our job to protect that spark of goodness it until its flame is so bright that nothing could ever quench it.”