by Wendy Knight
Ada jerked away, fingers sparking. “Then I will. You gave me away today, Father. Let me do this before I go. Let me heal him.”
The angry flames hissed in his blood, snapping angrily, and he was suddenly on his feet, straining against his chains and screaming like a madman. Were he able to raise his fingers, he would burn the spell again, but he could not.
“Christian Buttercroft! Stop it right now!” Ada stomped her small foot, putting her free hand on her hip and glaring furiously.
The sparks died abruptly and Christian felt himself coming back, and with it, the pain. “You are betrothed, then?” he asked, his voice breaking.
“Apparently. Without my consent.” She scowled at her father. Christian remembered, not long ago, when she had been terrified of him. What had happened that she suddenly had him wrapped around her finger, so much so that when she glared at him and snapped at him and generally disrespected him, he only looked at her fondly?
“William is an excellent match, Ada. Joining our lands will be beneficial to us all. We will have a stronger front against the French and Spanish invaders.”
Ada’s eyes narrowed, visible even in the darkness, and Christian could see the distrust there. Even if the duke had changed, she had not. If that glare was any indication, she still suspected him of all the evil she’d set out to prove in the first place.
“William and I barely know each other and he is not whom I would have chosen for myself.” Her eyes flickered, barely noticeable in the darkness, toward Christian, and the angry flames retreated a bit further.
“As your father, I am doing what is best for you.” Richard puffed out his chest and Ada sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Are you going to release him or do I have to find a way to break his chains when you aren’t looking?”
Christian froze, waiting for the duke’s reaction, but Richard merely threw his head back and laughed. “Here, little one. Free your healer.” He paused, though, and all merriment was gone from his voice. “But you — you stay away from my home. Your place is the stables or your cottage.”
Richard turned on his heel and left. Ada took the key ring and rushed to his side, sliding the torch into the notch on the wall.
“He wants you to die.”
Her eyes widened and she looked up at him. “Why would you say such a horrible thing?” she gasped. Her hands that were so busy trying to find the right key froze. The clanking of metal on metal echoed through the darkness and was gone.
“He left you alone with me.”
“I think you forget, Christian, who it was that stopped your spell today.” She sat back on her haunches and squinted at him. “I do not need my father to protect me. Or William. Or you.” After staring him down for several seconds, she bent her head toward the key ring, trying each one in the lock at his wrist. Finally, there was a loud click and the manacle screeched free. “Give me your feet.”
It took her only seconds to free him completely, and she rose, offering him a hand. “I was supposed to heal you. Now you’ve saved me again.”
She shrugged, grabbing her torch and walking deeper into the dungeon.
“Where are you going?”
“I think we should not go out the main exit. You are not hugely popular right now with the guards. Or the staff. Or… anyone, actually.”
Sighing, Christian followed her to a small door across the room, one he’d never noticed before. It led to a tunnel with at least a foot of water covering the floor. “What is this place?”
“My father built it in case he was ever locked in his own dungeon.” She didn’t hesitate, his little warrior. Lifting her skirts with her free hand, she sloshed into the tunnel and waded into the darkness. Christian followed, wondering how on earth she’d found this little door in the first place.
She didn’t seem inclined to speak at all, so he spent their walk studying her and trying not to fall over into the water. She had changed in these weeks since she’d returned from London. She hadn’t gone mad, as he had, or trapped inside her own mind, as Charity had, but Richard’s training had changed her just as much as it had them. She had lost her innocence, her playfulness. “Now you’re a warrior before all else.” He didn’t realize he spoke aloud until she answered him.
“That’s because in London, I forgot that. I forgot that I was different. I got caught up in the dresses and dances and beauty and attention. I forgot who I was.” She risked a glance over her shoulder at him. “You showed up with your angry sparks and reminded me who I am supposed to be.” Sighing bitterly, she notched the torch again and turned a heavy metal handle laid into the wall, shoving hard on the slab until it swung open. “Now, my parents seek to marry me into that world and take what I am away from me. But I will heal you first.”
Christian swallowed hard. Grabbing her hand, he stopped her before she stepped out into the light. “I’ve lost you forever, haven’t I?”
She froze for several seconds before turning slowly to face him. There was no expert sweep of her skirts now, they tangled around her feet and she stood silhouetted in the doorway. “If my Christian is still there and can win over this completely mad Christian that keeps taking over, then perhaps love will find a way.” She shook her head, pulling her hand free. “But right now, my Christian is lost and I only see glimpses of him. Enough to break my heart every single time.”
She left him in the darkness, jerking her skirts out of her way as she stumbled into the light. He followed her, temporarily blinded. When his eyes finally cleared, he found them to be in the forest behind the manor, emerging from a knoll.
“You—you still love me?” he asked, hating how timid he sounded. Ada was small, yes, but powerful. Whatever timidity she’d had once was gone, driven out of her by her parents.
She sighed, turning toward him. “Christian, I will always love you. You tried to kill me and here I am, still trying to save you. But that doesn’t mean we should be together.”
“Because of William,” he said bitterly, his fingers sparking.
“No,” she snapped, whirling away. She turned her back on his sparks.
Very brave. Or very foolish.
Somehow, he wrestled the flames back under control and hurried to catch up to her. “Because of what my father has made you. Because you embraced what my father made you. And because if we were together, my father would always be hunting you.” She said all this without turning toward him, marching resolutely through the forest. She extinguished her torch in their pond, which had, sometime during his madness, been cleared of all the briars.
“I am not afraid of your father.”
She whirled on him, her face a mask of fear and rage. “You should be. Do you not realize what he’s done to you? You should be fearful of him!” Sparks, just a few, escaped from her clenched fists. He wondered how she could control her angry flames when he could not, why his overtook him and nearly destroyed him and hers only made her more powerful, more beautiful, more Ada.
She searched his face, and whatever she found there was not what she hoped for. Her head fell, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “I will walk you to your cottage. It is safe for you there.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, and he had nothing left to do but follow her. “Do not leave without me until the servants and guards… and my mother… have realized you are not to be feared.”
She left him at his door, promising to return in the morning. And return she did, like a miniature drillmaster. She put him through test after test — not the painful kind her father did, but different words or spells or emotions that would trigger his anger.
And then she would make him control it.
“I can teach you to be a warrior, Christian, if that’s where your heart truly lies. But this—” she waved her hand toward him, “this is not a warrior. This is madness. Madness gets killed because it has no sense.”
Christian bent over, his hands on his knees. He gasped for breath and glared at her through his lashes. “This is supposed to cure me?”
She smiled, mischievous in the face of his mental and physical exhaustion. “Yes.”
“You have a lot of faith in my ability to control it. What if I lose my mind and try to kill you again?” As it was, she was hiding him in either his cottage or in the dungeon because no one had forgiven him for his last attempt.
She shrugged, but her eyes still sparkled. “Then I will simply have to move faster than you do.” She raised a teasing eyebrow. “And let’s do be honest, shall we? I doubt that you have enough energy to muster a lirik that would do more than sting quite a bit.”
He growled half-heartedly before it hit him. She was exhausting him on purpose — the exact same method she’d used to control her father. The dark eyes watching him read his realization and she nodded slowly. Sometimes, he was positive she had a bit of Charity’s gift.
“So. Let’s begin again, shall we?”
Christian flopped on the ground, groaning. “Ada, you have won. I am tired.”
She crossed the dungeon, kneeling next to him in the dirt to peer into his face. “I am certain you will survive.” Her smile played around the corner of her mouth, but he refused to rise. Instead, he closed his eyes stubbornly. “I’ll tell you what. If you can control your angry flames for the next several words, I will teach you a new spell.”
He cracked an eye open and studied her. “New spell, you say?”
“Yes. In fact, if you are a good student and behave, I will teach you a new spell every day.”
Ada had found his weakness, perhaps his greatest weakness besides her. He wanted the power, the knowledge, the ability that came with Edren spells.
“One day he will take those spells you teach him and create an army of Carules to rise against the Edren tyranny.”
Christian turned his head in the dirt to see Charity grinning from the steps. She was more pale than usual, and her silver eyes glowed a bit, but her smile said she was not caught in a vision. She was safe.
Ada stood, offering him a hand to pull him to his feet. He rose, falling forward just a bit. He caught himself by placing a hand at her waist. It was the closest he’d been to her since that night in London, and he felt the flames roar to life, smothering his Carules blood. Ada must have seen the change in his eyes and she backed away, throwing the ward up before he could even think about burning a spell. When he was surrounded, she stood back, arms crossed, chest heaving, and nodded once.
Giving him permission.
He burned the spell and threw it at the ward, at her, at Charity, at everything out there, until his magic was depleted and he collapsed to his hands and knees in the dirt. Dust clung to the sweat at his temples and he could taste it against his teeth. He felt tears snaking their way through the grime and held back a sob. Ada knelt next to him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Christian. We knew this wouldn’t be solved in one day. It will take time. Weeks, months, even.”
“Your wedding is in four months, Ada.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
****
Every single day, as soon as Ada escaped from training with her father, she came to get him, working with him until all hours of the night, until he would collapse from exhaustion and she would help him home. Sometimes Charity joined them, but mostly it was just the two of them — a fact that would ruin her socially if anyone found out.
She didn’t seem to care. In fact, she didn’t seem to care about her other, non-magical life at all. She didn’t talk about the wedding or her betrothed. She grudgingly met with seamstresses and the dragon-faced woman who seemed to be in charge of planning the event — one Christian had heard Vivian say would be a fairy tale in the making, and all the girls in London would swoon with envy.
But it all seemed to drive Ada even more into her magic, her training, her saving and protecting and fighting. And Christian thought maybe he hadn’t lost her completely after all.
She was later than usual picking him up that day, and Christian started to plan how he could sneak into the manor without anyone killing him. Because that would be somewhat unfortunate. When he finally started thinking it was worth the risk, she suddenly appeared at the window, rapping lightly against the glass.
“You look awful,” he said as he met her outside.
She smirked at him, but it was a half-hearted smirk. Partly because the entire side of her face was badly burned, and partly because she must have agreed with him.
“What happened?” He stopped her as she attempted to walk away from him, tugging her gently back to his side. Her eyes widened and she glanced quickly at his hands, checking for sparks, no doubt, and he realized for the first time that she was afraid of him. The thought at once shamed him and thrilled him.
But this time there were no sparks. He raised his hand, and the warm blue heat throbbed from his palm, sweeping to her face, to the expansive burns there, and mending the broken skin. When it finally healed, he dropped his hand, but didn’t let go of her wrist, waiting for an answer.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “I stumbled into my father’s spell.”
“Ada…” Now the flames erupted. She’d told him Richard wasn’t hurting her anymore. This was one of the worst injuries he’d seen.
“Stop it, Christian. I tell the truth. I stumbled into his spell. My father thinks I am too tired and need to rest.”
His flames died abruptly. He knew it had to be coming, the exhaustion. She’d been going too hard for too long and her body couldn’t take it. No one’s could, and she was so small…
She took his hand and brought it to her lips, kissing the palm shyly. “Thank you for healing me.”
Hope bloomed in his chest, but before he could get overly excited she spun on her heel and marched away. “Come now. We have training to do.”
****
Ada was sure she understood what Christian was going through, his true self locked inside of someone else. She felt the same way — pretending to be so strong while inside she was dying. Pretending to be the daughter her father wanted while inside she wanted to strangle him. Pretending Christian didn’t still set her body on fire, and the way her heart would pound if he merely glanced at her. Pretending she didn’t cry at night when she was finally alone because she was marrying a man who didn’t hold her heart, because the man who did had lost his mind.
I am very tired.
But being tired did not save Christian, or Charity. Being tired meant she was weak, and she couldn’t have even one single moment of weakness or she would fail them all. So she locked her true self away and pretended she was someone else. Someone who adored and trusted her father, who did not love Christian, who could marry William, and who did not cry. Ever.
I am very tired.
She watched Christian struggle. He fought so hard to control the flames, but Ada could see that there was a part of him that embraced the anger, and until that part of him died, he would never win. If she could just understand why, she might be able to help him more, but talking to him hurt. It reminded her of before. Before she’d gone to London, before her father had made everyone crazy. When they had climbed trees and run through the forest and stolen kisses by the pond. The hideaway was gone now — she’d visited their secret place alone one too many times and finally burned the briars to the ground in a fit of heartbroken rage.
“I think you’ve had enough for today. We will work more tomorrow,” she said tiredly. Despite Christian’s healing, her face still burned underneath, and she desperately wanted to sleep. She also desperately wanted to escape Christian, because being with him was the sweetest form of torture.
Christian knelt in the dirt across from her, leaning forward on his hands. He raised his head slowly, the brown hair falling over his forehead. His face shone with sweat, and his eyes stared back at her, hopeless. She slid off the bench she’d been sitting on — her feet couldn’t even reach the floor — and went over to him. “It’s getting better every day, Christian. You are getting stronger.”
“I am not, and you know
it.”
She sighed, sitting in the dirt next to him, knowing her mother would be furious if she saw how dirty her skirts were. “Christian, I see something when I watch you.”
He laughed bitterly, staring down at the ground in front of him. “I know what you see. A weak, poor Carules with no future and no—”
“Stop it,” she snapped. He winced but said nothing. More gently, she said, “I see that there is a part of you that does not want to control these flames. You like the power that comes with them, yes?”
He didn’t answer, but his shoulders tensed. She continued, “There is another way to have this power, Christian. I learned to heal. You can learn to have Edren spells without the madness. You just have to let go of whatever it is my father put into you.”
When he still didn’t respond, she sighed and finally stood, brushing off her skirts as best she could. She held out a hand but he ignored it, struggling to his feet himself. He went straight to the little doorway to the tunnel without looking at her. “Wait. I need to protect—” she started forward but he froze, half in the tunnel and half out, balancing on a precipice that seemed more than a little symbolic.
“I do not need you to protect me, Miss Aleshire.”
Ada’s jaw dropped and her eyes filled with tears. Grateful that he refused to look at her, she scrubbed at her cheeks, but her tears refused to stop. She heard him slosh through the water, disappearing into the tunnel and the darkness without even a torch. Don’t be daft, Ada. His hands are torches. She thought about leaving him to it and escaping to her rooms for the night, but her heart wouldn’t let her — broken though it was.
“Christian, wait!” she picked up her skirts and ran after him, afraid when she got to the tunnel he would be gone. Somehow it mattered very much to her that he still be there. She tugged the door open, and he stood, his back still to her, but waiting. She let out a sigh of relief. “We didn’t learn the new spell. It’s new for both of us, I just learned it today.”