The Apprentice Sorceress

by E. D. Walker

  Noémi gripped her hand tightly. “Violette, you can’t go back to the princess’s home.”

  “What?” Sourness coated her throat, and a new crack of pain flared along her forehead. “What do you mean?”

  Noémi nudged at her shoulders, trying to push Violette onto her pillows. “Here, lie back while I tell you. Rest.”

  “I’ve had enough rest.” Violette thumped the mattress with her fist.

  “I should get Master Llewellyn.”

  “No.” Violette gritted her teeth, her head on fire now, her gut roiling. “Tell me.”

  “Everyone saw what you did, lovey. The buckets. They…everyone in the city knows you’re a witch.”

  Violette’s stomach sank as if Noémi had dropped a stone down her throat. “Everyone.”

  “Yes. It’s not that the princess doesn’t want you back, but it’s not safe. They’re hunting witches in the city right now. We need to keep you hidden until we can get back home.”

  Tears pricked Violette’s eyes. “What good will that do? Taking me home? I’m a witch. Everyone knows it. I’m ruined.”

  Noémi smoothed Violette’s hair back, her brow furrowed with concern. “It’ll be all right. The princess will take care of you.”

  Violette shook her head then howled with the pain that motion caused. She clutched her skull with both hands as tears leaked out of her eyes, tickling down her cheeks. Her face was hot, her stomach churning like she might throw up.

  “Violette…” Noémi’s voice was tight, worried.

  Violette couldn’t catch her breath. She’d nearly drowned once, not so long ago, caught in an ice-cold, night-dark river. She’d been tossed and pulled, the air driven from her lungs. This was like that, but instead of freezing she was burning, burning from the inside out.

  “Lovey.”

  Violette curled deeper into herself. Marriage or service. Only two choices. Well, now she had none. Nothing. No hope.

  “Master Llewellyn!” Something clattered against the floor, and Violette finally snapped her eyes open to see Noémi huddling in the doorframe, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. Her chair lay toppled next to the bed. Violette bent to right it, which was when she noticed the blue spellfire dancing around her palms.

  Her heart began to race. This hadn’t happened since the beach. Calm, cool. Breathe. She tried to focus, to corral the magic. But as soon as she tried to concentrate, her head erupted in fire as if someone were trying to smash it open with an axe. She gritted her teeth. “Run, Noémi. Run.”

  Footfalls outside.

  Noémi’s voice. “Llewellyn, help—”

  “Oh. Dear.” Llewellyn. Footsteps hurrying over the floor.

  Violette tucked her hands under her armpits, trying to curl into herself, make herself small, make herself into a container for the destructive magic trying to explode out of her. “Stay back.” She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not like the beach. Not Noémi. Not Llewellyn.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right.” A cool, dry hand settled against her forehead, and it was like knocking a cork out of a bottle. The burning, building magic inside flowed up and out toward that channel. Up and out into Llewellyn.

  The tension left her body, and Violette gasped before tumbling bonelessly in exhaustion against the cot. She stared at Master Llewellyn.

  Llewellyn’s eyes were kind, but his brow was knit with worry. “I’m afraid doing magic will be a bit difficult for the next few weeks until your head heals, Lady Violette. Sewing too.”

  “Sewing?” Noémi asked.

  Llewellyn shrugged. “Anything that takes concentration, really, or too much physical exertion. Reading. Riding.”

  Violette studied the magician, startled and unnerved how he could be so calm. “I almost blew up your workshop just now. When that happened on the beach before, it was like an earthquake. It knocked grown men off their feet.”

  He tilted his head to the side, his expression growing keen with interest. “Really? I’d love to hear about that.”

  Violette started to shake her head in exasperation but remembered in time. She sighed instead. “Are all magicians mad?”

  “Just the good ones.” He winked then turned toward Noémi, who still hovered by the doorway. “I think you must rest now, Lady Violette. Lady Noémi will visit again, I’m sure.”

  Violette ground her teeth together. “I don’t want to rest. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “You’re staying as a guest of King Thomas until we’ve had a chance to evaluate this situation.” His voice was still calm. Infuriatingly calm and even.

  Violette wrapped her arms around her middle. “So I really am ruined.”

  Noémi flinched, but she wouldn’t meet Violette’s eyes. “Lovey, no.”

  Violette turned to face the wall. “Leave me alone. I should rest, just as the magician says.”

  “I’ll come again soon,” Noémi murmured.

  Violette said nothing, just listened as their footsteps receded, the two of them talking too quietly for her to hear. Once she couldn’t hear them anymore, she let out the breath she’d been holding, turned her face into one of the pillows, and wept.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Violette slept for most of the rest of that day. Her head ached, and her gut was a tangled mess of unhappiness and anxiety. It was a mercy to sleep. Llewellyn checked on her several times, cleaning the cut on her head and bringing food. He seemed wise enough to realize she didn’t want to talk, because he didn’t say anything beyond asking her about her injury.

  Around sunset, Ned startled her when he banged into the shed with her dinner tray. “All right. Enough moping.”

  Violette huffed and folded her arms.

  Ned set the food on the bed then dragged a short stool over so he could sit beside her. “You know the silent trick won’t work with me. I’ll just babble enough for both of us until you throw this tray at my head.”

  “If you believe that, I wonder you’ve put the tray in my reach.” Violette grabbed a bread roll off the tray, broke it in half, then dipped the bread in the stew he’d brought. The bread had aromatic seeds baked into it, and the stew left a delicious sting behind on her tongue, sharp and hot. Clearly, King Thomas had a local cook who knew their business. She took another bite and sighed.

  “Are you all right, my lady?”

  “My head hurts.” She took another too-large bite of bread and chewed. She was ruined now, so what did good manners matter?

  Ned shook his head. “I mean the rest of you. How are you?”

  How are you? The question was too big, too much. Her magic wasn’t a secret anymore. Everyone in the city knew. And soon enough, the governor of the city, Lord Jean, might try to find her, to take her away like he’d done to the rest of the magic users. The cut on her forehead throbbed. Saving Jean’s life and the lives of all the people in the ballroom last night wouldn’t matter a bit. Her stomach cramped, and she carefully set aside the roll she’d been eating. “My life is over.”

  “It’s really not.”

  Violette glared at him. “My life as I know it is over.”

  “That’s true, but that’s happened before, hasn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat forward on his chair, knitting his hands together in front of him. “When I was ten, I was out late from home. I’d been hunting foxes for their pelts, and I stayed out too long. I came back to our manor just after dusk, and the whole thing was a smoking ruin. Everyone was dead. Everyone I’d ever known or loved was gone. Father. Brothers. Tutors. The kind old woman who’d been my nursemaid. All gone.”

  Violette’s stomach roiled in sympathy. “What happened?”

  “A kitchen fire got out of control best anyone could figure out. A local lord took me in after that.” Ned flashed her an unfelt smile. “King Thomas has multiple pages and squires. He’s a great man who can afford to act as patron to many knights. And every few years, he makes sure to select a page based on merit alone. Not the high
est born or the wealthiest. A few years after I lost my family, I swore I would be that one. I trained hard, and he chose me. I went to live with him in his palaces, follow him on this great quest. My life as I knew it before that time was over. Irrevocably changed. You see?”

  She grimaced and turned her face to the wall, inadvertently thinking of her lost father, her mother. The husband she’d barely known. Like Ned, her life had been upended over and over in a very short time.

  As if he could read her mind, he reached forward to squeeze her hand. “All things end. Changes happen. It’s what you do with it afterward that determines your fate.”

  Tears stung her eyes. “What do you suggest?”

  “For now? Take a walk with me. Llewellyn says light exercise is all right.”

  Violette plucked at the ruined ball gown she was still wearing. “I can’t go out like this.”

  “I brought clothes.” He pulled a sack forward and dropped it next to her food tray. “I’ll wait outside.” He stood and left the shack.

  Violette smiled, watching him go, then pulled at the drawstring on the sack to see which of her gowns he’d brought. But as she shuffled through the garments, she didn’t see any she recognized. And when she’d pulled everything out on the bed, she gave a gasp of dismay. “Ned!”

  “Yes, my lady,” he called through the door without entering.

  “These are—are boy clothes!”

  “Yes, they’re mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yes. They might be a little baggy, but Llewellyn’s would be too long, and I didn’t dare steal from anyone else. Hurry up. The light’s failing.”

  She felt her mouth hanging open but couldn’t seem to fix her expression. The sizing wasn’t the issue. Wearing men’s clothes was entirely improper. Lewd even.

  Violette bit her lip and held the jerkin he’d brought against her chest to check the size. She was already ruined. What did wearing boys’ clothes matter now? Feeling dangerous and somehow decadent, she stripped out of her own clothes and skinned into Ned’s. Hastily, she repinned the braids on her head and hurried to the door. She felt lighter, nimbler without skirts dragging behind her, although having her legs encased by fabric was a novel experience. Even the split skirts she usually wore for riding never touched her legs like this.

  She gripped the doorframe and swung on it to lean out toward Ned. “I’m ready.”

  He blinked when he saw her, and his gaze made a quick trip down her body before he swallowed and looked away. “Shall we?” He crooked his elbow toward her, still without looking at her again.

  He cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Is it very lewd? Perhaps I should go back.”

  He caught her arm and dragged her along with him. “You look quite well, and it’s not lewd at all. Anyway, didn’t that damned blood witch of Prince Philippe’s wear hose?”

  Violette sniffed. “As she nearly killed all of us more than once, that’s…not exactly a favorable comparison.”

  He cleared his throat. “I just meant that you’d seen women wear hose and jerkins before.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  They walked in silence for several paces, their feet crunching through a deadfall of leaves.

  “We never finished the story,” Ned said at last.

  “Which story?”

  “The one with the bride and the husband who won’t let her see him. How does that one end?”

  Violette clucked her tongue. “You’re just trying to get out of reading it. Although only Fate knows when I’ll be able to return to the princess’s villa.” If ever. A bleak thought. Her shoulders sagged with renewed worry.

  “Hey, now.” He caught her hand in his, squeezing it gently.

  He tried to let go again quickly, but she caught his fingers and snagged his other hand too so they stood facing each other and holding hands. “Are we friends, Ned?”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  “How can we be friends if you never call me Violette?”

  He snorted. “How can I call you Violette if you’ve never given me permission to do so?”

  “Oh.” She wet her lips and forced herself to look into his eyes. “I would like it if you would call me Violette.” She closed her eyes. “And your friendship has meant a great deal to me these last few weeks. You’re the only friend I have left now.”

  He jiggled her hands until she opened her eyes again, and then he shook his head vehemently, a tendril of brown hair falling over his forehead. “That’s patently untrue, my lad—Violette. The princess will send for you soon enough, I’m sure. Once things have settled down.”

  “But what if she doesn’t? What will I do?” Her voice broke on the end, and she had to take a quick, hard breath to stop from crying full out.

  “No, no. None of that.” Ned pulled her close, wrapping his arms tight around her. Crying hard, she snaked her arms around Ned’s wiry body too, holding onto him as he ssh sshed into her hair and rocked her.

  When she felt herself bordering on the edge of hiccups, she sniffed and stepped back. He brought his thumb up, smoothing her tear tracks away. Her skin tingled as the pad of his finger traced the sensitive skin of her face. “Better?”

  “A little.” It felt so right to be in his arms, close to him, being held and holding. Sweet Ned. Kind Ned. Her breath caught. My Ned. She was ruined. Surely that meant she could please herself now.

  Her nerves prickled and fired, but it wasn’t her magic burning to life. It was anticipation, attraction…she caught her breath and moved toward him, pressing her body close until she could feel the warmth of his chest against her own. “Ned.”

  He swallowed, and she could see the muscles in his throat move. “My lady…Violette, I…”

  She leaned forward. She didn’t even need to stand on tiptoe to reach his lips, they were of such a similar height. Her lips slid against his, and she leaned into the softness of his mouth with a happy hum.

  But Ned tore himself away, and she found her lips brushing his smooth cheek instead.

  “I can’t,” Ned whispered. He pulled her hands off his shoulders and held their clasped hands together against his chest. “I’m sorrier than I can say, but I can’t.”

  Violette laughed a little, hoping he was teasing. “Can’t kiss? Ned, I know you can.”

  A muscle ticced in his jaw, and he looked away from her. “I have to tell you something, my lady.”

  “Violette,” she corrected gently.

  When he looked at her, his eyes were haunted and sad. He opened his mouth once, twice, but didn’t seem able to force any words free.

  She trembled, worrying about what could make irrepressible Ned so gloomy, so fearful. “Ned, what is it?”

  He took one long, ragged breath then swallowed. “We should go inside.” He dropped her hands and offered his elbow instead, a clear distancing tactic.

  Mortified and confused, Violette tilted her chin up and felt it crinkle with emotion. Before Ned could see her cry again, she stomped past him down the hill, ignoring his proffered arm, and slammed into the garden shed. The door banged against the frame and bounced open again. Violette gritted her teeth and shoved it closed with her shoulder, just in time to see Ned’s startled face as he hurried down the hill.

  It was savagely satisfying to slam the door in his face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ned’s attempt to bring her out of her gloom having spectacularly failed, Violette locked herself in the garden shed and spent the night tossing and turning. She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, but her head injury must have made her need more rest than she’d imagined, for she fell asleep again in fairly short order.

  The next day, Llewellyn woke her with a gentle tap at the door. Violette groggily pushed up onto one elbow on her cot. She’d slept in Ned’s clothes and felt her cheeks heat as she realized it. The magician made no comment, though, only bustled about the workshop, mixing up something for her head.

  He asked her the now-familiar questions:
how she felt, how she’d eaten, how she’d slept. She answered him as curtly as she could.

  Llewellyn snorted. “I wondered if you would talk to me about your magic now, my lady.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and glared at the wall. “I’m a witch. What’s to tell?”

  Llewellyn cleared his throat. “Perhaps you don’t know this, but I am thought to be one of the most powerful sorcerers in all of Lyond. I’ve never met anyone who could equal me in power. Until now.”

  Feeling like a hunted thing, she turned her gaze toward him without moving her head. “What are you saying?”

  “You’re no simple hedge witch, Lady Violette. You’re a sorceress.”

  She slammed her hands over her ears and hunched over, as if she could erase what he’d just told her. Un-hear it. Her head ached, a sharp stab like a nail piercing her skull.

  His voice was kind, gentle, as he continued, “So it’s the greatest pity of my life I can’t do anything to help you train at the moment.”

  She gritted her teeth and scowled at him. “I don’t want more training. I don’t want…this.”

  He tilted his head to the side, his face expressionless, his voice mild. “Oh no? Not even after the ball?”

  The memory returned to her then, like an echo of a song, like the afterglow of skin against skin. The power coursing through her, obeying her, dancing like the most graceful partner in a duet. It had been like a giddy rush of wine to the head while remaining stone cold sober. She wet her lips. “What good is being a sorceress? Women aren’t allowed to practice magic.”

  “Your Prince Philippe had that wretched blood witch in his household, didn’t he?”

  Her head ached again. “No. Proper ladies, they—we aren’t supposed to. No one wants a witch for a wife.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s not true. Not for the right person. And is marriage what you want, anyway?”

  His words so closely echoed her own doubts of only a few days ago that she almost worried the magician had cracked her skull open and gone rummaging through her thoughts. She pressed her fingertips into the skin of her forehead and rubbed hard.