by D. R. Rosier
“Reece will be here in a moment, he asked me to keep you… company.”
I felt a little uncomfortable as she sat next to me on the couch, instead of across from me. I knew I might have misinterpreted, but the way she had said company had been suggestive.
I cleared my throat, “How long did you say he would be?”
She pouted and put her hand on my leg, “Actually, quite a while. After he sent for you he was summoned to the government building.”
She turned and put her other hand on my chest suggestively as her first hand made it to my inner thigh. When I looked into her eyes however I saw nothing there but calculation, and that’s when I realized what I hadn’t been sensing with my magic. The government building was easily in range of my magic, yet I didn’t sense Reece’s magic at all.
I stood up and took a step away, alarmed but not ready to attack, but she moved with me.
She whispered, “Damn that’s a shame, you’re really attractive and I thought I’d have a good time fucking you before you died.”
She shrugged and suddenly I was surrounded in fire as both of her hands glowed red hot.
I felt like every nerve in my body was on fire, but I had a protective ward loaded and ready in my mind and shot it off at the same time as I made a fist and punched straight into her chest. I had offensive magic ready too, but I had noticed mages hardly bother protecting against physical attacks, and to be honest my reflex was still heavily sided to attacking physically anyway. It was an instinctual reaction to stop the pain more than anything else.
Her chest cracked and she flew back into the wall, her eyes glassy with death before she slid down to the floor. Steam filled the room as my ward doused the fire with water. My clothes were mostly ashes and my skin was raw with second and third degree burns. I just stood there and tried not to scream for the time it took my body to heal itself.
I thought about everything Neala had said yesterday, she hadn’t lied once, only implied she was on our side. Fuck. At least I wasn’t dumb enough to sleep with her. The maid came in with an alarmed look on her face.
“I smell fire, what the hell happened?” she asked, then screamed as she took in Neala’s dead body.
I growled, “Neala was an assassin, go check on the mayor, I think he’s dead too. On second thought I’m following you, I need some clothes.”
She looked me up and down but there was nothing sexual about it, she was in shock. I could imagine what she was seeing, pink skin like a baby’s, with the tattered mess of burnt clothes barely covering anything. One day I’d make it through a mage fight without needing to go clothes shopping after, but not today.
I followed as she blindly turned around and walked through the mansion. We made it to the mayor’s suite of rooms without running into anyone else. I smelled his body in the bedroom with my enhanced nose, he’d been burnt to death, same as the bitch tried to do with me. I found the guys closet and thankfully he had something other than uniforms. He’d been a little shorter, but it didn’t look too bad until I could get my own clothes.
I sighed as the maid started to hyperventilate and gently pulled her into a hug. She stiffened at first, but then relaxed and started to sob. I led her back out of the room and downstairs as I composed another message to Serina and then lightly chanted the spell under my breath to send it.
“Teri, can you tell me who would be in charge now, until the king sends a new mayor I mean.”
She was shaking and I thought she wouldn’t answer, but a good minute later she said woodenly, “The guard captain I think, he’s the highest ranking person now with no other mages to take his place.”
I hugged her a little tighter then asked, “Where is he?”
She shook her head, “I’ll get him,” and pulled away from me and walked away. I followed just in case she broke down again.
She walked out of the back door and toward a small barracks. After asking a couple of guards and finding out his name, we found Captain Milton behind the building in the training area.
“Captain?”
He turned toward me, he was in his late fifties, if not sixty. His sharp eyes took in Teri’s condition and his eyes narrowed dangerously.
“What is it?”
It took a while to convince him I was serious as I told him about my morning, and that mage Neala had been an assassin sent to kill the mayor, and me. It took even longer to talk him out of the idea I was behind it. I finally had to use both air and water magic in front of him to prove there was no way I could have burned the mayor to death the way he was.
Still, he was suspicious and told me to stick around. I let him know I’d be at his disposal and I was staying at the inn. I took my leave and started back for the inn my mind spinning and hoping this wouldn’t be a deal breaker. We would still have six mayors on our side, against seven mayors and the king, although if the king replaces Reece fast enough he’ll have eight mayors on his side. We also had people like Carl on our side and I wondered how many more there were.
Of course now the most dangerous part of my day would start. I had to go back to my room and explain to my mates why I’d been dumb enough to let her set me on fire. It could be worse though, at least I didn’t sleep with the crazy bitch…
Chapter 15
The next couple of days as we waited for word from Serina on the final step of the plan to remove the king, I finally worked out the spell. The only problem was it took over a minute to cast, which meant I still wouldn’t be able to use the spell for an emergency retreat. At least not do so and take the horses along. It was better than nothing though and would be extremely useful for normal travel for anywhere we’d already been.
Once I’d been to most places of course, I wouldn’t need the spell, or horses, anymore. Still, that would be a while, there were still eight towns I hadn’t been to and that was just in this kingdom.
Sienna and I were taking well to Ari’s sword training. Sienna was doing so well in fact, that her priorities were changing. I had expected as much, she was still nineteen and she was starting to understand I wouldn’t keep her from anything she wanted. Her dreams went far beyond simply running a household now. She could hire people for that and share in the businesses that I built, staying with me much as she did now instead of waiting at home.
I had to admit that rather appealed to me as well. I had gotten spoiled having her constantly there in my life.
Ari was of the same opinion as well I didn’t doubt. I would just have to make sure we visited her home often enough. She didn’t really speak of it, but I could tell she missed her family, and was more than a little disturbed about our self exile. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I thought we would eventually come up with something that everyone, including Levi and Alton, could live with.
It had been half the reason I decided we should walk away. If leaving was our choice, then so was going back.
Ari broke my train of thought, “I’ve been watching the roads, there are soldiers coming from both the north and south, they should be here sometime tomorrow.”
I grunted.
“So was I, but not that far out. I’ll send Serina a message, if we don’t hear back by tomorrow morning we’ll leave. I don’t want to fight if we don’t have too, those soldiers will be on our side once there is a new king, Cirenthia needs all the troops it can get I think.”
Ari asked, “Where to?”
I shrugged, “No idea. Maybe that hill a half days ride outside the capitol? Where we escaped to that first time we fled the capitol. It’s pretty sheltered and a nice area.”
Ari nodded, “It will be nice to get moving. It feels like our lives are on hold.”
I pulled her toward me and smiled down at her, “You just don’t like being in a town.”
She frowned up at me and bit her bottom lip, “Maybe… I think it’s more than that though, it feels overwhelming sometimes, what we are trying to fight against and gain for our family. In the times we slow down… it seems almost impossible.”
I nodded, “There is a lot I’d like to do, but it can wait. There is a saying on Earth, life happens while you make plans. We have all the time in the world, and things will happen in their own time. The important thing is to try, to live life, and be there for each other. Everything else is really mostly out of our control. Planning is good, being ambitious, and wanting more, but when it all comes down to it only how we live day to day and being with the ones we love truly matters.”
She went up on her toes and kissed my neck, “You really believe that?”
I nodded against her hair and said softly, “Yes.”
She tilted her head back and claimed my lips. I caught her automatically by her backside as she jumped and wrapped her legs around me. I groaned into her mouth as she ground her core against me. I could think of a lot worse ways of burning an afternoon…
It was in the middle of the night when Serina’s message woke me up. It was short and to the point, she was in danger. With a thought I was scrying Serina, she was running through the mansion with two other mages. I moved back from the way she was running and saw four mages chasing. I zoomed out quickly taking in the town at a glance, there were a great number of soldiers there surrounding the mansion.
Apparently the king knew what Serina was doing and that she was organizing it all. I shook Ari and Sienna awake then threw on a pair of pants, a shirt and started grabbing our stuff.
I barked, “Serina’s being attacked.”
They started moving faster, helping me pack our stuff, we were done in less than two minutes. I didn’t bother getting the horses despite it being about a two hour trip, those few extra minutes seemed too precious to give up. I set my target for Serina’s suite of rooms and we all entered fast travel. It was a little amusing watching them get dressed in the elemental realm of air, without any gravity, but I was too angry to smile.
I frowned as I considered that, I didn’t love her yet, not by a stretch. But I was acting as if they were threatening my own. Well, no one said I was perfect, and she was mine, even though we weren’t quite there yet. Still, I did my best to suppress my anger. Even worse, we couldn’t scry from this realm, so I had no idea what was going on, nor what I would be landing in the midst of.
I growled, and took another eighth of my magic and poured in the thought to move faster, and launched it at my elemental in frustration. Suddenly a number of the elementals we saw rushed in our direction. It seemed like we started going faster, but I couldn’t really tell without a reference point. Regardless, it was only fifteen minutes later, my mates looking fierce with drawn weapons, that we appeared in Serina’s bedroom.
I stretched out all of my senses; I found Serina and another mage in what appeared to be a basement. Whoever that third mage was, there was no sign of them and I wondered if they had died. There was something very familiar about the second mage, but my mind couldn’t place it. There were four other mages as well, and I could pick up a lot of magic being tossed back and forth. I started to run for the stairs as I put a protection ward around Sienna and I, and also attached that offensive ward spell to her bow while Ari took care of her own wards.
I was between half and three quarters full and the fight hadn’t even started yet. But mage fights weren’t really all that long, or at least mine weren’t. We went quickly down the main corridor of the mansion as I tried to find the room where I felt the stairwell going down. I turned a corner and saw Tina struggling against two guards trying to subdue her. One was about to punch her in the head, so I went to full speed and slashed his throat open. Ari took the second one down before I could turn.
I grunted, “Hide Tina,” as we kept going. We wound up in some kind of lounge room, with multiple couches, tables and chairs. I could feel the stairway behind the wall, some bolt hole maybe? I assumed there was some kind of release, or secret door, but I didn’t bother to look. I jumped and kicked forward with all my strength, there was a loud crack and part of the wall dissolved in splinters.
I growled at the impact, the wall must have opened into the room, but the part of the secret door that didn’t turn to splinters broke into pieces as my momentum took me through. I covered my sword with a nimbus of elemental air to dispel earth magic, just in case one of them had it, and still feeling both Ari and Sienna right behind me I barreled down the stairs.
They were in range of my magic and I cursed myself for a fool as I started to launch magical attacks at them. I had no idea what my elementals were doing since I couldn’t see, but they were doing something to try and rip them to pieces. I was very angry. I didn’t really expect it to work, but it was one more set of attacks the four had to defend against, that would buy some time for Serina and whoever it was.
I was sure my defensive ward would protect me without any real thought, trusting my elementals. All I really needed to do there was maintain the pool of magic in the ward for the elementals to draw on.
I turned a corner and felt them straight ahead about two hundred feet, I knew that was somewhere below the town, not the mansion, this must be an escape tunnel of some kind. I heard the twang of my wife’s bow and an arrow race past me. I heard a panicked shout then a wall of ice go up, which the arrow bounced off.
Water was mine too, so with a thought the wall exploded into sharp shards of ice toward the enemy which I followed. The ice melted into water and fell harmlessly onto the ground, but I was on top of them now and started to swing my sword. I heard a scream as my sword bisected the arm and hit the mages head at an angle. He went down, not sure if he was dead or not, but definitely out of the fight. I felt another arrow for a split second as it went into the throat of one of the mages.
The last two mages must have panicked and lost their train of thought, because they both went up in pillars of white flame, just a handful of seconds later there was nothing left but ash and a black mark on the floor of the hallway. I was glad my reflexes were so good, or that could have been me a few days ago.
Serina yelled at me, “What the hell are you doing here. I sent you that message to keep you away, not to ask for a harebrained rescue! Typical man, always…”
She went on like that for a while, damn redheads, what was I getting myself into? I growled and marched toward her as she continued to berate and yell at me. She looked so damn angry, I could also tell she was more worried and just didn’t want to let on. She also looked incredibly hot. When I got in range she poked my chest, I grabbed her and pushed her back into the wall and claimed her mouth roughly.
She pushed me away, or tried to, still trying to yell at me. I growled into her mouth and just kissed her harder. She gave in all at once and returned my passion with her own as she threw her arms around the back of my neck. I was tempted to just throw her down on the ground and take her right there. I had missed her, and my adrenaline, anger, the violence, and her yelling had me crazy with need.
But I heard an amused cough behind me and then a light feminine and familiar voice, “Hello cousin, glad you could make it.”
I broke off the kiss, turned, and looked at her with incredulity.
“What are you doing here Alethea?” I asked in an annoyed tone.
She frowned and looked hurt, and I immediately felt guilty. That probably made me a sucker but I couldn’t help it. Alethea had always been on Ari’s and my side, even against her own brother and father. She was also extremely attractive; she looked a lot like Ari, which made sense since they were family. She was just a few inches taller and her voice while just as pleasant wasn’t quite as musical as Ari’s was. Otherwise they were exactly alike as far as looks go.
I cleared my throat, “That came out wrong; I just wasn’t expecting to see you here, of all places.”
I reluctantly stepped back from Serina, I realized I had still been crushing her against the wall, and her body was extremely distracting against mine. I did claim her hand though. I smiled slightly as she didn’t start yelling at me again, my approach had worked flawlessly.
Alethea’s smile c
ame back and she gave me a chaste kiss and hug, then greeted Ari and Sienna in the same way.
Serina said, “She showed up a couple of days ago, asked for my help in tracking you down. When I told her I expected to ask you back here in a few days, she decided she wanted to surprise you.”
Alethea nodded, “It’s been awkward as hell since you left. Dad and Alton have been… horrible, and mom and dad constantly fight. I felt guilty knowing you were out there trying to stop a war from happening between us and the humans. I just… really needed to help.”
I sighed, “It isn’t your fault, you don’t need to be here, but I am glad to see you. Let’s go up and clean out the mansion, we stopped two soldiers that were attacking Tina on our way down here. We should make sure she and the others are okay, and deal with things.”
I felt Serina stiffen next to me and knew I’d made a mistake. This was her city and I shouldn’t be giving orders.
I asked, “Unless you have something else in mind?”
She saw through my clumsy attempt to appease her but let it pass. I didn’t really think this was about her authority as mayor though, she was fiercely independent and obviously reluctant to accept help. She was too used to being alone and was afraid to depend on anyone else. I was still interested, very interested, but I knew it would take time and a little patience before she’d let me in.
Whatever hurt she had gone through was disguising her previous generous nature with a scowl.
She said coldly, but at the same time squeezed my hand, “No, let’s take care of that. Then I’ll figure out what kind of message to send to everyone, we need to move fast before he does this to all the mayors that are with us. First he sent an assassin after Reece, and you, and now he tried to kill me. Waiting won’t strengthen our position.”
With no more enemy mages, and all five of us being mages, it took very little time to secure the mansion and then the town whose foreign soldiers were forced to retreat. After that, we discussed what we should do, I tried to speak diffidently when making suggestions. In our relationship I’d take charge, much like I had down in the tunnel to stop her yelling, but right now I was just a lone power and a mage who hadn’t finished his training or even given any oaths. She was the authority here.