Saved by Magic: a Baine Chronicles novel (The Baine Chronicles: Fenris's Story Book 3)

by Jasmine Walt

  Fenris and I turned to face the priest as he addressed us next. “Though you may not have known each other your entire lives,” he said in a solemn voice, “you have nevertheless been gravitating toward this day since you were born, and your union will last as long as you both shall live. As is our ancient custom, you pledge yourselves to each other and move forward into the future as one. Before you declare your vows, I want to hear you confirm that it is indeed your intention to marry today.”

  “Mina, do you come here today, freely and of your own will, to give yourself to Fenris in marriage?”

  “I do,” I managed to say around the lump in my throat, pleased that my voice remained steady.

  “Very good. And Fenris, do you too come here today, freely and of your own will, to give yourself to Mina in marriage?”

  “I do,” Fenris said, sounding a little emotional.

  “Excellent,” the priest said, smiling at us. “Mina and Fenris, now that you have declared your intentions to marry, please face each other and hold hands so that you may declare your marriage vows.”

  Fenris and I did as the priest asked, and I felt another swell of happiness as Fenris gently took my hands in his own. “I, Fenris,” he said in a clear, strong voice, “offer myself to you as I am, with all my flaws and strengths. I vow to love and cherish you for all time, to raise you up when you are weary, and to take you by the hand when you need someone to guide you through the darkness. I place my heart in your hands today, safe in the knowledge that you complement me perfectly, and that together, as husband and wife, we are unassailable.”

  He squeezed my hands tighter with those last lines, and I had to blink rapidly to banish the tears blurring my vision. Somehow, I managed to repeat the vow without tripping over my words, or at least I thought I did, because when I was finished, Fenris smiled brightly, and the priest congratulated us both.

  “Now that the two of you have exchanged your vows, it is time to seal this pact with the marriage spell,” the priest declared. “Best man, bridesmaid, do you have the rings?”

  “Yes,” Barrla and Iannis said in unison. They handed us the bands, gold with tiny runes inscribed on the insides, and Fenris and I carefully slid them onto each other’s left ring finger, then joined our hands once more.

  The priest then took our joined hands in his and began to chant the Loranian marriage spell. As the words echoed in the chamber, the air around us began to buzz with power. The hair on my arms rose, and suddenly a flood of emotion swept through me, so intense it nearly knocked me over. Fenris’s eyes went wide, and we gripped each other tighter as an invisible bond snapped into place between us. I had to hold back a gasp—suddenly I could feel everything that Fenris was feeling: all the love, joy, fear, and wonder that stormed inside him, twin to my own emotions that raged inside me. I breathed out in mingled wonder and relief—as I understood it, not all couples felt this closeness. Those who did, like Fenris and me, could be certain of the Creator’s blessing on their union. And that gave me more comfort than anything else.

  “And so it is done,” the priest said in Northian, releasing our hands. “Fenris, you may now kiss the bride.”

  Fenris and I grinned at each other, and then he swept me up into his arms and kissed me soundly. The guests broke out into cheers and whistles, and the string quartet started up a lively, celebratory tune. I clung to Fenris tightly for a long moment as I kissed him back, relishing the feel of his arms around me for the first time as husband and wife.

  “We finally did it,” he murmured against my mouth as he pulled back. His eyes glowed with a tenderness that took my breath away. “Tamina Marton, you are finally mine.”

  “Tamina Shelton,” I corrected him with a teasing smile. We had agreed, for simplicity’s sake, to take Shelton as our family name—Fenris was going by it anyway, and neither of us had an objection to the name.

  “Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Fenris Shelton.” Grinning, he offered me his arm. “Now why don’t we go and celebrate?”

  29

  Fenris

  After the ceremony, we all adjourned to Solantha Palace for an exquisite dinner in one of the private dining rooms. It was a beautiful setting for celebrations in relatively small groups, with a view of the city rooftops and the sea, and tonight, many exotic plants and orchids that evoked a tropical island grove. Sunaya and Iannis could only stay for a short while as the Minister’s reception in honor of their own wedding was starting soon, but they toasted our happiness with great enthusiasm.

  “I never thought that you would get married before me, Fenris,” Sunaya teased as we snacked on appetizers.

  “Well I don’t think it would have turned out that way if you hadn’t taken it upon yourself to orchestrate our wedding,” I said with a smile. “Thank you…for all of this, by the way.” I looped an arm around Mina and hugged her close. “You and Iannis have made this a wonderful day for us both.”

  “And for us as well,” my mother added—she and my father were seated to my left. “We kept hoping that Polar would settle down and start a family of his own, and while it was not to be, we are happy that at least we have lived to see our grandson get married.” She smiled at me, and her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. She’d cried unabashedly at the wedding, and even my father had seemed moved.

  “It was our pleasure,” Iannis said. “Your grandson is a fine young man, Mrs. ar’Tollis, and I am honored to call him my friend.”

  My father seemed pleased by that—it was a high compliment coming from a Chief Mage, particularly one so powerful and influential. Iannis and Sunaya stayed for a few minutes longer, then left us, along with Director Chen and Kardanor, regretting they could not stay to enjoy the rest of our feast.

  After the last course, Mina and I circulated among the guests. Elnos grinned at us from his seat opposite Elania and came up to congratulate us.

  “What an amazing coincidence, that the woman who bought the first set of serapha charms in my shop should end up becoming your wife!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand. “You two look very happy together.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling broadly. If he was missing Noria, he manfully suppressed any wistfulness—his eyes were sparkling with his usual good cheer. “And thank you for helping Mina by loaning her that ether owl. It proved invaluable in a recent investigation.”

  “Oh?” Elnos raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you two were in the business of investigating.”

  Mina laughed. “Well, I was posing as a journalist at the time,” she said. “I can’t tell you what we were looking into, but rest assured that your ether owl was put to very good use.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” Elnos said. “Why don’t you two keep it as a wedding gift? I’ve already made two more, so I don’t need that one anymore,” he added with a broad smile.

  “That would be wonderful,” Mina said as I bit my tongue. I wasn’t certain how I felt about learning that there were more of these out in the world, but considering that it had helped avert certain disaster, I could hardly complain.

  Later, after most of the guests had left and I’d bundled my parents into a steamcab and sent them back to their hotel, Mina and I adjourned to one of the east wing parlors with Barrla, Marris, Comenius, and Elania. We finished up the champagne and talked about the future at length—how Mina and I planned on settling down in some beachside town near Solantha, where she could have a surgery and her own pets before the children came along—and, I did not add, where I could teach her everything she needed at our leisure, so she need never undergo a formal apprenticeship.

  Elania and Comenius announced that they were pregnant, to our collective delight, though I suspected from the lack of surprise on Mina’s face that she’d already known about it. Barrla and Marris then proudly told us that they were getting married.

  “We’ll have to have the ceremony in Abbsville,” Barrla said, “or our families would kill us. But after the wedding, we’re thinking about coming back out here.”

 
; “Check with Constable Foggart first if it is safe to marry there,” I advised, remembering why Marris had to leave his hometown. “If he thinks it’s too dangerous, I could help with bringing your families out here for the ceremony.” It would be dreadful if Marris went home to marry, only to be arrested by the Mages Guild as he left the temple with his new bride on his arm.

  “We’ll be careful,” Barrla assured us, snuggling against Marris.

  “So you like Solantha?” Comenius asked. “It was the same for me, when I first arrived from Pernia. Once you come here, this city feels like home to those of us who like its bustle and energy.”

  “Yes,” Barrla agreed with a smile. “I’ve also discovered several out-of-print novels from one of my favorite series in a bookshop in maintown, and rumor has it the author lives in the area. Her identity is a secret, but I am determined to find out who she is,” she added eagerly, her eyes lighting up at the prospect of a challenge.

  Marris laughed. “She won’t stand a chance against you,” he said, pecking Barrla on the cheek. “Even without the Watawis mages on my case, I don’t think we could stand to spend the rest of our lives in Abbsville after coming to Solantha. There’s just so much more to do out here. The wages are also much higher here than in Abbsville, and there are more jobs. I should be able to find work easily, and in a year or so Barrla and I can open up some kind of business. Maybe Cobil and Roth will move out here too, once I tell them how great this place is.”

  “I’ve already decided it’s going to be a bookstore,” Barrla declared, though by the way Marris rolled his eyes, I could tell that they weren’t agreed on that yet. I could see him more with a hardware store, or perhaps sports equipment.

  “What about a photography shop?” Mina suggested. “You have been doing very well with that camera, and I look forward to seeing the pictures you took today before and after the wedding. Doing that would also allow you to get out, do photos of parties, weddings, that sort of thing.”

  “Hmm,” Barrla said, looking intrigued by the idea.

  “Elania and I own two different stores, though it is not always easy,” Comenius mentioned. “You could go for a bookstore and something else too. There are no limitations but your own energy and imagination.”

  “Has Sunaya found anything out from the Enforcers Guild on that suicide?” Marris asked, by way of changing the subject. “She said she was going to investigate, didn’t she?”

  “She has interviewed several people, I believe,” I said, “but with the wedding and the reception today I don’t think she’s gotten to the bottom of the issue yet.”

  “You know...” Barrla trailed off, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Earlier at dinner, I remembered reading a book where a bomb was hidden inside a castle’s foundation pillars so nobody could find it. The villain nearly succeeded in blowing the place to smithereens, but the hero—a shifter—managed to sniff out the bomb at the last moment with his superior sense of smell.”

  The room fell quiet for a moment as we all considered that. “If there was a bomb hidden inside a pillar, even a shifter might not notice, if he wasn’t specifically looking for it,” Marris said slowly.

  “I’m not at all sure that I would scent something walled in,” I agreed. “Such a plot would require quite a lot of explosives, but if they were properly isolated from the air, no one would smell them in time.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell Sunaya and Iannis about this possibility?” Mina asked in a worried voice. “The Minister’s reception tonight is a prime target—Sunaya and Iannis are there, along with anybody who is anybody in the government.”

  “Hang on a second,” Barrla said, narrowing her eyes. “Isn’t the Minister’s reception held in that concert hall? Sunaya and Iannis said that was where they were going. Has it been renovated since the quake?”

  “Very likely, and that would have been the perfect opportunity for the Resistance to smuggle a bomb in,” I admitted, truly worried now. “Sunaya and Iannis would have had the place inspected, but still…there is always the chance something was missed. They would hardly have inspected inside walls or under floors.”

  “And we know for sure that construction companies were involved in the plot,” Elania added. “Nobody would have checked what kind of materials they used while rebuilding, with the whole city in disarray after the quake.”

  “But they couldn’t know that the Minister would hold the Convention here in Solantha and give his reception in that particular building,” I objected.

  “That was a stroke of luck for them—if we are right,” Mina said. “A hall like that is often used for important events. They may have just waited for the right occasion to come along and then offered the venue to the Minister’s staff at a very low rent to ensure they picked it.”

  I scrubbed a hand across my face, torn. Were we just engaged in a bout of collective paranoia, or was there a chance of this nightmare scenario being real?

  “The guys I visited earlier today to say goodbye to were still kept in readiness,” Marris said. “Nobody has been sent home, though there has been some redeployment. They are expecting a loud bang to signal the start of the fight. I thought their bosses were reluctant to tell them that the attack is off, but maybe the attack is still on.”

  “Blowing up the concert hall makes a lot more sense than attacking the Convention with guns,” I had to concede.

  “We can’t just sit around here and do nothing,” Mina declared, standing up. “We’ve got to go to the concert hall and warn them. If it’s nothing, it’s nothing. But if the threat is real, we must act before something terrible happens.”

  30

  Fenris

  Galvanized into action, the six of us raced over to the Solantha Concert Hall as fast as we could. I pulled the steamcar up in front of the gigantic three-story circular building, where the reception was in full swing. Golden light spilled out of the floor-to-ceiling windows on each floor, and I could hear music and laughter even from here.

  Comenius and Elania, with Barrla and Marris in the backseat of their steamcar, pulled up behind us, and we abandoned our vehicles in the middle of the street—there was no time to try and find parking, which was non-existent in this area anyway. Grabbing Mina’s hand, we rushed up the steps to the entrance while the others hung back. A veritable army of guards flanked the large glass doors, along with a tall, dour mage with the Minister’s crest stitched on the breast of his dress robes. I vaguely remembered him from previous Conventions in Dara.

  “Invitation?” he said in a snooty voice as the others rushed to catch up behind us.

  Shit. Mina and I exchanged glances—we had been invited to the reception, but we hadn’t brought the actual invitations. “My name is Fenris,” I said authoritatively. “I’m a close friend of Lord Iannis. My wife and I are on the guest list.” It was the first time I’d been able to refer to Mina like that for real, but there was no time to savor the moment.

  “That may be,” the mage said coolly, “but due to strict security protocols, no one is allowed in without an invitation.”

  “Fine,” Mina said before I could snarl at him. “Would you please fetch Director Toring, then? We have important information to relay to him regarding a possible attack.”

  The guards exchanged uneasy glances, but the mage just scoffed. “Director Toring doesn’t have time to bother with the likes of you,” he said. “Get lost.”

  “Iannis? Sunaya?” I called as Mina tried to reason with the majordomo and guards. “I’m outside the concert hall, and the guards won’t let me in. I need to speak with you urgently about a possible attack!”

  “Hey, you!” One of the guards had shoved his face into mine. “You heard what the man said. Get lost!”

  “Let’s go,” Mina muttered, taking my hand. Cursing silently, I allowed her to lead me back down the steps to where the others were waiting. I wasn’t sure if Iannis and Sunaya were busy, or if the extra-strength wards around the perimeter were interfering with my ability to mindspe
ak to them, but this was the absolute worst time for them to be out of touch.

  “What happened?” Comenius asked, frowning. “They wouldn’t let you in?”

  “No,” I said tightly. “And I wasn’t able to reach Iannis or Sunaya using mindspeak, either.”

  “Where is Barrla?” Mina asked, looking around in puzzlement. “Did she go back to the car?”

  “She managed to sneak around to a side entrance,” Elania said, sounding faintly impressed. “I think she managed to get in using her journalist credentials.”

  “I tried to go in with her,” Marris groused, “but they wouldn’t permit me without a press pass.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Elania assured him with a pat on the arm. “Your Barrla has a good head on her shoulders and a knack for getting people to do what she asks. She might very well be able to get a warning to Sunaya or Iannis.”

  “If she can get in that way, so can I,” Mina declared. “I’ll go after her—I can use mindspeak to try and contact them once I’m inside.”

  “Wait.” I grabbed her arm as she began to turn away. “Please, let me try one more time to reach them.” If there was the slightest possibility of a bomb really being involved, I didn’t want Mina any closer than she had to be.

  Closing my eyes, I gathered my power, then used it to boost my mindspeak signal. “Sunaya?” I shouted down the line. “Can you hear me?”

  “Fenris? Are you here?”

  “Outside,” I said, relief rushing through me at the sound of her startled voice, faint though it was. “I forgot my invitation, and the guards won’t let us in. We have a theory that the Resistance may have found a way to smuggle in bombs and are planning to blow up the concert hall tonight.” I quickly explained our reasoning.

  “They didn’t find anything like that during the security check,” Sunaya said, sounding troubled, “but I’ll speak to Iannis and Garrett immediately. We can’t evacuate the place based solely on a hunch, but if we find anything suspicious I’ll let you know.”