by Eden Reign
Manda stared, unable to move a limb. This scene was something she’d allowed herself to picture in her dreams following the night of the fire, only it was she in the swing, and Jackson’s smile was meant for her and her alone.
The jealousy knife entered her ribcage, twisting as Jackson took both ropes behind Miss Blazen and gave her a gentle push, laughing over something she said in return.
Manda whirled, blindly heading back the servants’ quarters. By the time she reached the door to the room she shared with Grey, tears blurred her eyes. Before entering, she rested her forehead against the wooden door and wept.
Chapter 19
Jackson
Leah swung in a slow, graceful arc, her silk taffeta skirts ballooning with the motion. Jackson’s mind felt glazed, smoothed like freshly groomed wood, and each swing the girl made sanded away another groove in his memory. There had always been this, only this. Idyllic days, halcyon evenings, jasmine perfume filling the air, smiling girls in green dresses, and ease. So much ease.
Jackson moved behind Leah, who sat as still and perfect as a painting, and gave the swing another soft push. A light breeze wafted beneath the boughs of the everbloom magnolia tree, sending a white blossom tumbling to the ground before them in a rain of fat petals.
The gentle creak of the ropes on the branch above was accompanied by crickets in the woods behind them and the soft strains of the ball in the manor. He could see the milling crowd through the windows, along with guests who had sought air on the back verandah. Jackson dropped his gaze to the white petals strewn on the ground, his mind pulling him to darker depths, places he did not wish to venture.
Lige. Lige’s sightless eyes, staring into an ash-strewn sky. One single magnolia petal, falling like a benediction upon his face.
Those blue eyes. They reminded him of … Manda. Manda, whose hand had fit so perfectly into his, whose skin could be a balm to his lips, water to his thirst.
A sense of clarity he hadn’t experienced in weeks shattered through him. Remember Manda.
The cleansing power of her name infiltrated his head, sweeping through every corner of his shrouded mind, removing the cobwebs that had clustered thickly over it.
“Jackson?”
He blinked. Leah Blazen sat below him on the swing, gazing up at him. “What are you thinking?”
Jackson couldn’t focus on her words, only on the disturbance that swept through him. He pulled back on the swing ropes again. That strange, thick feeling threatened to wrap around him again, but the clarity fought back. “I’m thinking of love.”
“Oh,” Leah said, triumph enlivening her face. “For a moment—oh—Jackson, I love Coalhaven. It is all I had hoped. We needn’t wait any longer.” Her porcelain face glowed in the lanterns’ light.
Jackson leaned against the tree trunk, hardly attending to her words. Manda flooded his thoughts. “Wait for what?”
“To become engaged, silly.” Leah dropped one foot and brought the swing to a standstill.
“Engaged? You … and … I?” Inner resistance lurched to roaring life in Jackson’s chest. No. He was not going to marry Leah Blazen. Why then, did the idea pull at him? From inside his receding fog, brackish vines tangled around him, refusing to let go. He felt as though he’d waded into a blackwater swamp and become mired in thick muck, his boots so heavy he could not lift them.
“Who else?” Leah batted her eyelashes, but behind her carefully composed expression, an edge hardened. “If we make it official, I’m sure my papa will give you that book you wanted so much.”
The book. Desire for the book took over every other impulse—but why? Why was the book so important? He stared off into the aisle of trees that led to the front of the house, his mind losing traction. This was all related to something. Something to do with that book. He scratched at his stinging right wrist.
He needed the book, that much he knew. Leah took hold of his wrist, the one with the sting, which she rubbed with her thumb. Her smile was like cut glass. “Well?”
Jackson swayed. He had to resist Leah’s touch, resist her coercions.
But why?
For Manda, a voice answered from deep inside of him.
Clarity, like a flood, overturned his mind in a debilitating current.
Blazing Fires! Jackson tried to shake Leah off, but her thumb stroked a lulling, maddening pattern over the stinging itch on his wrist. Her touch was all wrong. Where Manda’s soothed him like Coalhaven’s waters, Leah’s burned and stung, unsettling him, drawing him into a hot, sticky mire. Resist, by the Wells, man, resist!
Leah stood, her skirts belling around her, her small lips held in their tight bud. “Jackson, it is normally the man who proposes.” She gestured at the ground in front of her, as though she expected him to kneel.
He looked at the spot by her feet and then back up at her face.
It was like looking at a stranger.
A chill coursed down his back, but a fire lit on his wrist. He clapped a hand over the heart-shaped sting. Something was wrong—so wrong. Jackson stepped back, away from the light of avarice and greed in Leah’s green eyes. “I will never marry you,” he rasped, stalking toward the river. He needed to think. He needed space. Leah smothered him, like a prison, a cage with bars where he couldn’t escape. He needed … cool water. Soothing water. Manda’s blue eyes.
Behind him, on the path, came light footsteps and rapid breathing. He turned.
“Never say never, Jackson Coal,” Leah hissed, her tight face more brittle than he’d ever seen it. She reached for his right wrist again, but this time, Jackson snapped it away, out of her range.
He and Leah made a strange silent dance as she lurched and lunged at him, trying to get hold of his wrist, while Jackson swung his arm this way and that to keep free of her. Finally, he lost his patience and caught both her hands in one of his. “Stop this,” he snarled. “Whatever you’re up to, Miss Blazen, it stops here.”
Leah’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “You’ll regret this,” she snapped. “Now release me, you uncouth beast, or I’ll scream and bring my papa down here and tell him how you’ve been mishandling me!”
Jackson let her go. Leah gave one last lunge at his arm, but he swept it high out of her reach. She stamped her foot and shrieked before whirling in a flurry of taffeta and racing back up the path toward the house. “Don’t think this is done!” she called over her shoulder. “You’ll marry me, Jackson Coal. You’ll see.”
Leah disappeared into the bright, bustling house, where hoop skirts and coattails still swished by the windows as the guests danced. He watched her go without the smallest amount of regret for her loss.
What in the name of the Sacred Wells had he been thinking, flirting with Leah Blazen? He shook his head. He had not been thinking at all. He’d been under a spell. But how had it happened? And, more importantly, how could he break it?
Jackson stumbled through the trees, forcing his mind into focus. For weeks, he’d been living in a blur, as memoryless as a goldfish, led around his glass bowl by the lure of Leah Blazen, ever since she’d given him that fireheart. He scratched at his right wrist, the wrist she’d been so eager to grab hold of just now. As he lifted it into the moonlight, the red heart on his wrist throbbed and pulsed.
What had she done to him? Jackson closed his eyes, trying to recall exactly what had transpired. He remembered the burst of light as the fireheart had opened, followed by the sting that bit his wrist. And then the blank emptiness of his mind, as though he’d placed it into Leah’s hands. He’d obeyed her every wish, and when he’d begun to stray, to have thoughts of his own, her relentless fingers had rubbed at that heart-shaped mark, numbing his mind each time she did. He’d broken her control this evening, but the last vestiges of it clung to him.
He had to get rid of that fireheart. Even now, it might be allowing her to manipulate him. He was not safe until it was destroyed.
He sprinted to the house, ignoring his guests as he pushed through them to the sta
irs. Taking the steps three at a time, he strode purposefully along the balcony to his chambers.
Jackson had put Leah’s fireheart in an oaken chest in his new room, a much grander one than the bedchamber he’d burned. No doubt she’d assumed it would remain packed away in some box forever, giving her free access to his mind.
He ripped open the chest and pulled out the delicate heart. The ember inside it throbbed in a rhythmic pulse, the light burgeoning and then retreating in a tempo that exactly matched the mark on his wrist.
Bright rage unfurled through every limb in Jackson’s body.
She’d magicked him, marked him. Leah Blazen had violated every rule of etiquette and respect between fullmages. And worse—he’d permitted it. He had not even fought.
Heat rushed through his hand and into the vile mage-cast heart. Jackson’s own power wrapped around the pulsing ember within. He hurled the heart against the wall as hard as he could.
It burst in a shattering rain of red shards, and with a pop, the ember extinguished.
Pressure released in his head, as though he had arrived at the top of a high mountain.
The vestiges of his clouded thoughts flew apart. He remembered. He remembered it all: Lige, Grey, his father. The magemark. His dangerous fit that had nearly destroyed Coalhaven in fire. His desperate flight to the Blazens to get help, answers, hope—anything. Manda. He remembered her most of all. The water she had wielded to save his life. The sweet, curative power of her touch, her presence. Her leaving him alone in his burnt-out room. The hurt on her face when he’d come back from Blazenfields with Leah. His epic stupidity in exposing Grey to the Blazens’ notice.
Grey! Jackson swallowed a surge of distress. What had he done? Grey, Lige’s boy, Lige’s halfmage son. Sacred Wells have mercy!
Jackson started for the door, panic whirling through him. Halfway across the room, he stopped. He had no idea if breaking the fireheart was enough to eradicate Leah’s hold over him. What if, even now, her fingers pulled strings to guide his steps, luring him to reveal secrets about Grey, Coalhaven, Manda? He returned to the shattered fireheart, nudging the pieces with his booted toe. If the porcelain substance was fire-crafted—and it was—it could also be destroyed by flame. Jackson pulled power from the Eternal Flame and commanded the pieces to burn. Indigo smoke wafted up as the porcelain-like substance first blackened and then fell to pieces of ash.
His mother would have been ashamed of him. Julia Coal, who, despite her husband, had transformed Coalhaven into a shelter for those who needed protection—for the croppers, their families, even for Jackson when he’d fled Henry’s rages. She had always been there, the mediator between the world and Henry, ever the soothing water against Henry’s fiery temper. How she would have hated to see Jackson endangering Grey, his thoughtless, reckless stupidity in placing the boy in the midst of the wolf pack.
He shuddered in abhorrence. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Julia Coal would have forgiven him immediately; it was her nature. But—would Manda? Would Grey?
Jackson yanked off his frock coat and cuffs, throwing them across the bed, rolling the sleeve of his fine cambric shirt above his elbow. The red mark on his right wrist still stung, though it no longer pulsed. He rubbed his thumb over its clearly delineated red mark, shaped like the South Sea tattoos Jackson had seen during his time among Savana’s stevedores. He pressed harder, scrubbing at the mark with his maimed hand, but it was stuck as surely as a skin infection.
Infection. That was how Wilcott had put it, when he’d described his research: he’d “infected targets” with his experimental magemarks. Clearly Leah knew how to use these new-fangled magemarks Henry and Wilcott had devised, too, though she’d pretended to know nothing about them at Blazenfields.
Rage threatened again, but Jackson calmed himself. He was too explosive, and he didn’t want anything to happen like the fire he’d started in his fit. He posed a risk to everyone until he could confirm he was entirely free of Leah Blazen’s spell. He could not see Grey—or Manda—until he was certain Leah had no further hold over him.
Jackson yanked off his cravat and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt. He strode to the washstand and splashed water over his face and neck, but the small amount of water did nothing to soothe his anger or cleanse his guilt. He stared in a red haze at the mark on his wrist, picking up the washcloth from his washstand. He wetted and soaped it, scrubbing even harder at the mark. It remained inert, but it did not fade.
“Blazing Fires.” He threw down the cloth and shoved his fingers through his hair.
Leah Blazen’s magic scarred his skin, even if the curse itself had broken. He needed to cleanse himself of her touch, to be sure she could not exert and lingering sway upon him.
But how to remove the mark?
An image of wide blue eyes filled his mind, blue eyes the exact color of Coalhaven’s Mirror Lake in summer. The lake was fed by the small river that trickled down from the highlands above the indigo fields and emptied into the sea near Briary Beach. As a boy, Jackson had loved to play in that river, though he’d had to keep it secret from his father, who would have scorned him—or worse—for reveling in an element that was not his own.
He wanted to go to Manda, to offer himself up to her, to beg her to touch him and cleanse him of the syrupy stick of Leah’s magic. He wanted to drown in Manda’s blue eyes and lose himself in her sweet embrace. But how could he? After his reckless and revolting antics these past days, she would be horrified by him. Repulsed. He’d brought contamination into the safe life he had promised her and Grey. Moreover, he might still be dangerous to her and Grey.
Vermin, his father’s voice said in his head. Ruining everything you touch. Filthy.
Jackson stumbled out the door of his bedroom and back down the main stair, again ignoring the guests. Some had begun to leave, their carriages pulling away from the fountain in the front driveway. He didn’t care that their gazes raked over his half-dressed appearance and his haggard features. He might not be able to have Manda, but he could have the waters she commanded with such grace and ease. He could cleanse himself in her element, in nature.
Jackson hurried through the shadowy aisle of oaks toward the river. He turned up his face, hoping for rain to hide his tears. A black mass of thick cloud billowed overhead, but as they passed over, they broke apart, quickly dissipating.
Rain alone would never cleanse him from his past.
Chapter 20
Manda
Manda lay on the hard, small bed in the servants’ quarters, staring up at the dark ceiling. Rest would not come. The full moon bathed the bed linens with silver. She’d given up trying to keep her eyes closed. Dark thoughts and fears clogged her mind: how could she protect Grey when his own guardian behaved so recklessly? She couldn’t leave Grey exposed to Leah Blazen. How could Jackson do this? Manda’s heart twisted as she recalled how sweetly the man had held her when they’d danced the waltz in the drawing room. What had happened to that version of Jackson Coal? She wanted him back.
A whimper rose from the still form on the bed beneath the window.
“Grey?” she asked softly, rising and going to him. She pressed her hand to the boy’s damp forehead.
His wide, grey-blue eyes blinked at her. He sat up and pushed aside his blanket, throwing his arms around her waist and burying his face against her. Manda gently stroked his sleep-mussed hair.
“I had a bad dream,” Grey said, muffled into her night rail. “You left.”
“It was only a dream. I’m here, Grey.”
Grey nuzzled against her. “Miss Rivers, is Master Coal going to marry Miss Blazen?” His anxious gaze went straight to Manda’s heart.
She smoothed his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know, Grey. Perhaps.” Speaking the words brought fresh pain to her bruised heart, and probably to Grey’s, too. Had it been less than a week since the Blazens had arrived at Coalhaven? Since Jackson had returned? It had been like welcoming a stranger, not the master of Coalhaven for
whom she harbored such strong feelings.
Not Jackson.
She thought once again of the night of the fire, of his dark eyes as he’d searched her face. Will you stay with me?
If she had stayed, would he have gone?
“Miss Rivers?”
“Yes, Grey?” Manda brought her attention back to the present.
“I don’t want that lady to be my new mama.” His voice quavered, and he buried his head against Manda’s neck. She held him close as his little body shook with sobs that came in great, gasping bursts.
“She tried to k—kill me, Miss Rivers. I don’t ever want her to marry Master Coal. I want you, Miss Rivers. You marry Master Coal.”
Manda kissed the top of his head, saying nothing while the boy cried. She wanted to grab Jackson and drag him into the small house and show him what had happened to Grey, but she couldn’t know how Jackson would react. He’d been a different man, changeable and strange, since his return.
At last, Grey sat back, hiccuping. He eyed Manda hopefully. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Miss Rivers? You’ll marry my new papa? Please, will you, Miss Rivers?”
Manda forced a smile. “The wrong person is asking me, Grey. Master Coal would have to ask me himself, and it—it seems that he isn’t planning to do that.”
The hope in Grey’s expression snuffed out like a candle. His eyes filled again with tears. “I don’t want him to marry that horrible heart-hag. I don’t want him to keep them here. I want him to send them home now!”
Manda glanced nervously at the window pane where ice crystals unfurled a spiral design on the glass. The ice thickened and grew as the boy’s cries grew stormier.
“Grey,” she soothed. “Grey, you must calm yourself.”