by Eden Reign
Manda quivered as though she could feel his thoughts. She touched his wrist, her fingers trailing lightly over his skin, raising gooseflesh. “Let me take that woman’s mark off of you,” she whispered. “I cannot stand to see it there.”
“If you can, please.” Jackson tried to hide the aching hope in his voice. Save me, Manda Rivers. Touch me. Heal me, by whatever power you possess. Admittedly, his mind was still a bit bleary from Leah’s Blazen’s spellwork. But submitting to Manda’s power was as soothing as faith. He succumbed to the simple pleasure of Manda’s hands on his skin as she pushed up his damp sleeve to expose the mark. He wanted to close his eyes, but curiosity kept them open. “Explain to me how it is done as you go.”
Manda’s fingers trembled against his skin. “I’m not sure I can explain.” She traced delicate fingers around the heart-shaped mark. “Its power is already dissipated. It does not move or pulse; there is no force of fire in it. Grey’s was a terrible, pulsating mess.”
“I broke the fireheart that contained the ember of the spell,” Jackson explained. “Only the mark itself remains. But I have read that firemarks become like scars, part of the flesh itself, impossible to remove.”
“Leah’s marks are different from the Nanu firemarks, which are called Roving Marks,” Manda murmured as her fingers danced over the mark, applying quick pressure here, a gentle nudge there. “Leah’s mark is not so strong as a normal Roving Mark of fire. I can touch it and feel it and … pin it down. Most Roving Marks are impossible to grasp. At least, that’s what I was told.”
A soothing, liquid rush ran through Jackson’s skin, like a wave of cool water sweeping from his hand to his shoulder. He hadn’t felt such a healing power since his own mother’s touch, years ago. It filled him with a sense of peace and comfort. A feeling very much like … love.
When Manda lifted her hands away, the absence of her touch left an ache, a dull throb beneath his skin. He wanted more. So much more.
“It’s done,” Manda whispered. She had said she was not cold, but she shivered like a magnolia petal in a summer night’s breeze. His own hands ached to warm her skin again, as they had in the lake.
Jackson looked down. “It’s gone,” he said in awe as one of his burdens lifted from his shoulders. “Manda, how can I ever thank you? You have saved me again, and I truly don’t know what I’d do without you.” Of their own accord, his hands reached for her, taking her shoulders. He released a tiny flow of warmth over her to quell her shivering.
She closed her eyes. Her head tilted back and a soft sigh of pleasure escaped her mouth.
Every thought fled Jackson’s head as he stared at her slightly parted lips. The touch of her hands had been a balm to his wrecked soul. How much better would her lips be? He could lose himself in her kiss, so thoroughly it would be as soothing as sleep.
He pulled Manda to him, cupping her face as he brought her mouth to meet his, first only softly. His fingers strayed into her hair, wet silk beneath his touch.
Manda accepted his kiss, deepening it, welcoming him with an innocent gasp. Her arms circled him, her small hands running up his damp back and holding him close.
A sigh of contentment escaped Jackson’s throat as he gathered her to him. She tilted onto her tiptoes, her hands gripping his moist shirt in her fists. Her breath beat swiftly against his cheek, setting his heart thundering inside his rib cage. She met his flame with water, and the two elements circled them as their mouths danced.
He cracked his eyes open to see her beautiful, feverish response, and his gaze caught on the two elements twisting around them so happily. Manda’s was water—real water, the very water of the Mirror Lake where they’d just argued. Not the indigo liquid that was the product of the Eternal Ocean, but real water. Jackson pulled back from the kiss. His eyes could be fooling him in the night’s dimness, or perhaps the water was just the vestiges of their adventure in the pond? Or—
Manda wriggled free from his hold. One of her talented hands wrapped around the doorknob behind her, the other arm curled around her waist, her shoulders hunched as though she wished to conceal herself from his gaze.
“Manda, your magic, you didn’t use the Indigo Wells when you removed Leah’s mark.” Jackson felt as though she had just doused him with icy water.
“I must change my clothes,” Manda cried, throwing open the door and slamming it behind her.
“Manda!” Jackson reached for the knob, heedless that his loud voice might wake Grey. “Are you—”
“Master Coal!” Mr. Stone’s urgent voice cut through the misty night.
Jackson whirled, irritated. “What?”
“Sir, please, you must come up to the house.” In the moonlight, the butler’s normally congenial half-smile was missing, and sharp intensity outlined the planes of his face. “We have—well, we have had to sequester Miss Blazen. But we fear she is about to lash out. Dangerously.”
Jackson gaped, attempting to order his own wildly spinning thoughts. Manda Rivers was a halfmage. Leah Blazen had hurt Grey, terribly, and Manda had saved him. He, Jackson, was responsible—for Grey’s pain, for Manda’s fear, for Leah’s mischief here at Coalhaven. Blazing fires, would Lige’s sweet, tentative, prickly boy ever trust him again? Why should he? Leah had destroyed in an instant what had taken weeks—no, months—to build, and it was his own fault. Rage burned a cleansing fire through Jackson’s veins, eradicating any lingering blurriness from his mind. First things first, Leah Blazen had to go. Probing Manda’s secrets could wait. This could not.
“Sir,” begged Stone. “Will you come?”
Jackson rapped on the door behind which Manda had vanished. “Manda,” he said, “we’ll talk tomorrow. Stay here with Grey. Keep him safe. I’m getting rid of the Blazens. This instant.”
Jackson marched determinedly up the steps of the main house beside Mr. Stone, his temper roiling.
“I was closing up for the night,” Mr. Stone said, “and I recalled I’d opened a window in your office to air the house after the guests had departed. I went in to shut it, and I found Miss Blazen in there. She was reading your letters, sir. She’d burned out the locks on your desk.”
Jackson’s rage sprang to life in his hands as two fat fireballs. He shook his head and tamped down the flames.
“I have contained her in the great room, sir, but she’s been doing damage to my briars,” Stone went on.
On the verandah, Jackson turned to Mr. Stone and said, “Rouse the Blazens’ driver, and tell him to bring their carriage around front. I’ll deal with Miss Blazen. She tried to harm Grey. I’m throwing the entire family out.”
Stone straightened, and the deep furrow that had creased his brows for days eased. He gave a sharp, smart bow. “Very good, Master Coal.” The usually stoic man gave one revealing quirk of his lips and added, “I am not sorry to see them go.”
As Jackson entered through the front door of Coalhaven, a pungent odor of smoke and blackberries engulfed them. Leah Blazen, in a frilly pink dressing gown, stood amid fat, green thorny vines that formed a chest-high barrier. Blue smoke curled above the vines where she’d just managed to burn a path out of the thicket.
“What is the meaning of this, Miss Blazen?” Jackson snarled. “What have you done now, you sly, conniving minx?”
She glared at him over the brambles, lifting her chin. Her face hardened into its usual mask-like stillness. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Master Coal.” She lifted one hand and waved a handful of papers. “But now I know very well what you really are.”
“Oh? And what, pray tell, have you discovered?” Jackson eyed the packet of letters in her hand warily. There were many varieties of secrets locked away in his desk, most of them not his own.
Leah stepped from the tangle of briars toward him, reading from the top paper in the stack:
“Dear Jackson,
“It is with utmost joy that I write to tell you of the birth of my son, Grey. You know Jenny and I have been in hiding for months. At last,
our baby boy has come, and we can resettle our lives. We have picked the mundane village of Blue Hill, for Jenny feels safer among her own kind, and she has a relation here, a Mrs. Tailor, who has no children of her own. Of course, my duties and responsibilities will keep me away from my small family much more than I would like. But Jackson, every slander anyone has ever said about halfmages is proven to be false by my Grey. He is the most handsome little man, all smiles, all rosy cheeks, utter perfection. How anyone could think there is anything wrong with him, I cannot understand—”
Leah broke off, casting a triumphant glance at Jackson. “There!” She crowed. “Proof! You are harboring a halfmage. Grey Tailor is a halfmage! And you remain a Leveler sympathizer.”
Jackson curled his fingers into fists as flames circled up his arms.
“I suspected, you see,” the young woman said, her green eyes glowing maniacally. “His power wasn’t right. My fireheart should not have exploded when he opened it. The mark it made should not have been so large nor so deadly. The only reason my spell would have gone wrong was if his magic was wrong. I suspected he might be a halfbreed, so I went searching for the truth. Now I know your secret, and I can demand that you wed me, whether you like it or not.”
“Marry you?” Jackson roared. “Not if you were the last female in Arcana.”
Footsteps clattered down the stairs. Wilcott Blazen stopped halfway down them, still in his nightshirt, clutching his cap atop his head. “Leah, Jackson,” he peered at the brambles and the smoke, “I thought I smelled something burning. What is going on?”
The dam burst on Jackson’s fury. “You are no longer welcome at Coalhaven, Blazen. Gather your things and get out. Now!”
Wilcott gaped, but did not move. “This is no way to treat your guests, Jackson. You are a madman!”
“Indeed I am,” Jackson snarled back. “Mad, indeed. Your daughter cursed me—and my ward. She has broken every trust and invaded my privacy. I will show no more civility to one who dares such vile betrayals. Now, get out! Your carriage awaits you in the drive.”
Wilcott backed up the stairs toward the bedroom from which he had emerged, his face nearly purple. “Daniel Lake will hear of this, Coal. The Brotherhood will not let such an insult go unanswered.” The smaller man blustered back into the bedchamber, returning in only a few moments with a valise in one hand, his sleepy and bewildered wife clutching the other. She wore a frilly wrapper like her daughter and carried an equally frilly parasol, as though she were unaware it was the middle of the night.
Master Blazen cast a wary glance at Jackson’s still-flaming hands.
Jackson felt no inclination to snuff them, but he did step back to give the Blazens room to pass.
“Leah, come,” Beulah Blazen swept down the stairs in front of her husband. “I’ve never heard such a display of boorishness,” she said, nose in the air. “Indeed, I do not think this man is fit for proper society.” She scowled at Jackson. “I fear you have been irreparably damaged by the war, though perhaps you were fundamentally flawed long ago. We shall leave, and high society shall hear of your treatment of us, Jackson Coal.” As she passed, Beulah smacked her parasol into Jackson’s shin.
Wilcott scrambled after his wife and daughter.
Mr. Stone held up a lantern at the front door as the Blazens bustled through. Jackson followed them, his hands still lit, half-suspecting they’d try some mischief as they departed.
Mrs. Blazen’s parasol caught on the carriage door as she tried to enter. When she finally yanked it free, it was broken. She gave a frustrated shriek and dumped the parasol onto the gravel.
“You will never be welcome here again,” Jackson called for good measure. “Take your carriage and go.”
Leah Blazen paused before she entered the carriage. “You will answer for your treatment of us, Jackson Coal.”
“Don’t make me throw you out bodily!” Jackson roared. Covering the distance to the carriage in two strides, he slammed the door open. “If I ever catch you here again, your conveyance off this property will be wrapped in a cloud of magefire.”
Leah’s eyes blazed. She said nothing as she studied him for a long moment. “Jackson Coal, you may throw me and my family off of your property, but I know what you have housed under your roof.” Jackson’s hands clenched into fists, and the flames that had been brewing exploded in a loud snap. Fire rippled outward, and a shower of sparks rained over his feet and toward the carriage. Leah hastily moved into the carriage. “I shall await your answer to my proposal.” Her smile was rock-hard. “It would be terrible if word got out about the boy. Especially to Daniel Lake. Far better that I announce a marriage, don’t you think?”
Jackson slammed the carriage door in her face and pounded on the side of it. The coachman slapped the reins, and the horses pushed forward. The carriage wheel crunched Beulah Blazen’s parasol beneath it, twisting it into a caricature of its former shape.
Chapter 22
Manda
Before the sun had even crested the sea’s horizon the following morning, Manda left the small cabin she’d shared with Grey, pausing on the stoop in surprise. Jackson sat in the roots of a tree, his head tilted back against the rough bark, his lips parted. Soft, deep breaths issued from his mouth.
Her lips softened as she studied his weary face. He could have—he should have—gone to his own bed in the manor; he would have slept much better. But his obvious concern for her and Grey was touching.
She considered waking him, but she couldn’t bring herself to disturb his slumber. She would thank him later. She shut the door behind her, replaced the water shield, and stepped through the woods toward the northeastern indigo fields.
When she reached them, Mr. Flacks’s familiar figure approached her in the early morning mist rising off the harrowed earth. He bowed with a smile and greeted her, motioning her to follow him. As they walked, he explained in depth the process of tending the indigo, pointing out the various farmlands and which sharecropper cared for them.
Manda had made the appointment to tour the plantation with him while Jackson was still away, hoping to see if it was something that would enhance Grey’s current lessons about indigo. That had been before the Blazens had arrived, before a thousand dangers had loomed in every direction, before she had foolishly used her magic on Master Coal and shown him what she was. She kept the appointment, out of respect for Mr. Flacks’s time, and because her mind was so jumpy with caged terror she could do nothing but fill the rote role of her position and pray she had misread Jackson’s understanding the night before.
The plantation was serene, with no sign of the Blazens anywhere. Apparently Jackson had succeeded in getting rid of the firemage family.
“These were planted late,” Mr. Flacks said, motioning to the field on Manda’s right, beyond which the glimmering sea shifted like a sheet in the wind, “on account of the former Master Coal’s death and the transition of the Estate. We weren’t sure how well they’d do, planted in haste, but so far, it’s been a success. We’ve had plenty of sun, and the seedlings from last year’s stock were hardy. I don’t know of any other indigo plantation that has the jump on us, despite our late start. We’ll be to market right on time.”
Manda smiled as she crouched to touch a plant, feeling down the stem to the rich earth beneath it. “Do the sharecroppers market it, or is that Master Coal’s responsibility?”
“Since he took over Coalhaven, Master Coal has made changes. He and I market the indigo, with help from the more senior croppers. The day-to-day upkeep of the fields is the sharecroppers’ responsibility. The crop and the land belong to Master Coal, of course, but unlike many Masters, he pays a fair percentage to the croppers for their work. More than fair, really.”
Manda stood and dusted her hands on her skirts. “Do the sharecroppers mind?” Mr. Flacks looked surprised, and Manda hastily added, “That they don’t own the land. Wouldn’t they rather have something to call their own?”
Mr. Flacks rubbed a hand over a
stubbled jaw. “Well, given the current system, a great deal depends on the master. Coalhaven’s croppers are relieved to work for Jackson Coal. His name is protection, and he does right by them. If these croppers and their families owned the land they worked—because they’re not fullmages, they’re mundanes—the High Families and the Arcanan government would lean so heavily on them with taxes and property judgments that they would be unable to afford even the seed to plant one season. Mundanes face an uphill battle in Arcanan society, to say the least. The Levelers sought to secure them rights, but the Arcanan Congress has not seen fit to grant them anything in the Armistice bills. Yet.”
It was Manda’s turn to be surprised. “Even growing magical grade indigo, they could not make it on their own?”
“Especially then. The fullmages of the Indigo Wells Trade Bureau would never buy from mundanes. Trust me, Miss, Master Coal runs things as fairly as the system allows. His father didn’t. Our Master Coal nearly doubled the croppers’ income when he came on as master and formed a new contract, at a personal expense.” Mr. Flacks’s gaze softened. “He’s a generous master.”
“Henry Coal was well known for his intolerance of mundanes. How did he come to hire so many mundane sharecroppers?”
“Cheap, desperate labor.” Mr. Flacks scowled and spat to the side. “Many plantation masters do this. It’s pure greed, fueled by fullmage privilege. Beg pardon, Miss,” he apologized, touching his hat. “As far as I can see, Henry Coal trapped the sharecroppers into contracts with promises, and then gave them scant living and sunk them into debt. His son is nothing like him.”
“Indeed, I am not.”
Both Manda and Mr. Flacks whirled. Jackson stood behind them, a silhouette set ablaze by the rising sun behind him.
“S—sir,” Flacks stammered. “I meant no disrespect or offense.”
“None taken,” Jackson said. “Calling me different from Henry Coal is high praise in my book. Might I have a word with you, Miss Rivers?”