“They’ve not yet hung the mistletoe,” he remarked absently.
“They will do it before the prince’s arrival,” Nia told him. “Would you like to see?” As with any ritual at Midwinter, the hanging of mistletoe would be a celebration all on its own.
Nico shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said, closing his eyes to hide his sorrow. “I think I will rest awhile before the prince’s banquet.” Before he would present Nia. As much as it pained him, he could not wait any longer. After tomorrow, Nia would no longer be his charge and he would no longer be needed.
Nia kissed his brow. “Sleep now,” she said, covering him with a blanket. “I will wake you when the time comes.”
* * *
“Stable the horses,” the cloaked rider said, and without waiting to see his orders obeyed, he ran up the stairs into the great hall. The guards changing shifts grew wide eyed when they beheld him. He smiled in greeting and held a finger to his lips to silence them.
It was good to come in from the cold. The sun had set not long ago, but when it did it took all warmth and comfort with it. Stripping his gloves and cloak, he paused by a hearth to warm his hands. The journey had wearied him. He glanced at the chair nearby, wanting nothing more than to rest awhile, but he knew he’d be asleep the moment he sat down and there was important business to attend to.
Shaking off some of the winter’s chill, he continued on his path, up the stairway and to the royal wing. A long hallway stood dark before him, all the torches extinguished for the night, but he could see well enough by the light of the moon. He traced the tapestries with a reverent hand as he passed, recalling fond memories of hiding behind them. The servants always pretended they couldn’t see his feet poking out.
At the very end was a set of double doors. The guards who stood watch before them during times of war and unrest were gone, no longer needed now that peace had been restored. He grasped the handles and shoved the portals open.
As he’d suspected, the chamber was lit with candles and the king himself paced before the hearth, tugging at his beard.
“What weighty business troubles your mind, my king, to furrow your brow this late at night?” he asked, deepening his voice and biting back a grin.
King Manfred started and spun around to stare at him, but the moment recognition dawned, the ruler of Wilderheim rushed forward to embrace him. “My son,” he cried. “My boy!”
Ceremonies were for kings. There would be time enough for them tomorrow and the next day, and the next. After ten years, this was all Saeran had wanted. To embrace his father without crowds of witnesses watching their every move and gesture.
“I’m home,” he said as his father wept with joy.
CHAPTER 2
It was late. Nia was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow the prince would arrive and Nico would present her at court as his apprentice. He would expect her to stand tall before them and be worthy. Worry gnawed at her. What if they turned her away or shunned her? Women, as all mothers, shared a connection with the earth, and female witches with gifts of foresight, truthsense and the like were common enough. But it was rare for any woman to carry raw magic like Nia did, let alone so much of it.
She would have to prove herself, if the king deigned to allow it. If even one of her spells went awry…
Nia set aside the scroll she’d been studying and took another tome from the shelves. Yawning, she read spell after spell, committing it to memory. She wiggled her fingers, playing with magic while she read. Not enough to work the spells, only enough to create sparks in the palm of her hand. It helped her concentrate. The ancient language was no longer a mystery to her. The words were clear, and she understood their meaning no matter what dialect they were in.
To learn magic is the same as learning anything else, Nico’s voice guided her, You need only open your whole self to it. Open your mind and let the words in. Their meaning will follow.
She immersed herself in her studies, allowing nothing else to distract her. She read the spells and repeated them to herself, letting her voice echo softly all around her. Once she knew she’d not forget one incantation, she moved on to the next one, and the next.
She shifted in her seat when it became uncomfortable; stood to walk back and forth. The words came faster and faster as she chanted with her eyes closed, her concentration absolute.
Then, all of a sudden, a strong wind whirled around her, raising her hair and making her cloak billow. Just as quickly, it was over. Nia opened her eyes to total darkness and sighed, listening for the sound of all her scrolls and parchments fluttering to the floor. But she couldn’t hear the rustle parchment. All she heard was the walls whispering in rushed words she couldn’t quite catch.
At the very least, their voices assured her she was still inside the castle. Scowling, she clicked her teeth together, trying to remember what incantation she’d been saying to make all the torches and candles go out.
It made no sense. Recalling the symbols in the scrolls, she tried to match them to the words she’d chanted. She couldn’t. The spell she’d chanted wasn’t the one she’d read. One small mistake in pronunciation and something like this happened. “Bah,” she whispered. This was precisely what she was trying to avoid!
Something stirred in the darkness, and she turned her head toward the sound. Had she conjure something else besides the wind?
It stirred again and this time, Nia was certain she heard cloth swishing.
“Who’s there?” a male voice demanded and Nia started. The man sparked a flame on one of the candles and brought it around to look at her. Without thinking Nia blew lightly and the candle across the room went out.
But it had been enough for her to see she was no longer in her study and for the man to catch a glimpse of her. She was in someone’s bedchamber!
“I wish Father had told me he was sending someone to me,” the man said, a grin in his voice. “I would have been better prepared.”
Nia drew back a step. What?
He was moving again. He’d risen from bed and was coming toward her in the darkness. His step was somewhat unsure, but he seemed to know which way to go. Nia had no such advantage. She didn’t know where she was, or what was around her, and she didn’t dare conjure light. It would make it too easy for him to find her.
Closing her eyes, even though it was dark in the chamber, she tried to create an incantation to take her back. Nico had said something about reversal spells a fortnight ago, but she couldn’t remember his exact instructions. Frantic words slipped over her lips in a hushed whisper. A transportation spell needed words to be voiced, not thought. Nia needed a place to appear and a way to get there, and neither of those would help if she didn’t know where she was in the first place!
He must have followed her voice, for she suddenly sensed he was in front of her, so close her nose almost touched his chest. His breath stirred the hair at the top of her head and she could hear his heartbeat. Gasping, she took a step back, but encountered a wall. The contact threw her off balance. Nia began to tip to one side, her hands flailing for something to grasp on to.
The man caught her waist and turned her so she was trapped between the wall at her back and him.
“Release me,” she hissed, funneling a small thread of magic into her voice to charm his compliance. It didn’t work.
“My, aren’t you in a temper,” he said with a chuckle. “Not to worry, my girl, I’ll take good care of you.” As his lips brushed her temple, his hands slid up from her waist until they were level with her breasts.
Nia slapped his hands away and shoved as hard as she could at his chest. It didn’t make him fall back as she’d intended, but he did move to give her room. She sensed he only did it to humor her, which only frustrated her further. Anger made her magic boil, and she gritted her teeth to keep it contained. “Don’t touch me.”
Silence answered her. Nia felt the moment he sensed a threat like a charge in the air. His alarm, however muted, sparked her own, and she felt
along the wall, moving sideways to get away from him while racking her brain for something to help her get out of here.
What came to her was nothing so structured as a spell. It was a sloppy invisibility cloak she’d used as a child. It never lasted long, and it took more magic and concentration than she’d had back then, but it was something. Reaching deep inside her, she called up her magic and drew darkness and silence around her.
Completely cloaked, she moved another step to the side and winced when her hand struck a rickety table. The water jug and wash basin on top of it rattled together and in a blink the man was in front of her again, caging her in. “If you aren’t here to warm my bed, girl, then why are you here?” His hand braced on the wall next to her head, but it was his other hand that worried her for in it he held a dagger which scraped along the stone wall, making her cringe. Her cloak dissipated.
“By mistake,” she said hoping the man didn’t decide to stab that dagger into her heart. Nia could hurt him if she needed to, she could even kill him if he forced her hand. Magic filled her palms, ready to be used, but caution kept her still.
“Mistake,” he repeated, his deep voice strained, as if he was trying to hold back laughter. “You came to the prince’s bed chamber by mistake? And how, pray tell, did you manage to appear here without me hearing you enter?”
“What prince?”
“This prince,” he replied. “Son of King Manfred of Frastmir, heir to the throne of Wilderheim. Are there so many princes around you need clarification?”
“The prince is not due to return until tomorrow. You’re lying to me.”
He leaned in closer. “Are you certain of that?”
Scowling, Nia quickly cast her senses down through the walls into the earth to orient herself. She went two stories down and through the underground study before she touched packed earth and bedrock. She found the leylines running north and south and determined she was in the south wing of the castle. The royal wing, where only the king, his heir, and visiting nobility slept. Flowing back to the chamber, she followed the floor stones out into the hallway and traced it left and right. Not far to the left, she felt a different song. Wood. A great wooden portal which could only be the king’s bedchamber.
Oh, no.
“P-prince Saeran?” she asked weakly. Who else would be sleeping in the prince’s bedchamber?
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Did you come through the window? Where are the ropes? Who helped you?” The tip of the dagger ran up the crease in her cloak to her neck. “Why are you here, little bird?”
“It was an accident. Please, I mean you no harm,” she implored reaching out. She didn’t need to touch the dagger to make the blade disappear; she could work the spell through him.
He breathed in deeper when her fingers curled into his night shirt. The blade was gone. He wouldn’t see it disappear in the darkness, but he might feel the weapon’s balance change. “So you’re not here to warm my bed,” he said, “but you want to. Is that it?”
Nia sputtered.
“If I were you, I’d choose my words wisely.”
“Release me,” she told him.
“And if I do not?”
“Then…then I will…” She would what? He was the royal heir, the future king to whom she was supposed to be swearing her fealty tomorrow. What could she do? Maim him? Enchant him? Turn him into a bumbling idiot? “I’ll turn you into a toad,” she finally said and winced.
He chuckled. “A witchling, then? Turn me into a toad, you say?” She felt his lips by her ear as he whispered, “I’m fairly certain they jail people for that.”
They would do more than jail her if anyone found out. “Don’t make me do this,” Nia said, willing him to step back and release her.
Instead he leaned in even closer, his nose to her neck and inhaled. “I can make you relent. I can make you want me.”
At her wits’ end, Nia did what she had to. “And I can make you regret this for the rest of your life.” She shouted three words, hoping they were the right ones. There was no flash, no great boom of magic, only silence. Nia reached out but encountered only air where the prince had stood. “Prince Saeran?”
Nothing.
With a thought, she conjured light and looked around. The chamber was grand and worthy of a prince, but it was cold in its opulence. He had yet to make it his home again. “Prince Saeran?”
Croak.
Nia looked down and her light flared brighter as relief washed over her. She hadn’t killed him!
There at her feet was a bewildered toad, staring at his hands, his eyes wide and mouth open. Then he looked up at her. He croaked and jumped, landing on his side and rolling onto his back. His wild struggle to right himself made Nia wince. He kicked his legs and made a sound no natural toad would make. It might have been a panicked scream.
Taking pity on him, Nia picked the creature up and brought him to her face so they were at an equal level. “I did warn you,” she said. “No, don’t struggle, you will hurt yourself. I will turn you back but you have to stay still, or I cannot release you.”
The kicking continued. He even tried to bite her, not realizing toads had no teeth. The clamp of his soft mouth over her fingers was little more than a tickle but when his long tongue shot out at her face, he almost struck her eye.
“All right,” she said, holding him a little farther to evade his continued attacks and spoke the words to reverse her spell. The air shifted, her light flickered, and the toad grew and transformed back into a man, which left Nia holding his face. Any doubt she may have had as to his true identity disappeared when she recognized him by the light of her magic. Dread settled in her belly. Gods protect me. She’d turned the crown prince into a toad!
Saeran blinked his eyes rapidly, panting as his heart fluttered in his chest. His feet tingled and his arms and legs were shaky. But at least he had feet. And legs, and arms! Saeran pushed away from the accursed witch and immediately tripped over his own feet. He hit the floor hard, but the pain was nothing to him while his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest. He stared at the witch with his eyes open so wide he thought they might fall right out of his head, but he dared not blink even once for fear of what she might do to him next.
There was still light in the room, little orbs of it floating in the air between them like giant fireflies. Breathing hard to keep from fainting like a girl, he stared at the woman, truly seeing her for the first time. She wasn’t very tall, but she carried herself with the air of someone much bigger and nobler than her dress would let on. He’d caught the merest glimpse of her before his candle went out earlier, but now that he saw her Saeran had no doubt she was powerful. He could see it in her eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked, wringing her hands together.
“All right? I…” That was when he saw his dagger. Or rather, the hilt of it because the blade was gone. His favorite dagger! The one gifted to him by King Halden, which he kept at his side all the time and beneath his pillow when he slept. It was ruined. And it was her fault! “You changed me into a toad!”
“You thought I was a whore!” she returned with righteous indignation.
“Who the bloody hell are you?”
She took a deep breath and absently waved a hand. All the torches and candles in the room flared to life. “Ah!” When she took a step toward him, he scrambled back, grabbing the ruined dagger hilt and waving it at her. “Stay away from me!”
She stopped, looking unsure. “I am Nia,” she said, bowing at the waist like a knight. “Nico’s apprentice.”
The wizard’s name stirred a memory, but as awake as he was at the moment, Saeran was still exhausted from the journey. He’d only gotten to bed moments before this stranger appeared, having spent long hours talking to his father. “My father did mention something about an apprentice,” he said, trying to recall his exact words. “He did not say it was a woman.” But he had said he’d never met the apprentice himself.
Nia blushed, appearing much
younger than she had when he’d seen her through the eyes of a toad. “He doesn’t know, Highness. I am to be presented at court tomorrow.”
In the silence that followed, Saeran’s mouth quirked. “He doesn’t know?” Sitting there on the floor of his bed chamber, dressed in nothing but his night shirt while a cloaked woman with hair like sunshine caught in gold looked at him as if she expected him to shout for the guards and have her beheaded, Saeran’s dagger hand lowered. Of all the things he’d imagined coming home to, this had to be the most ridiculous.
As the panic he’d felt slowly melted into irrational hilarity, he imagined this Nia appearing before him and his father tomorrow and suddenly he couldn’t contain his mirth. The chuckle turned into a laugh, and when she looked at him as if he’d lost his mind it got worse. “Gods, I can’t wait to see his face!” He fell back, lying spread eagle, laughing until he couldn’t breathe. “Ahahahahagirlhahahahahwizardahahahah…”
If anyone saw him in that moment, they would think him mad. Every time he tried to stop, he would look at the girl and start all over again. His sides began to hurt and his eyes watered, which only made him laugh harder.
Finally he struggled to raise himself off the ground, his insides still tickling, but he tried hard to make himself stop. He grinned at Nico’s chosen apprentice and had the satisfaction of seeing her completely confused, which he would wager his future crown didn’t happen often.
She drew back when he approached, another spell no doubt on the tip of her tongue. He liked her already.
“Calm yourself, Nia,” he said, his grin turning crooked, “I know better than to make you angry twice. Who knows what you would turn me into next?”
After an uncertain moment, Nia returned his smile. “I was considering, a caterpillar. Or some other kind of worm.”
Saeran chuckled. “I could not have asked for a more fitting advisor.”
The Royal Wizard Page 2