by Bec McMaster
As if she'd spent half the night in tears.
A gut-wrenching blow, for when he'd left her, she'd been utterly ravished. What could have moved her to tears? Had he hurt her? He'd not been gentle, but his reading of the situation at the time had told him that she'd liked it.
"Did you sleep well?"
Miss Martin took up her teacup in both hands, meeting his eyes over the rim of it. "I snatched a few hours."
Which told him nothing. "You look tired... I didn't hurt you?"
That brought her full attention to bear upon him. She blinked in surprise, then a faint, weary smile curved over her pretty mouth. "Would it bother you if you had?"
"I'm not in the habit of abusing the fairer sex. Of course it would bother me."
They stared at each other, her gaze curious and faintly wondering, and his defensive.
Miss Martin gave him a respectful tilt of the head. "My exhaustion has nothing to do with you, Rathbourne. My mind is busy at the moment. Too much to dwell upon. It keeps me from sleep. Your demands are but a welcome distraction, a chance to forget... for a moment."
Sadness painted a pale, milky blue across her face, like a watercolor that swiftly dissolved. She shook her head, as if setting herself to rights. "But enough of that. I have been thinking about yesterday afternoon and the events at Lady Eberhardt's mansion."
"Yes?" He poured himself some tea, wondering where she was going with this.
"You didn't use your power, Lucien, except for that one act of Expression."
Lucien. It was the first time she'd called him that. The word was somewhat... intimate, but then he supposed that last night had been infinitely more so. The rest of her words, however, bothered him. "It's been a long year, Ianthe" —he too could use her name— "and my strength had waned. There is little energy to be gained in the cold stone walls of the isolation ward or in meager fuel supplies."
"Good." Her eyes sparkled. "Last night between us should have restored your power reserves then. It's the least I could do." She gestured toward his clean plate, where he'd buttered his toast lightly and smeared the faintest hint of jam across it, as compared to her breakfast of beefsteak, fried ham, and eggs. Sorcerers often ate heartily. "Would you care for another helping? I desire you strong and whole."
"I fear my stomach wouldn't tolerate it," he admitted. "It's used to deprivation."
"You spoke of being overwhelmed. I had wondered if your mind were blocked and you couldn't access your powers."
"A... little."
Sympathy flashed in blues across her features. "That's to be expected, following a severe psychic assault, such as what occurred with the demon."
Lucien looked away, the teacup rattling as he set it down, memory assaulting him for a brief second. "I barely remember it."
Ianthe pushed back her chair and stood, those skirts swishing around her ankles as she circled the table. Her fingertips rested on his shoulder, instantly affirming the bond between them. It was stronger today, knotted tightly around the two of them; a result, no doubt, of their carnal relations. "I could help you, if you wished it—"
"No." He could deal with it himself. He just needed time.
"Lucien, I could see your aura bleeding all over the place that day in the Grosvenor Hotel, after the demon savaged you. That you've managed to heal it to this degree in such a short time as twelve months is incredible, but it's entirely possible that you won't be able to manage more on your own, or without long periods of calming meditation, and unfortunately, we don't have such time up our sleeves. There's a sorcerer I know, a man who can heal maladies of the mind to some extent. Or, perhaps... Drake could—"
"I'll think about it."
She released an exasperated sigh. "I should think you would be inclined to pursue every avenue, considering that prophecy has predicted your death."
"I said I would consider it, and the prophecy wasn't so specific, I noticed," he replied, pouring himself more tea. "It predicted only that my death would be part of the relics spell, if it were to succeed. Not that it was a definite. Considering everything that occurred yesterday, I'm surprised that that is the line of questioning you've chosen to pursue."
Dark eyelashes lowered. She was hiding something, and he had a sudden gut-wrenching suspicion that he knew what it was.
"Did you know about it? About Bishop?"
"I knew."
His nostrils flared. "And you didn't think to mention it: Oh, by the way, you have a brother."
He'd spent half the night brewing on the subject, and he was angry now. The Prime had pushed and pulled him throughout his life, like a pawn on a chessboard. He'd been the one to decide if Lucien should be in his life, and he'd been the one who'd thought both brothers should not know each other. The teapot clattered against the table as he set it down rather abruptly.
A brother. Hell. A stranger. How many times had he watched other children playing nearby and wished that he could join them, when Lord Rathbourne decreed that he attend his studies instead. He wouldn't have been so bloody lonely if he'd known that there was someone else out there, someone just like him. It would have been easier to cope with the truth when he realized that he was the Prime's bastard son, not Lord Rathbourne's, and that the Prime wished nothing to do with him.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize… It wasn't… I've had so much on my mind of late, that it didn't occur to me."
"It feels like my entire life has been a lie, Miss Martin." What else didn't he know? "And every time I uncover a little piece of the truth, it unlocks a dozen more strands. My reality, as I know it, is unraveling. I stand on shifting sands every day, with not a single ally, nor anyone who truly gives a damn about me."
"Your father—"
"Sentenced me to this life. Don't use that word for him. He is not a father. His debt to me ended the moment he spilled his seed, and I won't forget that. If you think for one second that I would allow him to... to help me with this... God." Turning away, he fought hard to bring his emotions under control. "What else are you keeping from me?"
She made a choked sound in her throat. "I–I–"
He made a slashing motion with his hand. "Forget it." This was what came of letting her get under his skin. When he'd seen her swollen eyes, he'd begun to care. When she laid her hand upon his shoulder as if to offer comfort, he'd begun to forget she was the Prime's tool first and foremost. A lie. It was all a lie, and he couldn't forget it again. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," he told her. "That is all we can be."
"I'm so sorry, Lucien—"
Heavy footsteps thundered down the stairs, and then a young woman appeared, her pale cheeks flushed with youth and her hazel eyes gleaming. "You're back! I didn't even hear you return. I did it, Ianthe! I froze my cup of tea!" Holding said cup upside down, she shook it firmly, then seemed to realize that Lucien was sitting there.
Miss Martin somehow appeared perfectly serene, as though their argument hadn't occurred. However, she couldn't quite hide the brittleness in her voice when she said: "Lucien, this is my apprentice, Miss Thea Davies. Thea, this is Lucien Devereaux, the Earl of Rathbourne, who is serving as my current Shield."
Thea's eyes widened. She bobbed a curtsy. "My lord. How do you do?"
"A pleasure to meet you," Lucien greeted.
Miss Martin gestured to a chair beside her for the young woman as she returned to her own. "Excellent progress, considering the fact that you were only supposed to be studying your books while I was gone and not using sorcery."
Thea's smile died. "I was careful."
"And what happens if your temper flares, hmm?"
Thea squirmed.
Miss Martin held out for long seconds, making her disapproval clear. "Now make it melt."
Thea's lips pressed together mulishly. "Can I not have breakfast first?"
"Melt your tea and then you may dine."
Thea set her teacup on the table in front of her and stared at it. Nothing happened for a good two minutes, though Lucien could feel the girl
's energy reserves turning molten within her. Thea would be a powerful practitioner one day, perhaps even more so than him. Even being in the same room as her was starting to set off an ache behind his left eye.
"Thea's natural affinity is Telepathy," Ianthe explained a little proudly. "She struggles with Telekinesis, however, and her control is limited. She's so determined to do something, that she can often do it once out of frustration, but rarely at will and never whilst calm."
Thea's lips pursed, her fingers clenching into fists as she glared at the cup. It took almost a minute, but the iced lump of tea gradually pooled into water, until a miniature iceberg floated in the cup and then bubbles started floating to the surface, slowly, then faster, until the tea was boiling.
It was an impressive display, relying on sheer force of will, rather than ritual and Words of Power. Or it would have been, if the room wasn't so cold. Lucien had to stand and move away, the girl's power bleeding all over him.
"Now freeze it again, but this time, I want you to focus on your meditative techniques. Remember what we discussed about building your sense of ritual? You were angry again, which means you were able to melt the tea, but you cannot allow that to form a block in your mind, which ties your power to emotion, or else you'll never be able to advance."
"I will advance." Thea took a steady breath and closed her eyes, but emotion painted rainbows of color across her face—anger, defiance, frustration, hope, perhaps even fear, if he was reading that dark, indigo blue correctly.
The tea stopped bubbling, but even when Thea began murmuring her ritual words, it remained stubbornly steaming. Her lashes flickered, those hands beginning to curl into themselves.
"Stop," Ianthe instructed. "You're getting angry again. Let it all go, Thea. Release all of your emotions and your power and have some breakfast. You can begin again afterward."
When Thea opened her eyes, mutiny burned there. "I can do it."
"How do you form ice?" Lucien found himself asking, his voice calm and cool.
"Absorb the energy in the water," Thea explained. "Energy and friction compel the water to heat, yet by removing all of the energy and absorbing it yourself, you force it to cool."
"Yet emotion drives us to expend energy, which is why boiling water is easier than cooling it."
"Yes, but I froze the water, even when I was using emotion as my driving force of will!"
He smiled faintly, sharing a glance with Ianthe. "I'm starting to feel some sense of kinship with my own mentor."
Ianthe sipped her tea. "And I believe I'm starting to understand why Drake passed her apprenticeship onto me. I'm learning rather a lot myself, most particularly the fact that His Grace has an odd sense of humor. He's probably been waiting for this moment ever since I first began my apprenticeship."
"I thought it was rude to discuss someone when they are sitting right there at the table with you." Thea stabbed a kipper with ruthless intent. "I don't understand why we cannot simply use the tools we already own. Expression works! Why does it matter if I'm angry, or scared, or—"
"Has your mentor never explained why we tie our sorcery to ritual and power words instead?"
Ianthe glanced his way. "Lucien—"
"The girl should know the truth."
Ianthe's lips thinned. "I didn't wish to frighten her."
Thea's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Most of our first forays into sorcery are caused by emotion," he said. Like his yesterday, which was an uncomfortable truth. He pushed it aside. "A girl is beaten by her father so often, that one day some mental block in her mind snaps and she wants him to stop hitting her so much so that he does. Her desire and her emotional energy force the laws of nature to her will, just for a moment and often uncontrollably. Perhaps she throws her father across the room? Perhaps she breaks every bone in his body or chokes him to death? Sometimes the girl can even force her father to never lift a hand against her again by placing a compulsion in his own head, though such a thing is extremely rare. It's most often telekinesis or pyrokinesis, something destructive, something that is relatively easy for the will to perform. Sometimes these girls or boys are so afraid of what they can do that they form a mental block in their minds, which means they can never do it again. They... suppress their sorcery. It becomes a mysterious miracle, or I'm sure you've heard of mysterious healings, or deaths, or catastrophes?"
Thea's eyes grew distant, her lower lip trembling, just a fraction. "I-I–"
"That's enough, Lucien," Ianthe murmured, taking the girl's hand. "She understands what can happen." Thea turned into her, and Ianthe squeezed her hand and drew her closer.
Of course she did. Most of them did, and now he'd unwittingly blundered into some dark scar of memory that the girl owned. "My apologies. I did not mean to touch a nerve." He cleared his throat. So many times these days he was missing social cues and blundering through human interactions. He'd never been so careless before his incarceration.
Lucien knelt on the rug at Thea's skirts, taking her hands in his. "Expression is incredibly powerful, more so than harnessing your will, but so dangerous, Thea. So uncontrollable. That is why we use ritual and meditation to teach ourselves to harness our will."
Thea looked eminently subdued. "What if I cannot learn to do so?"
Miss Martin kissed Thea's forehead and hugged her. "I remember a time when I was certain I would never learn to harness my will. The more I could not do it, the more frustrated and impatient I became. But it finally happened, and once learned, it became so much easier, Thea. That is why we set you such complicated tasks to study at first—to unknot a rope with your mind, or to use telekinesis to move a wooden puzzle piece from the bottom of a tower of them whilst holding the others in place—because whilst Expression is powerful, it cannot perform complicated tasks. It will come, Thea. Trust me in this."
Thea nodded.
"Finish your breakfast," Miss Martin pressed. "No more talk of Expression and dire disasters. I believe we have enough on our plate as it is." She glanced his way, finishing the last mouthful of her tea. "Have you quite finished, my lord? I believe we have an old acquaintance of Morgana's to question this morning about her potential whereabouts and a Relic Infernal to find?"
Lucien stood. "Actually, I was starting to wonder at your lack of enthusiasm this morning. You seem quite calm, considering someone—possibly a dangerous sorceress with a price on her head and a yearning for revenge—has stolen two infamous relics."
"One relic, Rathbourne. We're not quite certain she has the other in hand yet. As for lack of impatience, Drake sent out Sensitive's to comb the streets of London last night for hints of sorcery. If they'd found anything, we'd already know it." She flashed a warm smile at Thea. "I want you to continue trying to freeze and boil the tea. However, if you find yourself growing irritable, you are to set aside such a task and return to your meditation. Use your rituals to simply gather your power to the point where your skin is brimming with it, then disperse it and do it again. The more you use ritual, the more your mind will form that path, until it becomes instinct, not emotional channels. I shall see you tonight, hopefully."
They left her staring forlornly at the dining table.
***
LUCIEN LEANED BACK in the carriage and tried not to stare at the woman bound to him. He could sense her emotions pricking at his skin like needles, and the color wash of it over her face was immense, despite her expressionless face.
She was staring, arrested, at a pair of young children playing in the park across the street. The girls couldn't have been more than nine or ten and were laughing as they deliberately splashed each other, stomping their boots into puddles. Ianthe fingered the locket at her throat and looked as though the world might not have existed around her.
Through the bond, it felt as though her heart was breaking.
Lucien looked again at the girls. Happy young lasses, wrapped up in bonnets with a plaid shawl thrown over their shoulders. One of them had shiny black hair k
notted into a plaited chignon, and the other wore pigtails.
He couldn't for the life of him figure out why the sight of them ached within her so much. Pressing a hand to his chest, he squeezed, but it was merely a phantom emotion. The bond between them was strengthening. If he wasn't careful, he'd begin to hear her more outspoken thoughts—and she his.
"You are fond of Thea," he said, both out of curiosity and also to see if he could discover what had set her emotions roiling.
"You sound as if you're surprised."
"Perhaps I am. I would never have suspected you to own a maternal side."
Ianthe reacted as if he'd slapped her. "You do not know me at all. I know you hold me partly to blame for your incarceration, but that does not mean I am a cold, wicked woman, devoid of feelings."
"I know." Lucien cleared his throat. "My apologies. I didn't mean to offend you. I just... I was trying to understand you."
"What you must think of me." She gave a tight, pressed-lip smile. "All these words you throw my way: mistress, whore, unmotherly—"
"I never called you a whore," he said sharply.
A flash of violet eyes. He had hurt her. "And yet, what have you demanded of me?" At his own flinch, she smiled bitterly. "It's all right, Rathbourne. I'm used to it."
Then she turned to look out of the window again.
And he suddenly felt quite ill and ashamed of himself.
"I'm sorry that you feel that way. I did not think of our agreement as such, no more than I thought myself a lesser man for bending to your will during the day. I wanted you, and I feared the imbalance of submitting to your will with no recourse, which is why I demanded such a thing of you." His gaze lowered. "Perhaps it was wrong of me."
There was an echoing moment of silence. When he looked up, Ianthe's eyes were wide, and she looked surprisingly young. "Well. Look at the pair of us, treating each other kindly. That was something I did not expect."
"Perhaps we have both made assumptions about each other?"
More silence. It was awkward, and she looked flushed and somewhat sweet.