Burned by Magic: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Baine Chronicles Book 1)

by Walt, Jasmine

  I curled up on my bed and slept.

  When the knock on my door awoke me, night had fallen, painting the room with shadows and moonlight. Yawning, I stretched lazily before I opened the door to find a single guard standing outside my room.

  “What’s up?” I covered my mouth with my hand to muffle another yawn, blinking at the guard.

  “The Chief Mage requests your presence in thirty minutes.” The guard looked me up and down with a disapproving frown. “He sent me to fetch you, so I suggest you make yourself look a little more… presentable.”

  “Presentable?” My first instinct was to tell the guard to fuck off, but then it occurred to me that I’d yet to look at myself in the mirror today. I probably had crusts in my eyes and pillow creases all over my face, not to mention bedhead. “Oh alright,” I snapped. “Give me a few minutes.”

  I slammed the door in his face, then opened it again after I’d grabbed a robe and a change of clothes and headed down to the bathing room, skipping the bathtub in favor of a quick shower. Ten minutes later, I stood in front of the mirror dressed in a red tee and black sweats, feeling ridiculously inadequate as I finger combed my unruly black curls. Thankfully my face looked decent enough – the food and sleep had been enough to heal the simple cuts and bruises from Chartis’s air slaps, and my bottle-green eyes were bright and alert – but I was woefully underdressed for an audience with the Chief Mage.

  Oh please. As if you looked any better the last couple of times you were summoned. If he’d wanted you to wear better clothes, he would have had the servants provide you with some.

  True. Clearly I was letting my hormones get the better of me again. Since when did I care what any man I wasn’t trying to fuck thought of me? But I couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped my lips as I studied my reflection. I’d been without my leathers and weapons for so long now, it was like a different person looking back at me.

  A knock on the door interrupted my pity-party. “Miss Baine, the Chief Mage is waiting.”

  Grumbling, I wrenched the door open and stepped out into the hall. “Take me away, Captain.”

  The guard frowned at me, then led me through the torch-lit corridors in silence. He was nothing like the other guards, who’d been more than happy to taunt, glare and leer at me depending on their mood, and it made me wonder whether Fenris or the Chief Mage had specifically chosen him for that reason. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it – on the one hand it was nice not to have to put up with that shit, but on the other hand it was weird not to hear it.

  Clearly I had masochistic tendencies.

  The guard stopped in front of the doors to the Chief Mage’s study, then opened them and stood back to let me in. “They’re waiting for you, Miss Baine.”

  Sure enough, I stepped in to see Iannis sitting behind his desk, talking with Fenris who was lounging casually in the visitor’s chair in human form. They both rose at the sight of me, Fenris coming around the back of the desk to stand by the Chief Mage’s side. The sight reminded me of where Fenris’s loyalties lay, regardless of how nice he was to me. The door closed behind me, and I swallowed against the ball of nerves in my throat.

  “Hi.” I clasped my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t fidget with them.

  “Hi.” Fenris smiled at me reassuringly, but the Chief Mage remained silent and stony as usual. I held my breath, remembering his promise that I would not escape punishment. What was he going to do to me now?

  “Right.” I clasped my hands in front of me. “So, would you mind telling me what my punishment’s supposed to be? Or did you call me here so you could study me in the hopes of finding new things to criticize?”

  “Punishment?” The Chief Mage waved a hand dismissively. “There is no punishment. I just said that to satisfy our audience. This was simply a test.”

  My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” Fenris said gently, indicating the chair he had vacated.

  Normally I would have refused, since I’m more comfortable standing, but in my shock I numbly obeyed. “What part of the last twenty-four hours was a test?”

  “All of it.” The Chief Mage took a seat as well, and Fenris remained standing next to him. “Your cousin making the rescue attempt, Chartis ordering you to come to a hearing, all of it.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “It had come to my attention that the Director has not been sharing pertinent information with me,” Iannis explained, clasping his hands together and resting them on the blotter covering his desk. “I do have eyes and ears in the city, and I found out through them that your cousin was going to make a rescue attempt last night. I strengthened the wards to make sure that he would fail and left with Fenris to see what would happen during my absence. As I suspected, Director Chartis decided to take matters into his own hands without first alerting me to the problem.”

  A sense of foreboding filled me, and I leaned forward again. “Wait a minute. How did you know Rylan was coming?”

  Iannis waved his hand dismissively. “As I said, I have spies. But if you’re worried as to whether or not I am going after your cousin, I shall not bother just yet. The Resistance is hardly a concern – they’re little more than a scattering of snakes hiding out in their holes in the desert country. There are more important matters requiring my attention at this time.”

  I gritted my teeth as my hands curled into fists in my lap. The way he spoke of the Resistance, as if they were nothing more than a cockroach beneath his boot, made my blood heat, and not in a good way. But I decided against mentioning it – I had to pick my battles, and there was no way I was going to win this one, not now anyway.

  Instead, I directed my anger to a more pertinent matter. “You know that both my cousin and I could have been killed last night, right?”

  “A possibility, but highly unlikely since I calibrated the wards to ensure they were not set to kill.” His eyes gleamed as he regarded me. “I find it very interesting that you were able to breach the wards at all to free your cousin and his friends. That part of the plan was not anticipated.”

  I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Well if you hadn’t wanted me to do that, then maybe you shouldn’t have given me access to my magic.”

  The Chief Mage shook his head. “The level of magic I granted you access to should not have been enough to allow you to bypass the reinforced perimeter. It should have barely been enough for you to breach the wards keeping you inside the palace walls.”

  I sighed. “So what? We already know that my magic bursts out when I’m in danger. Is it really a stretch that it would do that when someone I care about is in danger too?”

  The Chief Mage arched a brow. “Has that ever happened before?”

  “Well…” I racked my brain, then deflated when I couldn’t find an example. “No.” Only when my own life was on the line.

  “The bond must have weakened more than you realized,” Fenris remarked to Iannis, studying me with a frown of his own. “Either from your interference or because of something her father has done.”

  “Great.” I stood up, tired of being peered at like a caged mouse, and beyond sick of hearing about my father. “Now that this is all settled, can I go? Like, as in, back to my actual home?”

  “Soon,” the Chief Mage said. “I’m not quite finished studying you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I leaned forward, pinning him with a glare. “Well, I’m finished being studied!”

  Iannis scowled, rising to his feet so he could tower over me. “I don’t know why you’re so reluctant,” he began. “If I am able to complete my investigation, you could –”

  “I don’t care!” I slammed my palms against the table, making it shudder. “While you’ve got me cooped up in here, people are dying out there! There are shifters being murdered by silver poisoning, and nobody is investigating it no matter how loudly I yell, including you!” I poked my finger in his chest.

  The Chief Mage’s eyes blazed. �
��I haven’t heard anything about these shifter murders, and I don’t appreciate –”

  “That’s because Chartis and the Enforcer’s Guild haven’t told you about them, just like all the other things they’ve kept from you. You’re corrupt, all of you!” I jabbed a finger in Fenris’s direction as well, and he took a step back, his eyes widening. “And you’re no better than any of them! I told you about these killings days ago, and you never even mentioned the matter to him, did you?”

  Guilt flashed across Fenris’s face. “I –”

  I threw up my hands in frustration. “You know what, I don’t want to hear about it from either of you. Any excuses you can make are meaningless to those dead shifters and their families. You all disgust me.”

  I turned on my heel and stormed out of the room, leaving them gaping after me. Fuck them all. If they weren’t going to let me out of here, then I would figure it out myself, even if it meant I had to dig a hole to Garai in order to escape.

  Chapter Twelve

  I spent the entire evening as well as most of next morning trying to decipher a spell book I had pilfered from the library, hoping I might learn something useful. An invisibility spell or instructions on how to remove or disable wards would have been nice. Unfortunately the book was written almost entirely in Loranian, the language mages used for spell casting, and it was damned near impossible for me to figure out anything it said.

  I was drilling holes into the book with my eyes, a raging headache coming on, when Fenris knocked on my door. I thought about denying him entry, but the smell of roast beef and potatoes accompanied him, and I was hungry.

  “Come in,” I grumbled.

  He entered, dressed in his customary dark tunic and holding the anticipated platter of roast beef. “I brought you lunch,” he said cautiously.

  Sighing, I put the textbook aside and took the plate from him. “Thanks,” I muttered, not quite meeting his eyes. Part of me was embarrassed about my outburst yesterday, and the other part of me was still angry that he hadn’t brought up the murders to the Chief Mage. Clearly he didn’t take them seriously at all, which didn’t make any sense since he was a shifter. Didn’t he feel any sort of racial loyalty?

  “So,” he said, eyeing the textbook I’d placed on the bed next to me as I shoveled forkfuls of meat and potatoes into my mouth. “What are you reading?”

  “I’m learning spells on how to boil peoples’ brains from the inside out.”

  Fenris tilted his head sideways so he could read the title on the spine. “Well I imagine that would be quite tough, considering that this is a book on Agricultural Magic.”

  The tips of my ears burned in embarrassment… and then it dawned on me. “You can read Loranian?”

  Nodding, Fenris reached for the book, then began flipping through it. “There’s a lot of useful stuff in here about using magic to influence the weather, repel certain pests –”

  “How do you know Loranian?”

  Fenris looked up, a vaguely uncomfortable expression on his face. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Iannis these past years. You can’t help but pick up a few things.”

  I frowned, sensing he was holding something back, but he broke eye contact, returning to the book, and I decided not to press.

  “So are you here to help me bust out of this joint, or to give me more excuses from the Chief Mage as to why I can’t leave?”

  Fenris closed the book and set it aside. “I’ve come to inform you that Iannis is hosting a banquet, and that you and I are both required to attend.”

  My jaw dropped. “Me? At a banquet?” The Chief Mage must have lost his mind. I had little to no training in etiquette, and besides, I was still considered a criminal. “What is this banquet for? And who’s attending?”

  “A variety of Mage Guild members, from Solantha and anywhere else in Canalo who can make it on such short notice,” Fenris said with a shrug. “Iannis needs to choose a new Director for the Mage’s Guild, so he’s gathering the candidates together. It ought to be an interesting night, watching them drool over the position like a pack of wolves gathered around a choice haunch of venison.” His features twisted briefly in disgust.

  “Yeah, well you can count me out.” I leaned back against my pillow, placing my hands behind my head and crossing my ankles. “No way am I hobnobbing with a bunch of snobby mages. Besides, I don’t have anything to wear.”

  Fenris gave me a wry grin. “You won’t have to worry about either of those things. We’ll both be going in beast form.”

  “We will?” I frowned. “Why?”

  Fenris shrugged. “I usually come in wolf form because the others underestimate me. It lets me observe and listen in where Iannis can’t do so. As for why you’re coming, I’m not certain, but I suggest you follow my lead and do the same. You might learn some useful things.”

  My mood lifted at that idea. Maybe I’d hear something that could give me a more solid lead regarding the shifter murders.

  “Alright. I’ll do it. When is the banquet?”

  “Tonight.”

  I spent the rest of the day alternating between training and reading the primer on Loranian that Fenris produced for me – a pursuit that was both challenging and rewarding. By the time dusk began to settle over the horizon, I was a third of the way through the book, and had also deciphered a spell from the Agricultural Magic text that, in theory, would allow me to summon a spring rain in the middle of fall to water my crops.

  Not that I envisioned ever needing such a thing. But still, the fact that I was even able to read it was a win for me.

  Hungry, I wandered down to the kitchen to grab some food before the mages arrived, and then made my way to the banquet hall in panther form after ducking into my makeshift training room to change. It felt good to walk around as a beast, my paws padding silently across the parquet and carpets as I took in the castle using my panther senses. Though in human form my senses of smell and hearing were outstanding, they were even better as a panther – my ability to swivel my ears as well as detect odors through a secondary scent gland located above my upper teeth gave me an edge that my human form did not possess.

  Strains of classical music emanated from the banquet hall, and I groaned inwardly, knowing it was going to be a fight to stay awake – classical music always put me to sleep. Hopefully whatever the mages said would be interesting enough to keep me alert. One of the double gilt doors was cracked open, so I nudged it a little wider with my shoulder and slipped inside.

  I paused in the middle of the doorway to stare at the banquet hall. It had been transformed from a predictably fancy stateroom into a tropical jungle, replete with old trees with fat trunks and orchids hanging from their gnarly limbs. Dirt crumbled beneath my feet as I stepped, but when I pressed my nose to the ground I smelled nothing aside from the faintly soapy scent of floor cleaner.

  It was an illusion, at least partially. A damned good one, too.

  “Miss Baine.” Iannis broke away from the center of the room, where he’d been observing the servants as they set up chairs and tables and long, rectangular serving areas with silver trays of food. “Good, you are on time.”

  “Sure am.” I did the ol’ stretch and yawn motion, exposing my long, white fangs, which was usually an intimidating maneuver. Iannis didn’t bat an eyelash. “Where do you want me to go?”

  Iannis turned and pointed to a sturdy branch that jutted out from one of the trees and hung over the table. “You should find that vantage point sufficient for listening and observation. No doubt it will provide a thrill to some of the guests as well, to look up and see a black panther perched directly above them, ready to pounce.” Dry humor tinged the last sentence.

  “I’ll do my best to be scary.”

  “Wait.” He crouched down beside me as I turned to leave. “Before you go…”

  He spoke a Word, and ran a hand down my sleek pelt from the top of my head to the base of my tail. Magic rippled through my body, and I yowled, springing away from his touch.


  “What the fuck was that?” I shook my body like a dog as tingles raced through my nerves.

  The left corner of Iannis’s lips curled upward as he rose. “Just a simple glamour, Miss Baine, so the guests won’t pay you undue attention. I suggest you get up in that tree now.”

  Huffing, I turned my back on him and did as he ’suggested’, walking across the room to where the tree stood. I rose up on my hind legs to dig my claws into the bark, and though I was worried that the tree might prove to be an illusion too, it held steady as I scrambled up it and onto the branch.

  Funnily enough, this is one of the ways jaguars like to hunt, I thought to myself as I settled onto the branch. We like to hang out in trees above watering holes and wait for prey to come and drink, then pounce. I crossed my paws beneath my chin and allowed my tail to hang over the side, swishing back and forth slowly enough to be subtle, while obvious enough to alert anyone paying attention that I was up in the tree. I did not need anyone here freaking out… though if I’d been perched above a pond they would have a right to.

  I suppose this is as good as a watering hole, I thought to myself as I looked down at the arrangement of round, linen-covered tables being set up below me. From this vantage point I could probably take down just about anyone, though I doubted the Chief Mage would be pleased if I did so.

  “Are you doing alright up there?”

  I looked across the room to see Fenris standing by the serving tables, wagging his bushy brown tail at me. I swung my own tail back and forth a little faster in greeting, happy to see him.

  “Just peachy. Though I wish I’d eaten more before we got here. Whatever’s under those covered trays smells divine.”

  “I’m sure we can help ourselves to the leftovers once we’re finished.” Fenris’s mental voice was tinged with a smile. “In the meantime, stay where you are. Company is about to arrive.”