Algardis Series Boxed Set

by Terah Edun

  Mae briefly looked over her shoulder at the dark tome they’d been fighting over. She’d had no choice to leave it where it lay, and Ember was so focused on her broken nose that she was too distracted to look for it.

  That was a good thing. Practically the only good thing coming out of this morning. As for Ember, she jerked them to a halt and stopped tilting her head. With her hands lowered as well, Mae got a full look at the damage she’d inflicted on the cartilage. She flinched in shame. Ember looked away bitterly, and the blood started gushing again.

  Mae hastily handed over a handkerchief to mop up some of the spill. Ember took it, but it didn’t help much. The scrap of cloth pressed against her unsightly nose just went from a dusty cream straight to dark red.

  Mae said softly, “I’m sorry—okay?”

  Ember glared at her. “Sorry doesn’t cut it!”

  Mae gave Ember a smile as she nudged her forward. “But you’re not going to throw me to the wolves, are you?”

  Ember shot her a dark look. “That’s what you’re worried about? Facing the elders? How about the fact that you broke my nose!”

  Yeah, I kind of did, Mae thought—impressed despite herself. At least she didn’t say it out loud. She’d never broken bones before. Scuffles weren’t for proper young girls, you see.

  “They can fix it, can’t they?” Mae said. “So it’s not all bad.”

  “Do you know how much resetting a bone hurts?” Ember snapped.

  “Well, no,” Mae said. “But I’ll be right by your side for moral support, the whole way through.”

  Ember slapped Mae’s hand away from her shoulder.

  “Ow,” Mae said as she stepped back and gave her sister a bit of space.

  5

  Then a throat cleared behind them and they both froze.

  “Did I just see my son heading through here?” a man asked as Mae slowly turned around.

  “Maybe,” Mae answered. “I think he went that way.”

  Ember glanced at her with anger in her eyes. She had started whimpering again, and Mae glared at her to reinforce the warning that she should be silent.

  She wouldn’t actually hurt Ember again physically—that had been an accident, after all—but boy, she was not above making her sister’s life miserable. Ember had certainly done the same over the years.

  Still, Ember got the message. Ember rolled her eyes, but she didn’t open her mouth to make any noise beyond the small, muffled cries of pain she couldn’t stifle, and that Mae was not going to ask her to internalize. She might be mad at Ember, but she wasn’t a torturer. As Ember was relatively silent, the show was all Mae’s—if she could be persuasive enough to get him to move along, that was.

  The morning light had gotten better and better as the hour passed, so all Mae had to do was point down the corridor.

  “Is that where he went on his short, chubby legs?” their uncle asked as he walked up to them.

  Maybe he meant to give them a hug or share in the day’s greetings, but any trace of a smile immediately disappeared from his countenance when he saw Ember’s face.

  “What’s this?” he said. “Bloodshed?”

  “No,” Mae said hastily. “Just a misunderstanding!”

  “A misunderstanding? Broken bones are not a misunderstanding!” he said.

  “Well—” Mae started.

  “Who assaulted you?” their uncle demanded.

  To her credit, Ember didn’t say anything, just turned her eyes to Mae—to get permission to rat her out or to plead with her to speak up so Ember didn’t have to, Mae wasn’t quite sure.

  Her uncle took it as the latter, though.

  “Mae?” he said.

  Mae’s shoulders slumped as she muttered to herself miserably, “Can I get a freaking break once in a while?”

  “No, you cannot,” he said. “Start talking before I start yelling for the guard and have the entire holding shut down—we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

  Mae glanced at him. “That seems a bit much.”

  “There are foreigners within our walls at the invitation of the council,” her uncle said dismissively. “I wouldn’t put anything past them, and if you tell me that one of them did this, I will hunt that individual down.”

  Mae’s ears perked up. That was interesting, but not for the reason her uncle thought.

  To save others the trouble of being assaulted, Mae admitted, “It wasn’t them.”

  “Then who?” her uncle said as he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. Her nosey relative’s gaze swept over Ember’s form, going from the still-wet patches of blood on her skirt and up to her face, where he quickly zeroed in on her smashed nose.

  But before she could speak, he rapidly reached forward and gripped Mae’s hands.

  Quietly, her uncle said, “I think I know who the culprit is now and why neither of you said anything.”

  Wincing, as she knew just how bad it looked, Mae opened her mouth to say something—object, even—but the caustic glance he threw her and her rather bruised knuckles said silence was the better choice at the moment.

  Mae shifted uncomfortably as she watched him evaluate Ember’s wound. She gave a weak smile that he didn’t even acknowledge. At this point, his attention was entirely focused on Ember, and from the way his mouth had thinned in displeasure, Mae got the feeling that she was going to be whistling a tune just as high as Gareth when the “adults” got through with punishing her for this latest escapade.

  “Sit,” he barked as he finally finished looking his patient over and began to roll up his sleeves to take care of the mess.

  They both sat, Ember with more sobs—after all, here was a receptive audience to her plight—and Mae with what might have been the guiltiest look in all the kingdom of Nardes plastered on her face.

  Mae licked her lips and tried to think of a way out of taking the full blame here, but elected to be silent for the moment. From the intense concentration on Uncle Brandon’s face, he certainly wouldn’t welcome her interfering.

  Not now. It was just her luck. Not one but two family members would catch her red-handed as it was, and she didn’t have any option but to own up to it. Not with this one, anyway.

  Uncle Brandon was the constable of the local guard, and he would find out the truth easily. She also happened to be his least favorite niece, and she well knew it, so the least she could do to offset future trouble was come clean.

  Mae took a deep breath and prepared to say her piece. The hardest thing about admitting a mistake, after all, was owning up to it. But he didn’t even give her that chance.

  “Why did you do this, Mae?” Uncle Brandon snapped in the same brutal tone he would have used had he come upon two robber barons in the night. Her careful wording flew right out of her head the second she heard the anger in his voice. Instead, she fumbled for a response.

  “Uncle Brandon, it’s not what you think,” Mae cried.

  Ember, meanwhile, had stopped whimpering for a second. Maybe because she realized just how serious this was. Or maybe because she couldn’t hear them clearly over the sounds coming from her own throat.

  “I can see with my own two eyes,” Uncle Brandon said. “One victim. One perpetrator. And to think I was about to sic our guards on the innocent foreigners when it was you all along.”

  Mae felt resentment roll down her back. Why was it that she was the one always pinpointed as the troublemaker? He didn’t even want to hear her side.

  Her anger made her words jumbled as she said, “I… We just—”

  Fumbling, she stopped, frustrated. She never fumbled. She never felt anxious.

  Maybe pitying her, maybe feeling guilty, Ember spoke up. “I’m owed some blame here.”

  With the blood splashed all along her front and her face a mess, Mae was actually impressed at how steady Ember’s voice was—she looked like a nightmare.

  Uncle Brandon murmured, “We’ll see about that.”

  That was it for Mae. Frustrated and sore at being blamed—
even if this was mostly her fault—she lashed out.

  “You know I’m not always the bad guy here.”

  “So this wasn’t your fault?” Uncle Brandon replied, leaving her stumped. She couldn’t deny it, but she certainly wanted to argue that there was more to the situation than met the eye.

  Before she could do that, however, Ember surprised her by actually standing up for her. Or trying to, anyway.

  “Truly, Uncle Brandon,” Ember said. “I hit her first.”

  “I don’t care if you attempted to slap her silly first,” Uncle Brandon replied. “It’s you with the fractured nose and enough blood for a lambing on your outfit. Yet I see no corresponding wound on your sister.”

  “I can’t help it if she’s got a poor hook,” Mae muttered.

  Ember shot her a nasty look, and Mae decided it would be much better to be penitent rather than defiant. She didn’t want to lose what little support she had.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” Mae told her still-angry uncle, who wouldn’t be above swatting her on the head for impertinence if it came to that.

  “Mae, one more word out of you, and I’ll make sure your ears are ringing for two days.”

  And just like that, he confirmed the attitude she expected of him. He didn’t like her, and she didn’t like him. Expecting a fair trial would be outrageous. So, giving in and not wanting her ears boxed, Mae stepped back and tossed up her hands.

  When his face softened, just a tad, she couldn’t help adding in one last plea, though.

  “I truly didn’t mean to harm her!” Mae said. “It was just…an accident.”

  He did not look convinced, although he did give her more of his attention.

  “How is your fist hitting her face an accident?” he said.

  “More like a…reflexive punch?” Mae said with a bright smile.

  Maybe she was getting to him. He looked skeptical. But that was better than the righteous indignation when he’d marched up.

  “Hmm,” he murmured. “We’re not all as smart as you like to think you are, Maeryn Darnes, but my eyes see just fine.”

  When pigs fly, Mae thought miserably as she half turned away.

  It was to shield the wetness glimmering in her eyes more than anything else. She was so tired. Tired of being the one always blamed. The one never given the benefit of the doubt.

  Maybe her sister sensed Mae was getting to her breaking point. Or maybe Ember was just tired of not being the center of attention, but she sighed pitifully and said, “Uncle, please, it hurts so.”

  He turned his attention back to her and said, “I’d say so, looking at the damage inflicted.”

  Mae’s mouth twitched in rueful amusement, but this time she said nothing. He wasn’t listening to her anyway.

  As the minutes passed and he softly poked at Ember’s face to get an accurate assessment of what bones went where, Mae dried her leaky eyes and put on an impassive face. She wasn’t going to cry just because someone refused to give her the benefit of the doubt. If she let tears fall every time that happened, well…she’d be more of a crybaby than Gareth.

  “Quite an accidental hit you gave her,” Uncle Brandon said dryly as he raised gentle hands and poked at Ember’s face.

  It was almost a compliment.

  “I didn’t mean to break her nose,” Mae said. “I didn’t think my punch was hard enough for that, but I wasn’t calculating force. I just…reacted.”

  Her uncle glanced at her over his shoulder with a suitably gruff glare. “And what could have possibly been such a sore point that you managed this much damage?”

  Mae muttered something. When Uncle Brandon snapped at her over his shoulder, she jumped to attention.

  “Speak up. No use playing the shrinking flower now when there’s blood on your hands,” he said.

  Mae glared at his back in resentment. He made it sound like she’d killed her sister. But she answered him. Just because she didn’t want to be on the receiving end of another one of his angry glares.

  “We just got in an argument, is all,” Mae said.

  For the third time that morning, miracle of miracles, Ember backed Mae up.

  “Yeah,” she said in a stuffy voice as their uncle set about doing his magic.

  “Well, keep your thoughts to yourself for a moment,” Uncle Brandon said. “You may have gotten into this mess, but it’s up to me to fix it.”

  Mae and Ember exchanged knowing glances.

  Here, now, they were going to get to see something that was rarely seen by the female line of the Darnes clan.

  Real-life magic.

  It wasn’t that it was forbidden for someone of Mae’s sex to see it. It was just that there were few chances. As for the tattooed girls? It never happened. Because none of them had magic.

  It was a punishment from the gods, as far as Mae was concerned. Who wouldn’t want to be able to heal someone with their hands? Or start a fire with a thought? Or grow trees with the flick of a wrist?

  All those gifts and more she’d seen in the holding amongst the males. And not a single one of them appreciated the bounty of their gifts. As little as they were, at least they were something.

  As Mae’s eager gaze gobbled up every motion of her uncle’s gentle touch along Ember’s cheekbones, she was filled with an emotion she rarely succumbed to.

  Envy.

  If I was a boy, I could do that, Mae thought.

  The yearning went through her, flashing in and out so fast that she barely was able to process it. But that was all right; she had already internalized it years before.

  It was a stupid wish. It wasn’t one she particularly wanted to come into fruition physically. But she would have given everything that made her her to feel the fire of power running through her veins.

  Just once.

  6

  With that envy burning in her veins like kerosene, Mae watched her uncle create magic.

  His fingers were calm and sure as he checked for any broken capillaries and displaced bones on Ember’s face. As he did so, his hand thrummed with magic. Mae couldn’t actually see the magic that he was pushing into her sister’s face, but she felt it. The vibrations in the air that hummed like a harp that had been strummed with a quickness. The closer Mae was to her uncle’s working hands, the more she felt his touch, as if it was her being examined instead.

  It made her uncomfortable, but not for the reasons most would have guessed. Instead, it was for something so basic it was almost embarrassing—her tattoos itched. And with every touch of his fingers while he examined his patient, they itched even more.

  But his ministrations were working, despite the magic crawling over her and across the room like an invasive predator, and that was what mattered. Mae watched as the blood still dripping from Ember’s nose dried up and her sister stopped emitting soft whimpers of pain.

  As the distracting noises in the hallway eased, Mae’s sensitive ears focused on something much worse in the air. It wasn’t just spreading silently—her uncle’s magic, that was. It was thrumming like a living thing, creating a series of vibrations that echoed everywhere and throughout her own body. She couldn’t escape it, and as the magic grew stronger and stronger as he called more from within him, Mae felt her body react. The skin underneath her tattoos began to physically respond, even though she wasn’t the one casting. The itching sensation built from what had been the occasional feeling of dryness along her collarbone to the inescapable feeling of fire ants biting a burning path along her neck.

  It was making her miserable.

  Judging by Ember’s dismayed expression, she felt it too, and they shared a look of commiseration that all the females of the holding knew and understood. It was the downside of being born a woman of the Darnes line…well, one of the downsides of the tattoos on each and every one of their collarbones. There were more, but luckily, the only one that seemed to be particularly pernicious was the itching burn.

  As her uncle focused deeper on his work, to the point that he wouldn’t ta
ke notice of anyone and anything else, Mae thought, At least I can take advantage of the distraction.

  And so she did. Licking suddenly dry lips, Mae reached back with her heel, careful to make no sudden movements while keeping her back ramrod straight and eyes forward.

  When he didn’t move, didn’t even shift his eyes, Mae decided to keep it going. Heel raised, she let it drop down.

  Cla-a-ck.

  Mae winced and looked down. She’d meant to hit something other than the floor. When she looked back up, Ember’s eyes were open and staring straight at her.

  She was tracking Mae’s movements with a calculating gaze, but she didn’t move her head. Couldn’t, really, as their uncle held it in his viselike grip. Neither did she speak and wake him from his trance. Instead, she let Mae continue with her secretive act.

  Mae would have said she owed her, but Ember was the reason she was in this bind in the first place, so she’d just call their debt squared.

  Stiffening as she tried again, this time her heel found purchase about two inches off the ground.

  There it is! she celebrated silently. The tome now securely under her foot, she pushed back as casually as she could while extending her leg and hoping he didn’t notice. She wanted to keep the text safe and hidden—just until she could come back for it.

  Stepping forward with a brief stretch, she went back to watching him correct Ember’s nose. It was almost done; Mae could feel it just as she felt the vibrations surrounding her cresting.

  She knew that was so he could hit all of the broken bones in Ember’s nose at once. But it made Mae feel like she was being surrounded by a swarm of bees just waiting to dive and attack along the ring of her neck like it was a target.

  She rolled her neck to ease the discomfort, but that didn’t work. When her extra movements caught his notice, even for just a short period, Mae forced herself to still and focus on something else. Like why her uncle was doing what he was doing instead of how it made her feel.

  Her uncle—any healer’s—focus was always to stabilize the victim. Stop the ailment from growing worse and ease the pain if possible. Assess for triage needs and then move in for the primary surgeries. Her uncle was doing just that now. His dexterous fingers swept all along Ember’s cheeks, up to her brow, over and down the sides of her face, and finally over her lips and chin.