He fumed the entire while, beating out his frustration with a hammer and sheets of metal. A little over an hour passed before scorching fury diminished to cool indignation instead, the rebound of his rational thoughts reminding him that he’d given her free rein of the hoard. And he’d also given her leave to make herself at home.
Blast. It was as much his fault as it was hers, especially since he’d left the journal out on his desk. It could have been anything. Hell, it wasn’t like he’d written on the cover Xavier’s Personal Thoughts and Feelings. Do not open.
Though that was irrelevant, as he’d left the fucking thing open for her to traipse over and find. She hadn’t even needed to crack the spine to uncover his secrets, read his innermost thoughts, and see his fears laid bare. Still, if he had taken that kind of precaution and inscribed it with magical charms, it would have drawn Rosalia like a moth to a flame.
Was it so bad that he wanted children and recognized she could endure what no human or elf could survive without immense suffering? His thoughts wandered as he poured molten metal into casting molds, the mindless repetition of his work becoming an ideal distraction until her scent wafted into the sweltering room on a scant breeze circulating through the forge.
Too stubborn to acknowledge her, he continued beating and shaping metal while the molds cooled. She stood there for a time watching him in absolute silence, and he wondered if remorse had driven her to him.
“Xavier?”
He glanced over his shoulder. She’d donned her leathers and had pinned her hair. “Yes?”
“I’m heading into the city again. I received a tip from a friend about a disagreement between the Mages Guild and the king. Someone close to Mira lives at the tower, and I thought I might see how he’s holding up now that she’s gone.”
He nodded. “All right.”
Rosalia lingered in the door. “You’re welcome to accompany me if a visit to the tower interests you.”
Xavier considered traveling on the shoulder of a woman who had only an hour ago implied her sole value to him resided between her legs despite their burgeoning friendship. He pasted an insincere smile to his face. “It doesn’t, but thank you for the kind offer. I have work to complete.”
Her eyes lingered on his face. She licked her lips, parted them to speak, then slammed her mouth shut again and turned on her heel.
He let her go. What other option did he have?
The Mages Guild wasn’t a wizard’s tower so much as it was a mystical compound, the chief structure a stone spire surrounded by clusters of outbuildings. The single gate lacked proper watchmen, as the guild leaders rightfully assumed there was no one foolish or skilled enough to make it past the gauntlet of magical traps and curses awaiting anyone who dared to trespass.
Technically, there wasn’t anyone foolish enough to trespass on their property. Desperation was another matter—Rosalia was doggedly determined to see the only living man in the world who understood the pain of losing Mira as deeply as she did. Mira had mentioned Bonare receiving private quarters in the mage tower, and to meet him, she had to be lucky enough to find his apartment out of possible dozens of instructors and senior mages dwelling on the upper floors.
Right. This had been a stupid plan, and it became more daunting by the moment as Rosalia stood at the base of the tower, peering through the magnifying visor of her goggles while scanning the dozens of balconies above her. A handful of residents flew black mourning banners from their windows, cool evening wind whipping the fabric beneath the moonlit sky.
If banners were the color of dried blood and hung from a residence’s window, the deceased had been deeply loved, a close relative or even a spouse. Black banners indicated the mourner had merely lost a friend. Most were the latter, ink black with fine golden print declaring the names of recently deceased, but only two were deep, rust red.
Salazar Omira. Gone too soon to Moritan’s embrace.
Her gaze darted to the second banner. Mira Valiente. May Islena and Inja welcome you home.
Rosalia’s heart caught in her chest and anxiety fizzed through her stomach. If it weren’t for her, Mira may have had the chance to flee the city and seek asylum at the tower. Instead of mourning Mira, Bonare would be shielding her inside. Rosalia owed him an apology at the very least.
Without Xavier’s guidance, she relied on her gifts over fortune, tugged up the gloves that had become a parting gift from her fellow thief, and began to scale the stones. If she could evade apprentice magicians, magical hounds, and gods know what other security measures she’d passed, then anything that followed had to be as easy as taking candy from a nobleman’s baby.
As far as she knew, from what little the mages allowed into common knowledge, the uppermost level of the thirteen-floor beauty belonged to the guild’s master sorcerer, the three levels below it to the senior staff. And as luck would have it, Bonare dwelled on the tenth level.
Thank the gods for small miracles.
Stone yielded to the master-level enchantments in her gloves, each fingerpad sticking against the tower surface. She ascended one floor at a time until she reached her goal. At last, she heaved herself through and onto the hard floor, muscles screaming for relief because she’d yet to ever climb so far. The tallest residence she’d ever burgled in Enimura had been four stories.
Her body had hated her by the time she reached the tower’s sixth floor, and each level thereafter had been a fresh hell, her thighs straining, arms burning, and sweat beading over her brow. So much for being in shape, her athleticism and endurance better suited to long sprints instead of a dizzying climb that seemed to stretch into the heavens.
The gloves may have prevented her from slipping and plummeting to her doom, but they didn’t alleviate the burden on her muscles. Still shaking, she stumbled to her feet and glanced down below.
“Freeze,” a voice spoke behind her, barely a hiss penetrating the otherwise silent room. Before Rosalia could spin toward the source, an unusual, frigid weight blanketed her body from head to toe and locked her joints. Gentle snow flurries danced around her on a magical wind, carrying small flakes of frost over her leathers. “You must have a death wish, assassin.”
Assassin?
The cold intensified, not just chilly, but biting, penetrating her muscles and seeping into the bone marrow—an unbearable cold she’d never before experienced that brought tears to her eyes. She blinked a few times, suddenly petrified. Her gifts hadn’t worked, and now she’d die alone in the tower before she ever retrieved the mirror.
Unless… “Bonare?” she chattered out.
If his freezing spell hadn’t paralyzed her, the fresh realization of how absolutely fucked she was would have done the trick. What if she’d entered the wrong apartment after all and this was some other mage, some more experienced magician with a fireball capable of knocking her out of her damned shoes? And possibly over the rail now that she was at his mercy.
No sooner than the first inkling of true panic tickled down her spine, did a warmth bloom in her chest and spread through her body from the base of her spine to her toes. The weight lifted, mysteriously gone. Rosalia pivoted on a heel and raised her wristbow to what she presumed was eyelevel of a hooded magician standing a few yards away.
“The hell?” he muttered. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You shattered my spell. Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
The mystery wizard cast back his hood, uncovering the darkly tanned face of Mira’s boyfriend, though there were dark circles beneath his eyes and his goatee hadn’t been trimmed in days.
Overcome with relief, Rosalia lowered her cowl with her right hand.
Bonare’s eyes went wide. Despite the weapon aimed at his chest, he extinguished the flames surrounding his right hand then crossed the room to her in one step. He barely left behind a faded afterimage during the teleportation. “Rosalia? It’s truly you?”
“Yes.”
Before she
could respond, he swatted aside the bow and dragged her close. She stumbled forward against him and landed against a hard chest, taken off balance. “Thank the fucking gods for minor miracles. I can’t believe you survived the purge.”
“I can’t either.” Too stunned to resist, she sank against Bonare and let his strong arms surround her. Instead of the resentment and anger she’d expected, he radiated only warmth, the ebb and flow of genuine relief rising from him like steam from the beach sand at low tide. He crushed her close, shoulders shuddering once, then twice.
A few silent minutes passed in shared grief, of holding each other up until Rosalia swallowed hard knot tightening her throat. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Bonare. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?” Bonare tilted his head back and gazed down at her, liquid silver eyes duller than she recalled.
“Causing Mira’s death. She died retrieving my things.”
“Shhh. Sit with me.”
“But—”
“Just sit with me. Please.”
Bonare relocated her from the window to a bench nearby then lowered into the seat beside her. Unable to look at him, she twisted her hands together and focused on her chipped nails. “Look at me.” She couldn’t. Her shoulders shook again as he pushed a handkerchief against her fingers. “Look at me and listen to me well.”
For a man who should have loathed her, the soothing timbre of his voice wrapped around her like a hug instead, as comforting as the arms that had held her moments ago. “You owe me no apologies, as you are not to blame for Mira’s death,” he said, moisture shimmering in his eyes. “She died as all of your brethren did, on the whim of a mad king and his mediocre pet. We know this. Each magician of the Mages Guild knows this, from our wisest sage to our youngest apprentice, but we don’t know why and can only speculate. Can you tell us anything?”
She nodded, sniffling.
A long exhale whistled from his lungs. “I prayed for someone to survive, for anyone to emerge from this tragedy with honest knowledge of what happened between the crown and Thieves Guild. Thank the gods,” he said hoarsely, voice thick with emotion. “We were positive no one lived. They told us there were no survivors but the ones due to be executed.”
“Did they not tell you about the ones sold to the prison camp?”
Bonare’s brows flew toward his hairline, practically disappearing beneath the wavy ebon strands. “Prison camp?”
Leaving out Xavier’s direct involvement, Rosalia told him of the dragon vault keeper, her infiltration of the city jail, and her eventual rescue of every living thief on board the Noble Sword. He stared at her, eyes growing larger by the second as she spun her tale of the mirror.
“The Devil’s Eyeglass? Seriously? You probably know more about it than I do. Ancient magical lore isn’t my particular school of study as I prefer to practice modern schools of enchantment.” He rubbed his chin and gazed toward a book shelf. “But there’s someone who could tell you more.”
“Who?”
His features tightened. “Just as I lost Mira, High Enchantress Elora lost a nephew during the raids. I didn’t know him well, but he studied as a student here for several years. His gimmick was all about combining magical talents with his sleight-of-hand skills.”
Rosalia swallowed. “Salazar?”
After a curt nod, Bonare squeezed her hand. “Yes. Only fourteen. A prodigy among us, but still a damned kid. I guess when the royal guard mobilized into the city, they were operating on a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy. A few civilians witnessed it, said Salazar tried to protect another thief in the gang operating near our office in the Twilight Gardens, and the guard cut him down. They didn’t care that he was wearing mage’s robes.”
“Gods. Getting in their way was crime enough to kill a kid?”
“Apparently.” He rose from the bench and dusted his hands down his immaculate robes. “Will you come relay everything you told me to our guild leader?”
“Yes, of course.”
With Bonare as her escort, she viewed the mage tower’s residential floor without fear of being reduced to a pile of molten slag. A curved corridor awaited them beyond his personal chambers, the floors padded by decorative carpets and rugs. Multiple wooden shelves and small tables lined the wall, each one sporting a different set of shining trophies, magical knickknacks, and random trinkets.
The mages lived in the lap of luxury, or at least, their instructors did. A chisel wedged between her ribs when she thought of Mira enjoying the splendor of the tower. This was where she should have spent the rest of her days until she chose to step down from her career.
“This place is beautiful.”
“It is. Mira loved to visit. Did you know she had a little magical talent?”
“What?”
Bonare grinned. “Just a small bit. We’d just discovered it the day of our lunch date and were going to…were—” He swallowed down his grief and chuckled through the pain, voice thick with heartache. “I thought with practice we could coax her powers to develop and flourish over time. I hoped for her to live here with me, to marry me, but she didn’t want to leave you. Gods, she loved you, Rosalia. You were the sister she always wanted.”
Rosalia squeezed his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
He patted her knuckles with his other hand. “You didn’t do this. There are only two people responsible, and both dwell at Sandfire Castle. Gods, I can’t tell you how much I miss her.”
Sconces ignited with blue flames to illuminate the path ahead, each one flaring when she and Bonare reached them. They turned into a central chamber and took a lift to the thirteenth level where the master of the tower lived. While it crept upward, Bonare studied her.
“You’ll have to share with me how you managed to infiltrate the tower. If I didn’t watch you crawl over the balcony, I’d have never realized you were there. Didn’t set off a single damned ward.”
Rosalia considered sharing her secret with Bonare and his superior. If Adriano could be trusted and the dozen flags dangling from the windows outside meant anything, the Mages Guild was no friend of the crown. Killing the guild leader’s nephew didn’t help their cause, and Bonare certainly had no reason to betray her. “Everything will make sense once I speak with the high enchantress.”
“All right.”
By the time they reached the thirteenth floor’s lavish receiving chamber, Rosalia had her nerves under control, tamping down her fears with cool logic despite Xavier’s absence from her side. She didn’t need him, but she wanted him there, all the more reason to find a cordial middle ground between them once she returned to the hoard.
“She’ll be in bed by now, but I suspect she’ll be eager to hear your story. A moment, my friend.”
Rosalia rubbed her sweating palms against her cloak while he knocked. Each time his fist struck, tendrils of magic glimmered over the door’s wooden grains and glowed golden-red. She watched, mystified and enchanted by the beauty that suffused every inch of the Mages Guild tower.
“What is it, Bonare?” A woman’s voice filled the chamber, coming from every direction at once, resonant with a striking blend of authority and amiable, grandmotherly warmth. “The hour is quite late. Who did you bring here?”
“I’ve brought a very important visitor, Your Grace. You’ll want to meet with her.” He glanced over a shoulder at Rosalia, his light smile reassuring.
All Rosalia could pray was that the woman didn’t toss her from the nearest window. She didn’t know how much to expect from her uncanny development of supernatural luck and dreaded depending on it to save her from a master sorceress.
Once the locks released and the door swung open, colors in the wooden grains faded as an older woman emerged. She didn’t fit the image in Rosalia’s head of a high enchantress, her hair a cloud of rose pink and silver curls surrounding an oval face the color of warm sandstone. While Bonare was native-born, Elora had been blessed with the high cheekbones of Nairubian royalty and all the traits to match. Sh
e folded her arms against her chest, mercurial eyes darting from Bonare to Rosalia. Then her breath caught.
“She’s a—”
“A surviving thief, Your Grace.”
High Enchantress Elora swept her arm toward the open door, a silent invitation to enter her suite.
With her heart in her throat, Rosalia followed the two mages inside their guild leader’s chambers, into an elegant sitting room with a panoramic view of the distant city and the coastline. A silver moon shone over the black waters in turbulent ripples and waves. Cushioned divans upholstered in rich cobalt velvet, plush royal blue armchairs, and pale silver sofas made up the heavily furnished parlor. Most table surfaces displayed ornate candles, crystal figurines, and books on pedestals.
“Please, make yourself comfortable. I sense your journey to our tower wasn’t as easy as walking through the doors.”
“It wasn’t.”
Once she took a seat on one of the chaises, Rosalia fought to remain still under the scrutinizing—and eerily familiar—gaze of the most known mage in all of Enimura. A moment of silence passed before Elora murmured, “You didn’t come for protection.” A pause. “You don’t need it if you’ve survived on your own without us in the days since the purge.”
Wringing her hands in her lap, Rosalia nodded. So much for not fidgeting. “I came for Bonare, but he asked me to share the truth with you.”
Elora didn’t interrupt her to ask questions or to lay blame, both mages a silent audience through the second telling of the story. At the conclusion, Elora leaned across the small distance between the settees and placed a weathered, dark brown palm over Rosalia’s knuckles and squeezed with surprising strength.
“It wasn’t your doing, Rosalia. You may have stolen a mirror as contracted, but you didn’t misuse the royal guard to commit genocide. Many good men and women died that day, and I am not the only sorcerer who lost a loved one. Now, tell me what we of the Mages Guild may do to help bring this bastard down.”
For the first time since her return from Ilyria, Rosalia felt she could breathe again. Her shoulders dropped forward and the tension melted from her spine. “I need to find the Legacy of the Divine Order. They were split from the Eyeglass, but I don’t know the first thing about finding them.”
Fool's Gold: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 2) Page 8