Page 84 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

“In private? Why?” I asked. Anxiety spiked in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time Marcus looked so serious.

He shifted uneasily in his chair. “I have information that’s relevant, but it’s of a… somewhat personal nature,” he told me. “I think you may want to process it without any additional eyes on you.”

“Is it something I’m going to have to tell these guys?” I asked, waving a hand at the people around us. Marcus shrugged. Isabella and the vampires watched, their attempts at pretending not to pay attention ranging from Oscar-worthy—Vic—to nonexistent—Gwendoline.

“That is entirely up to you,” he said.

“Real helpful,” I muttered.

I weighed my options. If it was bad enough to make Marcus serious, then it must have been a big deal. If we talked about it in private, but it was important to the work we were doing, and I had to listen to him tell the others… At least if I had them in the room when he told me, I would be able to turn to them for support. “Look, just tell me, okay? If we’re keeping everyone on the same page, we might as well do it properly.”

Marcus looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “As you wish.” He heaved a sigh and rubbed at his temple, then began. “Some time ago, I knew a very powerful pair of witches. They found out they were being hunted.” He spoke quietly but intensely, his eyes firmly on mine. I leaned forward in my seat. “Another witch, desperate for power, intended to take theirs from them and kill them both, along with their young child.

“They knew that they had too much to lose to go on the attack, and so they threw everything they could into their defenses. They prepared to face the dark witch, but knew that if they lost, the consequences would be disastrous. Not just for them, but for all of us. In an effort to protect the magical world, they began to work on making their own version of an ancient artifact that would allow them to store their magic, keeping it locked away until it could be accessed by the right person. The two of them were not only powerful but immensely skilled and dedicated. It took them some time, but they managed to create an ascendancy array—something that hadn’t been accomplished for hundreds of years.”

I couldn’t look away from Marcus. We might as well have been the only two people in the world. He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was saying, right?

Marcus removed his glasses. Without them, his eyes looked smaller, sadder. There were two little pink marks on his nose from the pads of his glasses, the sort of tiny detail that my mind always latched onto when I was on the brink of free-fall.

“Their names were Miranda and Ewan Argent. They were incredible,” he told me softly. “They built up wards and safeguards for their daughter, so that if anything happened to them, she would be sent away somewhere safe. She was only a toddler at the time, and they knew she would adapt to her new life. Every other drop of magic they had, they put into the array. It was still a risk, of course. If the pieces of the artifact fell into the wrong hands, they could be used as a weapon, but it was still the safest route. The ascendancy array’s true power would be locked away, inaccessible until it was found by the only person who could use it.

“Miranda was an exceptional inventor, and Ewan understood magical theory unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Their greatest innovation with their version of the ascendancy array was figuring out how to seal the true potential of the device so that only their heir could truly channel their power. They made sure that their magic would be kept safe until their daughter was ready to claim it.”

I was leaning forward in my chair, elbows on my knees, and hands clenched together into a white-knuckled tangle.

“They were my parents,” I said hollowly. “You knew they were my parents this whole time?”

“We’re going to give you two the room,” Gabriel said, stepping forward and brushing a hand against my shoulder.

“But—” Lissa began with a petulant tone, and Gabriel cut her off.

“Now,” he said with steel in his voice.

Isabella and the vampires filed out quickly. Gabriel went last, and I heard him hesitating at the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from Marcus.

“I wasn’t sure,” Marcus said. “Miranda and Ewan were very dear to me, but with lifespans like ours, friendships are different. I had been in Europe for fifty or so years when I got word of what had happened. I never got the chance to meet you when you were a baby. I sometimes think that if I had been there, if they had been able to get in touch with me…” He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “As soon as I got word of what they were facing, I returned, but I was too late. They were gone. So were you.”

“You were trying to find me,” I said. My voice sounded distant and flat. “That was why you were traveling around? My apprenticeship was never about me, it was about my parents.”

“No,” Marcus said. “Well, yes. Just… I looked for you, of course I did, but your parents were too smart to leave any hint as to where they had sent you. I searched for years, and as much as it pains me to admit it, eventually I gave up. I had always been somewhat nomadic, but I felt particularly untethered. I wandered from place to place, intending to avoid attachment.”

He sighed and rubbed his face. “I had failed two of my dearest friends in a way that could have led to the end of magic as we know it. I had failed their child. I felt… poisonous. Like I had outlived my usefulness.”

“Then, why the fuck did you decide to teach me?” I asked.

Marcus smiled ruefully. “I had heard about a rather excellent hotpot place in your town,” he explained. “I wanted to try it out—you know how partial I am to a good dramatic dining experience. As soon as I drove into town, I could feel your magic. Wild, untrained. Confused. Lost.”

I winced, thinking back to the first moments where my magic had manifested. During my first ever experience with PMS, I’d accidentally destroyed half of my science classroom, and had done something to the neighbor’s hedges that made them start eating small birds.

“I had been…” Marcus huffed out a laugh as he put his glasses back on. “I had been moping. For an entire decade, I’d been punishing myself instead of trying to do better. I didn’t train you because of who your parents were, Evangeline. I trained you because I didn’t want you to feel as lost as I did. And, selfishly, it felt like a second chance—an opportunity to make up for my past failings by being there for a young magic user who needed help.”

“When did you figure it out?” I asked. “When did you realize who I was?”

“I suspected it when you began looking for the array,” Marcus told me. “There was other things I could explain away—you have some resemblance to them, of course, but back when we knew each other, glamours were all the rage, and they changed their physical appearances regularly. I didn’t know which traits were their real ones. But… the look in your eye when you got the case… it reminded me so much of your mother, and then…” He shook his head. “There were only so many things that I could brush off as coincidences.”

“You should have told me,” I said. It should have come out angrier, but I was just so goddamn tired. Too much was hitting me in quick succession, and I was just completely overwhelmed, trying to doggy paddle to dry land as wave after wave of bullshit crashed over me.

“I should have. But, in all honesty, I hoped I was wrong.”

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