Page 2 of Twisted Magic

Giving him the side-eye, she blew out a huff of exasperation. “You’re telling me that you were giving poor Pinny grief, refusing to take the missive from her, and you don’t even know who it’s from or whether it’s good or bad news?”

“Oh, it’s definitely bad news.” No question of that.

“Jadren, you don’t know that until you look,” she said in her all-patient-and-reasonable tone that made him perversely want to be even more exasperating.

“Seliah, darling.” He rounded on her. “Haven’t you learned by now that it’s all bad news? People don’t pay for Ratsiel couriers and expensive stationery to send happy chirpy thoughts. People only invest time and coin in enterprises they expect will deliver even greater benefit in return, which is always at the expense of someone else.”

“Hmm.” She pursed her full lips, amber eyes brightening. “Perhaps I should start sending you happy, chirpy notes.”

“With what coin?” he retorted, pointing out the obvious. “You and I are the impoverished charity cases living on House Refoel’s good will, shamelessly exploiting their guilt and repressed desire. I doubt your admirer, Chaim, will extend his generosity in paying for you to correspond with House Phel to sending your wizard—with whom you share a bed nightly instead of with him as he so longs for—unnecessary love notes.”

She frowned, narrowing her eyes. “Why do you assume they’d be love notes?”

Amused by her despite himself, and annoyed that she didn’t dispute the bit about Chaim, he decided not to touch that one. “Fine. Who is the missive from?”

She turned it over in her hands. Deliberately, he didn’t look at the thing, watching her face instead. “It’s sealed with the El-Adrel crest.”

No wonder Chaim had been so fired up to get the letter to him. No doubt the lecherous wizard was chortling with joy at the prospect of the El-Adrel claw poised to yank Jadren back to the house of his birth and his sadistic mother. Jadren’s stomach curdled with dread. “Burn it,” he advised.

“What? No!” Seliah danced back and held the envelope away from him, above her head, as if that would do anything to keep it from him if he should take the perverse notion to lay hands on the thing. Probably the magic seal was keyed to him and who knew what vile flower would blossom from it should he touch it. “It could be important.” Seliah’s eyes were wide with alarm.

“I don’t care.” He didn’t even have to fake firmness in that statement. To his amazement and relief, he found a core of certainty in himself about the decision. Liat might be frustrated with their lack of progress in untangling his scarred-over psyche, but apparently he had made some sort of incremental recovery after all. He could make at least one decision. “Burn it,” he repeated, pointing at one of the fire-elemental-crowned torches ringing the terrace. “Do it, Seliah.”

She got that stubborn line between her brows. “No. You don’t order me around, Jadren. If—”

He lunged for her and she shrieked, mostly in surprise, moving fast but not fast enough to evade him. Grabbing her with one arm around her slim waist and seizing her wrist—she was tall, but not taller than he was—he levered her arm down and toward the nearest torch. She fought him, of course, but this wasn’t the first time he’d had to wrestle a crazed Seliah for her own good. Except this time she wasn’t crazed at all. She fought him with slippery determination, twisting nearly out of his grip and using every dirty move she knew—including a few he’d taught her—to escape his grip.

But he’d contained her before, and at times when she was far more volatile than this. In her feral and demented state, she became wildly unpredictable, but in her right mind, she was a calculated fighter, applying rational choices and a smidge less conviction. Only the truly crazed would attempt to injure their loved ones, and Seliah loved him, despite all good sense. She didn’t want to hurt him and that hampered her. She’d also forgotten about his magic.

He might be shit at healing on command, or doing any fancy enchantments, but he still possessed his fundamental wizardry. He didn’t even need to employ any El-Adrel tricks or be all that skilled at manipulating elementals. Any wizard worth their salt could instruct a tame elemental that was already bound to a task. Reaching out with a lick of magic, he commanded the closest fire elemental to abandon its torch and leap onto the scroll Seliah desperately tried to keep out of his reach.

She emitted an ear-splitting shriek at a volume he hadn’t known her slim body could produce, shocking him enough that he flinched—and she wrested herself and the scroll away. Then, arms cartwheeling, an almost comical look of surprise on her face, Seliah fell into the nearby hot pool.

~2~

The water closed over Selly’s head, filling her nose and ears, stinging her eyes, flooding bitter into her mouth before she belatedly thought to close it. Thrashing, she righted herself from the shocking immersion—then battled the strong hands grappling her.

“No!” she yelled at Jadren, the obstinate idiot. She clutched the scroll, holding it away from him. “I’m not letting you burn this message.”

“I won’t need to,” he retorted, hanging onto her, “as its impromptu drowning will have no doubt finished the job the fire began. Now stop behaving like a lunatic and let me fish you out of there, you half-feral swamp creature! Are you hurt?”

She shoved drenched and tangled hair out of her eyes with the crook of her elbow, which worked about as well as you’d think. “I can stand up in this pool. It’s not as if I could drown.”

Jadren scowled at her, wizard-black eyes stark and glittering in his pale-skinned face, auburn hair and beard catching the firelight from the torches and echoing the fiery streaks in the sunset sky. “You could have hit your head,” he insisted, yanking on her arm. “Stop being a fool and let me see to you.”

Calculating, she put on a pained expression. “Oof, maybe I did hit something. I feel all weak and dizzy.”

He cursed, a frantic light in his eyes, and he gentled his hold, reaching with both hands for her. “I knew it. Let me—”

Flipping her grip, she yanked him into the pool, delighting in his garbled shout of surprise as he tumbled in head-first beside her. He surfaced immediately, glaring daggers at her and sputtering in a most inelegant fashion. “You infuriating minx!” he snarled. “You wretched, ungrateful, traitorous Familiar.”

He lunged at her and, shrieking with laughter, she attempted to evade him. No such luck in such a confined space. She did manage to hurl the scroll out of reach, however, sending it soggily skidding across the patio, where it fetched up against the low garden wall, safe from Jadren’s unreasonable vindictiveness for the moment.

“You’ll pay for that nasty trick,” Jadren declared, pinning her to the low, prettily tiled ledge over which a clear sheet of water tumbled into the pool. He wound his other hand into her hair, holding her in place with a firm grip in the sodden mass at the base of her skull, levering his weight against her, their bodies pressed together. The hot and hard portions as well.

Oh, yes. She shivered, making a production of it, since she wasn’t the least bit cold in the very warm water. It said something that Jadren still felt hot in contrast, his wizard’s magic shimmering along her skin like miniature lightning bolts, firing her already aroused nerves. She met his gaze eye for eye, lifting her chin defiantly. Well, as best as she could with his iron grip in her hair. “I’d like to see you try, Wizard,” she hissed.

His magic flared, along with his palpable desire. “I’m going to make you apologize,” he informed her, “and beg for my forgiveness.”

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