Page 33 of Twisted Magic

“When you are Lord El-Adrel,” Seliah continued thoughtfully, “you can investigate and dissolve the conspiracy between Elal, Sammael, and El-Adrel. You could expose their treachery. The Convocation would celebrate you as a hero!”

“You’re laying it on a bit thick now,” he informed her wryly. Though Seliah was right. He’d have a much easier time doing everything if he headed up El-Adrel. Power could be handy. For so many reasons. And he wouldn’t be a minion of anyone else’s, which held definite appeal. “It’s going to suck,” he confided. “Being in charge, especially since neither of us is a power-mad megalomaniac interested only in furthering our insane schemes.”

“We could always take up a few schemes as a hobby. Dabble in megalomania on a small scale. A creative outlet, if you will.”

“I always knew you were more than half crazy.” Absurdly, he nearly laughed at her sally.

“And yet you love me anyway.” Her full lips quirked in a half smile.

“I suspect I love you because of it, which says something about me.”

“Birds of a crazy feather.”

“Well, my crazy birdie lover, your plumage is covered in blood, so I suspect mine is also. We’d better get cleaned up before we go confront whoever the house didn’t eat and convince them to accept me as Lord El-Adrel.”

“I doubt the house ate them,” Seliah replied. “I think she redeposited them elsewhere.”

Jadren regarded her in considerable bemusement. “Did the house tell you that?”

“You laugh, but you have yet to acknowledge that I was right about the house all along.”

“True,” he conceded. “You were right and you told me so. Sufficient?”

She nodded. “Sweet words, indeed, though I could wish for happier circumstances. Let’s go brave the minions of El-Adrel.”

“This won’t be easy,” he warned her.

“Nothing fun ever is.”

A laugh escaped him. “Help me stand?”

“Asking for help? You must be crazed, indeed.” But she shouldered herself under his arm, levering them both to their feet.

He braced for the sight of the gore-splattered room but, to his vast surprise, the pretty, airy, and sunlit rooms shone pristine. No signs of the duel remained, not even the magic-dead artifacts remained. Only his mother’s—his late-mother’s—lethal darts lay scattered across the polished wood floor. The chains must have dissolved along with her. Good riddance.

“Those darts extruded themselves from you as you healed,” Seliah said, following his gaze to the inert things. “You took them all into yourself. Not a one touched me or Fyrdo. It was stupidly fucking noble of you.”

“My new middle name.” He surveyed the room, still not sure of his own perceptions. “Where is all the blood—why is it only on us?”

“The house absorbed it all,” Fyrdo answered in a broken, wounded voice. “Katica is now a part of the house she loved. The house that birthed her. The house that betrayed her in the end.”

Jadren made himself go to his father, to look him in the eye, both of them smeared with the blood of the woman who’d been so many things to them both, a figure of tortured love, the queen who’d ruled them utterly. Who knew how they’d emerge from this utter collapse of her power over them?

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it, tepid and weak as those words sounded.

“Sorry?” Fyrdo repeated, bewildered, scornful. “You murdered her. Your own mother. In cold blood.”

There had been nothing cold about it. His fury had blazed hot, an immolation to cleanse them all from the insistent taint of corruption.

“I had no choice,” he told his father, softly, with all the remorse he felt for this one person who’d ever loved him, who’d been the sole reason he’d survived to see this day. “She would have killed Seliah, and probably you, too, for refusing to help her against us. I couldn’t allow her to keep doing these things. I couldn’t let her dig her hooks into me again.” Literally and metaphorically.

Fyrdo nodded, tears falling freely. He lifted a hand, let it fall. “You won’t understand this but, despite everything, I loved her.”

“Oh, Father.” Jadren had to swallow to loosen his throat against his own very real tears of grief. No, he wouldn’t ever mourn Katica El-Adrel, but he could and would grieve for the mother she’d never been. The woman he’d loved as a child, with all the fierce and innocent attachment that somehow managed to endure even over years of abuse. If he hadn’t loved her, maybe he’d have found a way to separate himself from her before this. “I do understand,” he said quietly. “Sometimes we love despite our better judgment. All we can do is try to live by that good judgment and let our hearts do as they will.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” Fyrdo said, eyes unfocused. “I can’t live in this house that killed her.”

Jadren hesitated, feeling he should correct that statement, wondering at how his father had already rewritten history to make House El-Adrel the villain and not his beloved son. And yet, he couldn’t refuse that favor. He couldn’t bear for his father to hate him. So he only nodded. “There’s time to decide. Let’s get cleaned up and you can rest.”

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