Page 35 of Twisted Magic

She nodded, mostly out of agreeable habit, not really seeing the march of numbers at the nexus points where moon and water magic showed her highest scores. Bending most of her attention to Jadren’s scorecard, she tried to make sense of it. “Isn’t this column healing magic?” she asked with a frown.

“Yup.”

He continued to watch her, tension riding him, saying nothing more.

“Unless I’m reading it wrong, it looks like you have almost no healing magic.”

“You’re reading it right.”

She looked up. “Then you don’t have healing magic.”

“Nope.”

“Then how…” She wrestled with putting her confusion into words.

“A question for the sages,” Jadren replied. “Or for my sainted late-mother, who won’t be answering any questions now.”

“That’s why you tried so hard to negotiate with her,” Selly realized aloud. “You hoped for answers.”

“No hope of that now,” he said bleakly.

“We’ll find a way,” she assured him, with optimism she didn’t feel. “Maybe her co-conspirators will be able to shed some light.”

“If I brutalize them enough?” Jadren asked sarcastically, but stared at the blood on his hands.

“Maybe you should wash.” After all, she had been nearly desperate to get clean, to wash the evidence away, and Katica hadn’t been her parent. She’d had the luxury of hating the woman with unadulterated loathing, not a conflicted emotion in her. Selly couldn’t imagine murdering her own mother or father—or really anyone at all. She only provided the power for Jadren to do it, which she knew didn’t excuse her or protect her from equal guilt. But she also didn’t have to make that terrible decision.

Jadren threw her an irritated glance. “Don’t back off your convictions now, poppet. Blood-spattered monster striding into the great hall is what you envisioned and that’s what you shall get.”

“That’s what they will get,” she corrected, with satisfaction.

“Let’s get this over with.” He buckled Mr. Machete to his hip, just in case it came to that, and crooked an elbow for her to take his arm, then winced. “Never mind.”

Though she had to compose herself to look nonchalant, she slipped a hand through the opening, his sleeve damp and sticky with the gore, not dried as on his skin. “There is nothing you could be or do that would keep me from touching you, Wizard,” she said, meeting and holding his stark gaze.

“I hope you never have cause to retract that sweeping statement,” he retorted, but he laid a hand over hers on his arm, squeezing her fingers.

As if they’d been called to assembly, the wizards and familiars of House El-Adrel awaited them in the great hall where Selly had eaten dinner seated at a table on the elevated dais on her first visit to the house. She’d sat there stewing in anxiety and confusion, uncertain of whether Jadren cared for her and was trying to protect her or if he’d been bent on betrayal all along and she’d been a fool to trust him.

Sliding him a surreptitious glance, she marveled at how far they’d come since that day—and how fortunate she was that this man loved her. His skin, pale as white marble, made his handsome face look hard and sculpted like some mythical being. The dried blood darkened his beard, clinging there where it flaked off his cheekbones. His beautiful mouth sat in stern lines, wizard-black eyes glittering like obsidian as he swept the room with his contemptuous gaze, playing the murderous conqueror to the hilt.

He also drew lightly but steadily on her magic—one reason she’d have made sure to touch him no matter how grisly he looked—maintaining the wards he’d erected around them.

But nothing flew at them, no surprise attacks as he’d dourly predicted. Instead, the crowd parted for them, creating an aisle up the center, leading to a grand chair Selly recognized as being Katica’s from that dinner. The table, however, had vanished or been pushed off to the side, along with the other chairs from that night, leaving only the one on the dais, like a throne from a fairytale. The same banner hung vertically behind, glowing white, diagonally bifurcated by a lighting bolt worked in metals of all shades, seeming to repeatedly strike the ground, a dazzling work of art created by some magic Selly didn’t know. It seemed to be suspended from nothing, well below the high-arched glass ceiling, showing glorious sky above.

As Jadren proceeded through the crowd, his gaze fixed straight ahead, the wizards and familiars bowed deeply, then continued to sink to one knee, remaining there in a posture of humble fealty.

“Maybe this will be easier than we thought,” she murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Jadren to hear.

“Or they plan to trap us up against that wall and, once we’re cornered, attack en masse,” he replied, just as quietly, far more cynically.

“I’m sure the house won’t let that happen.”

“I wish I shared your certainty.” On the heels of his words, a shifting sound clicked through the mostly silent hall, like scales sliding against each other, growing gradually louder. A few murmurs of surprise and dismay ran through the crowd. The sensation of movement beneath her feet, now familiar, had Selly smiling. Sure enough, behind the throne and banner, the wall peeled itself apart, curling like old paint—or dried blood—and revealed a set of doors three times as tall as a person. In stately splendor, they swung outwards, revealing a verdant garden with meticulously trimmed trees and roses trained to climb in intricate patterns on stone walls that looked as old as anything in the house.

“The queen’s garden!” someone exclaimed.

“I’ve never heard of a queen’s garden and, even if I had, it’s not supposed to be there,” Jadren confided to Selly. “Is there nothing the house won’t do for you?”

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