Page 8 of Twisted Magic

“Tell me what you do know,” she prompted, pouring them both wine. An excellent Elal vintage, too. “Perhaps, together, we can puzzle it out.”

“Stronger together?” he asked wryly, referencing her impassioned speech convincing him to stop fighting their relationship and take advantage of it instead. Though he gave her a cutting look with it, a softening in his magic revealed his true feelings. They were stronger together, in every way.

“Absolutely.” She handed him the wine and took the missive. “Let’s take the low-hanging fruit. They want us both back at House El-Adrel.”

“That fruit hangs so low it’s rotting on the ground.”

She raised her glass. “I’ll cross out those lines. We know Katica wants us back. That’s why she sent Ozana. Addressing the next part, the ‘all is forgiven’ bit refers to our escape, surely, but also references Ozana?”

“Possibly,” he allowed, his expression carefully neutral. Jadren had categorically refused to discuss his feelings—even more than Jadren categorically refused to discuss his feelings in general—about murdering his sister. He’d had to defend himself against the murder charge, the violent act witnessed by Refoel wizards, which had led to their plan to execute him. A judgment he’d narrowly escaped, mainly by revealing himself as a scion of the powerful House El-Adrel. No one liked to interfere with the internecine squabbles of high-house heirs, even when that sibling rivalry ended in death. In return, Jadren had agreed to learn from Liat Refoel and be studied in turn, with the aim of controlling his unprecedented abilities.

Ozana had been intent on dragging them back to House El-Adrel, resorting to torturing Selly to ensure Jadren’s compliance. We are aware that she is the key to your happiness. Surely that line referenced El-Adrel’s willingness to use Jadren’s attachment to Selly against him. She in no way thought Jadren bore any guilt or shame for killing his sister, even if he had gruesomely exploded the woman. He hadn’t had a choice. “Do you think they know how you killed Ozana?” she asked.

Jadren met her gaze evenly, hand going to toy with the brass tube hanging from a chain around his neck. Selly doubted he was aware of the gesture. He tended to fidget with it when his thoughts went elsewhere and refused to have the thing any distance from his person, ever since he’d discovered the enchanted artifact—a widget his mother had created and attempted to implant in him—enabled him to heal people besides himself. When reversed, it had allowed Jadren to use his healing magic to destroy, obliterating Ozana.

“They can only know if Refoel told them and so far this pompous house’s clinging to their absurd code of honor means they’ve kept our secret,” Jadren replied.

“That code has worked to our benefit,” Selly felt compelled to point out. “They won’t let anyone, even the Convocation, take us from here against our will. All right, let’s assume El-Adrel doesn’t know how you killed Ozana, only that somehow you did. What does it mean that they say you’ve made your point?”

Jadren heaved a sigh and rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling. “Any number of things. If I were to hazard a guess, which I apparently am being coerced into doing, I’d say that my dear maman thinks I ran away only as a bargaining chip. She won’t believe that I don’t truly want, in the charred cinder of my withered heart, to be Lord El-Adrel after her. Katica can’t conceive of anyone not wanting her power. She’s used that to play her heirs against each other all these years.”

“Do you?” Selly asked.

He lifted his head and gazed at her. Blinked, long and slow. “Do I want to be Lord El-Adrel? Dark arts, no! What would possess you to even ask such a question?”

“It’s a reasonable question,” she answered, studying him.

“Not unless you think I’m enough of a monster that I want to become my mother,” he spat back.

“See, that’s not a reasonable answer. You can head your house without becoming your mother.”

“Oh, and I suppose you believe I should follow the example of the pure-hearted Gabriel, Lord of House Phool?” he sneered. “If my choices are to become a tyrannical megalomaniac, an idealistic idiot merrily leading my house to doom, or a conniving wannabe like Chaim Refoel, then I’ll take option D: none of the above.”

“Or,” she retorted, “you could make the role your own. You’re not one of your mother’s automatons, plodding along mindlessly in the footsteps of others. If you became Lord El-Adrel, you could make the house over into what you want it to be.”

He curled a lip. “Why, Seliah—have you been harboring a secret desire to become Lady El-Adrel? Perhaps all that half-feral swamp-beast behavior of yours has been a cover for a heart that quietly yearns for the power and glory of a high house.”

“Be nice,” she warned him. “You know I don’t care about heading a high house and, for the record, I don’t care if you are Lord El-Adrel or not. But I think your people deserve better. And,” she added after a moment, “the house deserves better.”

“The house is a house. She doesn’t deserve anything. She can’t, because she’s not a person.”

“Then why do you talk about her like a person instead of an ‘it’?”

“Because she’s a right bitch,” he observed without rancor. “You saw what she did to us.”

“She helped us escape,” Selly replied remorselessly. “Besides, I think she wants you to be Lord El-Adrel.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not letting an over-magicked dwelling make life choices for me. Besides which, you’re forgetting a key point here: House El-Adrel already has a head.”

“That could change,” Selly said, letting the words settle with their own weight, but Jadren was already shaking his head.

“That would change only if my powerful wizard of a mother, who also shares an uncanny resistance to death, were to drop dead in the bloom of health and youth.” He pinned her with a pointed look. “And do not say that I could kill her. There’s no way I could defeat her in a duel, even if I wanted her job, which I don’t. Even then, I have several other siblings far more powerful than I who do want the job and would fight for it.”

“But Jadren…”

“No, and that’s final. Let’s stick to the topic at hand. Cross out the line about me making my point.”

Selly wasn’t convinced, but she complied. “The bit about training implies that she knows that you’re seeking to understand your healing ability.”

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