Page 68 of The Faceless Mage

And yet… There was one thing she had not yet tried. One thing she’d been cautioned never to reveal.

But the Raven already knew about her magic. Already knew what she was capable of. And if mirror mages were so feared, there must be a reason. Maybe her magic could be used for something far more powerful than simply changing her face.

Now that she’d reached the end of this road, if she were to fail anyway, she would far rather die here than in Melger’s dungeons.

So she bolted. At least, she tried, but her ankle folded under her, and her legs gave way. Instead of fleeing towards the forest, she fell to her knees by the edge of the pond, and ended with her arms held behind her, her captor looming over her as she stared at their reflections in the water.

And still, though he grasped her wrists in an unbreakable grip, he did not hurt her, and the realization gave her hope.

Leisa gathered the last of her strength and determination and focused on the water. Fixed her gaze on the Raven’s face reflected in the moonlit pool. She couldn’t see much, but she could see enough, and she could remember the shape of his mask—the flat black metal, the delicate tracery, the empty eyeholes.

She envisioned them. Held them. And then… she changed them.

Changing objects was never as simple as changing herself. It required every bit of energy she had to give, even when she was not already exhausted.

But somehow, Leisa’s desperation summoned a surge of magic. It came from somewhere deep, and it hurt, as her magic had never hurt before. But it locked onto the mask that hid the Raven’s face, seized on its form and its nature, and made it something else entirely.

Metal softened and flowed. Grew thin and delicate. A new pattern appeared—flowers and leaves on a white background.

The enspelled steel became a mask of thinnest white linen, embroidered with delicate stitches. And as Leisa watched, darkness encroaching on the edges of her vision, the linen fluttered loose and fell away, unheeded, to the ground.

The last thing she saw was eyes.

The Raven’s eyes. They glowed and burned with power beneath his hood, and Leisa somehow marveled at their beauty even as she finally let go and surrendered fully to the darkness.

Chapter 20

Later, he would recall the strangest details about that moment. A tiny cloud crossing the face of the moon. The quiet plop of a frog or a fish into the murky waters of the pond. The scrap of white linen lying in the mud. And her pale, broken form falling towards the water.

He was frozen—his mind and body unmoored from the unrelenting compulsion that drove him. For the first time in ten years, no other presence tainted his thoughts.

He was free.

So why was his first thought ofher?

Why could he not hold back the trembling of his hands as he realized that he would not be forced to take her life?

A splash drew him back to the moment and enabled him to move—to pull her out of the shallow water where she’d fallen. When she lay on the shore, he dropped to one knee at her side and watched to ensure that she still breathed.

Watched. No, he no longer needed to be content with watching. He could feel. He could…

In a sudden fury, he stripped off the gauntlets that bound his hands and covered his skin. Then the chest plate. The greaves. The gorget. Everything.

Everything but the bracers. And as he tore at them with his bare hands, he felt the marks in the metal and nearly howled in fury as he realized they, too, were spelled. He was not fully free.

But his mind and his body… Those were his own. When he dropped to his knee again, he laid one trembling hand against the side of her neck and felt her heartbeat, slow and weary against his fingers.

She’d freed him, this wildly unpredictable woman with fiery hair, a stubborn mouth, and freckles scattered across her cheeks. Her true face. Completely unfamiliar, and yet not, because he knew her. Knew the truths that she hid no matter what face she hid them behind.

Perhaps such magic should have terrified him. But had he known what she was capable of, he would have offered her everything he would ever possess to do what she had just done of her own free will.

From those last scattered thoughts he’d glimpsed before she freed him, she hadn’t known whether it would work. Had no idea what her magic might do. It had been a final, desperate gamble, made in the hope that revealing his face might disconcert him enough that she could slip away.

On a sprained ankle in the middle of the night when she was already practically falling over with weariness. So ridiculous and determined. He wanted to laugh, and he wanted to shake her. Wanted to know her and wanted to run from her. She had seen him at his worst. She knew the ugly truth of his captivity, and he yearned to destroy everything that could remind him of that feeling. And yet, he had never been able to hurt her, even when she’d been his enemy.

And now?

He was free to go, if he chose. Free to disappear into the night and return to his home. No one would ever find him. No one would ever know what had happened. Melger could rage for the next fifty years and find no trace of the one he’d dared to consider his possession.

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