Page 50 of The Misfit Mage and His Dashing Devil

“I’ll take another glass of the unicorn, thank you.”

I very much needed to wash the thoughts out of my head. Mora’s illuminating revelry made it seem like I had actual feelings for Walter. Feelings that kept us close. Feelings that motivated my decisions. Feelings that… NO. None of that made sense. I hated him. Hated all mages. Granted, he was better than most. Considerate in the most insufferable ways. Thoughtful in the most overthinking manner. Polite in the weakest way possible, where everyone walked all over him.

Everything about him was worthless and vexing. A living, breathing reminder of the man I wanted to be centuries ago when I deluded myself into believing I could be a man in this world. Before mages reminded me that all I’d ever be was a Diabolic stain on the fabric of this dimension. I’d contemplated mortal friendship, lust, love—all the foolish things those finite beings deceive themselves into. Every time it’d been a failed experiment. The last time ended with imprisonment. I’d never allow such trickery again.

17

17

Walter

Everything hurt. Something kneaded my insides. Not something. Bez. His Diabolic essence. It saved me after Ian… After he’d stabbed me. Why? Some ploy involving Chancellor Driscoll to incite a war between the Collective and displeased Mythics, along with misfit mages like Ian who wanted to what…? Liberate magic to the masses.

I sank deep into the cushiony mattress I found myself in, unable to pull myself up. Unable to open my eyes. The moment I opened them, all of this would be real. Permanent. I’d walked right into a trap and couldn’t accept the open world around me until I comprehended at least a fraction of it. My eyes bounced back and forth beneath my closed lids, avoiding the sunlight which pierced into this room. I bit my lower lip and pulled the comforter covering me over my head. I wanted to sleep forever. Or until I had a solution—which might as well be forever.

Ian wanted free magic, which in theory always sounded lovely, yet mass introduction to magic, mages, and Mythics was something that’d been experimented with a hundred times over. Dating back thousands of years, the Collective and Mythic Councils had entertained the concept. It led to all sorts of unproductive societal reactions.

There were too many examples of attempting to co-exist that proved fallible by those with magic abusing it and those without craving it. Simpler to keep the worlds apart. Something Ian would understand if he’d been raised in mage society, grown up with the teachings from the Collective, as opposed to stumbling onto his fate later in life. Maybe that was his misguided reasoning. No. He made his choice. He knew so much more than I realized possible.

He conspired. Murdered. Framed. Defamed. And who knew what else he had planned with Chancellor Driscoll. Two opposing forces, which made no sense unless the two kept their agendas very secretive. Not that Driscoll could. The chancellor had hated Mythics his entire life, part of what prevented him from rising to the role of magus. Which meant Ian was playing Driscoll, helping him light the fuse to a war that would lead to exposure.

Still, to what end? And although Ian might’ve grabbed a few relics and even gathered a small army of loyalists, it wouldn’t be enough. What made the Collective a force unlike any other was that all mage territories united when things like this occurred. If the chancellors couldn’t quell Ian’s rebellion, then soon, the mages across the world would send their most elite to lay waste.

A solution that would cost the city of Seattle. Maybe even the state. Anytime magic razed destruction upon the land, mortals paid the price, and mother nature became the scapegoat. I empathized, considering how I’d found myself in the role of the wrongfully blamed.

I huffed, needing to understand, find a solution through the few variables I knew about.

“Are you going to lay there pretending to sleep all day?” Bez asked. A crisp page flipped.

My chest warmed, and my heart hastened. He was in my room. Not my room. Whatever room he’d brought me to. There was so much I needed to resolve and understand about the events which led me here, and thinking about him was definitely last on my list. Especially considering… I pulled the blanket tighter over my face like it’d somehow erase my presence or his awareness of me.

One of my favorite things was lying in bed, ignoring everything in the world while simultaneously planning for every outcome. What made it ideal was I was also forgotten by the world. But not with Bez nearby.

His mere presence made my skin vibrate and itch. I lifted the plain white shirt I’d been put in, ignoring the fact all my clothes had been changed while I was unconscious, and stared at my chest. Pale. Hairless. Soft. Not very defined. Most of all, there was no scar. Not even a tiny nick where the blade had carved its way inside me. I felt it. The blade. The pressure against… my heart? Bones? Everything? Now it was like it’d never happened. I pulled my shirt down, remaining hidden beneath the covers. That was Bez’s doing. His essence. It saved me. Even after he…

“Wow. Really gonna pretend like I’m not even here,” Bez said, loudly licking his finger and flipping another page of some book. “Rude. Truly. Precisely. This is why I can’t stand you. Not even for a second.”

Excuse me?I tossed the covers off and sprang forward. “Then why’d you save me?”

“Oh, looky. Prince Uncharming has awoken. Thought I was pulling a total Worthless Walter and talking aloud to myself.” Bez held his book high, poorly hiding his wide grin.

“You didn’t answer me.” I gritted my teeth. Bez had this annoying aversion to answering questions. I’d actually found it more difficult to get a direct answer from him now that he’d been released from the orb than three years of silent conversation.

“I didn’t.” Bez returned to his book. “You’re just lucky so much of my essence remained inside you. Otherwise, you surely would’ve died. Should’ve, in fact, considering how pathetic and naïve and tragic and—”

“Shut up!” I growled, fury in my veins. His body was a fuzzy outline, so I searched for my glasses. There on the nightstand, tucked beneath a cloth, yet the lenses weren’t smudged.

I put them on, fully taking Bez in. He widened his eyes, the pink faded slightly, but the dark red was as sharp as ever.

Bez. The Diabolic who’d saved my life more times in the few days I’d known him than any other person in my life combined. Bez. The devil who gambled on my wellbeing for… I didn’t know. Bez. The one who pulled me out of death’s grip and slashed his arm to pour his essence into me when he thought I’d died or passed out or both. Why lie about it now?

“Chill.” Bez closed his smutty romance book, tossing it on the bed. My ears burned. I’d read that one to him once before. Well, not him. Okay, him before I realized he could hear every word I said. If I’d known, I would’ve read the actual scenes in the book instead of reliving the steamy scenes alone and aloud in the repository.

“How long have I been out?” I asked, averting my eyes from the cover.

“Seven weeks, three days, and fourteen minutes.” He looked at his bare wrist, pretending to count. “And thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four seconds.”

“What?” I leapt out of the bed, legs shaky on the hardwood floors. How’d I slept that long? Coma? Mystical? What’d happened to everyone? “Is Ian still out there? Does anyone know about him working with Chancellor Driscoll? Have the chancellors subdued the culprits? Have they contacted The Global Collective? Shit. What’s happening?”

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