Page 30 of The Prince's Mage

And where was this going? What did it matter if one man realized that the Inimicus idea of her people’s vitae being corrupted was wrong if he was dead?

Gavril continued, “It means ‘They make a desert and call it peace.’ Peace has always been a foreign, elusive thing for me. Until you. I saw you—at first I thought I had imagined it. During your escape, you cast separate runes with two hands at the exact same time.”

His grip on her tightened.

Where was he going? Why did she have such a terrible, ominous feeling settling over her shoulders?

“My people believe that while yours can cast runes single handedly, you can’t cast them at the same time. That skilled Sordes can cast one right after the other, but there’s always a split second of delay. That you can’t balance your vitae to equally distribute it the way we have to for our two-handed runes. But I know what I saw, and it was at the exact same time. So… if you could balance your vitae enough for that, then it should be possible to prove corruption wasn’t possible. In you I saw a path to peace. A way to prove our people aren’t that different, but when I returned, with your vitae now under my skin because of…” Gavril’s left arm shifted and he cleared his throat. “The bond. I thought it was proof, that there was no corruption, but still they waved it off. I realized my parents aren’t interested in peace based on such discoveries. At least, I needed more time to get enough proof they could not wave away. So in order to keep you alive, I promised I would get useful information out of you that could end this war as long as they let me do it my way and not put you on the table.”

She stayed silent. Something was dropping into her stomach, dark and turning.

“So that’s what I promised. First, I came to you to spar not for that purpose, but so it at least looked like it. I just… I wanted you to have a reason to live. Even if that reason was your hatred of me. But—”

Marcella shot off the bed, backing away from him.

She’d guessed they’d been trying to study her people’s style of fighting. She’d assumed when it had become sparring with magic they were looking for weaknesses.

She just hadn’t realized he was studying her very magic. The so-called corruption his people believed was in her.

Experimenting on her like the heretics.

Just without a scalpel.

The feeling of straps on her wrists still lingered. The table scraping against her skin and her back exposed to cool air and a blade was still too fresh. She grabbed the nearest receptacle as she emptied what was in her stomach into it.

When a hand brushed her shoulder, trying to pull her hair back, she swatted it away and kicked at him. Her skin was crawling as she kept retching, sick from the knowledge that she’d just been clinging to him like a child. He was no better than the heretic who put her on the table.

She shuddered as she finished and there was nothing left for her nausea to dredge up.

She pushed the—drawer. She’d grabbed a drawer from the dresser and had thrown up into it—away. She could see Gavril hovering, kneeling on the ground out of the corner of her eye, hands hovering in her direction but not on her.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

“Stay back. I—I—” Marcella shook her head and curled into herself. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to keep falling into these pieces, but now—

Of course he had been. She’d been foolish to think he’d been treating her as anything else. Nothing was sacred to the Inimicus.

Not even when they loved.

Something hit the ground in front of her.

She pulled her hand out of her hair to see Gavril kneeling in front of her. There were notebooks stacked in front of her with papers sticking out of them, all in Gavril’s handwriting. One was the same notebook she’d seen him writing in on the road. Another she vaguely recalled seeing in the workroom with the Heart. Some of the papers had her language written on them.

“This is all of it. It is yours. Do with it what you will.”

Marcella slowly reached forward and pulled the stack toward her. She refused to look at him as she opened up the first notebook.

Her hands were shaking as she tried to read the Inimicus writing. It was hard for her to decipher anything, but there were clues in her own language to help her, at least in the notebook she’d picked up. The one he’d been writing in on the road.

It seemed mostly just his attempts to learn more of her language to better communicate.

Then she got a little deeper into it and spotted a rough sketch of a rune, but it wasn’t an Inimicus rune. It was one of her people’s. The rune she used to create blinding light in her escape.

The note in his language said:Impossible.

She skimmed ahead to the others. There were little notes about her along the way. Things she’d said to him. How she was no one. Her mother was a Solitus. She’d said she liked sparring. The gold lilies marked an engagement. Then after they came to Areator, notes on her general fighting style. More notes about her language. Then drawings of the runes she’d used when she had to use them.

A note that said:Never casts two at the same time while sparring. Maybe I imagined it?

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