Page 178 of Disillusioned
“Did he request you hand-deliver it to him?” asked Myrddin.
Lilac considered the night of the failed Accords meeting and couldn’t quite recall. She’d been rightfully distracted. “All he said was that we were to retrieve the chest from the Midraal Market and bring it to him. He never got to sayhowbefore he—I mean, his revenant—grew violent.”
“But he didn’t specify a journey to his manor in the Low Forest? That is what I’m asking.”
“No. Once the revenant took over Hywell’s body, the communication with him ended. He said the deal was made in blood as he died in that fire, and then he was gone.”
“Lovely,” said Bastion. “So that settles it. We don’t go. Garin has his way with Lilac and we all get on with our lives.”
Piper shot up from her seat, knocking her chair back. Before Lilac could stop her, Bastion lunged sideways and yanked her into a headlock.
Lilac gasped as the wind was knocked out of her, and somehow managed to twist and jerk out of Bastion’s grasp. Once free, she craned her arm around and snaked her fingers against his scalp, slamming Bastion’s head upon the desk and holding him there. Or, attempting to.
He nearly bucked her off, but Lilac’s fingers stayed curled into Bastion’slong sandstone hair, taut against his skull. Marvelling at her own strength, she laughed—until his hand shot out, fingers snapping around Lilac’s free wrist and squeezing. She yelped when he twisted his hand.
“I should have let you die in that room,” Bastion rasped. “Should’ve let Garin have his way with you.”
“Actually,” said Myrddin, chuckling and only sounding mildly alarmed, “she got herself out of the brothel. And he wouldn’t have killed her. It would take a dark and unholy magic toforcehim to allow that to happen.”
“Shut. Up,” Bastion breathed against the tabletop, Piper frozen near the window with the back of her chair in her hands like she was getting ready to swing. “Any one of you move a muscle, and I’ll snap her forearm in half. She might’ve inherited an ungodly amount of our speed and strength, but it is yet only a portion. She still has the body of a human. Ashellof mortal life. And she is just as delicate, just as easily broken.”
“Let go of me,” Lilac snarled, yanking away from him, still refusing to let go of his head.
Bastion dug his nails into her flesh. “I’ll?—”
“Stop!”
Apopsounded, followed by a gust of wind that violently ruffled Lilac’s hair. A deafening silence followed, as if all the air and sound in the room were sucked away.
She gasped when she cleared her eyes. It was unlike any of his spells she’d witnessed before; the warlock was surrounded by several books knocked off the shelves by the wind—two on the floor, one wasfrozenmidair, blown open on its way down. Several of its pages were impossibly suspended mid-fall, their corners quivering in the dying breeze.
Myrddin’s arms were raised, his hands projecting a cannonball-sizedthingof swirling mist, shards of gold, mahogany, and gray just inches from his chest. A reflection of the library pulsed in a frenzy within the floating sphere—the same muted colors of the room, anyway.
The pain at her arm from Bastion’s grip had subsided; Bastion’s face and unruly hair had frozen, too, wrenched in a furious snarl.
Stunned, she shimmied her arm out from his grasp. “What have you done? What kind of magic is this?”
“A kind you don’t want me using,” Myrddin said warningly, his expression stoic. “Something only I can do. It is a beacon of arcana, enacts allkinds of consequences, good and bad.” He lowered his voice. “But Iwilluse it if it means saving you and that disastrous vampire. Beyond your kingdom’s immediate future, the very fate of our arcane world relies on?—”
There was a gasp. “Look!” Piper was very muchnotfrozen, her face pressed against the floor length window.
Myrddin turned and blinked in disbelief. He trailed Lilac over to Piper, bringing the hovering ball of smoke and fragment with him. “Does magic just roll off her body, like rainfall on a goose? Meanwhile you, Your Majesty, soak it up like a sponge.”
Outside, the swaying canopy of Brocéliande was still.Completely. More than it ever was on dry, windless days.
But that wasn’t all Piper had noticed. Up and to the right, just past her tower balcony, an unfamiliar black bird with extravagant olive wing markings hung in the sky.
Frozen, like everything else.
“A lone Cormorant,” Piper whispered in wonder. “What’s it doing so far inland?”
“Oh, marvellous.” Myrddin cocked his head for a better view beside Lilac. “Why, would you look at that? Yes, that is rather strange. An ample distraction for this kingdom going to shit!”
Both Lilac and Piper turned to look at him.
“Each and every one of us has a role to play.” His brilliant blue eyes flitted threateningly between them, first landing on Piper. “No more picking fights.” Then, on Lilac. “No risking your lives. Not yet.”
“Bastion was her kidnapper and abuser. He deserved at leastthreeof those punches she landed,” said Lilac, sneering at his spinning ball. “Garin might’ve brought you, but you have no authority over us. It sounds like he’s made it crystal clear to youwhatyour role is in securing my sovereignty.”
