Page 4 of Heart's Flame

Vian was careful not to react. No one outside of Demitrius and Coren knew about his affinity for earth magic. How he could reach into the ground beneath his feet and draw strength to enrich the mage magic living inside him. Demitrius was a witch, an earth witch and the only reason Vian knew how to use and control the energy he pulled from the earth. If Vian’s mother ever found out, she’d kill them both. Not even Coren knew about his mentor.

“You have my attention,” he said carefully, moving his hand to the hilt of his sword. The shape of the red gemstone set into its hilt was a familiar roughness against his palm. This had to be some type of trap or he’d been drugged and was hallucinating, but for as insane as this meeting was and even though his heart was pounding in his chest, it didn’tfeelwrong. In fact, everything aside from the rain and the chill, felt right. Which to Vian, made it all the more concerning.

“You won’t need that, Vian. Truly. I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

Vian’s patience was wearing thin. “No, you came to deliver the message of a dead man and dangle the name of one of the only men I truly trust in front of me. Come then, what’s my deceased father have to say?”

“He wishes to speak with you, and if you come to complete that training, he’ll be able to do so.”

Blood rushed in Vian’s ears. “Are you trying to tell me that Dem is my father?”

“No,” Marcellus said, starting to turn away. “His mate is.” Then he disappeared back into the shadows of the forest as if he’d never been standing there at all.

* * *

The stone hallsof the Conservatory were cool despite the bright beams of sunlight streaming through the high windows interspersed along the south wall. Vian had awoken with a head full of questions and a fire in his belly. He needed to see Marcellus again. He couldn’t explain it, but now that he knew Marcellus was alive—even with all the other worries fighting for dominance in his mind—being in Marcellus’s presence demanded to be his priority.

The only way he knew how to accomplish that was to do as the Null had asked—he needed to go see Demitrius. Which meant dealing with his mother. He knocked on the heavy wooden door to her study. A moment later, a dark haired servant girl opened the door to him.

“Morovian,” Araminta, his mother, called without looking up from the scrolls stretched across her desk. Her voice was like candied apples, sugary sweet and sticky enough to pull your teeth out of your head. “Your captain tells me that you’ve requested a holiday.”

Damn it all to hell. He’d hoped to beat the request he’d made all of ten minutes ago. Nothing got past his mother within these walls.

“Yes. Things have been calm these past months, so I’d hoped to spend a few weeks at my house in the country.”

The High Mage watched him with eyes as green as the vines that slithered and twisted up the outside of the stone walls that surrounded them. She was a beautiful woman, his mother—flawless pale skin, deep chestnut hair, and an air of authority she wielded as well as any sword. Their relationship had never been an overly fond one. She gave him orders, he followed them, and either received her praise or scorn depending on the result. In his younger years, he’d done his absolute best to always impress her, but as he’d grown and after Dem came into his life, his feelings and thinking toward her had changed.

He hadn’t followed her blindly in a long time, and it had a deep well of anger and panic starting to swirl inside him that she may have lied to him in such a monumental way.

“You always did love this time of year,” she finally said in a voice far more pleasant than he’d expected. “Go and enjoy the season. I’ll send word if you’re needed.”

“Thank you, Mother.” He gave a short bow and turned toward the door.

“How is Coren, by the way? I feel as if I haven’t seen him in ages,” she said the moment he had the still open door in sight.

That well of anger swirled all the higher. There was a time he wouldn’t have given a second thought to her question, but now he saw it for what it was. She’d been watching him, and she wanted him to know it. He turned his face to the side so that he could see her out of the corner of his eye. “He’s well.”

“Good. Still courting that young healer?”

He fought to keep his temper in check and a look of nonchalance on his face. “I believe he is.”

“I wish them joy. Perhaps you’ll find a sweet young person to bring home to meet your mother while you’re away.”

He forced a chuckle past his lips. “Perhaps. Be well, Mother.”

“And you, my son.”

He moved his feet toward the door and didn’t stop until he reached his already saddled and packed horse in the stables.

3

The one thing his mother had been right about was Vian’s love for the fall season and the simple joy he found as he made his way from the structured streets and buildings of the capital and into Ferron’s countryside. The road he traveled bisected one of the great forests now crowned in hues of gold and orange and yellow.

His country house—which was the house he’d spent every summer in as a child—was outside Ferron’s eastern port city, Sabline, and right beneath Ferron’s northern border. He could see the beginnings of the hills the Null’s had called home from his back fields.

From the capital, it was a two day journey to Sabline. The first he’d spent in contemplation of all Marcellus had told him and the second—after a fitful night’s sleep at a small village inn—he’d used to try and backtrack through everything he could remember from the time he awoke after the last battle.

Marcellus made it seem like he should have known his father was alive—as if Vianhad knownit at one time. If that were true, he simply had no memory of it. By the time he made it to the dirt path leading away from the main road toward the forest trails leading to Demitrius’s, his head ached from staring into the black holes he found in his mind with no way to recall what had once filled them.

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