Magic Binds (15 page)

Julie knew. She
knew
.

“She already loves you as much as she can. I would die fighting for you.” He stabbed his clawed hand at Ascanio. “He would die for you. Isn't it fucking enough, Kate? How much love and devotion do you need that you keep making slaves?”

It felt like he had stabbed me.

“I didn't make her into a slave.”

“She's bleeding out and all she wants is for you to love her and kill her. What the hell do you call that?”

“I didn't enslave her! My father did. I broke their bond. She's free now.”

“I'm so sorry, Sharrim,” the woman on the ground whispered. “I didn't mean to make things difficult.”

“Will you obey any order she gives?” Derek snarled.

“Yes.”

Derek pointed to her. “Don't lie to me, Kate. I'll do almost anything for you, but don't lie to me!”

He didn't believe me. He was right there when it happened and he didn't believe me. Curran wouldn't believe me either. Julie knew she couldn't refuse my orders. Everything I built was collapsing around me.

The magic tore out of me and I screamed into it. The land screamed with me. Water shot up from the river, the trees jerked up as if pulled straight by an invisible hand, and every weed stood perfectly straight. Derek clamped his hands onto the bridge rail. Holland flew back. Ascanio caught him and spun him around, grabbing the rail and shielding the deputy with his back.

I screamed, the frustration boiling out of me until it was finally gone.

Water collapsed back into the river, drenching us with spray.

I had to fix this. I had no idea how and I was suddenly so tired.

I exhaled and turned to Derek. “Have I ever lied to you?”

He didn't answer.

“Have I ever lied to you, Derek?”

“No.”

“I'm telling you right now I didn't turn her into a slave. I could've, but
I didn't. I don't know what she is. I don't understand why she is acting this way. But we're going to find out. Pick her up. We'll take her to a medmage and when she's better, we can ask her questions.”

He stared at me.

“If you won't carry her, then I will,” I told him. “But she would be more comfortable with you because you're stronger. Or you can walk away. That will be fine, too.”

Derek scooped the woman off the bridge. Ascanio picked up the old woman's head.

We started down the path back to civilization.

I'd fucked up. I didn't cross the line but I came close enough to see the abyss at the bottom. Explaining this to Curran would be really difficult. Derek was right there and he didn't believe me.

“What's your name?” I asked the woman.

“Adora.”

“We're going to take you to the emergency room, where a medmage will work on you. Please don't tell the medmage anything about my father or me. If he asks how you got this wound, tell him to ask me.”

“Yes, Sharrim.”

Derek's eyes shone.

“Also, please don't call me Sharrim. Call me Kate.”

“Yes, Kate.”

I needed to figure out exactly what she was before I saw Curran, because I didn't understand it myself and I didn't want there to be any misunderstandings. I knew what I did and what I didn't do. If I made it into a “believe me because I am me and you know me” argument, he would give me the benefit of the doubt, but I didn't want that. I wanted to prove to him with absolute certainty that I hadn't enslaved this woman. I hadn't crossed the line. I'd ridden an elephant up to it and run back and forth along its edge while a mariachi band played in the background, but I hadn't crossed it.

“What kind of language was that?” Holland asked.

“What?”

“When you were talking to her on the bridge, asking questions, what kind of language was it?”

What was he on about? I spoke English.

“I'm going to have to write a report,” Holland said.

I looked at Derek. “Did I speak another language?”

“Yes.” He didn't look at me.

“What did it sound like?”

“It hurt,” Ascanio said.

“But do you remember any actual words?”

“
Estene kari la amt-am.
That was the last thing you said,” Derek said.

You're no longer a slave.
Oh fuck. I understood it. I've been speaking it. All this time I thought my magic was saturating my words. Fuck.

“Put ‘language of power' into your report,” I said.

“Okay,” Holland told me.

The Milton ER was our first stop. We left Adora there. I paid for the first twenty-four hours of treatment and told Adora to stay there until I came and got her. The medmage spelled the cut on my face closed and told me to not expect miracles in regard to whether it would scar.

We walked into Beau's office headfirst. It barely fit through the double door. The sheriff of Milton County looked at the head, looked at us, assessed the sorry state of his deputy, reached into his desk, and extracted a feather.

“This was found where the horses were. The two brothers identified it as belonging to the winged devil.”

I took the feather. It was long and glossy, a pure black that seemed to swallow the light, except for the very tip where a thin orange-red flared as if someone had dipped the feather into liquid fire. Only one being had feathers like that—Thanatos, the angel of death, with black wings and a flaming sword.

As soon as I got to a working phone, I'd need to call Teddy Jo.

“You need to tell Curran,” Derek told me as we walked back to our cars.

“Stay out of my relationship.”

“I don't want you to turn into someone else,” he said quietly.

“I won't.” Back in the woods when he was screaming in my face, I'd wanted to crush every bone in his body. I'd stomped on that urge before it went anywhere, but it was there. There were few things that terrified me. That did.

•   •   •

I
HAD TO
do a dozen things. I needed to call Teddy Jo. I needed to speak to Sienna. I needed to look through my notes on my father to see if I could find any reference to what Adora might be. Instead I dropped Ascanio off near his mother's house, dropped Derek off at Cutting Edge, and turned around. I drove through the city as the sun slowly rolled toward the horizon. By the time I got to the Keep, the heat of the day had begun to ease. Evening was coming.

I walked into the Keep, identified myself to the sentries, and one of the guards walked me to the medward. New rules. Jim had decided I shouldn't be walking around the Keep unescorted. It didn't even bother me. I'd gone numb.

They'd put Andrea in a corner room, the one with large windows. I walked in. She was eating fried chicken and Raphael was holding Baby B.

Andrea saw my face and stopped eating.

“I've come to hold the baby,” I told her.

She nodded to Raphael. He got up and gave his daughter to me. I took Baby B. She stirred a little in her sleep and snuggled against me.

“The other room has the rocking chair in it,” Andrea said, pointing through the open double door. “There's a nice window there.”

I went into the other room and sat in the rocking chair by the window, Baby B in my arms.

“Is everything okay?” Raphael asked quietly in the other room.

“Things are kind of fucked up right now,” Andrea said. “I'll tell you later.”

I rocked Baby B. It was just me, the baby, and the slowly dying evening.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed.

Someone walked in. I listened to the steps. Julie.

“Hi,” she said behind my back.

“Hi.”

She came over and sat on the floor by me.

“What's up?” I asked.

“Derek talked to me.” Julie sighed and hugged her knees. “Derek is a dummy. Why is it that guys can't keep a secret?”

“It was a pretty big secret.”

“Well, it wasn't his to tell.”

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“Roland told me when you went to the Black Sea.”

“Is that how long you've been talking to him?”

She nodded.

“He's poison.”

“I know.”

I looked at her. “Why, Julie? Is it power? Is it knowledge?”

“It's because I love you,” she said in a small voice.

“What?”

“You're twenty-eight,” she said. “Voron left Roland's service almost thirty years ago. The last up-to-date information you have on him is thirty years old. When Voron died thirteen years ago, you lost even that. Roland has done a lot in thirty years.”

“I don't need you to spy on Roland for me. It's too dangerous. You're sixteen years old. He is over five thousand years old, possibly older. You can't trust anything he says. You can't even trust anything you see there. He's manipulating you and grooming you.”

“Yes,” she said. “He is. He would be manipulating me and grooming me anyway. He wasn't going to leave me alone, Kate, so at first I wanted to learn as much as I could to shut him out. Then . . .”

“Then?”

“You're right. I'm sixteen years old. He doesn't remember what it's like to be sixteen. He doesn't understand it. To him everyone is a child. His own childhood was long and happy. He was a pampered prince. But I starved on the street. I learned how to read people and manipulate adults when I was ten.” She bit her lip. “I kind of thought he would be more subtle about it. Maybe if I didn't have you and Curran, or if he had gotten me really young like he did Hugh . . .”

“You keep thinking that you've got this, but you don't, Julie.”

“He manages what he shows me,” Julie said. “But I'm not you, so he doesn't manage quite as much. You're his daughter, his precious jewel. He's so proud of you. I'm an expendable tool. He wants to sharpen me, use me,
and then throw me away when I've served my purpose, just like he threw away Hugh. He's less careful with what he lets me see.”

“All the more reason not to interact with him.”

“You could order me not to do it,” she said.

“I won't. It's your life, Julie. You're a person. As much as it makes me freak out, you have to be free to make your decisions, even the wrong ones. But I think it's dangerous and stupid, and I will tell you so.”

“In great detail. With a scary look on your face.” Julie sighed.

“Yes. But in the end, they are your decisions. You're not a baby.”

“Sometimes you treat me like one.”

“I'll treat you like a baby when you're fifty. Get used to it.” I looked at Baby B. “I didn't do it to own you. I did it to save your life. I had no choice.”

“I know. You knew I would hate it, but you did it anyway, because you love me.” Julie swallowed. “So did I. I talked to Roland even though I knew you would hate it. It's your fault. You were my role model.”

“Great.”

“I didn't mean it that way. That was a joke.” Julie looked down at her feet. “He's teaching me. I think he means for me to be the next Hugh.”

“Hugh is one of the most lethal fighters I know. You're nowhere near that. Your magic isn't combat magic.”

“It is now,” she said.

My heart turned over in my chest. “Power words?”

She nodded. “Also incantations. Makes the power words a lot easier.”

“You always wanted combat magic.” It bothered her that she didn't have any. At first, we put her into a private middle school. The kids there had combat magic and she didn't. It made things harder on her. She didn't fit in and she kept running away.

“I did,” Julie said. “Now I have it.”

That was how he got her. There were four main incentives that moved people to do things: power, wealth, knowledge, and emotion. He offered her power and knowledge, two out of four. She belonged to me, so he couldn't take her outright, but he could poison her. He could push and shape her until he made her into another Hugh.

I wanted to believe that she wasn't his creature. I wanted so much to believe that she had kept her independence, but the fear sat inside me like a brick.

This was what Curran must've felt like when I assured him I would fight the magic changing me. Ugh.

“The girl is sahanu,” Julie said.

“Mmm?”

“Adora. She's sahanu.”

Sahanu meant “to unsheathe a blade” in ancient Akkadian. Specifically, to draw a dagger.

“And the other two on the wall?”

“Sahanu also. I was going to tell you, but Roland came out and then you were angry.”

“Are they elite troops of some sort?”

“He made them to fight Erra,” Julie said. “He showed them to me before. I think that when he felt your aunt waking up, he became concerned that he wouldn't be able to control her, so he created the Order of Sahanu. He got the idea from a documentary on assassins.”

I must've moved because Baby B stirred and started whimpering. I rocked her, making shooshing noises.

“He bought a bunch of children and put them into a fort,” Julie whispered. “Somewhere in the Midwest. And brought in really good teachers. He turned the whole thing into a religion.”

“Shhh . . . Shush . . . He would never allow himself to be an object of worship.” When you let people worship you, their faith had power over you. My father would never tolerate anything imposing on his will.

“He isn't. They worship the blood.”

Baby B opened her mouth and cried with all of the despair her little heart could muster. I got up and took her to Andrea.

“I see how it is.” She squinted at me. “While she's quiet, everyone wants to hold her, but when she cries, give her back to her parents.”

“Yeah.” I winked at her.

Andrea gave me a long look and cuddled Baby B to her. Julie and I left the room. We walked through the Keep in silence. The walls did have ears
here. In the courtyard, only my car looked out of place. Peanut was nowhere to be seen.