Chapter 16
Marcus
I couldn’t believe I’d just met Desmon’s personal wizard, and he knew Gigi. Seth wasn’t anything like I’d imagined a wizard to be, and most definitely not like the ones I’d seen on the news. But I guess if he worked for Desmon, he could dress pretty much any way he wanted.
He’d claimed that Desmon couldn't help, yet the dragon of Darlington had sent him to warn me. I considered that help enough.
I stared at Gigi’s ceiling as I listened to her soft breathing. Even her ceiling had not escaped my little witch’s numerous decorations. Instead of the plain ceiling light that graced my master bedroom, a chandelier hung from hers. One I’d almost caught my horns on when I knelt on her bed last night.
Swaths of fabric hung on either side of it, pinned up to the ceiling so that it almost made her room look like a tent. Pins and brooches were attached to the fabric, many of them looking like antique collector items. There were sun catchers hung up by the window, which currently reflected the moonlight instead of the sun.
At first glance, I’d thought it too full of useless things, cluttered almost. But now that I’d seen her at work and understood that she relied on her items to do her magic, I got it. Every piece was a part of her, collected from a life full of experiences.
It was so different from my own life. While I owned plenty of machines and equipment for my gym, my personal space was plain. The first reason was that I’d had to leave everything behind when I first made my escape. I kept no friends, no items, no electronics. All I had was cash and the shirt on my back. I’d even had to abandon my bank account after taking out as much as possible.
I’d realized by then that the money hadn’t really been mine to keep anyway, even though I’d earned it. Elise would’ve kept it after I “disappeared” into the maze. Leaving my things had been easier than I’d first thought. They were just items. And many of them reminded me that my life until that point had been one big lie.
I’d never gone into higher education. There was no point. And it wasn’t encouraged anyway. The dragon—and Maman, by extension—didn’t need someone who could think. In fact, the less I used my brain, the better.
Maman had tried to keep me na?ve. She pulled me out of school the second I was old enough and got me working with a construction company. She’d claimed it was to get me set up so that when I finally came out of the maze, many decades later, I’d have money to live.
That had been a lie. I’d overheard her talking to her friend about using it as additional funds after the dragon’s last payment when she handed me over. I’d only been a teenager when we opened the account, so she had access to it.
My whole life, she’d talked up what a privilege and honor it was to be the next keeper of the maze. She told me how proud she was of me. And I’d fallen for it for so long.
Perhaps in centuries past this ruse would’ve worked, but information was too readily available in today’s world. Elise also craved a life of luxury. She spent much of her time going out, traveling, leaving me at home alone—enough time for me to think and piece everything together.
The trip to America disguised as a new worker on a freight ship had taken eighteen days. The cargo master hadn’t found out about me until we’d already left the harbor, but then again, it hadn’t been the first time corporate had messed up, sending people to the wrong ship. He’d chalked it up to another mistake from corporate and put me to work.
I disappeared right after we made land and started hoofing it, quite literally, to Darlington.
I put one hundred percent of my effort into rebuilding my life. Everything cost money, so I mainly focused on that. I took a job doing what I knew best: construction. That was where I’d met Declan. He’d been taking classes at the University of Darlington and needed extra cash, so he’d worked construction during the summer.
It was during Darlington’s big boom right after the fall of The Wall, and hard workers willing to put in the time and raw power were able to make a lot of money in a short time. But I knew I couldn’t stay in that job long. Elise, or even the dragon himself, would come looking, and they’d probably check construction companies first, considering it was the only trade I knew.
So I’d made my money, then got out.
I’d moved to my old location, mostly because the rent was cheap, and started Bullseye Fitness. That was a few years ago. I had to continue doing odd jobs in the beginning, but over time, my gym started covering itself and my living expenses.
I put everything I earned back into my business. And what I didn’t spend went into an emergency fund in case I had to drop everything and start over. And all that was to say that I still owned very little outside of my business. Unlike Gigi’s place, my double unit was basically empty. I was a trendy minimalist by circumstance, not by choice.
It had been the reason why I’d only ever looked for one-night stands. It felt like I had to be able to get up and leave at any time. There was always the threat of the dragon, ever looming in the background. Plus, I couldn’t trust anyone.
Gigi hummed in her sleep, stretching as she turned onto her back, making me ultra-aware of her presence. Somehow she’d wiggled her way into my life, even though it had only been a few days since I’d found her again after losing her the first time.
Telling Gigi about my past had been an exceptional risk, one I didn’t know why I’d taken. She could’ve betrayed me, offering me up to the dragon for a price. She hadn’t. She’d put herself in my corner instead.
But what if knowing my secret put her in danger? Arcane Development was bad enough, but now I’d also saddled her with a potentially angry dragon. I’d avoided closeness and intimacy before due to self-preservation, but now I wondered if I should have been worried about the safety of the people I cared about instead.
Could I ever drop everything now and start over? Without her? Without Declan?
The thought was depressing.
A feeling of something important weighed over me. And not for the first time, I wondered if Gigi was my mate. The thing was, I didn’t even know if minotaurs had mates. I hadn’t known any other minotaurs until I came here, and even then, I’d deliberately kept my interactions with them short and concise, lest they figured out who I was.
“You’re still awake.” Sleepy green eyes blinked up at me. “Did you know you mumble to yourself when you think?”
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t known that. “Did I wake you?”
“Yeah, but it’s sort of cute, so I forgive you.” She reached up and slid her fingers into my hair, massaging my head at the base of my horns. “Here. Let me help you sleep.”
I moaned at the feel of her fingers on my scalp. That was nice.
I wasn’t sure if I was just plain ol’ tired or if she’d put a little bit of magic in that head rub, but when I opened my eyes again, it was morning.
Gigi was already out of bed, and I was disappointed I didn’t get to wake up with her in my arms today. I found an extra toothbrush laid out for me in the bathroom. By the time I stepped back out into the living room, she was already on the phone with a glass and window repair company haggling for a good deal to get the work done together.
As she called her employees to let them know not to come in and updated her store hours online, I sent a message to Declan to let him know what had happened.
His first reaction? “The mirrors!” Which had been my reaction.
“Don’t worry, I saved them.”
“Thank fuck! Because I do not want to put those up again. I’m glad you’re alright, man.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve got something for you to look at while you wait for them to fix those windows,” Declan said. “You’ll have to sign into the University of Darlington library portal with my alumni account, but I have it saved.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see. You can’t miss it.”
He hung up and sent me the link and sign-in credentials.
Curious, I went to the website and signed in. At first, I was confused. What was I supposed to see? I clicked around and eventually made it to a section labeled Digital References.
There it was: Rencontre Avec un Minotaur. Or at least, a scanned version of it, on a temporary digital loan from the once-secret Université de Magie in Paris.
“Whatcha got there?” Gigi asked.
“Declan found the book.” I showed her my screen. “Someone scanned it. He borrowed it digitally from Paris’s University of Magic.”
“You mean the one that vehemently claimed they didn’t exist when The Wall first fell?”
“That’s the one.”
“While you read up on that, I’m going to brainstorm what Arcane might be after.”
“Want some company?” I asked.
Somehow, returning to my mostly empty apartment felt rather…well, empty. Also, it felt like a dragon could appear from nowhere at any moment and drag me to my fate. Being around her calmed me, and I was able to think. And should that actually happen and I lost my freedom today, I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.
“Yeah, I’d love some company.”
I quickly ran over to my apartment to grab a change of clothes and my laptop and returned to find Gigi on the couch deep in thought, with a project in hand and yarn in her lap. Triscuit was out playing with another smaller ball of yarn.
I sat down on the couch next to her, but the couch dipped, interrupting her…knitting? I didn’t think that was done with a hook, though. I moved to the opposite end of the couch instead and stuck my hoof out so that it touched her foot. There. We were still touching.
I loaded the page onto my laptop and started reading.
The book was smut and very little else. Though I was pretty damn sure by the end of it that one of my female ancestors had most definitely written it. For one, the descriptions of the maze had been nearly identical to the ones my mother had given me. Not to mention, the agreement was basically the same.
And that had only made it worse because, in essence, I’d just read breeding smut written by my great-great-grandmother, and that was just fucking wrong on so many levels.
“Still no name for the dragon?” Gigi asked.
“No. She only refers to it as le Dragon, which is exactly how Elise refers to him. I don’t think the women he contracted ever knew or cared. In the book, Jeanne, the main character, was originally born into the good life, but her father had gambled away everything, and her mother died of consumption. She was forced into a life of prostitution to survive when the dragon approached her. Elise was in a similar situation. Started out with some money but fell on bad times with no one else in her life.”
“And the promise of being able to live that way again was enough incentive to take the bait.” Griselda nodded.
“Yeah. Too bad there’s nothing useful in here. What a waste of my morning. This fucking sucks.”
The moment the words came out of my mouth, Gigi’s eyes grew round, and she made a zip-it motion with her fingers across her lips.
“What?”
I followed her gaze to Triscuit, who was chasing after a ball of yarn.
Gigi released a breath. “He didn’t hear it. Good. I said that particular combination of words one too many times in college, and Triscuit started saying it. Constantly. It took years to get him to stop. Years .”
“Oops, sorry. Won’t happen again.” Note to self: living with a parrot was like living with a flying child. “Thought of anything while you were…” I mimicked the motion she made with her hook.
“Crocheting?”
“Yes, crocheting. I should’ve guessed since croche is French for hook. I knew it wasn’t knitting.”
“Smart man. Never call crochet knitting unless you want to get intimate with a hook. And yes, I did think of something. But I might need your help.”