Briar
I STAYED BENEATH THE COVERS FOR MOST OF THE DAY, ONLY pulling the blankets down when I scented smoke in the air.
I peeked out into the too-bright room as creamy daylight seeped through the frosted windows.
The burgeoning flames growing within the freshly lit fireplace made me frown.
The little acts of kindness only made fresh pain blossom anew.
Better for the sorceress to be wholly heartless than to have heart enough to keep me from freezing to death.
“Are you going to keep yourself trapped in this room?” that rough voice asked before I even spotted her.
The sound of her voice was like a long-lost song etched upon my soul, but it wasn’t mine anymore. That voice didn’t belong to me.
A fresh wave of grief hit me all at once as I sat up and rubbed my swollen eyes. Haunted by a ghost who still lived.
“You look terrible,” Maez said, staring at me coolly from the corner of the room. “You’d think being rescued from a dungeon would have brightened your spirits.”
That was when I had something to live for, I’d wanted to say but refrained. If anything, she probably would’ve enjoyed my suffering.
My Maez would’ve never hurt me, not in body and not in words.
With this person standing before me, I had no such assurances.
She might have dragged me all the way here just to kill me at one wrong move.
Dark magic was senseless. There was nothing I could put past her, no assumptions I could permit myself to make.
“This is just another kind of dungeon,” I muttered, pulling my knees up to my chest.
Maez threw her head back and let out a rough laugh.
“Shall we send you back to Evres for a few weeks and see if that changes your mind?” She raised her eyebrows, but her amusement disappeared when she saw the utter fear on my face.
Would she do it? She might? “There are no locked doors here, Princess,” she continued.
“You can go wherever you please, do however you please. I’m surprised that you haven’t run back to your twin yet.
Perhaps you need a bit of food to gather some strength for your journey; then you can rid yourself of this dungeon. ”
In a blink, a tray appeared beside me—a fresh scone still steaming from the oven and little jars of jam and whipped butter beside it. A teacup swirled with sage-green liquid, wafting the telltale scent of peppermint tea, my favorite. I looked between the food and Maez warily and she scoffed.
“It’s not poisoned,” she said with a shrug. “Eat, don’t eat. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Why do you want me to leave?” I asked, seemingly surprising us both with the question.
“You want to leave,” she said flatly.
“I never said that.” Even if I did, I’d never voiced it.
“You want to stay? Here?” Maez asked incredulously, waving her static magic across her obsidian leathers. “You can’t be serious.”
Did I? Did I want to stay? Did I still carry some hope that maybe Maez’s curse could be broken, that she would find her way back to me?
If the roles were reversed, I knew she’d never give up trying to reach me.
I think I was questioning all this because I was still reeling from the knowledge of her turning to dark magic, still grieving her like she died even though she stood right in front of me.
I should want to leave. I should be fleeing for the hills.
I suspected her of trying to poison me for Moon’s sake!
And yet it still chafed to think she wanted me to go. She was practically ushering me out the door, and while my mind told me to go, my heart urged me to stay.
I held her stare as I grabbed the teacup and took a fortifying sip. Her wicked grin widened as I licked a lingering droplet from my lips.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Maez’s eyes lingered on my face for a moment too long before darting to the frosted window. “Now you do whatever it is you want to do, Princess,” she said, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. “Your life belongs to you again.
“Just leave me out of it.”
When she pushed off the doorframe, I leapt out of bed. “Leave you out of it?” I growled, the words wounding me even as I spoke them. Just when I thought she couldn’t tear me open any further, she twisted the knife deeper. “And what if I don’t want to leave you out of it?”
Maez took a step toward me. “Then you’d be making a grave mistake, Briar.”
I blinked. So rarely now she called me by my name and not “Princess,” and yet every time she did, it seemed more like a slip of the tongue, one that made traitorous hope bloom within me. “And what will you do about it? Pin me against the wall again? Choke the life out of me?”
Maez huffed, her shoulders rising and falling with a twisted sort of joy. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t love it,” she said with a wink. “I know your heart, Briar Marriel, darkness or no.”
And with that she vanished, leaving nothing but glittering emerald stars in her wake. My heart battered against my chest as I stared and stared at that vacant space she’d left, wondering if it would be worth taking whatever she threw at me next just to keep her close.
MAEZ DIDN’T RETURN FOR THE REST OF THE DAY . . . OR THE next. Whatever glimmers of hope there were from our last interaction quickly faded again and I had the distinct sense she was avoiding me, as if maybe I could sway her back into the light.
I’d awoken with a half-hearted resolve to leave for Olmdere, but when the icy whiteout gales started blowing across the window, I thought better of it.
I could travel in my furs across Taigos, but if I was sniffed out by any Silver Wolves—or Ice Wolves for that matter—I’d definitely be killed.
And the only way I knew was the roads, which was the worst way to go.
I could end up lost in a snowstorm or stuck up a mountain, and now that Maez wouldn’t die if I died, there was no incentive for her to help me survive the trek.
But I knew it wasn’t the snow nor the threat of enemy attack that kept me from lacing up the new snow boots by my bedroom door—it was the hope that I could find a way to bring Maez back to me.
She wouldn’t have given up on me, so I wasn’t going to give up on her.
As much as I wanted to go back to Calla and Olmdere and the quiet little life that we were just beginning to build, I knew there was no way I could move on without her.
Maybe Maez could survive losing me now, but I couldn’t say the same for myself.
Whatever was left of her was still mine.
After that heartbreaking thought, I was determined to stay in bed all day when someone cleared their throat and I sat up, finding Maez standing exactly where I thought I saw her figure the other night.
“You need to get up,” she said. “You need to bathe. You need to eat.”
I frowned at her. “If you want me to eat so badly, why don’t you just conjure food to appear magically at my feet.”
“I could,” she hedged. “But I think it would be good for you to eat outside of your room.”
“You care what’s good for me?” I asked, hopeful. “I thought sorcerers didn’t have feelings.”
Maez’s lip curled. “Feelings are a weakness, Princess,” she said. “It is power that fuels my magic—death—not feelings.”
For all the distance she seemed to be trying to create, I liked the hint of sarcasm to her voice—it sounded a little more like her normal cavalier tone.
“If you want death, why don’t you go kill Nero, then? You were so close to ending Evres, why stop?”
I wondered if she had the strength to kill only one or would she be like a shark in chummed water.
Would the next kill create a blood frenzy?
That’s what I heard happened to sorcerers.
I wondered if killing Nero would make her insatiable.
Right now, she seemed so close to the Maez I knew and loved, but what would happen after a decade of killing.
Two? Would she even be recognizable to me anymore?
Would she turn her bloodlust onto me one day, too?
“I told you before,” Maez replied, seemingly unaffected by my line of questioning.
“Evres is your kill.” She studied me intensely.
“I could bring him here right now, you know. Let you run him through with my blade.” A smile curled her lips as she licked her canine. “I could help you. It could be fun.”
Fear gripped me. “No.”
“No?” She seemed smug at my response, as if it had proved something to her. “You can’t bring yourself to do it, can you? Because in your heart of hearts, you are pure goodness.”
“I’m not so sure of that anymore.”
Fear mixed with a strange envy. I wished I had a small spark of that dark magic within me to make me say yes, to seduce me into going through with it. What was the point of goodness if it allowed beasts like Evres to live?
“Cast Evres from your mind, Princess.” Maez swirled her hands wreathed in brilliant green. “He’s nothing more than a fearful coward. He won’t cross me again.”
“I should kill him,” I admitted, finding more resolve in my voice.
Maez’s magic seemed to flare in response.
She wanted me to kill him. Clearly her magic delighted in the thought.
A scintillating desire coiled in me to see how else I could provoke it.
“With a flick of your hand, you could do it now,” I pushed, trying to lure out her magic like a siren’s song.
“You are powerful. You can protect me. You can protect everyone. You can end this fight before it even begins.”
Apparently, though, that was the wrong tack.