Chapter 9
Xaydin was still reeling from his newfound discovery. “You’re a daughter of Cratus.”
Fuck me. He didn’t want to believe it, but…
“You can turn around now. I’m dressed.”
She still hadn’t answered his question and he had to know. “How long have you known?”
“Most of my life. My mother accidentally confessed it one night when she was in the midst of a tirade.”
“And you never thought to reach out to your brothers or sister?”
She scoffed at his question. “You think they’d believe me?”
“Again, only a unicorn can be a unicorn. The moment they saw you, they’d have known the truth.
” And now that he knew who she was, it was obvious how much she favored her father.
And brother. She was definitely the feminine version of Dash.
How he’d missed it, he had no idea. “They wouldn’t have questioned it. ”
Gisela let those words sink in. Her mother had convinced her that they would have all killed her. Her father for tying him to her mother.
Her brother because she could have contested his inheritance.
And her other siblings just for spite.
The last thing that bastard wants is anyone knowing how intimate we were. You are my guarantee that the unicorns won’t dare invade. The daughter of two equine races, you are the rightful heir to their throne!
She’d always wondered what had made her mother so positive they’d know her.
Now she understood. It was the alternate form her mother had forbidden her from taking. Her mother must have known that only unicorns could be unicorns.
You are centaur! Damn you for not showing my blood!
When Gisela had been born as a unicorn, her mother had slaughtered everyone who had witnessed her birth.
Everyone. All to safeguard her mother’s illicit secret that she’d slept with King Cratus of Licordia.
Gisela had been born in blood, and but for her mother’s politics that wanted to use her, she’d have been slaughtered, too. As it was, she’d been kept completely sequestered until she’d been able to turn human.
Released only so long as she swore to her mother that she’d never turn into her birth form.
Never be the unicorn she’d been born to be.
As if it were Gisela’s fault that her mother’s centaur genes hadn’t fought any harder to show themselves in her blood. Her mother had acted as if Gisela had done it on purpose to anger her.
No one had a choice as to what they were born.
Only who they’d become.
“I never wanted to be an assassin,” she whispered in a confession that caught her off guard. “I just wanted my mother to acknowledge me.”
To her shock, Xaydin pulled her against his chest and held her. “I know it hurts and I’m sorry. Every child should feel wanted and loved.”
How would she know? Neither of her parents had held an ounce of parental concern. Her father had handed her brothers over to be brutalized. He’d separated Dash and Ryper to be raised separately. What kind of monster divided twins?
It made her wonder how Xaydin’s mother had felt about her children. She was still alive and they didn’t know her…
Gisela couldn’t imagine being like that. She’d never be able to let a child go. Not for anything.
But here they were. The unwanted.
And yet standing this close to Xaydin…
She didn’t feel unwanted at all.
We’re enemies.
Weren’t they?
Why did she have this overwhelming urge to trust him? To seek him out? It wasn’t like her at all, but she had learned to enjoy their company. Enjoy having someone at her back.
But dare she be that stupid?
Masakage could feel the hatred from the atasweres around him. It hung heavy in the air, like humidity in the atmosphere right before a mighty storm. They begrudged his presence, just as they’d ached to attack Xaydin earlier.
He’d give them credit, they knew restraint. How to hold themselves back even when they were filled with fury and a need for vengeance.
Masakage respected that. Holding his hands out to show them that he meant no harm, he gestured toward the bed where Saress coughed and tried to breathe. “I can save him.”
His eldest son scoffed. “For what price, wizard? One of us must die?”
Normally, they’d be right. The usual price was a life for a life. But there was something he’d sensed earlier. And it was something he didn’t want to let Xaydin know.
“The ink used for Meara’s contract was bespelled. I can smell it. Let me take it from you and you’ll see.”
Saress scoffed. “Lies.”
“No. Deep inside, you know it, too. You felt it the moment you began carrying that contract. Something wasn’t right.
But your pride kept you from correcting it or saying anything.
This isn’t the usual illness some of you get.
This one is special. A built-in safeguard to make sure the queen wouldn’t always have to abide by her word. ”
Saress sat up.
Masakage approached the bed slowly. “Admit it. You haven’t been right since the moment you took that contract on.”
Saress started to argue but then caught himself. He looked to his wife, then back to Masakage. “How did you know that?”
Because wizards knew their own kind. They could smell magic no matter how little. It literally sizzled on their skin when they came near it. Not even the most skilled of their ilk could mask the unique sensation.
“The how isn’t important. What matters is that I can cure it.”
“For a price.”
“Magic always comes with a price.” A price usually paid by the one wanting the magic enacted.
“And that price?”
“We transfer it to another course, and you never speak of the contract again.”
“What difference would that make?”
“You would no longer be poisoned by the ink, and you have no reason to enforce it.” Because without it on his skin, he would never know if or when the contract was broken.
Saress narrowed his gaze on him. “What do you get out of it?”
“That’s no never mind to you. Just do as I say and you’ll live a long, happy life as will Fenrys…your son.” The boy who’d led them here had wanted his father put out of his suffering, and he was carrying a grudge because his father wanted to give contracts to his brothers, but not him.
All because Saress didn’t want his youngest son hunted.
Masakage manifested the medium he intended to put the contract on. “Are you ready to be healed?”
Asla nodded. “Do it, my love. We’ll tell no one.”
Saress cupped her cheek in his hand. He waited for so long that Masakage was sure he’d turn the bargain down.
But after several minutes, he nodded. “Do what you must, wizard. I want to be with my family for as long as the gods will allow.”
Masakage inclined his head, then used his powers to pull the ink from the ataswere’s skin to the document in his hand. Word by word, the ink floated from his skin to the parchment until the tainted contract was transferred.
Satisfied, Masakage rolled it up and smiled.
It was done.
Now the question was who would pay the highest fee for this…
King Dash or Queen Meara.