Chapter Sixteen #2
The children knew he was coming home, too. The nursery reported that Mary and Alfred kept looking out of the window, and wouldn’t settle. Perhaps it was an unknown power of their own, or perhaps they felt Jasper through Delia’s connection to them.
After the scare they’d had over the floral spies and Mary’s excursion to Jasper’s study, Delia had felt the need to keep track of the child.
She had experimented with finding the one magical thread that connected to the child from among the millions that flowed from her into the living world around her.
It had taken months, but she had finally succeeded, and had been able to shape the connection into a medium for communication. Now she could find Mary at any time, just by following the thread. Even better, she had set it to alert her if Mary was somewhere other than where she was meant to be.
Once that was working, she had found the threads for her other two children and then, with Jasper’s permission, she had shaped the thread that led to him for the same purpose, giving them a more powerful sense of one another than they had through their mate bond.
Jasper called the threads their leading strings, which wasn’t quite fair, since she could only feel their emotions and find their location, not influence them.
It did exactly what she wanted, but no more.
The thread to London was stretched almost to its limit, but through it, she could feel Jasper’s exhaustion.
He had been acting as a power source for the palace healers since his power awoke, and had barely noticed any diminishment.
Thanks to Jasper’s power, the healers had been able to halt the progress of the curse on King George, but not to reverse it.
He was still alive, poor man, but his madness seemed entrenched.
The working Jasper had just assisted at and the one a few weeks ago had been different.
It was a direct intervention in the war on the Continent.
The last one had left him drained, and this one was even more complicated.
He would need nourishing soup and a healing sleep, and she had ordered all to be prepared hours ago, when she first felt his thoughts turn homeward.
Still, she waited. And there he was, suddenly winking into sight above the manor, so high that perhaps others might think the dark shape against the sky was an impossibly long bird, except that as he spiraled down, he grew larger and larger.
Delia raced out to the courtyard to greet him. By the time she crossed the parlor and then the entrance hall to the door the butler held open for her, his dragon body and wings cast a shadow over most of the courtyard.
The rich emerald of his scales was dulled, and his wings beat sluggishly as he landed, hind feet first and then the forelegs dropping heavily to the ground.
For a moment he crouched, his head bowed in exhaustion, and then he disappeared into the mist of his change, reforming as a man while Delia was still descending the steps from the front door.
Her eyes searched his face, marked with fine lines that had not been there when she saw him off.
She had been right. This time had been more grueling than last time.
As he shrugged into the robe given to him by the servant who had been posted for the purpose, he gave her a tired smile. “Success,” he said. “But I could sleep for a week.”
It was not a time for questions. No doubt he would share the details when they were alone. “Come inside, my love. Eat, and then sleep.”
Later that evening, he woke for long enough to eat a proper dinner, which they took in their chambers, serving themselves from the dishes sent up from the kitchen so that they could be private.
“It worked?” she asked.
“So the enchanters say. We shall not know for certain until next year. Lady Margate said that the key parties might yet change their minds, but for now, at least, the Tsar is preparing to invade French territory in Poland and is refusing to meet with Napoleon. As long as he doesn’t draw back, we are certain Napoleon will invade Russia. ”
He chuckled, and took a sip from his wine glass.
“The effect of the last session still holds. Both tyrants see the other as the enemy. Alexander is convinced that, for Russia’s sake, he must strike while Napoleon is occupied in Spain and elsewhere.
Napoleon believes his best plan is to invade Russia and take Moscow, so he can force Alexander back to the treaty table. ”
Jasper’s role in the enchanters’ work had been to provide the necessary power for them to reach into Napoleon’s mind through the powerful wards around him, and send their power over fifteen hundred miles, to the brain of Tsar Alexander.
“The plan involved an intervention with every ruler who might influence what happens next, and all their major advisors, so I was feeding power to fifteen enchanters at once,” Jasper explained.
“For three days, Delia! After it was over, I didn’t have enough energy left to translocate, and I had to dig deep for the energy to change, so I could fly home. ”
“What did the healers say?” Delia demanded. “Are you injured? Did you strain yourself? Did you even see a healer?”
He covered her hand with his, smiling. “I am not hurt, darling. Just tired. And yes, the healers were there. Lady Bright herself examined me. A couple of days of recovery is all I need.”
Delia made no further protest. The task had been to set Napoleon and Alexander against one another, thus neutralizing, or at least distracting, the world’s two greatest powers while Britain fought for its survival.
“It seems Persephone and the gardener did not overhear that crucial first meeting with their spelled flowers,” she commented.
“We discovered their floral spies before they could collect the information,” Jasper corrected her.
He had agreed not to report Persephone, and by extension the gardener, as spies.
That didn’t mean he had forgiven them. “But you are right that the Welsh have done nothing to interfere with our spells. If Ymrs or his like had known what we were doing, he might have been able to counter our efforts.”
He yawned. Delia dropped the topic of Persephone and focused on getting her husband off to bed.