Chapter 1
Reagan
Reagan found it odd that he felt worse now than when the curse had been breaking him like a walnut. He should have felt better. He wore his own skin again at all times, instead of that beastly hide—though his familiar kept it still.
Every time he reached for his mana, his mind filled with the bison’s horns and jagged canines straining against its maw. Seven years ago, it had looked like a poised wolf. Just a proud, brown-furred predator. Now, his familiar had become a hideous beast.
Gwinifer found it funny. Of course she did. Hers was a monster too.
He sighed, his gaze trained on the two sisters hovering by their father’s bed in the infirmary. The sight brought him no satisfaction, only a gnawing weight clawing through his ribs.
When Reagan probed at it, he ground his teeth.
Guilt.
He should have only felt guilty if it was her on that bed, or if he hadn’t taken precautions with her volatile sister sleeping just across from her. Or the kind born of a dozen failures, each time he let himself be ruled by his worst impulses.
But her father? The man who’d dropped to the ground the instant he’d seen what his own daughter could do? That wasn’t on Reagan. He wasn’t to blame for a heart too weak to face its own blood.
And yet, the miserable thing lingered. It crawled beneath his skin until it nearly drove him to do something dramatic. Like apologising.
He exhaled, eyes closing.
If he didn’t apologise, she probably wouldn’t speak to him. And if she wouldn’t speak to him, he might very well lose what remained of his mental clarity.
It had been four days of silence, and he couldn’t afford to squander what little brain power remained.
Not while Alaister Quarrel pestered at his door, the magister who had been tracking Mountheim’s recovery for the last days.
He demanded figures and forecasts and all manner of guarantees—as though seven years of a curse could be undone in a week.
When the man had demanded a correct estimation for successful crops in the farmlands, warning that anything less would look incompetent, Reagan nearly snapped, Do you know how long it takes for soil to recover after almost a decade of blight?
The words nearly ripped from him. Instead, he dug his beast’s claws into the dirt of his mind and ground out, I’ll confirm a date with my arcanists.
The wretch went on about the measures of taxation that he would need to abide now, arguing that Mountheim had enjoyed far too much leniency in the past years.
Reagan had grown used to listening to demands and fulfilling his duty, used to denying himself wants and desires.
Except for the one desire he now stared at—the person who made him crave more from life, tightened his chest whenever she entered a room, and improved his mood in a way nothing else did.
He still chastised himself for not seeing what she was sooner, but he was not a complete idiot.
He had sensed something. Something he could never quite pinpoint.
An elusive feeling he kept shoving aside because he was drowning in more imminent concerns.
But that instinct about her clouded his thoughts, enough to make him knowingly ignore that she would return to human lands. He chose her anyway.
At the time, he hadn’t known what the instinct meant. He only knew he trusted it.
If Jane glanced his way now, she would only see her own reflection in the glass pane of the infirmary window.
But he could see her clearly, the bruised crescents beneath her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the way exhaustion seemed etched into every inch of her face as though the magelights had bleached her in a sterile glow.
Jane was curled up in a stiff vinyl chair that looked far too uncomfortable to sleep in. Her sister lay on the couch on the other side of the bed, half swallowed by a wool-stitched blanket.
Cerridwen had told Reagan, after he returned from meetings with the stewards, that they hadn’t left the room. Not since the day before, when he had snatched a moment from his duties replacing Silas in Eldritch to see them.
The pulse-tracker orb ticked a soft, regular beep, the only sound in that quiet ward. Her eyes flicked to the orb as if it might give up a different sound at any second, then slid back to where her father lay inert.
Reagan moved to the doorframe. The hairs along his forearm lifted when she noticed him.
Brown-green eyes were the only thing that stirred in her face.
Reagan dipped his chin, and she spared her family a long look before she rose.
Jane’s steps were leaden as she crossed to the corridor, still glancing at Joy through the glass as she stopped in front of him.
A few copper curls had escaped the braid falling along the column of her neck. A flicker of flux twined through his limbs, his power itching to reach out, yet he held himself back. She would not welcome his touch now.
The look in her eyes, the guarded one he had spent months trying to burn out of her, returned like a stubborn weed in spring.
“How long have you been standing here?” Her voice was frayed with weariness.
“A while,” he replied. “How long have you been awake?”
“A while.”
He did not bother to pretend; he had already bared his feelings in full.
This was no simple attraction anymore. The edges had blurred to the point he could not tell how far he would go to keep her from ever falling under harm’s way again.
That thought frightened him because there seemed to be no boundary left.
“You need to sleep,” he said. “In a proper bed, not that chair. You both should be in real rooms.”
Where had his dignity gone? He sounded like a governess.
“We’re fine,” she murmured, stretching her back. “We don’t want to be away when he wakes.”
“Someone will fetch you the moment he wakes.”
She stared. “Is there something you need?”
He hid the half-smile with a pressed mouth, an urge to poke at her coming unbidden. “You know, if you need to relax, I’m more than willing to help.”
No reaction.
He inhaled, choosing his words carefully. “It has been days, Jane. Cerridwen said you have barely moved. I know you are angry, but talk to me.”
“Talk to you,” she echoed, shaking her head. There was no warmth in her eyes. “Because you will tell me everything?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I will. And gluing yourselves to this room will not help him. We have things to discuss. Malory, your sister.” He glanced at the ring on her finger. “Your mana.”
“Later,” she dismissed. “I cannot speak about this now.”
A small surge of flux made him clamp down, an act of restraint that was already second nature. “Later when? Give me a date that is more conve—” He broke off, bowing his head to throttle the serrated words. “Please. Talk to me.”
Her eyes flicked between his, mouth tightening as she weighed him. She reached into her pocket, fingers closing around a small hairpin set with an emerald. She stepped forward and laid it in his palm, rubbing his fingers over it.
His heart thudded, brows knitting.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
She clipped the relic into his shirt pocket and something tingled in his throat. Reagan recognised the sigil on the emerald.
It was a truth-telling relic.
Bitter humour curled the corner of his mouth.
It was proof she had lost trust in him. Still, the cleverness of the thing was bloody impressive. She had surely made it herself because no self-respecting smith would sell this relic.
“This is forbidden by law,” he said softly, willing to bet that she already knew. “You cannot compel confession, not even in court.” Her eyes flared, not with shock, but rather misreading his answer. “I’m not confessing anything. I will use it because I have nothing to hide from you.”
He didn’t tell her the stain this rune had left in magecraft over the years.
It was the sort of relic used in the old tribunals, when magekin still saw no problem in wrenching personal secrets from people unwilling to share, ripping thought and memory from them until the law finally called it immoral.
It was considered the same violation as compelling someone to bend to another’s will.
He doubted she knew that part.
“Then indulge me,” Jane said, her features fixed in a strained calm that was already cracking.
Reagan’s gaze flicked to her sister. “Has Joy told you anything about what happened in the Northern Forest?”
Her leg began to bounce. He knew that sign indicated she was either nervous or losing patience.
“Yes,” she said. “You were there when she told us. But I need to hear you say it.”
Otherwise, she’d think he was twisting the truth, which was not the case. He only wanted to brace her for what had truly happened.
“Your father and sister were attacked by Strzygas when I found them,” he said evenly. “I didn’t know who they were. When I reached for your father, your sister panicked, and her mana surged.”
Jane’s brows pinched together, tension gathering in the small space between them.
“There’s a reason I needed to keep her away,” he continued. “And from how you guard her, I’d guess this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”
“Her being attacked by monsters?” she bit out. “Yes, that was the first.”
“Her hysteria, Jan. She was wielding without control. I had to contain her. When I brought her in, she asked for her sister, and I called for Finn. He recognised her. Then I saw what I’d missed.
Your foresight, the signs I ignored. I asked if she still had her ring.
She said she lost it in the forest.” He exhaled, remembering the night.
“I went back searching, but I only found it days later, on my birthday. Before that, Finn was nearly spent keeping her calm and contained. I couldn’t risk the court officials seeing her in that state and deciding to imprison her.
Without the nullifier relic, I couldn’t tell you.
I wouldn't risk letting you near her. But when I saw you that night, I wanted to tell you. I should have, and I am sorry for that.”
Jane’s head shook faintly, as if she didn’t know she was doing it. Did she even hear his apology?
“She said you grabbed him by the collar and yanked him from her. That you killed the Strzyga. That’s when his heart failed.” She looked at him, eyes narrowing. “You treated her like a prisoner. You left her freezing in that bloody tower.”
The words struck deeper than they should have. But it had been months since he’d heard her speak to him like that.
“The tower was warm,” he said quietly. “Safe. I wouldn’t let her freeze. Gwinifer and Finn were checking on her. But apparently, she doesn’t remember the truth, not all of it. I didn’t kill the Strzyga. I pulled your father out of her flux and warded us. She assumed the rest.”
Jane went still. “You’re saying my sister did it? And Gwinifer and Finn knew?”
“Yes. Can I take this off now?”
She pressed her fingertips to her temples, voice stumbling through disbelief. “What…what you’re saying is impossible. How could we have never known this?”
He unhooked the hairpin, the rune’s pressure releasing him, and stepped closer.
“Because of the rings. Was it your father who gave it to you? Or your mother? Did any of them tell you not to take it off? Perhaps so you wouldn’t lose it.
” She didn’t answer, seeming to deliberate.
“If you need proof, bring her to dinner. We’ll talk. We’ll test both your access.”
Her hand found the stone sill beneath the window, gripping it hard enough for her knuckles to pale. She looked through the glass, at her sleeping sister.
Reagan sighed and moved closer, enough that his chest hovered a breath from her shoulder.
Her faint scent, like cherry soap, clung to her hair. It dragged some restless need from his body. He inhaled deeper, fighting the stupid urge to nuzzle his face in the crook of her neck.
“Tell me you’ll both come to dinner,” he murmured. “We’ll talk. And then you and I will talk.”
She looked up from beneath her lashes, wary but softened.
It hadn’t been long since she’d reciprocated his feelings, slipping beneath his skin in a way that left no going back. He ached for her now, for that nearness. But the silence between them had grown thick, like a wall he’d need to break down brick by brick.
“We’ll come,” she said.
Relief eased through him.
She didn’t add anything more and started to turn away.
“Your father said something before he collapsed,” he told her quietly. “He told your sister, ‘Find her. You’ll be alright.’”