Chapter 15 #2
The prima stared at her for one long, excruciating moment. Malachi could see the calculation happening behind those brilliant green eyes, her reassessment of a situation that in reality was far more complex than it had appeared from a thousand miles away.
Connor was less patient. “Roslyn, this man threatened our entire clan. He sent people to steal from us, he tried to recruit Brianna, and he attacked us on our own land. He’s the reason Allegra nearly — ”
“I know what he did.” Roslyn’s voice cut across his, quiet but final.
“I know all of it. I’ve spent three weeks in this house with him, and I know exactly who he is and what he’s done.
I also know that he’s dying, and that killing a dying man or leaving him to die isn’t something any of us should be comfortable with. ”
The silence that followed those words was so heavy that it felt as if the air itself was somehow solidifying.
Malachi was acutely aware of the picture he presented — propped up in a leather chair with a blanket over his legs and his burned left arm braced against his body, his white hair lank and unwashed, his face the color of paper.
Currently, he was far from an impressive figure, and the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him.
He considered saying something. Under normal circumstances, he would have had a prepared statement for this situation, a carefully constructed argument that explained the necessity of his actions, the philosophical framework underlying his collection, and the strategic logic that had led to Roslyn’s summoning.
He’d delivered such arguments before, to smaller audiences and in less fraught circumstances, and they’d been, if not persuasive in the end, at least sufficiently complex to forestall violence while he maneuvered himself toward a more favorable position.
But he had no maneuvering left. His magic was nearly gone, his body was held together by Roslyn’s skill and stubbornness, and the audience in front of him included two people he’d personally wronged and two beings whose power far exceeded his own even when he was at full strength.
Any argument he constructed would be transparent, and any attempt at the kind of rhetorical positioning that had once been his primary defense would insult the intelligence of everyone in the room.
So he said nothing and let Roslyn stand where she stood, and accepted that his fate was in the hands of a woman he’d kidnapped and a family he’d attacked.
It was, he reflected, a fitting arrangement.
If his career had been built on the principle that he always knew best, that his judgment was infallible and his methods were justified by the purity of his intentions, then there was a certain symmetry in having all of that dismantled by a twenty-something nurse practitioner who’d decided, against all evidence and self-interest, that he was worth saving.
Belshegar spoke then. What he said surprised everyone in the room…including Malachi.
“She’s right.”
The words were quiet and measured, and, judging the extradimensional being’s overly even tone, he didn’t expect them to be particularly popular with their audience.
Angela turned to look at him, and the surprise on her face was quickly replaced by a kind of sharp attention, a prima hearing counsel she hadn’t anticipated.
“What do you mean?” she said.
Belshegar moved away from the window and walked calmly across the study.
As he approached, Malachi felt his extradimensional signature intensify, like a bass note dropping even lower.
He stopped a few feet from the chair, close enough that Malachi had to tilt his head back to look up at him, and for a moment, he simply studied Malachi with an expression that wasn’t hostile or kind but was something older than either.
“I can see his aura,” Belshegar said, still looking at Malachi as though he was reading a text written in a language only he could interpret.
“It’s not the same as it was in Jerome. When he confronted us on the promontory, his signature was armored, layered with artifact energy, and reinforced by objects that amplified his natural power and obscured his true nature.
” He paused for a moment, expression thoughtful again.
“That armor is gone now. What remains beneath it is damaged, but it’s also different. ”
“Different how?” Connor asked. His skeptical tone made it clear that he wasn’t inclined to believe a single word of what Belshegar was saying.
“Changed,” Belshegar said, and something in his voice — a certainty that wasn’t human, that came from a being whose perception extended across dimensions — made even Connor go still.
“The aura I see now isn’t the aura of a man who’s trying to deceive or manipulate.
It’s the aura of a man whose defenses have been stripped away, and what has been revealed isn’t what I expected to find.
” His gaze shifted to Roslyn, and then back to Malachi.
“There is also something between them, a bond that was formed through the healing process. I won’t call it romantic, not precisely, although that element is present.
It’s the kind of bond that forms when one person sustains another through a prolonged crisis, when the healer’s magic becomes so deeply integrated with the patient’s system that separation would cause damage to both. ”
He delivered this clinical assessment without apparent discomfort, and Malachi, despite everything, felt a flush of something that might have been embarrassment at having his psyche described with such frank precision.
He was accustomed to being the one who read others, who analyzed signatures and cataloged properties and maintained the analytical distance that kept him in control.
Being read himself by a being whose perceptual abilities exceeded his own was a reversal he found deeply unsettling.
Angela looked at Roslyn. “Is that true? About your bond?”
Roslyn’s shoulders lifted, and Malachi could see the tension in the set of her neck.
“I’ve been healing him twice a day for three weeks.
My magic has been inside his system, tracing every channel and repairing every piece of damage.
That kind of sustained work creates a connection.
It’s not — ” She paused for a beat or two, and he could hear her choosing her words with the same care he would have chosen his if he’d had the energy for speech.
“It’s a medical reality. Severing it abruptly would destabilize everything I’ve built. ”
“That’s putting it conservatively,” Belshegar said, and Roslyn shot him a look over her shoulder that Malachi couldn’t see but could imagine.
“Thank you, Belshegar,” she said crisply. “I can advocate for my own patient.”
The faintest suggestion of a smile crossed the extradimensional being’s face, and Malachi registered, with some interest, that Roslyn’s directness appeared to amuse him rather than offend him. It was, he supposed, an encouraging indicator of the quality of being they were dealing with.
Levi spoke for the first time since entering the room. He hadn’t moved from his position by the bookshelf, and his voice was calm and unhurried, telling Malachi that he’d learned the value of patience over decades of living among people who possessed considerably less of it.
“The Van Horns are outside,” he said.
At once, Angela’s attention snapped to him.
Connor straightened, and even Belshegar turned from his study of Malachi’s aura to acknowledge the shift in priority.
The domestic drama of the Collector’s fate was, temporarily at least, put aside in favor of the more immediate problem of the hostile witches and warlocks who were presumably still stationed around the property.
“I felt them when we arrived,” Levi continued.
“Five sources of magic, ranged around the perimeter of the property. They’ve been probing the study wards, but they pulled back when they sensed our arrival.
They’re regrouping.” His head tilted slightly, and Malachi gathered that he was processing information from a source that didn’t correspond to any of the five standard senses.
“They’re also afraid. They didn’t expect reinforcements, and they can feel Belshegar’s presence, even if they don’t know what it is. ”
“Good,” Angela said, and the single word contained a shift in her bearing that Malachi found informative.
The fury was still there — he could see it in the set of her jaw and the brightness of her eyes — but it had been redirected, channeled from the personal grievance of a prima confronting her clan’s enemy to the tactical focus of a leader assessing a more immediate threat. “How long before they regroup?”
“Hours, I think,” Levi said. “They have significant offensive capabilities — fire magic, lightning, and a sleep caster — but they know they’re outmatched now. They’ll need to decide whether to press the attack or withdraw and report to the Van Horn prima.”
“Victoria.” Angela’s lips thinned. “Victoria Van Horn sent a strike team against a solitary warlock and a healer, and she didn’t even come herself?”
“She will,” Malachi said.
His voice was barely functional, thin and hoarse, stripped of the measured cadence that usually characterized his speech, but everyone in the study went quiet when he spoke, and every pair of eyes in the room was now fixed on him.
He met Angela’s gaze directly; he owed her that much, and looking away would have been the kind of evasion he no longer had the energy or the right to employ.