10. The Green Flame
The Green Flame
“Relax,” the deep voice commanded. “Stop looking for him, Shadow.”
I couldn’t relax.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure how to tell him that if I “relaxed,” my magic would only instinctively do exactly what he’d just demanded I stop doing.
I took a deep breath, and exhaled it out slowly, trying despite what I knew. I kept my eyes closed where I sat in his office’s high-backed chair, mostly so I wouldn’t have to see those eerie, ghost-like irises staring back at me.
My magic did what it always did, whenever I relaxed my control.
“Stop looking for him,” the voice growled.
The older mage’s magic cut through my concentration, forcing me to pay attention to it, even though I didn’t want to.
I heard annoyance mixed with derision in his deep voice.
“…I’ve told you not to seek him out when we are doing this,” the older sorcerer bit out.
“You are only warning him of our presence here, which will definitely taint whatever results we get from the attempt. If he knows I am using you to discern information about his whereabouts or his father’s plans, the heir will have only a few options.
He can shut his mind down altogether, denying us access…
or, he can let us in, only to feed us misinformation…
or he can let us in, and allow us access to the truth. ”
He paused deliberately.
“Which of these scenarios do you suppose is most likely?” he asked sourly. “Which, do you suppose, would be the most healthy for him? And how would you expect us to know the difference, witch, if he hides his presence and intentions from us both?”
His voice grew even more scathing.
“And what do you suppose his father will do, in any one of those scenarios? Or were you under the impression Malefic wouldn’t check his son’s mind rigorously, knowing of the connection between the two of you?
Have you actually deluded yourself to the extent that you believe Malefic would somehow be unaware of that connection by now?
Or is that your goal, Mrs. Bones?” he asked scathingly.
“Perhaps you are feeling resentful of this marriage thrust upon you so young, and without your conscious consent? Perhaps you blame him for leaving you with the repercussions of it? I can think of less sadistic ways to become a widow…”
He paused, likely so I could read the implications of his words.
I stared at him in disbelief.
As much as he talked down to me, I understood him perfectly.
I certainly didn’t need him to draw me a map.
“Are you asking if my goal is to get Bones tortured?” I spat. “Really? That’s your theory?” At his stone-faced silence, I glared up at him. “Unlike you, the King, the Ethnarch, and whoever else, I don’t actually believe he’s working for his father.”
Blackstone ignored most of what I asked.
He honed instead on the question everyone seemed to be asking.
“I think it’s a very strong possibility he is working for his father, yes.
” Contempt dripped from Blackstone’s words.
His pale fingers pulled his long hair back into a half-ponytail, and attached a silver clip to keep it back.
He folded his arms. “But then, I only have twenty-five years of watching the dynamics between the two of them, and his father’s methods of motivating Caelum to do his bidding. What would I know?”
I bit my tongue harder, fighting not to snap at him for real.
I honestly couldn’t tell if he was going out of his way to annoy me so it was easier to get past my mental shields, or if he really thought I was as shit at blocking as he pretended.
“Both,” the mage rumbled in annoyance. “Focus on your breath. Not on me. Not on your dark magician husband. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t discerned what we’re doing already.
” His words inched colder. “Which means the results we get might even be instructive, and not merely provide his father with yet another excuse for ‘disciplining’ him.”
I felt my shoulders tense, rising higher towards my ears.
I exhaled my annoyance a beat later, but wasn’t able to get that sicker feeling out of my mouth. Even apart from what was likely to happen to Bones if we did this, did I really want Blackstone, of all people, poking around in my mind?
Maybe Luc was right.
Maybe I was trying to hard to have it both ways.
It didn’t help that Blackstone had never hid his dislike of me. Something about Bones and I being married seemed to have ratcheted that dislike up a noticeable extent.
I hated his casual comments about the magical bond between me and Bones.
I hated his constant implication that everything that happened to Bones was somehow my fault, and not only because I had to fight those feelings already.
What right did Blackstone have to act like the marriage and everything that came with it was something either of us had done on purpose?
He acted like it was something we’d planned and plotted to achieve, rather than primarily a result of Bones’s magical condition.
In any case, neither of us could control what it was doing to our magics now. Belittling our connection was like mocking someone for needing water, or food.
Blackstone’s own magic didn’t exactly help me to trust him.
Some of my reaction to Blackstone’s Oracle sight felt nearly animalistic.
I could tangibly feel my magic distrusting his.
“I. Don’t. Care,” Blackstone bit out coldly.
He somehow managed to loom over me, even from five feet away.
“You need to detach from how you feel about me, Shadow… and about him. You must detach from whether or not we succeed, what we see if we do succeed, your reactions to what we are doing, your reactions to the possible risks. Magic feeds on emotion, in good and bad ways. If you can’t control that, you will never master your craft. Never.”
I could feel the truth of that.
It still annoyed me, maybe because it came from him.
Also, I was trying to do those things. I just wasn’t succeeding.
I couldn’t seem to control the part of me that went after Bones.
In an attempt to distract myself from thinking about him, I glanced around the room.
Blackstone’s office always looked and felt dark, but usually I came here during the day, when natural light from the tall window next to Morag’s perch usually penetrated a portion of the shadows.
Today I didn’t come until after the sun had set, and I found myself in his chair beside a tall bookshelf in the pitch dark, fighting not to sneeze from the dust and dense smells of herbs and the endlessly bubbling cauldrons around his work table.
I frowned at Blackstone’s angular form when he moved to stand between me and the room’s only fireplace.
It was cold in here, too, even though the days had been slightly warming of late.
Blackstone watched me, his pale eyes unmoving, the firelight glinting off the silver and emerald stones wrapped around his ear.
Before I could try again to clear my mind, he lifted his weight abruptly off the heavy table, and straightened to his full height.
“There,” he said, clicking his fingers impatiently. “You clearly cannot relax while hiding from me in the corner.”
I looked to where his bony finger and knuckle pointed.
In the corner nearest to him, behind Morag’s perch and a table covered in stacks of papers, an antique-looking chaise lounge with a rosewood frame and midnight blue upholstery stood. It looked to be in pristine condition, and I wondered that I’d never noticed it.
As much as I hated the idea of lying down and opening my magic to him even more, I could see the logic in it. We weren’t going to get anywhere like this, with me backed into a corner and half-gearing my magic up to fight him.
I rose to my feet and walked stiffly over to the lounge.
I sat on one edge long enough to remove my boots, then rolled my body sideways to stretch my legs out on the velvet upholstery. I folded my hands over my sternum and leaned my head back on the one pillow, which was a spotless cream.
Then, with a great deal of reluctance, I closed my eyes.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Blackstone didn’t say anything.
Somehow, that felt like progress, but probably wasn’t.
I could still feel my magic screaming to go after Bones. I tried not to react to the frantic feeling there, or to read any meaning into it.
It doesn’t mean Bones is dying, I told myself firmly. It doesn’t mean he’s in any particular danger right now, or worse danger than he was before.
I adjusted my spine on the velvet, and did everything I could to focus on my breath.
Blackstone remained silent for a few seconds longer.
Then, he spoke so quietly, I almost didn’t hear him.
“All right,” he said. “I’m lifting the shield around you now.”
I tensed the instant his words sank in.
Shield? He’d been shielding me? Clearly he hadn’t trusted me not to go after Bones. But now I wasn’t sure I trusted myself––
Calm down. Blackstone’s voice was flint-like, even inside my head. I can keep some of that back, just not when you’re hysterical. Try to relax. Don’t do anything.
I bit my lip, but tried to do as he said.
I tried to focus on my breathing.
I could hear my heart thudding wildly in my chest.
I was still lying there stiffly, breathing, listening to my pulse, when out of nowhere, the darkness behind my eyes abruptly changed.
“––Now kneel.”
I blinked, confused by the swirl of green smoke that filled the air, clouding my thoughts. I froze every part of myself, well before I realized I didn’t have a body. Nothing physical or organic existed to stop moving, or needed to breathe.
I felt like vapor, like a ghost.
In that silence, I let my vision slowly adjust.
Flickering green flames distorted the dimensions of the space.
Smoke swirled, confusing my ability to see.
It soon became clear I was in a cavernous room, hovering maybe six feet off the floor. Wherever I was, it felt underground. It felt damp and old.