Chapter 47
THE LURE OF THE CHERRYWOOD BOX, DARK THOUGHTS, AND HOWLING IN THE TOWER
Bradley stood at the edge of the large desk, hands at his sides. He’d been standing there for ages now, barely registering the cooing of the pigeons in the attic above him, the sigh of sand shifting under the passage of the desert wind, not even the dull drumming of his heart.
Outside, seemingly faraway and very faint, Dirk battled his princess’s would-be rescuer. That was good. The little luck dragon wouldn’t be able to interfere with what came next.
The cherrywood box seemed to gaze back at him. In this staring contest, the two contestants were equally matched, though only one was wrestling with his conscience.
The apprentice reached for the box. It was warm to the touch, the hook latch sliding as smoothly as butter across a hot skillet as his thumb swept it aside.
Licorice, sweet and sharp, wafted towards him. The parchment folded at the bottom of the shallow box appeared no less demure than a lady’s stack of letters from a secret lover. No less chock full of details and declarations that could damn them both.
There was still an opportunity to close the box.
Lock it and hurl it outside for the desert to consume.
He could still break his curse without selling his soul.
Master Excelsior wouldn’t have brought him here if it couldn’t be done.
Unless this had been his master’s plan all along, to create a dark disciple.
Out here in the desert, no other students were at risk and Master Excelsior’s secret was safe.
Unless this was a test.
Nothing was what it seemed with Master Excelsior, not ever.
When other professors had Bradley practicing magic in the controlled environment of the classroom, Master Excelsior had thrown his pupil out into the middle of a thunderstorm and told him to make it his bitch (which was where Dirk had picked up the colorful phrase).
“You need to broaden your mind, dear boy,” the twiggy sorcerer had crowed. “It needs to be as limber as a wet noodle! Those fools inside don’t want you to get wet. I want you soaked and grinning.”
Then the crazy man had caught lightning in his fist and thrown it back into the sky.
I’m broadening my mind, Master. Setting his jaw, Bradley lifted the parchment and returned the cherrywood box to the desk. His fingers trembled as he unfolded it and angled it into the sunlight.
But he’d made his decision. He was done with the suffering. The inching and crawling for meager scraps of progress.
He would use the knowledge he had gained from Small Magicks and summon a djinn from the desert wastes, free it of its purgatory by his very blood if necessary, and task it with freeing him of his curse.
Blood magic was dangerous and forbidden, but no one was here to witness it.
And if nobody else knew about it, perhaps one day Bradley could forget he’d ever performed it.
He recognized the illustrations inked upon the parchment as clearly as if he’d seen them only yesterday.
The strange inscriptions were still a mystery to him, but as he stared at their foreign swirls, the script began to change.
Before his very eyes, the strange language translated itself into Commons.
Every alarm bell sounded in Bradley’s mind.
“Suspect everything that comes too easy, my boy,” Master Excelsior had told him. “If you haven’t earned it, it won’t do you any good. Not now, and not in the long run either.”
Why would his master tell him that and then conveniently leave this dark magic instruction manual for him to find?
Indecision wracked him. Bradley wanted this—freedom from his curse—ached for it, but what was the cost?
Magic itself had no limits, but its wielders did.
Sorcerers were still human and bound by such constraints.
A spell that tired one user could kill another.
What price would he pay to summon a djinn and break its bonds?
The cautionary tales told of dark sorcerers with black eyes and corrupted souls.
Shunned by their peers, erased from their family trees.
Bradley was already alone, and he’d vowed never to return to the Cut, so what was he truly losing?
Nothing, yet he would gain everything. He would be happy again, and all would be as it should be.
Just a little different. But wasn’t that the way of the world, change? It was inevitable as the weather.
No one depended on him. His parents found sufficiency in their village, and he had no real friends.
And certainly no lover. And Dirk . . . he was just a baby, as he was fond of saying.
He could return to his littermates at the College or travel beyond the mountains into the mists of Tianzi.
Dirk didn’t deserve to be bound to a grump like Bradley.
He deserved the carefree wind and refreshing rain and spinning up tornadoes and hurricanes whenever he pleased.
So, when it was all tallied, Bradley would be doing Dirk a favor. He would be protecting the little dragon from an existence where Bradley’s curse brought them both down.
Bradley wet his lips. He was strong in both body and power.
His magic was born of the wilds, hardier than that which passed through bloodlines, now diluted.
This parchment wouldn’t twist him or turn his eyes black like it had those of the cautionary tales.
Besides, if a hapless twit like Franklin Gladstone could muster the magic to curse him, then Bradley could survive this.
He would survive, regain full use of his magic, and leave this tower.
Shed all those tiresome fetters that were holding him back.
The College would never accept him, and probably hunt him down as a rogue, but he’d have magic.
He could make a life on the fringes of society—life on the Cut had already prepared him for that.
Sucking in a deep breath, Bradley focused on the first line of instruction that would liberate his future.
Before he could utter the first syllable, a howl tore through the tower.
It was pain, raw and terrifying, almost identical to the wail of the little luck dragon that day in the rain in the lilac garden.
The thing he had buried deep, the heart he only let Dirk see, broke its chains and roared to life.
“You wonder why your magic is so much more powerful than your peers’,” Master Excelsior had told him one afternoon after a grueling test. “It’s because you feel deeply, my dear boy.
You think that makes you weak, but it doesn’t.
That empathy for life is what makes you extraordinary.
It connects you to this world and all the creatures within it far more intrinsically than anyone born of inherited magic.
It fuels you. Don’t lose your heart, Bradley Donmarin. Not ever.”
The parchment hit the floor long after the apprentice had sprinted from the room.