Chapter Seven #3
The court gasped. The king had recovered his seat and was now cackling, the teeth at the back of his mouth black and hideous. Miranda whipped another slice of magic toward me and missed. She lay sprawled on the ground, crying in frustration.
I leapt into the cage, the reptile close behind me.
When she heaved herself up, the tension in her body promised she would lunge again.
I waited, watching her muscles shift. Waited a few beats longer.
That’s when her jaw coiled back and snapped forward.
As her teeth were about to clench around my leg, I shifted into a mouse, just for Roland—a twinge of amusement from somewhere in the stands—and slipped through the bars.
Mouse to deer again, I slammed the iron door shut with my back, the creature trapped inside.
Across the yard, Miranda shrieked and threw a final burst of blood-red magic. It spiraled through the air, swift as an arrow.
The reptile and I locked eyes as I fell. She was thrashing inside the cage. Tormented by years of captivity, distrustful of any human kindness. As my head slammed into the ground, I thought, I’m so very sorry I had to trap you. Your scales are just like mine.
When I was seven years old, Prospero arrived at my father’s rundown inn in the bowels of the city.
Wherever traveling courtiers usually stayed, it was not with us.
We had our fair share of merchants and the occasional knight, if he was considerably downtrodden, unable to afford somewhere nicer.
I’d never met someone from court—only knew that far away we were ruled by someone named Richard and that the king had a sorcerer, a magician who fed him tastes of the future and multiplied his heaps of gold.
I was to fetch ale and a plate of whatever bread and vegetables my father had made that day for travelers, then scurry off to scrub the floors on my knees until they were red and raw.
Sometimes, if he screamed, if he was crueler than usual, I’d draw false memories inside of him out of spite.
He never suspected, even when he’d speak to our guests about events that never happened, enduring their odd stares.
He assumed he was too clever to be tricked by me.
I still remember the sound of creaking wood above. Of beds squeaking, and heavy boots stomping. It sounded like my life could cave in at any moment.
The stranger wore a cloak, and he accepted the meal and drink with only whispered thanks. Yet I could see his eyes were a striking blue. Magician eyes. Strange and unnatural. They were the first I’d seen other than my own.
“You,” he said, casting off his hood. His hair and beard were just as shocking. His face, however, was not in accordance with gossip. He was not ethereal or bewitching. Instead, he had homely, kind features, a nick in his ear. “Girl. Your disguise is slipping.”
I glanced over my shoulder. My father had turned his back. I lowered my voice, ducking into the seat opposite the stranger. “What do you mean, Sir—”
He indicated to himself with a flourish. “Prospero.”
Prospero. Everyone knew that name. My father said it was because of Prospero our treasury overflowed—they didn’t need our taxes to fund their petty, foreign wars, though still they collected the crowns.
He got rowdy after he drank, whining to customers about Prospero, always that bastard Prospero, born under Jupiter, born into greed, who surely bathed naked in a tub of jewels and coin.
Prospero, who should be hanged for theft, left for birds to peck outside one of the king’s many palaces.
Now here he was, at our little inn. His eyes were like a sunny day, just as bright, and I didn’t think he should be left on a pike for the crows like my father said. I told him so, and he laughed, a full sound that creased little forks beside his eyes.
“Which man is your father?”
I pointed. My father was a large man, hard to miss. Prospero hummed. “Best not introduce me, then. As I said before: Your disguise is slipping. Your hair is white beneath your cap.”
I reached for a strand and twirled it around my finger.
It took so much concentration—too much—to alter my appearance all day and night.
My father didn’t want any of his patrons to know what I was, because then they might demand to stay elsewhere.
Or I might be taken away, and he’d lose the labor a daughter provided.
But I longed to be taken away. When a customer seemed important enough, I’d let my appearance slip, so that when they rode off in the morning, off to court or their manors, they would whisper that there was a bedraggled magician girl in an inn they passed through on their travels.
I yearned for this very moment, trembled for it, prayed for it.
I knew one day, if the whispers spread, someone would come and find me.
“Was that what you intended?” Prospero asked.
I nodded shyly.
“Clever girl. When and where were you born?”
I told him the date and the time. I told him it was here, in this very inn, that my mother had bled out from the trauma of my birth. That the first thing I ever felt inside another person’s mind was my father’s grief.
“And what am I feeling at this very moment?” he asked.
No one had ever asked me before. I explained how emotions reminded me of portraits, rich in color and texture. Right now, he was eager and curious, but there was also a swatch of impatience inside of him, too. Was he running late?
He smiled. He was indeed days late to see the king, he said.
“With proper training, I hope you will be capable of even more. You may be able to transform yourself into any creature. To step into memory. To grasp hold of emotion and change it. Do you know a magician aligned with the Moon has never been recorded? Only in legends. That’s her magic in your veins.
” He murmured, “Moon eyes and hair. Maiden fair.”
I shook my head as he pulled out a worn book and began flipping through the pages. The illustrations were peculiar, even slightly grotesque. An old man beneath a full Moon, transforming himself into a wolf, into a falcon, into a youth.
“She is the closest celestial body in the sky,” he continued, his gaze shining with new hunger. “Her face always shifting. There is an entire side to her we’ll never see, and I suspect the same is true for you. I’d like to bring you to court. You will make my councilors very afraid.”
“How do I know for sure you are who you say?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I’d be honored to give you a memory.”
“I’d like one with the king.”
And I saw it inside his mind as if it were a hand extended.
He knelt beside the king in a private chapel.
Beside him was a lanky boy with pink hair and a sour smirk and a slightly younger boy with the chiseled looks of the king, the same gray eyes.
The pink-haired boy was struggling to keep his eyes closed, kept peering at the other one and fidgeting.
“Prospero,” the king said softly. Light filtered through the stained glass, the rays falling before his feet. “What shall I pray for if I already have everything?”
After that, Prospero took me away.
After that, I didn’t know what to pray for either. For years, I had everything I ever wanted. And then I lost it all.
A blurry head was hovering over me, peering down. All at once, I was wet and ice cold, a woman again. My leg was throbbing, the wound bleeding through the wrappings, so deep I could still see a sliver of bone.
Edward Guildford’s long, thin face came into focus. “Apologies,” he stuttered, glancing away from my chest.
I was in a strange bed, and there was a weight on the end of it. Roland waved a dismissive hand. “Ed, fetch her fresh bandages, please.”
Edward bowed and scurried off.
When Roland set my ruined thigh in his lap, I tried to pull it away. “Hold still. I’m working on it bit by bit.” I watched as his dawn-colored magic flowed forward, a tide of light, and knit another inch of the wound.
“It still hurts.”
“Yes, well, it looks nicer. You’ll be in pain for days, I’m sure.”
There was a bowl of bloody water on the table and a stack of cloth on the floor. He had been at this for hours, it seemed. “How did you do it?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“The bear.”