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Clare stormed into Verol and Marquin’s study, expecting to find only Marquin, but not displeased to find Verol as well. Two opinions were always better than one, and Verol’s expressions were easier to read. “Give me something with magic. Something small that you don’t care about.”
Two perplexed faces looked up at her, Verol’s from his journal, Marquin’s from what looked like an accounting ledger.
“I can choose for myself if you like.” She reached for a small wooden box on Verol’s desk. One inch wide by two inches long, she could feel the magic engraved into its lacquered surface.
“Not that.” Verol snatched it away, and she wondered what it did. He tucked it into a drawer and instead handed her a small glass apple.
“Why is this so terrifying?” she asked, and though the Song was feeling recalcitrant, its desire for the small magic in the apple was clear, and it did not require much nudging on her part to make it reach out and take it.
Both men went still. Verol recovered first, rising to take the apple from her fingers, turning it over and over in his own, as if he would come to some different conclusion if he performed the motion enough times.
When he spoke his voice was calm and cold, and it sent a shiver through her. “Clare, who have you shown this to?”
She did not answer him. “Why is it frightening?”
“Because” Marquin said gently, “it is something only Alaric can do.”
Clare swallowed, hard, the movement sticking halfway down her throat because Marquin’s voice, while gentle, held the same undercurrent of cold dread as Verol’s.
He was frightened. They were both frightened. Of her. Just like Alys.
A sense of distance opened between her and them, a pang of something twinging through Clare’s chest.
“What does it mean?”
“It means that, among other things, Clare, you are a Reaper.”
“She can’t be a Reaper.” Though Verol’s tone said he didn’t believe his own words. “She’s a Songweaver. Reaper doesn’t coexist with other disciplines.”
“We have seen she is a Healer, too. Another discipline that does not coexist with others, but you did not raise the problem then.”
“I did not because?—”
“What,” Clare interrupted, voice much calmer than she felt, “is a Reaper? I have never heard of them.”
“That is because they were ruthlessly culled two centuries ago by royal decree. Any living Reaper was killed and their entire family line sterilized.”
“And the Mages Guild allowed this?” The brutality of it didn’t surprise her, but she had thought that, for the sake of self-preservation, the Mages Guild would balk at allowing the death of their own kind.
“They didn’t allow it, Clare, they executed it. Even in the guild, reapers were?—”
Abominations.
“—feared. They don’t simply possess the ability to take magic from a spell or an item, which is in itself impressive, but can reap it directly from a mage.”
An inkling of understanding spread through her, but she asked anyway. “What happens to the mage?”
“If the Reaper is merciful? They kill them. If they are not?” Quin shrugged. “Magic is what a mage is. Without it, they are only a shell. They go mad. If they retain any agency at all, most kill themselves.”
“And Alaric? How does he exist?”
A bitter smile twisted at Marquin’s lips. “It seems his great-grandfather, who ordered the annihilation of the Reaper talent, knew it ran in his bloodline. He didn’t order the destruction of the talent because he feared it, but because he wanted a world where that talent existed only in royal hands. He must have been sorely disappointed when it didn’t manifest to any offspring in his lifetime.”
She thought of the magic coating Alaric, thick and viscous, layer upon layer of foul, putrid power, and understood where the scent of decay that lingered on him originated. How many people, she wondered, had Alaric reaped?
I saw the future, Numair had said, and it is a monstrous thing.
“Can a Reaper only reap a mage?”
