AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why?”
She smiled but didn’t answer.
“Glad to hear you got away, Inali,” Gertrude said. “I was getting worried.”
Inali shrugged. “Well, you know me. I’m good at disguises.”
“What are you?” I asked Inali. “That wasn’t shifting magic you just did. Not quite. It’s something else.”
“Right you are, Leda,” she said with a smile. “I’m a changeling, in fact. We can change shape. We absorb and use another’s appearance and magic.”
“So you mimicked a man named Gaius Knight?” I guessed.
“Yes.”
“Did the real Gaius Knight ever know Calli?” I asked her.
“No.”
“So, a mimic.” I thought that through. “That’s a passive magic power.”
“Correct,” Inali said.
I looked at Gertrude. “Your magic is passive too. You’re a magic smith. Like Arina.”
Gertrude nodded. “Indeed, I am.”
Looking more closely at Gertrude’s face, I noticed something else. “You look exactly like Inali, only many decades older.”
So that’s where I’d seen Gertrude’s familiar face.
“You’re very observant,” Gertrude told me.
She nodded at Inali, who stepped toward her sister. She waved her hand across Gertrude’s face, undoing the glamor of age.
“I can mimic age too,” Inali added.
Now Gertrude looked exactly like Inali. And exactly like the rogue Guardian River.
“Just how many of you are there out there?” I demanded.
