To hear those words twisted on her was hearing a death sentence.
Chapter 22
Sinclair Estates, sometime. . . before.
Ambrose appeared at Mal’s side, narrowly missing a drunken guest stumbling onto the balcony at Sinclair Estates.
“Alright, my boy?” asked Ambrose, following Mal’s gaze to Maeve, where she sat with Abraxas out on the balcony.
“Reeve and her,” said Mal, softly, something bordering on defeat in his voice. “Their Magic is. . .bonded.”
“Hmm,” said Ambrose, looking over his shoulder where Reeve stood, a glass of dark liquid in his hand.
Mal didn’t look over at Ambrose. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“Magic is tricky. Some Magic is deceitful even.”
“I know what I feel,” said Mal.
Maeve laughed at Abraxas, covering her smile with the crystal goblet in her hand. Something she did often. And each time, it made him want to smash his lips into hers.
“I am not arguing you don’t,” said Ambrose, taking a puff of his cigar. “You’ll learn, Maeve, too, that the definitions and rules we apply to Magic, well, let’s just say it seeks to break them. I call it deceit, but maybe that just means your Magic is trying to show you something else.”
“You speak of it as a living thing.”
Ambrose chuckled. “You’ll come to understand that, too. We are but Vexkari ourselves. Given power from something entirely not human.”
Mal was speechless for the first time in his recent memory. He finally peeled his gaze away from Maeve.
“You never wondered why we can bleed out like humans unless Magic intervenes? Why, aside from whatever special energy that courses through our veins, we are utterly human?”
“You know about Vexkari?”
Ambrose looked over at him at last. “You are not the first to seek such knowledge.”
Mal was silent for a moment. “Reeve.”
Ambrose hummed. “What about him?”
“Those marks on his face and neck. Those scars.”
They were Vexkari.
Ambrose nodded slowly. “You’ve a keen sense of Magic, Mal.”
He pressed his cigar into the tray and turned towards him fully. “What do you feel in my daughter?”
Mal hesitated, reflecting on the one and only time he’d felt her Magic fully, shortly after she nearly drowned. “She’s a fortress of resistance.”
Ambrose smiled. “Good.”
Mal didn’t return it. His mind was on the thread of Magic that connected his Little Viper to another powerful being. And how it grew stronger with each moment they shared space.
Chapter 23
The earth beneath Castle Morana trembled at Reeve’s presence.
Maeve watched from a balcony, high in Castle Morana, as Shadow’s newest addition to her army emptied into The Dread Lands, pouring from massive Portals in perfect formation.
