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Words of magic swirled around her, along with the angry shouts of her prison guards as they attempted to halt her progress. They couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t get near enough to hurt her, as if she were shielded. Protected with her father’s comforting power to keep her safe. Safe. Free. Unfamiliar and unlikely words that suddenly sounded possible. Sounded true.
Sarah prayed to all the ancient gods of her family that it was so. That she would be allowed to regain her freedom, if only long enough to right the wrongs that had been done to her family. Her friends. To succeed at the one goal that had kept her fighting back far longer than was natural or fair—vengeance.
There was a barrier blocking her way. The twisting shell around her banged against it once. Twice. Sarah focused with all her will on the wedge she had created, on weakening and unweaving the wall of magic that restrained her in the hopes it would aid her rescuers in their final push.
“No.” She fell on the polished wood of the hard floor in a crashing cloud of dust. It stung her eyes and throat and she gasped for breath. Did the collapse of the whirlwind mean they failed? Her hands slid on the unnaturally smooth surface. This was not her floor. This was not earth beneath her hands.
She crouched; balancing her body on her scraped hands and the soles of her ragged shoes, ready to flee if an enemy was waiting to strike. Had her captors released her because they were merciful, or simply devised a worse hell in which to contain her?
Sarah glanced through the strands of her dark, knotted hair. A small crowd of men and women stared down at her in silent shock. These were not her captors. “Where am I?”
The clothing they wore was of a type she had seen on occasion in her ever-changing cell. Women in long pants and shirts that revealed more than they concealed. Handsome men whose snug clothing left nothing to the imagination. She studied them each in turn, her gaze narrowing on one woman’s piercing grey eyes. The only thing in the room that seemed familiar. “When am I?”
Another crash followed quickly by a pain-filled moan beside her drew her attention. “My angel!”
They’d released him as well, she realized, but something was wrong. He was pale as the grave, his face covered in angry wounds. His hands clutched his side and she could see the blood spilling through his fingers.
Sarah slid across the floor, heedless of the others and replaced his hands with her own, applying pressure. “Fools. You pulled him out before the spell could revive him. Do any of you understand the magic you are playing at?”
She heard a female gasp, “Lorie’s hurt. Someone call the healers.”
“There is no time,” Sarah growled. “I believe I still remember…”
She let the memories wash over her, praying that her newfound freedom had returned all of her abilities. Images filled her mind. Children with broken limbs and fireside burns who’d come, wide-eyed, to the home she’d shared with her grandmother. The song she hummed to soothe them as her magic spun around her, stitching the bones back together and healing any trace of injury.
Her hands tingled with the heat of her power, glowing with the arcing green and golden energy that had once been so familiar to her. And something more. That sharp spark of knowledge, desire and connection that she’d felt with this man the first and only time they’d touched.
His magic was reaching out to hers again. Surrounding hers and drawing it back into his body. As she studied his face, the cuts on the full lips closed and the wound at his temple disappeared before her eyes. She almost smiled at the long-forgotten sensations of gratitude that always came with her power. She could sense it in her now, the healing magic moving through her to embrace him. As it did, it seemed to give her back some of what she’d lost. Some of who she’d been before she was trapped. Cleansing her of the darker shadows that had grown inside her through the long years.
She cried silently over her patient. To be a healer was a gift to the bearer as well as the recipient. Another gift he’d given her, to remind her of that truth. His angelic face had eased her torment. His presence had, for a short time, made her feel less alone. She could do this for him. The beautiful specimen whom she longed to kiss just once—before she ran as far away from her jailers as she could get.
Sarah leaned down, ready to give in to her urges when his long lashes fluttered. Blue eyes, so bright and brilliant she lost her breath, were gazing back at her without surprise. “Saved you,” he rasped weakly.
Her surprised chuckle at his first words was a strange and rusty sound in her ears. She wasn’t sure if his mind had been addled, but that was to be expected after his traumatic experience in her world. “I saved you in return, angel. You are welcome.”
Her senses were on high alert. Perhaps as many as nine Magians were moving closer, almost surrounding her as she hovered over his body. Enough to imprison her again.
Removing her hands, she pulled back her power, rolling adeptly to a standing position behind his head, her arms up defensively. “Stay away. I warn you, I won’t go back. You will have to kill me first.”
All their movements ceased at her words. An older woman, nearly as beautiful as her angel, reached out in supplication. “Sarah Blackwood, you have my oath as a Magian that you are in no danger from us. Lorie…the man you healed is my son. He’s been lost to us for months. May I go to him?”
“Magian oaths mean nothing to me.” The heartbroken expression on the woman’s face tore at her. There was no pretense in her concern. A mother’s concern. “However, family does. Of course you can go to him. I won’t stop you.”
She wanted to. She wanted to keep her angel—Lorie was his name? She wanted to keep him with her. To touch him and experience that flame again. She’d never known anything like it.
The way she felt reminded her of reactions she’d heard of when magics truly, intimately combined. She looked down at him again. No. No, it couldn’t be that. This man was not hers. That was not her destiny. She was far past the age for an arranged or natural pairing. He was attractive, and she had been alone for so long. That was all.
A soothing male voice interrupted her thoughts. “Sarah, my name is Tucker. I am a Magian protector. I am tasked with keeping our laws. What’s been done to you goes against every code in the Rede. Now that you’ve been released, can you tell us if you know—”
“Not now, Tucker. Are you blind?” A short, spry woman, of an age or older than her angel’s mother, pushed the others out of the way. “She’s obviously been through hell and back. Can’t the third degree wait until she’s rested? Maybe even taken a bath?”
Sarah’s heart raced. Did she dare hope they didn’t know about her punishment? That they weren’t in any way involved? They spoke her name as if they didn’t know it. She was a stranger of no import or high birth, while these Magians looked very well taken care of—and yet they were offering her shelter and a bath.
“A bath?” she breathed.
“Jenner.” Lorie’s strengthening voice brought Sarah’s gaze back to his face. He was trying to sit up, but his mother kept pushing his shoulders back toward the floor.
“Jenner,
