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Yasmin narrowed her eyes, but Nicolette quickly popped in, saying, “She showed me her visitor permit signed by you, Caulder. She was here legitimately. She wasn’t trying to plot anything underhanded, I swear.”
“Oh, well, she seems perfectly legal then,” Yasmin sneered, rolling her eyes. “Someone with magical power showed you a certificate, insisting it was real, and then led you to believe they were friendly and honest, so you just let them tattoo permanent ink into your body. My God, Nicolette! How stupid can you be?” Whirling toward Caulder, she cried, “This… This is why I have insisted over and over again that she go to one of those academies. Because she can’t be trusted to act responsibly. I mean, just look at her! Look at what she’s done this time. It’s probably not even an authentic love mark.”
“Well, that part’s easy enough to determine,” Urban said. “Tap it five times with your pointer finger,” he instructed Nicolette.
She immediately began tapping her temple. “Oh!” she exclaimed when green, electrical sparks crackled from the ink. “That tickles.”
Urban grinned and nodded, then turned back to the king. “It’s authentic.”
“Incredible,” I said, moving closer to see everything better. “Does your mark do that?” I asked Urban without thinking.
When he glanced at me, memories flashed through me of our dream, making my body shudder with longing. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t spoken to him at all. Now I just wanted to touch him, and smell him, and kiss him.
Smiling lightly, he gazed at me and tapped his temple five times. Red sparks instantly crackled from his tattoo. “If you were marked as well,” he murmured to me. “You would also be able to draw sparks from my mark.”
Nicolette clapped enthusiastically. “See, I wasn’t swindled,” she reported gleefully. “She was a real priestess.”
Urban nodded. “And I can reassure you she couldn’t have any kind of dark magic in her, either. To qualify for mark giving, all magic women swear a binding oath, agreeing that they’ll cease to exist the moment they receive any darkness inside them. They get tested fully before becoming a
mark giver, too, and since they die the moment they go bad—the oath they made kills them—there’s no way the priestess who tattooed Nicolette was here in Donnelly with any kind of evil intent.”
“Dark magic,” Nicolette gasped, her eyes going wide.
“What about it?” Caulder asked, frowning at her.
The young princess waved her hand, calling attention upon herself. “I just remembered, the priestess said something quite disturbing about dark magic. She took my hands and looked at them as if she could see some invisible dirt on them, and then she said I had touched someone full of dark magic that very day.”
“What?” Caulder boomed. He whirled accusatively to Urban. “What the hell does that mean?”
Urban shook his head and dismissively held up a hand toward the king as he studied Nicolette intently. “And this was when, yesterday, you saw her? Who did you speak to yesterday? Where did you go? Did you go to the market or visit anyone else outside the castle aside from the priestess?”
“No.” The princess shook her head with certainty. “My guard escorted me straight to the priestess’s room at the Cotton Maker’s Inn and then straight back home afterward.”
“And did you talk to or touch anyone on the road there or back? Or at the Inn? Did anyone approach you, trying to sell you anything or give you anything, hand you anything?”
“No.” She shook her head more insistently, frowning as she thought it through before shaking her head again. “Not at all. I only spoke to and touched the priestess.”
“What about inside the castle?” Urban asked.
“Well…” Nicolette heaved out a shuddering breath. “No. I mean, yes, of course, but only the usual people. Family, servants, guards. People I see every day. It’s hard to remember everyone, but it wasn’t anyone I didn’t know. I had no contact with any strangers at all.”
Urban shot the king a hard, knowing glance and sighed wearily.
“What?” Caulder demanded. “What does this mean?”
Urban shook his head. “I thought you said you didn’t allow any magical kind inside your castle, Your Majesty?”
The king grew alarmed. “I don’t.”
“Well, it sounds as if one is here, anyway.”
“What?” Caulder stormed closer to Urban. “Who?”
“I don’t know, not who or how they got in. But if it’s someone with dark magic in them, then it’s no one with any kind of good intentions.”
“That’s impossible,” Caulder blustered. “I banished all magic.”
“Yes,” Urban muttered sarcastically, “and I’m so sure someone with evil intent would follow every letter of your law and not conceal their powers from us, either.”
