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Unable to stand a moment more, through the tears I hadn’t known were running down my face, I made a fervent, heartfelt wish.
Abruptly, fire turned to night. Eye-searing light turned to dripping dark. With all light gone from the camp area, stars burst into life above, raining their needles of halogen light upon us. Wet ash and smoke filled the air. Along with the smell of grilled meat. Water dripped like the runoff from gutters after a torrential rainstorm ceases.
Someone seized my arm, the grip a bruising claw.
“What did you do?” he shrieked in my ear. I ripped away, stumbling a few feet. Water soaked through my slippers.
“Well, Lady Sorceress?” Falcon’s familiar voice snarled from off to my right. “Your work, I presume?”
Someone tried to light a torch, but it wouldn’t take. The starlight showed that the tents that had been merrily burning now sagged with moisture, like dying circus elephants. Charred pillow remains scattered in dissolving pools of charcoal lumps. Moving between tents was a black-on-black sinuous shadow. I caught my breath.
“Lady Gwynn?” Falcon repeated.
I nodded. “I turned the fire into water, to stop the burning.”
“Did you have to turneverybit of fire in the whole valley to water, you filthy whore?” Lady Strawberry inserted with a bright laugh, a socialite giggling at a party gaffe.
One of the charcoal piles at Falcon’s feet choked a cry through watery lumps, pain radiating in an exploding star from its thoughts. I gagged on mucous and tears and horror.
“Help him!” I ordered through my teeth. “Fetch a healer!”
Falcon stared curiously at the dying child. “We have no healer—this is a war zone. It’s not the most glorious of deaths, but…”
“Wasn’t that just spectacular?” Puck bounced up, nearly stepping on the page. “Did you see what she did? The whole valley, every campfire, torch and candle a puddle of water! Didn’t I tell you? I told you, didn’t I? This will be amazing!”
“Shestilllacks all control,” Falcon snapped. “We’re lucky she didn’t drown us all.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t fucking burn to death!” I yelled at him. “You’re all like children playing a game. In a real war, you have healers to minimize casualties—and you don’t send someone into an inferno to rescue pillows!”
They all stared at me in mute astonishment, so I knelt down in the charred mud next to the page. In the torchlight I could see blood oozing out of the page’s crackling flesh. I tried to put together a coherent wish for him, but wasn’t sure how to reconstruct his body. I didn’t really know how to do more than wish for healing. And the anger was clouding my thinking. Stupid, stupid, stupid to let myself get so mad. I shuddered, thinking that Falcon might try to send me back to that place.Think about this dying kid.If I wished the pain to stop, would the magic answer by ending his life? It was funny that way.
Falcon seized my arms and hauled me to my feet. I choked on my breath, anger transforming to fear.
“Let me help him,” I gasped.
He lowered his face close to mine, hawkish nose sharp against the torchlight, eyes alien black hollows, the left made sharper by the brown feathery patterns dancing across the skin, flickering like flapping wings with the torchlight. I quailed, helpless in his grip.
“Do nothing else,” he hissed.
“But…”
“No!” he thundered in my face, as if his mouth might open into a massive maw that could consume me whole. His teeth were pointed in a jack-o’-lantern smile. “Why is she not trained?” He yelled this from inches away, spittle hitting my face with shrapnel force.
“Scourge and Marquise certified her,” Puck said obsequiously, his long fingers tugging at Falcon’s sleeve. I flinched at the sound of their names. “They’re most exacting. Really, she helped not harmed. It was just a little, well, much, you know?”
“Did your trainers win your obedience, little magician-slave?” Falcon crooned to me.
“Technically, she’s a free…”
“Silence!” Falcon’s voice crackled like lightning. Puck subsided. Falcon drew me closer so he spoke against my cheek. As if he might take a bite out of me. “She knows she’s all mine for seven years, don’t you? Trained to be my pet? That’s what I paid for. Answer me, Sorceress. Tell me of your obedience. I know something of what the trainers do. Shall I summon them to come hold your leash and give me a demonstration?”
I shook my head, trembling wildly. He laughed, a cruel sharp cackle.
“Not so full of yourself now, are you?” Falcon pulled back slightly, then gently kissed me on the forehead. “Do as you are told, Sorceress, or I will make good my threat.” He stared into my eyes. “Or maybe it’s not a threat? Maybe you liked what they did to you? Some do grow addicted, you know, can never know pleasure again without the pain and humiliation. Perhaps I’ll show you some of the games I like to play. I don’t mind that your magic is sexual.” Bending me back, he surveyed my bosom.
He sank his sharp teeth through the ruby velvet into my left breast.
I screamed. But held myself from fighting back. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I had indeed been carefully conditioned. I might have my thoughts back, but it was as if the circuit in my brain that would allow me to resist had been snapped.Or rewired,part of me whispered.
