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Chapter Ten
“Are you a magistrate or a king?” The words came out of my mouth before I had time to think about them when I walked into the room.
The skyline stretched out, and it seemed the quarters took up the entire top floor, given the expensive windows that surrounded it. A huge balcony surrounded it on all sides, and the massive living room could easily fit a party of thirty or more.
Grant huffed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Trust me, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“How can you say that? I’ve only ever seen you sleep in hotel rooms or by-the-hour motels in hell. This is an upgrade.”
“Thisis a perfect example of agolden cage, Ava. It looks pretty, but it’s a trap.”
When I turned, I found Grant staring at a picture that hung above the mantel of a huge stone fireplace. The painting was like those fancy ones people commissioned in the past. He didn’t glance and it and move on, though. He seemed frozen in place.
The painting was old, and the dress of the two people in it made me suspect it had been painted in the eighteen hundreds. A man in a suit had a cruel, stern look on his face and a cane clutched in his hand. He looked no older than his late twenties, but there was a twisted nature to his expression that made me sure he wasfarolder.
Beside him was a young boy, not even ten. He had blond hair and was thin enough that it seemed he hadn’t eaten much in his life.
The thing that stopped me were the kid’s eyes.
Iknewthose eyes. The piercing green were a familiar set I’d stared into plenty of times.
I didn’t need to ask.
The painting was of the old Magistrate and Grant.
Grant nodded as if he knew what I was thinking. “He had that done just a week after accepting me into the guild.”
“Accepting? I thought he was your father?”
Grant let out a slow breath. “He raised me, took me in. Mages can’t have children, so heirs areclaimedmost often, sometimes from descendants of the mage’s line who didn’t take the immortality rituals.”
“So you were related to him?”
“No. I was an orphan, just another vagrant mage they found.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as empty as the platitude was. Saying sorry didn’t change shit.
“Back then, there weren’t a lot of options for kids without parents. I lived on the streets, stole what I needed to in order to get by. I knew I had powers but didn’t understand them. That didn’t stop me from using them the best I could, and that’s what got me noticed.”
“Isn’t living here better than the streets?” Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, but Irememberedhow badly I’d wanted a home—any home—when I’d grown up.
I remembered falling asleep, unwanted, and praying for nothing except to find someone who lived in a place like this to take me in.
Ithadto be better than the alternative, and I hadn’t even lived on the streets.
Grant shook his head, though he still hadn’t moved his gaze from the painting, as if he couldn’t. “No.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest as though there were some deep ache there he couldn’t rid himself of. “Jameson is playing a game by putting us here.”
“What sort of game?”
“The kind he plans to win. He’s been wanting to kill me for years.”
I paused. “That’s why he came to the competition, right?”
He nodded. “He probably hoped I’d be wounded enough that he could finish me off and take my place.”
“What would putting you here matter?”
“Because he knows I had a complicated history withmy father. I’d guess this is a way to unnerve me, to throw me off balance.”
