Natural Dual-Mage (Page 57)

“As if we would let him be in charge.” Reagan rolled her eyes.

Adrenaline dumped into my body and all my limbs started trembling. I was unable to handle any more surprises. “Me? No! What do you mean you all voted and now I’m stuck with it? That’s not how this is supposed to work!”

“When I first met you,” Emery said quietly, “I was only out to claim vengeance. A piece of me wanted the Guild to be better, but I was blind to the importance of changing it. It was you who calmed me. You who showed me the way. All this time, it has been you who has wanted to do the right thing, above all. To tear it down and build it up again. Your moral compass does not waver. Say what you want about your mom, but she kept you on a path of pure motives. Of inner peace and outward compassion. There is no one else any of us trusts implicitly to see this come about. It has to be you.”

I couldn’t breathe. My fingers curled into fists. “But…I…”

“Relax. Obviously you’ll be guided. We’re all going to help…and we’re all going to keep an eye on one another. Especially Vlad.”

“Nothing has to be decided right now.” Darius finished his glass and stood, putting his hand out for Reagan. “Come.”

She didn’t balk at the command, taking his hand and allowing him to lead her farther into the house. In the back, a bedroom door shut softly.

I couldn’t process what they’d just said. I couldn’t think that far ahead. So I did what any self-respecting woman would do—I bundled it all up and dumped it into the ignore pile. It wasn’t a list anymore, it was a whole pile.

“Shall we head to bed?” Emery asked, holding me tightly.

As I nodded, a soft knock sounded at the door. Looking through the peephole with Emery at my back, I felt nervous flutters fill my belly. Mary Bell and John stood on the stoop, tired and bedraggled, but still standing.

Letting out a deep breath, I opened the door. I’d be lying if I claimed not to be worried about an attack.

“Penny,” Mary Bell said, that sparkle in her eye. “I won’t ask to penetrate your ward. We’ll be but a minute.”

John looked at her in confusion before scanning the house.

“Um…okay…” I said.

“We’re on our way to a hotel. One of Darius’s children’s,” she said. “But we owe you an explanation before we lose sight of each other. I owe you my story.”

I leaned against the doorframe, listening.

“We were both approached by the Guild, along with many others. Those not powerful enough— Well, you know what happened to them…”

I swallowed. They were sent to battle Emery, Reagan, and I, and they never made it home.

“John, I, and one other were invited back to Seattle. We were asked to join their fold, as it were. Both John and the other mage had reservations, but only John decided to take them up on it. Despite what he knew of their involvement with you, he was Bambi-eyed and feather-headed.”

John shoved his hands in his pockets and shifted away, looking out at nothing. He didn’t comment.

“I have been in John’s place twice along my life’s journey,” she continued, leaning forward onto her cane. “I have been seduced by power, only to be left destitute in the fallout. I knew his fate would be the same. So I followed, knowing all along that I wouldn’t be able to drag him back out when he realized what he’d gotten himself into—organizations feeding on power and the misfortune of others never let you come and go as you please. Death is often the only way to get out. I followed, knowing we were headed to battle, knowing they were collecting fighters for their side, against you.” She held up a hand and smiled. “And knowing I had the experience to manipulate my way anywhere I needed to be. I may have come out disillusioned in the past, but I did learn a thing or two.” Her smile faded. “My path was clear. The way to vindication for so many horrible decisions in my past.” Her eyes misted. “I still hoped that I could help you, give you a fighting chance at freedom. So I followed John and stayed close, waited for him to suffer at the hands of power in the cold new world he had chosen. When he became disillusioned and wanted out, recruiting him to my cause was child’s play. For all his age, he knows nothing of the world.”

John let out a disgusted breath, but still he didn’t say anything. How he couldn’t be embarrassed, I didn’t know. I was embarrassed for him.

“So you see, Penny Bristol, I never switched sides. I never doubted you, not even for a minute. I see great things for you. Big things. With the Rogue Natural by your side, helping protect you from the storms life throws at you, you will blaze like the sun.” She wiped away a tear with a gnarled finger. “My time for fighting is done, sadly. I am too old. I very nearly didn’t make it to the end of this battle. I had to sit down for half of it. But I will be watching you, and rooting for you. And should you need to hear of mistakes, so that you don’t have to make them yourself, my door will always be open.”

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand before stepping out and giving her a hug. “Thank you,” I said. “You saved our lives.”

Her smile was serene. “It feels better to be the hero than the villain.”

I gave John a shove. “You’re still on my poop list.”

He frowned at me and rolled his eyes.

Mary Bell patted John’s arm as she turned. “I think he has learned his lesson. I also think he’ll sleep with one eye open for a very long time.”

With that, she moved off to a black sedan Darius had clearly supplied, John slouching in her wake.

“Okay, bye…” I waved. They didn’t notice. “Is saying goodbye after a battle strangely forbidden or something?”

After I closed the door, Emery took me by the hand and led me to our room, leaving the exhausted dual-mages on the couch. “I wanted to ask you something,” he said softly, closing the door and wrapping his arms around me.

“Anything.” I closed my eyes against his hard chest, breathing in his smell, comfort and cotton.

“Will you visit my brother’s grave with me? I want to pay my respects…and introduce you.”

I smiled up at him sadly. “It would be my honor.”

Epilogue

My shoes crunched against the brittle ground. A white, crooked line stretched across the sky to my right, a scar on the blustery, gray day. My danger sensors blared, warning me that something hunkered in the distance, watching us.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emery said, looking around before glancing back down at the map in his hands. “It’s harmless. We’ll hear it coming before we smell it, and that’ll be long before it’s a real danger.”

If he said so.

We’d just come out of the Realm, a magical place with an orange sky and gold dust floating around in the air. I was pretty sure I’d gawked at everything through wide-open eyes. Parts were achingly beautiful, rich with wild magic and twisted woods. Other parts had clearly been manufactured, apparently by elves, and wow, could they do better. They were horrible at mimicking nature. And still other parts were dark and treacherous, making Emery jittery as he tried to watch everything at once.

I’d felt the safest in those areas, though I had had no idea why. Probably insanity.

Three months had passed since we’d blown the Mages’ Guild wide open. And I meant wide open, literally. The spells I had pulled from the ground had felt destructive, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of the damage until I saw it again after the battle. Sides of buildings had blown apart. Sidewalks had crumbled. Debris thrown. The spell hadn’t crawled across the ground like I’d felt—it had chewed it up, showing the earth below.

Just two days afterward, in each place I’d planted a spell, a tree had budded, reaching up through the destruction. Emery’s buried spell had been similarly destructive, but instead of growing into a tree, it blossomed into a thorny sort of bush with black flowers. He wasn’t pleased.

As my friends had threatened, I was placed in charge of the rebuild, though it helped that I had a budget from the Guild’s huge coffers to see it done.

The first thing I did was level the place. Everything was taken out, including all the concrete. I had it hauled away to the dump, smoothed the earth over, and planted many more trees and flowers. It would become a sanctuary for all magical people, hosted and overseen by the mages. I wanted to develop a better rapport with other magical people. I wanted to create a community in Seattle that, hopefully, might carry over to other places.

Darius and Vlad called me naive. They called it an experiment. But with Emery at my side, defending my reasoning and my right to follow my vision, they let me go the untraditional route.

Next I’d need to fill the new Mages’ Guild. I was still developing a system for that, putting together checks and balances. Applicants would, for now, go through a screening process run by people I trusted. And some I mostly trusted, like Mary Bell. Lastly, they would get to me, and I would do magic with them, using the magic the goblin had probably regretfully handed over. Like Cahal could, I could use those to suss out a person’s inner qualities.

But that was getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t there yet.