Page 10

SKYMALLOW HOUSE

“ H ans?” Gisele suggested as they walked through intricately carved passageways, all of them decorated with touches of gilt. She kept her hands firmly clasped, careful not to make contact with the gold. “Haldor? Havis? Hubert?”

Malediction’s lips curved, but he shook his head. “Do I look like a Hubert?”

“How will I know if I guess right?”

“You’ll know,” he assured her. “We both will. The release of so large and long-running a spell would not be a subtle thing. That’s probably what’s affected the wards.

Us being in proximity is a step towards fulfilment of the original promise.

It makes sense that would cause a release of magic.

Let us hope it’s only household pests who noticed. ”

Gisele drew her attention back from an intricate wooden sculpture of a fish, set into its own small display case in the wall. Its tail flapped as they passed, making her jump. “Is the person you were originally hiding from still looking for you? Even after so long?”

“Yes.” His ears had gone flat again.

“Why? Did you wrong them in some way?” she accused.

But the Malediction only shook his head and opened another door, and what lay beyond distracted her so completely that she forgot what they’d been talking about.

It was a library. A library of improbable size, given what she’d seen of the house’s exterior.

A beautiful library. The shelves were carved into the organic shapes of tree branches swirling all the way up to the ceiling.

The relentless goldwork continued, but here it took the form of delicate filigree, suggesting leaves amongst the branches.

A panel of stained-glass windows at the far end threw prisms of rainbows, and the vanilla scent of old books filled her nostrils, soothingly familiar.

“This is incredible,” she breathed. “Who made this?”

Malediction preened and shot her a sideways glance, almost shy. “You truly like it?”

“I can’t imagine anybody who wouldn’t.” Or why he’d have any doubts on that front. Except, they still hadn’t encountered any servants, and a suspicion was starting to form. “Does anyone else live here?”

She couldn’t read his expression as he traced the lines of a shelf. “No. Just me. And Zingiber, I suppose. You like to read, I take it?”

“Very much. If—” She hesitated, but she wasn’t going to protect his feelings.

“If I hadn’t been cursed, I would have attended the university, become a Skolar, I think.

They said it wasn’t worth wasting a place on someone who might not be around to finish a degree and that my presence would distress the other students. ”

“I’m sorry,” he said, which was as unsatisfying a response as it had been the first time.

He moved over to the stained-glass window and began tracing the gold inlaid into its frame, murmuring under his breath, as if he were testing for something.

Little glimmers of light flickered under his hands, illuminating a pattern in the air in front of the frame, as insubstantial as spiderwebs, tangled into knots that he began gently smoothing out.

“Does the pattern mean something?” she asked.

He stiffened but didn’t turn. “You can see the wards?”

“Sort of.” She tipped her head this way and that, the pattern glimmering in and out of focus. “Shouldn’t I be able to?”

“Are you a mage?”

“Not according to the temple clerics. But—” She bit her lip, suddenly mistrustful.

“But you can see magic,” he finished for her, completing his re-setting of the wards and turning back to face her. Her own mistrust reflected in his eyes. “You’re a witch? That’s the human term, isn’t it?”

Irritation flared. “You know that’s an insult in Isshia?”

He cocked his head. “No, actually, I did not. What do you call it, then, the human magic that doesn’t come from your gods?”

“I don’t call it anything! But I’m not a witch.” She held up a hand when he made as if to object. “I did actually find a wild mage to ask, you know. He couldn’t explain it either, but he said whatever I had wasn’t that.”

Malediction was considering her in a too-penetrating way that made his eyes even less natural than normal, the gold flaring molten while the blue swirled like an arctic sea. “It’s fae magic,” he said slowly.

Gisele took a half-step back, as if that would somehow stop him from seeing whatever it was he was seeing. “What?!”

He started out of his trance and waved at the surrounding shelves.

“There may be something here that could help us find my name. When I set up the library, I acquired anything that sounded even vaguely like it might have potential answers, but I haven’t read it all—far from it.

Perhaps I did grow disheartened too soon. ”

“Don’t try to change the subject! You just told me I had fae magic!”

He picked at his cuffs. “Yes,” he said, sounding deeply unhappy. “You do.”

“And why would I , an entirely human princess, have fae magic, my Malediction?” she asked in a dangerous tone.

His eyes flashed. “You know exactly why, Your Royal Highness.”

“I want you to say it.” Energy crackled between them.

He grimaced. “Fine! It’s because of me! Because I cursed you before you were even born with the bargain I made!

Which I deeply regret because if I hadn’t done such a thing, you wouldn’t be here now!

” His body jerked in her direction, and he snarled at the magic pulling at him.

“She’s staying! She’s staying!” he hissed, which seemed to settle it.

She began to laugh. She couldn’t help it.

Him arguing aloud with his own self-inflicted curse was so bitterly ironic that it was either laugh or cry.

What a pair they made. The sight of him glaring at her like an outraged cat with his tail bristling only made her laugh harder.

He was just so entirely… not terrifying, and she’d lived her whole life in fear of him, which now seemed so absurd that there wasn’t anything else to do but laugh at that, too.

She slid down the shelf onto the floor, legs folding under her helpless giggles.

The dark amusement convulsed through her in painful gasps, bringing tears to her eyes.

Years upon years of knowing there was a force in her that wasn’t quite right, that no books could explain, and he’d taken one look at her and named it.

Of course she had fae magic; that was as obvious and ridiculous as everything else, wasn’t it?

An arm slid cautiously around her shoulders, the bond humming to life, almost shocking her out of her hysteria except that when she looked up, the combination of awkwardness and panic in Malediction’s expression sent her straight back into a fit of giggles.

The only option was to hide her face in the awful man’s shoulder while her body shook.

Burning threads of self-recrimination ran beneath the hysteria.

She needed to stop making such a fool of herself!

How could she be accepting comfort from him , of all people?

! He probably thought her mad in truth, or at least hopelessly weak-minded in that way men so often judged women who showed the least bit of emotion. Damn it all.

Entirely different threads ran alongside the mortification, a sharp awareness of being held . He smelled like skin and clean linen, with a faint grassy underlayer from the poultice. He was very warm. Her hand was resting against his chest.

She stopped laughing. He remained holding her, his breath stirring the hair on her forehead. She’d somehow ended up more in his lap than not.

The connection between them was frighteningly comfortable, suffusing her whole body with warmth, and she let it continue for longer than she should have, past the point where she’d regained her senses.

It had been a long, long time since she’d been held, and there was an ache in her that craved touch—even his—as desperately as a seed seeking sunlight.

And remember exactly whose fault that is . She pulled away. “I beg your pardon. You can let me go now.”

To her surprise, he didn’t immediately move, so she matter-of-factly elbowed her way free, got to her feet, and dusted herself off.

He blinked up at her as if returning from a long way away, a stark vulnerability in his eyes.

If no one else lived here and he’d been here since leaving Isshia…

perhaps he’d been starved of connection for even longer than her.

She found the idea disquieting; she didn’t want to draw any parallel between them.

His vulnerability folded away, neat as a handkerchief returned to a pocket, and he got to his feet as well. “Are you all right?”

She put another few feet between them for good measure. “I’m fine. The absurdity of our situation temporarily overcame me. You give terrible apologies, by the way.”

He stiffened. “I am sorry. I can’t lie .” Implicit in the statement was that she could.

She gave a loose shrug of non-response. She was too tired for pettiness, but also no amount of apology was going to magically—ha!—make things all right between them. “When we find your name and you undo this debt between us, will I lose any fae magic I might have?”

His gaze was too sharp. She kept her expression perfectly bland.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually.

“Why wouldn’t I, if it’s yours to start with?”

He canted his head. “You aren’t going to like this answer, but some changes go bone-deep and are nearly impossible to reverse.

This might be one such. I don’t know, and I am sorry for that as well.

” His mismatched eyes burned again with that intensity that had to be magical; her own never looked so vivid.

“Is that what you meant, when you said making people uncomfortable was the least of it? Have you used magic accidentally?”

Gold, twisting… “I’ve tried a few things, with mixed success. It’s not as if you can learn that sort of magic in Isshia; even wild magic is frowned upon. It was a struggle to find one wild mage who’d even talk to me.”