Page 40 of Magick and Lead (Dragons and Aces #2)

ESSA

I awoke to a room filled with morning sunshine and birdsong.

Stretching, I rose from the bed and opened the door.

The farmhouse’s living space was simple and homey, not so different from farms back home.

There was a cabinet full of dishes and a table with a neatly draped tablecloth.

A trio of comfortable-looking chairs stood grouped around the hearth, and dried flowers hung from the rafters.

Out one of the windows, I could see a porch and the back of a broad-shouldered man sitting in a rocking chair.

Charlie.

My heart warmed at the thought of his name, but I shoved that feeling back to wherever it had come from.

This was all temporary. And as soon as I located Kortoi and finished my business, it would come to an end.

Still, I found myself hurrying out onto the porch.

The air was already warm, foretelling a hot day to come, but the feeling of the breeze as the door swung open was delicious on my skin.

I felt suddenly self-conscious of the borrowed garments I wore—a T-shirt, as Charlie had called it, and pajama pants.

They were thin, far lighter than my flight leathers.

I felt almost naked in them and acutely aware of all the places on my body Charlie had awakened with pleasure the night before.

“So, I guess—”At the sound of my voice, Charlie turned to face me.

Only it was not Charlie.

This man was smaller than Charlie, his skin a shade darker, and he had the beautifully shaped eyes of a person from the Far West. We had plenty of westerners in our court back in Maethalia, so the sight of him wasn’t unusual.

But there was something else about his eyes.

Though he turned his head toward me, they focused on a place somewhere far beyond where I stood, and the irises were milky and pale. He was blind.

“You must be Charlie’s cousin,” I said.

“And you must be the famous Essa,” he smiled. “Call me Bo.”

At this, I paused. He had been asleep when we arrived last night. And I assumed Charlie was still asleep. So how, then, did he know who I was?

“I suppose there aren’t too many women with a Maethalian accent visiting your farm these days,” I guessed.

The cousin’s smile broadened. “No. But I was hoping one would show up one of these days. Sit. Pour yourself some coffee.”

I did as he asked, taking the rocking chair next to him and pouring myself a mug of dark liquid from a carafe on the table. I sniffed it.

“It smells good, but it’s dark as the void.” I took a sip and wrinkled my nose. “Uck. Bitter.”

“Try some cream and sugar,” he said, gesturing to a small pitcher and a dish of white powder on the table.

I went to work, adding milk and spooning in the white granules into the cup until the liquid inside was creamy brown and the bitterness of the drink was replaced with a rich sweetness.

“Mmm,” I said, sipping it. “Much better.”

“Watch out. It’s addictive. Like all the greatest things in life,” he added, smiling out at the fields. They stretched out as far as the eye could see, a hazy morning mist hanging above them, giving way to a vivid blue sky above.

“It’s nice out here,” I said.

He nodded. “Way better than the city. That place is like one giant machine.”

That was true, I supposed. But…

“I loved it,” I admitted. “The lights and the clothes and the music and…” I realized what I was saying and trailed off.

So much had been happening, I hadn’t stopped to reflect on how I felt about Ironberg.

I was supposed to hate the place and everyone in it.

The fact that I enjoyed the capital of my enemies was alarming at best. At worst, it was treason.

“Well, I see why you and Charlie get along,” Bo said. When I didn’t respond, he added, “You are getting along, I hope?”

A vision of last night flashed before me, my body and Charlie’s intertwined as shivers of pleasure shook me from my core.

We are getting along, I thought . And we aren’t. And either way, when this is all over, I’m going to have to…

To…

Kill him . That was the end of the sentence. But I couldn’t even think it. Not on a perfect, peaceful morning like this.

“You know,” Bo said thoughtfully. “Charlie begged me to get that plane fixed up for him. Then he scoured the county for fuel and ammo—not easy to get in wartime. And he searched for you, every single day. I worried about him. Flying over the channel. Into enemy territory. Through dragon patrols and dangerous golenae. Risking court-martial if his Air Force superiors found out. But he just said to me , I have to find her. I’d rather die than not see her again. ”

“He sounds like a romantic, not an ace,” I pointed out.

Bo sipped from his mug. “Well… why can’t he be both?”

I stared down into my coffee, but it was too much like scrying, like gazing into the void.

It made me think of my mother. Of how, in her later years, she’d spent so much time staring into that spirit bowl of hers, looking for answers.

But she’d only become more confused. And in the end, she hadn’t seen the difficult truths that had been right before her.

Sure, she’d seen plenty of things scrying.

Confusing, frightening visions. But the answers had been somewhere else.

Inside her, maybe. Or out in the world. It was scary to think that through simply misplacing their attention, one could miss everything that was most important.

I looked out across the fields again, undulating waves of wheat drenched in morning sun.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said. Then I realized I was being insensitive. I turned quickly to Bo. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

He gave a laugh. “Oh, because I’m blind? It’s okay. I know it’s beautiful. I can feel it.”

I watched him. His placid expression. His pleasant calm. And I realized I liked this cousin of Charlie’s.

“Charlie said his cousin taught him to fly…” I said.

“Yeah, that was me,” he said. “Charlie may be a bigshot ace now, but I was one first. The first time he flew, he was stuffed in the back of my cockpit like a bag of airmail. There was no turning back for him after that first time. Charlie always wanted to fly.”

I sipped my coffee, thinking. “So, you weren’t always blind, then?”

He shook his head. “No. I was fighting a female dragon rider over the Bormish Channel. I had her in my crosshairs. Her dragon was taking a lot of shots. I almost had her. Then the dragon turned, craned her neck back toward me… and there was this flash.”

“Lightning,” I whispered. Laynine. My cousin. The one I fought in the challenge. The one I killed to become Irska… My cousin had blinded Charlie’s cousin. Gods, what a tangled web we were in. What a mess war was.

And why? Why did so much terror and killing have to take place when we could be sitting here on a porch drinking coffee on a perfect summer morning, perfectly content, with someone who was supposed to be our enemy?

Gods, this was bad. I was getting philosophical…

The door creaked open, startling me. I turned to find Charlie stepping onto the porch.

“Whatever this guy is telling you, it’s bullshit,” he said.

“I was just telling her what a fantastic person you are,” Bo said.

“See? Bullshit,” Charlie said, pouring himself coffee.

“He was also telling me how you searched for me every day,” I said.

Charlie looked at me, startled. I studied him, his sleep-tousled hair, the stubble on his jaw, the way the morning light illuminated the depths of his eyes.

Stop, I chastised myself.

“I did search every day,” he said. “And if you hadn’t found me, I’d still be searching.”

Our eyes met. Lingered.

“It’s already getting warm out here,” Bo said, breaking the tension. “Gonna be a hot one. Are you guys flying? Should I get the plane ready?”

“No,” Charlie said. “We’re planning. We have a foreign diplomat to kill.”

“Hmm. Sounds like fun,” Bo said.

Charlie sipped his coffee, his eyes still watching me in a way that made my cheeks warm. At last, he glanced at his cousin.

“But if you’d like to help me make breakfast, Bo, I won’t say no.”