Page 10 of Wings of Frost and Fury (Merciless Dragons #4)

“We’re friends,” she replied. “But he doesn’t look at me as a potential wife.”

“That’s his problem, not yours. You shouldn’t feel like you have to—”

“Don’t tell me how to feel, Thelise,” Katlee said. “You can’t possibly imagine everything I feel on a given day, or how conflicted I’ve been over this. But I’ve made my decision.”

“Based on a boy who doesn’t see you for all that you are. I don’t know, Kat.”

“You are not backing out on me now.” Her voice trembled. “You can’t. Not after everything we’ve done to prepare.”

I didn’t want to back out, not really. I believed I could do it. I wanted to succeed in this task, to change the arms Katlee was born with to a size and shape comparable to her body’s proportions, with the typical number of fingers.

If I could help her, I could help others with similar issues.

Not that there was anything wrong with being shaped differently—but if they wanted the change, I could provide it.

That kind of magic seemed worthwhile. Like something I could see myself doing for a lifetime, even if I wasn’t compensated for it.

After lighting the candles, I sat cross-legged in the central section of the casting circle, picked up the thin slab of wood on which I had engraved the spell, and began to recite it.

At first it seemed to be going well. Energy branched outward from me, spreading in crackling lines of purple lightning. The power stayed within the perimeter of the circle, tamed and harnessed by the spell. The crystals lit up like they should, and the lines I had drawn on the ground began to glow.

Veins of purple began to snake along Katlee’s arms, a tracery of light that glowed beautifully against her skin. She smiled, looking at me with delight and hope, but she didn’t speak. I had told her not to say a word, lest it break my focus.

Line by line I recited the spell, moving the stones, herbs, and bones to their places on the casting circle at the correct time. Every word was perfectly enunciated. My timing was precise. And yet the veins of light along Katlee’s arms began to turn black and sizzle against her skin.

Her face changed, apprehension extinguishing the hope.

I didn’t stop reading, thinking perhaps this was an acceptable detour on the way to our desired result. I did warn her that the transformation could be painful.

But the black veins sank deeper, dividing her flesh into pieces, and Katlee began to scream.

I didn’t know whether to stop, to keep going, or to attempt a reversal. Stopping the spell wouldn’t fix the damage that had already been done. The spell shouldn’t have to dismantle her arms in order to transform them. None of my experiments had unfolded like this.

Panicking, I diverged from the written spell, trying to reverse it.

Pieces of Katlee’s arms fell away onto the floor, and yet the veins continued to crawl over her shoulders, across her throat and chest. Great black sores opened in her skin, deepening like rifts while I wept and stammered words that should have undone the spell.

And yet the corruption continued ravaging her body, burning and rotting her flesh until nothing was left of my friend but a thick black residue in the vague shape of a human.

I screamed until my voice was gone. No one came. I had sent the servants out for the day.

I tried every spell I could think of, clumsily, ineffectually.

I wept so hard I vomited.

Over and over I rasped the same words. “It should have worked. Why didn’t it work? It should have worked.” I stumbled to the table nearby and tore through every reference book I had used to research and design the spell, ripping out whole pages in the torment of my confusion and grief.

My father returned to a silent house at the end of the day. He searched for me and found me in the casting chamber, sitting motionless among tattered grimoire pages next to the remains of my best friend.

Quietly he surveyed the casting circle, read the lines I’d written, and asked questions about the ingredients I’d used. I did my best to answer him clearly and thoroughly.

“It was beautifully orchestrated,” he said at last. “It should have worked.”

Those words were an echo of my own, a tiny balm to my hemorrhaging heart. But moments after speaking them, my father realized where I’d gone wrong.

I had used crystals from his study—crystals that hadn’t been properly toned since their last use. I knew he always purged and toned them before putting them away, so I assumed he’d done it. I didn’t double-check.

Those crystals carried residual energy and intent from the last spell he’d worked with them—the Rotting Death, performed on enemy spies at the Queen’s request .

Failing to cure the crystals myself was a foolish error—the mistake of a student, not a master, as I’d thought myself to be.

And yet I couldn’t help being horrified at the kind of spells my father was doing for the Queen.

He didn’t seem troubled in the slightest by the nature of his work or by Katlee’s death, except for the fact that it embarrassed him .

It was disappointing to him that I had failed, “and in such a stupid way,” as he put it.

The mistake was mine; I acknowledged that, and I still do. But if my father had been performing a milder spell, or a beneficial one, Katlee would not have died. Things might still have gone wrong, but I could have fixed it. She could have been saved.

I wasn’t registered as a trained sorcerer, and even if I had been on the books as a novice, the spell I attempted would only have been allowed for an enchantress several classes higher.

To be cleared to perform such a deeply transformative spell on a human, I would have had to pass stringent exams and go through a lengthy practicum.

In Elekstan, self-taught sorcerers are not illegal.

People can hire them, knowing there’s a risk.

But if sorcerers without official training attempt spells above a certain level, with bad results, there are consequences.

Those consequences usually involve fines and jail time, depending on the extent of the damage caused by the malpractice.

Since I caused a death, I should have been imprisoned for years and heavily fined.

But Katlee, with her foresight and kindness, had left behind a letter, signed and sealed in the event of her death, declaring that she had persuaded me to do the spell against my better judgment, begging her family and the Court to spare me from repercussions if it went wrong.

Even after death, she protected me.

Because of her plea and my father’s proximity to the Crown, I wasn’t fined or jailed. But I was banished from Court and forbidden to ever practice magic within the royal city or the surrounding regions. The sentence was handed down by the Queen herself, two days before my nineteenth birthday.

That night, my father and I walked home in silence. As soon as we stepped into the foyer and the footman closed the door behind us, my father said, “You should pack your things.”

“Pack my things?”

“You disgraced me,” he said. “You rejected all my offers of help and training. You pursued knowledge far beyond your abilities without accepting the gift of my aid. You’ve brought shame upon this house, this family, this name.

Your banishment from Court will forever be a stain on my legacy—a legacy I’ve been building for far longer than you’ve been alive. ”

I stood silent, shaking, choking on my tears.

“I am deeply disappointed in you,” he continued.

“I thought you were reasonably intelligent, but now I realize you’re as foolish, impulsive, and self-indulgent as your mother.

Any power you have, you received from me, and if I could take it from you, I would.

Leave this house before noon tomorrow, and go far from here.

I will see to it that my steward gives you a travel allowance, and I will send you money each quarter for expenses, but I do not wish to see your face again. ”

My fury finally burst through the painful tightness in my throat. “You’re not going to admit that you played a part in this? You performed that awful spell. You failed to purge the crystals before you put them away.”

“You should have checked them. Goodnight, Thelise, and goodbye.”

He went quietly upstairs, and that was the last time I saw him.

I was shattered. Convinced I would never do magic again.

It came as a surprise to me that despite what happened with Katlee, there were still people desperate enough to hire me for magical services.

Even so, months passed before I felt comfortable doing even the tiniest bit of magic, and it took years for me to venture back into the art of transformation.

Since then, I have performed fourteen successful human transformations.

The first was on conjoined twins who would have died without magical interference.

The healers could do nothing, and the parents were desperate.

When they approached me, I said that absolute secrecy was the only payment I would accept.

I could have been sentenced to life imprisonment had the spell failed. If the situation had not been so dire, I never would have had the courage to try it. I remember the nightmares that plagued me the night before the working of the spell—wretched, blood-soaked dreams.

But it worked. And when I saw those two babies alive and squirming in their own separate, healthy bodies, a measure of my confidence returned.

Following that first success, I’ve taken select cases quietly, always making the families promise that they will never reveal who did the work, lest I come back and reverse the magic. Not that I would reverse it, but the threat has so far proved effective.

Other than those cases, Elekstan’s people know me as someone who does mildly successful magic, but tends to fuck up dramatically on occasion. I’m a cautionary tale. A roll of the dice. Powerful and unpredictable.

That’s how I thought my father saw me, too, until I received his latest letter.

Over the years, he has attempted to stitch together the remnants of our relationship with his missives. They’re pathetically short, containing bits of news about the house and the Court, and occasionally including a scathing comment about the rumors of my incompetence.

This letter—this long, comprehensive letter—is much different.

I don’t know what story or rumor he heard that changed his mind and convinced him I could actually be helpful.

But clearly he thinks I have something to contribute.

Maybe he believes I’ll be grateful that he’s giving me a chance to consult with him.

The thing is, if he knows me at all, he should know that a genocidal spell like this would be utterly abhorrent to me.

Why, why would he send me this? To confuse me?

To fuck with me? To prove that he has actually gone insane?

He must have lost his mind to even consider performing this kind of magic.

Either that, or the Queen has her claws deeper in him than I ever realized.

The two of them are a pair of murderers—her giving the commands, and him fulfilling them.

When he was young, did he ever suspect where his path would lead? Did he ever see himself entwined with a ruthless despot, serving as a magical executioner?

Determination finally cuts through the haze of the memories and the wine.

I’ve wondered and wavered for an entire week, which is far too long. Yes, the dragons have been killing my people, but their race doesn’t deserve to die out entirely. On the off chance that my father does plan to slaughter them, my inaction isn’t protest enough.

I need to go back to the capital city. I have to stop him.

First, I’ll go into town to see if there’s news of the war. At the market, I’ll purchase supplies for the journey, and then I’ll head out tomorrow on Verda. I’ll ride north into the war-torn areas of the kingdom. I’ll stop my father and save the dragons.

My decision is made, and I’ll act on it—right after I finish this cup of wine.