Page 9 of Wings of Frost and Fury (Merciless Dragons #4)
I’ve been reading and re-reading the letter from my father, in which he describes the spell he plans to perform and asks my advice on a particular aspect of the magic.
I received his letter a week ago, and I still haven’t replied.
Haven’t sent any messages to warn anyone.
Why should I warn the invaders of my country, or the dragons who are helping them murder the people of Elekstan by the hundreds?
I don’t care for the Queen or her policies.
I think she’s a bitch, and I know my father’s a heartless bastard.
For seventeen months, they’ve been wasting lives and resources on this war, when they probably should have surrendered and let the Vohrainians take over.
Not that I think the Vohrainian king would be a better ruler.
From what I’ve heard, he can be cruel. But fewer people would have died.
It would have been the lesser of two evils.
From my seat on a stone bench outside the cottage, I can see a triangle of the sparkling blue ocean between two of the dunes. The morning air carries the scent of salt, the tang of fish, the freshness of sea grasses. My feet are bare, nestled slightly into the dry, sandy earth.
If it were not for the letter in my hand, I would be at peace.
But my father… my fucking father.
I haven’t heard any news since the letter.
Haven’t even ventured into town since I received it.
Maybe I don’t want to hear how the war is progressing.
I don’t want to know if my father attempted the spell, if he succeeded in slaying half of the dragon race, if he managed to find a way to survive the expenditure of that kind of power.
That’s what he wanted my help with—figuring out how he could accomplish the partial genocide of the dragons and yet keep himself alive.
The dragons may be our enemies, but they are an intelligent race with their own culture.
If my father is willing to effectively wipe them from existence, he should also be willing to accept the price of such an atrocity.
I will not help him kill them, nor will I help him survive the war crime he plans to commit.
I lift the cup beside me and swallow the remaining wine. Then I pour myself more from the bottle. The drink softens the constant buzzing in my head, the questions, the answers, the guilt and the madness.
I could see flaws in the spell rubric my father sent me, issues with the sentence structure and the ingredients he plans to use.
There are different schools of thought and styles within the art of complex spellwork.
I tend to follow the Dal Vitalin way, while my father favors the Jaanan school of magic, which won’t work for what he plans to do.
To accomplish this terrible spell, he must alter his entire mode of practice, which I can’t imagine him doing—and in the end, he will probably still die.
He isn’t so zealously obedient to the Queen or so maniacally vengeful against the dragons that he would risk his own life…
would he? He wasn’t that desperate when I knew him.
Granted, I haven’t seen him since I was nearly nineteen. A person’s character might not change much over time, but their habits and motives do. Give anyone a strong enough motive, and they will be capable of committing terrible or wonderful acts.
Why would he ask me , his estranged daughter, about this magic?
Surely there were others he could have consulted, even if they were less powerful than us.
Maybe all the other sorcerers in the land have been slain and there’s no time to consult with any enchanters beyond Elekstan’s borders.
Perhaps my father must keep his plan secret, and he thinks I’m the only one who won’t betray him—which would be foolishly trusting on his part.
Or perhaps he doesn’t know any other follower of the Dal Vitalin method who is as powerful as I am.
My thoughts are driving me insane. I should go into town this afternoon and ask Arnett’s father for news. At this point, I have a decent relationship with Arnett and his family, mostly because the second cock on Arnett’s head had the unexpected benefit of sparing him from service in the army.
Rhordan, the valet, recounted the story during one of his occasional visits to my cottage. He said the military recruiter who did Arnett’s physical inspection turned very pale when he saw the forehead cock and immediately signed an exemption for the boy.
Out of gratitude, his parents have become less frigid in their attitude toward me.
They tolerate my presence in Devil’s Kiss as long as I don’t make trouble, and I refrain from speaking about their son’s second penis.
It hasn’t yet disappeared, although Rhordan recently told me that he thinks Arnett is making progress in his relationship with a local girl.
Rhordan has hopes that the forehead cock will be gone within six months.
I could have left Devil’s Kiss when the war began, but I stayed.
Since the town is located farther south, it’s distant from the invasion in the north.
While food supplies may run short in other areas of Elekstan, the people of the coast enjoy the benefits of seafood and thriving plant life year-round.
And there are a few vineyards in the area, all of which have continued producing wine throughout these times of distress.
The village market has remained fairly well-stocked thanks to ships from the Southern Kingdoms and from island dynasties farther southeast.
Sometimes I almost feel guilty for having it so easy here, when I know the rest of the nation is suffering.
Perhaps I should have intervened in the war somehow.
But until the letter from my father, no one asked for my help.
I’ve done my work well, convincing everyone that I’m a failure as a sorceress.
They all believe that my magic produces more complications than benefits.
The Queen who banished me has been feeding her own people to the monster of war.
She cast me aside like a piece of garbage.
I owe her nothing. And the citizens of Elekstan have never mustered the courage to band together and defy the Queen, despite all her harsh actions throughout her reign.
Why should I feel responsible for any of them?
Why should I provide solutions to their problems with the energy of my own body and the cleverness of my mind?
That’s what I tell myself daily, whenever the flush of the wine starts to recede and doubts start to creep in. But lately it has been more and more difficult to convince myself that it’s not my problem, that there’s nothing I can do.
I do not believe in guilt, but I do believe in regret.
My greatest regret is everything that took place on Katlee’s nineteenth birthday, a month before mine.
She chose the day. She was convinced it was a lucky choice, that being transformed on her birthday had poetic significance.
I thought I was ready. I’d been studying for nine months, forgoing sleep, diving into every tome I could find that contained anything about transformation.
I had swallowed vast amounts of information and taught myself the spellwork I would need to create the change Katlee wanted.
I practiced on large spiders and rats, interchanging or altering the size of their limbs.
It was a darker magic than I liked to perform, careless and cruel perhaps, but I needed to practice on something alive, and pests seemed like the best option, especially since they were available in a seemingly endless supply.
In hindsight, I should have studied the art of transformation for another few years before I even thought about attempting what I did.
But as young adults, we are all hopeful and headstrong, wise and foolish at the same time, without the experience of years to make us cautious.
I was brimming with potential, driven by love for a friend, convinced that I was brilliant, that I’d thought of everything, that I could do it without the help of an older, more skilled sorcerer.
Even now, as I’m staring across the yard at the pale, drifted dunes and their tufts of coarse sea grass, I don’t see the scenery, not really…
because in my mind I’m there again, in the room where I cast the spell.
The dank, quiet stone basement of my father’s house, an area too chilly and damp to be used for much else besides spell-casting.
I can see the stone columns arching up to support the room. I can feel the way the chill of the room pressed against my skin, even as an anxious sweat collected on the back of my neck, beneath my hair.
I can feel the dried buds crumbling between my fingers as I sifted them over Katlee’s bare body.
I remember how her skin shivered as I painted it with glossy crimson lines.
The paint smelled of clay and copper, but the air sang with the incense I had designed for the occasion, every ingredient carefully chosen.
Katlee lay in the casting circle, surrounded by the shapes, curves, and lines I had marked, each one representing an element of the energy I was planning to harness.
I had painstakingly crafted the spell, section by section, line by line, trying to account for everything.
I had checked the placement of each word and phrase dozens of times.
“Are you sure?” I asked her, one last time. “Are you sure you want to do this now? We can wait…”
“I’ve been waiting,” she said calmly. “I’ve waited long enough. You’re ready. I’m ready. I need to do this now, before…” She averted her eyes, her throat working as she swallowed.
“Before what?”
“Before Zovi chooses someone else.”
“Zovi? The tax assessor’s son?”
“I like him, Thelise. I more than like him—I’m in love with him. He doesn’t have anyone yet, but if I wait too long to do this, he might find a sweetheart, or a wife.”
“Have you approached him as you are?”