Blood Pact (Darkling Mage 7)

Sterling sat perfectly still, but to my surprise said nothing about Luella’s blood. He’d always been pretty vocal about enjoying the blood of mages, and had been especially curious about the blood of truly powerful ones, like the Brandts. But this time? Not a peep. Huh. Progress.

“Gentlemen,” Luella said, without really turning to look at us. “I apologize for the ruckus. Good evening.”

She pulled off her swimming cap, blond hair tumbling down her shoulders in an uncharacteristic, haphazard mess, weirdly emblematic of how the night had gone.

Sterling held his arms out and stared down at himself. “I’m all wet. This is all leather. Good leather, too.”

Bastion handed me my own towel, and I pushed my face into it immediately, dabbing carefully at my skin instead of rubbing it roughly, the way he himself had once taught me. Because fine, Bastion was who he was, but if he gave me advice on how to keep my face pretty, I was going to listen.

“I’m sorry, dude,” I said, unsure of what else I could say. “I figured this Scion business would be hard on her, but I had no idea.”

“I love her to pieces,” Bastion sighed. “But mainly when she’s sober.”

Sterling and I dried off as well as we could before I told Bastion that we were ready to leave. He’d said his piece, anyway: stay alert, and keep the dog away from harm. We didn’t say much more as we made our way back through Brandt Manor’s many, many rooms, as we walked past the family portrait near the mansion’s entrance.

Bastion’s father stared down at us with hard eyes, an iron falcon. I never noticed before, but other images lined the top of the great fireplace, more framed pictures and cameos. Out of one of them, Agatha Black smiled at us, her mind and her body still whole, unsullied by the touch of the Eldest.

Onto the mantlepiece itself was sculpted one of the omnipresent lion’s heads that represented the Brandt lineage. It was a reminder of one of the most difficult and important lessons I’ve ever had to learn: that a lion really is nothing without its pride.

I touched the garnet set into my mother’s amulet. It still hurt to think of her, but that night, it hurt just that little bit less.

Chapter 16

The trip back to the Boneyard was chilly. You try hoofing it at night, waiting in wet clothes on a street corner for your rideshare to pick you up. Bastion had mumbled something about letting us use the mansion’s laundry room – because of course, where else would their laundry staff be stationed – but Sterling and I had exchanged glances and very quickly, silently agreed that getting the hell out of Brandt Manor was best done sooner rather than later.

Yet as chilly as it was on the sidewalk, it was quite little compared to the jolting, searing cold of the snowball that socked me right in the face.

“Focus,” Herald shouted. “If that was an icicle, you’d be dead now.”

I was surprised I could still hear him over the ringing in my ears. The hot flush of humiliation and anger quickly melted away the numb, dull ache of being pelted with a face full of ice, but Herald was right. I’d agreed to practice with him, so I had to commit. I curled my fingers around thin air, summoning a missile of my own.

We were on a flat, square platform, suspended somewhere within the quiet cold of the Boneyard’s endless chasm, that infinite space that occupied the bits of Carver’s dimension that we didn’t actually live on. That’s what the Boneyard felt like to me, anyway, a collection of platforms, rooms, and corridors that seemed to just float in an empty, black abyss.

No one had ever walked off the edge of a platform – not that anyone had reason to. With the exception of Hecate, of course, but that wasn’t just anyone. She just stepped off in midair, like the abyss meant nothing to her, but what else would you expect from a goddess of magic? Any other one of us would have just fallen, and kept falling, I presume, into an infinite, uncaring void.

Which was why I was so, so careful not to let myself get backed into a corner, or too far onto the edge of the practice platform the Boneyard had so helpfully carved out for us, what I liked to think of as our new magical dojo. Sure, Herald had agreed to stick to blunt force, using snowballs and chunks of ice in place of the razor-sharp shards he usually favored, but they still struck with enough force that I was afraid one of them was eventually going to knock me off and over.

And sure, perhaps Carver, out of the kindness of his own dead heart, would come and rescue me eventually, but better that he wouldn’t have to. Our undead mentor loved for us to live out our lessons, and a minute of sitting in an empty void would be more than enough for me. I know that’s strange coming from the former master and resident of the Dark Room, but I digress.

Another snowball slammed into me, my stomach, this time, and I doubled over, my breath leaving me in a winded rush. I gasped as I struggled for air, the flames in my hand sputtering. Herald wasn’t playing around.

“This is a sparring session, Graves,” he called out. “I’m not holding any punches, and neither should you.”

Easy for

him to say, he had access to a bunch of useful healing spells. But fine, I had access to them too. And worst case, there was always Asher.

I swung my right hand back, ready to launch my fireball, watching for Herald to react. He did, his eyes focused on the clump of fire in my hand. I smiled, relishing his surprise when I transferred the flames to my other hand, then, without having to physically hurl them myself, ejected a whirring ball of fire directly for his chest.

Herald’s gasp hissed across the room, but he cut it off soon enough as he began to mutter a quick incantation, turning his body sideways and planting his feet in the ground to absorb the impact. His entire right arm and shoulder gleamed momentarily with purple light – a barrier – and while he cried out when my fireball struck home, roaring in a pitch of flame across his shield, it did leave him a little gift. Herald batted at his forehead, a rare glimmer of panic running across his features as he fought to smother a tiny fire that I’d accidentally started at the tips of his hair.

“Sorry,” I called out. “Super sorry.”

Herald bared his teeth at me, rearing his hand back again. I crouched, prepared to dodge another snowball, or a volley of those stupidly painful ice cubes he was suddenly so good at throwing.

“There are plenty of less passive-aggressive ways to tell me that I need a haircut,” he growled.

I watched for the salvo of frozen missiles he was preparing, but it didn’t come. Instead a sheath of ice shot up from the base of his wrist, building into a huge shard that terminated in a wicked point. Ah. One of his ice swords. Great. He was pissed.