Pretty Bride (Rags to Riches 3)

But that was not what the rune meant to Jalisa. She had not chosen it or made a vow. Instead it was a cage that she’d been tossed into.

And so her power was bound beneath her skin…but her blood was still full of her magic. By shedding drops of blood, her magic she could use again.

“Because it is dangerous,” he snarled. “The scaling always affects the one who cast the spell. And never can anyone predict what the scaling will be. Blood magic kills the person who uses it. Always.”

“Eventually it will,” she agreed softly. “But I won’t need to use it so often after my father is dead. Until then, it is a risk I must take.”

“Why must you?” he challenged fiercely, and dropped to his knees, shoving up the hem of her torn and ragged shift. Jalisa trembled as his thumb brushed over a small pink scar on her inner thigh—the most recent of the scars. “This must be the ship. But what is this one?” His fingers moved higher, touching the oldest. “What was so important that you risked your life for this?”

“My father decided to make an example of a pack of street urchins who had been stealing food from the market. They were meant to hang. I unraveled the ropes. So they were exiled, instead.”

So still Aruk went. “And the scaling?”

“My hair was knotted for weeks. Which does not sound so very dire, I know,” she whispered painfully. “Except that I am always supposed to be a pretty princess and my father was so very angry with me and my maids. They could not fix my hair and so he had all of theirs shaved, as criminals have their heads shaved. They had to endure that humiliation—and to me, that was the worst part of the scaling. But other scalings were not so bad. Some spells, the effect on me must have been so small that I still do not know what the scaling was.”

For an endless time Aruk stared up at her, his tortured gaze searching her face. Then he glanced down again, his fingers sliding down the ladder of small scars. “All of these…?”

“To save those he would have executed for cruel and petty reasons,” she said softly. “But I did not save everyone. Such as a man who beat his wife to death—no spell did I cast then.”

“And the marks you hid here,” he said hoarsely. “So your father would not realize what you’d done.”

“Yes. And I have been mostly fortunate in the scalings. The cough was the worst.”

“Jalisa.” He groaned her name and pressed his face into her belly, holding tight to her hips. “You should not have used it.”

Her eyes burned. Did he not understand how helpless she’d been? “Then what should I have done? How could I have saved them?”

“What if the blood magic had killed you? Who would have saved them, then?” Drawing back, he looked up at her fiercely. “You must find another way.”

“I have,” she reminded him. “And the only blood required is my virginity.”

Again his eyes closed, his face a mask of torment. “To hire my sword and kill him.”

“Yes.”

The one night that had seemed such a cheap price to pay…and now seemed not a price to pay at all. Instead it was the sweetest gift, that she would have one night with him before duty pulled him away.

Gently he urged her down to kneeling in the sand with him, her face on level with his. “So tell me what sort of man I am to kill.”

“When I was a little girl, he was the best of men. He doted on me, spoiled me, encouraged me. Anything I wished for, he gave to me.” Her breath shuddered in painful remembrance. To a young girl, such indulgence seemed like love. And she had loved him so much in return. “He was so proud of how strong my magic was. From the beginning, he made certain I had the finest tutor—a witch from the Dead Lands whom he’d rescued from slavery after she’d been stolen from her home, and her magic bound with the rune. As my father instructed her to, she taught me many spells, so that I might one day become a powerful sorcerer who could protect our people and defend our kingdom. That was the sort of man he was.”

“Then he changed?” Aruk asked softly.

“He did not change,” she said achingly. “All that changed was how I saw him. I was fifteen years of age when I discovered the witch was my mother—and that he’d not rescued her from slavery, but instead had purchased her from a slaver. He married her so that I would be a legitimate heir, then forced her in his bed. Then he told her that if she ever wanted to see her daughter, it could only be as my tutor. But I do not think he ever realized that she taught me more than spells—and that she taught me of true magic, too.”