Authors: Anise Rae
“Sheer pleasure.”
Edmund almost lost his grip at the phrase. This was the second, maybe third, time that Bull had repeated Edmund’s thoughts. Holy hells. Bull was a mind mage. That was why the
obey
charm hadn’t seemed to work. He hadn’t activated it after all. Bull had read his mind about joining the gang and offered to make it happen. Why?
The black spots dotting the edges of his vision merged together just as Bull jumped up and yanked Edmund to his feet. Three quick pants of air stopped the black mass from encroaching further on his eyesight.
“Two lines, Thorn.” Bull’s words were met with shouts of protest somewhere to his left.
“Sure thing, boss,” the old man replied.
“Two fucking full lines? He’s gonna be our Second?” One man had the balls to protest aloud. “I’m the Second. That’s not fair.”
Second. This had gone better than he’d hoped.
“Whine to your mama, Haines. Not me. He took you down. He took Jet down. He even took Potter down who was about to jump line for your job.”
“Yeah, he even took me down.” The mocking voice belonged to Keene.
“Shut up, Keene. Of course he took you down.” Haines spat, oblivious to the sarcasm in the kid’s words. “He has to work his way up.”
“He just did.” The kid’s tone went flat.
Smoke drifted to Edmund’s bloodied nose. Thorn was stoking the burn barrel at the outside of the circle.
Bull stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Thorn. “Vow to protect the dark. To keep the shadows safe, to defend the sanctity of the Towers, to guard the health and safety of the territory.” Heavy power swirled through the ritual words.
Edmund repeated after him. He knew the vow word for word. It was good business for a future senator to know who was responsible for what around his territory. Being appointed Second—he’d expected to start at the bottom—meant that he could order some of them to guard Aurora directly.
“Protect all the good that dwells on these lands through the forbidden forest.”
Through the forest? That was different.
“I swear to the Goddess to protect all the good that dwells on these lands from here through the forest.”
I swear to protect Aurora.
“Or die a dishonorable death. And I will gladly render that to you. As would any here who witness your violation of this vow.”
“Wait. We can kill him, too?” Keene interrupted the spiel. “Not just you? That’s not how it goes.”
Haines scoffed. “Not you, Keene. You couldn’t kill him if he was tied down and an X marked the spot.”
The smell hit Edmund first, the sharp tang of metal, as if he could already smell his own blood. Thorn raised the brand from the fire barrel. Compared to the pain that was coming, everything before had been little tickles.
Bull smiled. “You’re so sworn. Now don’t move, pretty boy. Aurora’ll be mighty pissed if she has to make you a new eye, too.”
The glow perched in the air, closing in on him and frying his eyesight. It smacked his face with a sizzle. A mass of pain seared his skin, his mind, his very being. Edmund’s bones froze, even as his muscles liquefied with the heat, but he didn’t move. Thank the goddess he didn’t move. The old man was so damn close to his eye.
The scent of burning flesh—hot, crisp, and sickening—drowned his nose. It swirled into his lungs, stirring up a wave of nausea so strong he couldn’t swallow it down. All he could do was live with it. Live with the pain.
A pat on his cheek sent knives through the burn. It was his only clue that the brand was complete.
“Holy vibing darkness, he didn’t move,” Keene said, his voice audible over the shocked chatter of the other gang members. “Has anyone ever just stood there?”
“Shut the hell up, Keene. I don’t think you’re even allowed to talk about him anymore. It took three guys to hold you still for a shitty dotted line,” someone answered.
“Has anyone ever just stood there?” Another man spoke, awe in his tone.
“Everyone, meet our new Second.” Bull’s hard voice silenced the gang. His hand landed on Edmund’s shoulder.
He swayed.
Bull continued. “Spread the word in the Pipe. Tell them a new protector has been marked. You can call him Monday.”
Edmund sensed Bull’s spell as it fell down around him from head to foot, but he could do nothing to stop it. If it had been something less innocuous than a sound spell, he’d have been in trouble. Shit, he had to get his head out of this fog of pain.
“But I’ll call you Rallis.” Bull’s words bounced around.
“Why?” he slurred. “Why let me in?”
“Why wouldn’t I? The heir obeys me now.”
“I obey the vow.” Edmund formed the slow words within the desert his mouth had become.
“Good enough. You guard from here to the last tower. No farther. And one more thing, you hurt her, you’re dead.”
“Is she the good I’m protecting? She needs it.” The brand screamed for him to rip it off, but he didn’t dare lift a hand to touch it.
“Maybe she won’t want you, now that you’re not so pretty. Two raised black lines. Forever marking our heir.”
“Only two until I get the third.”
Bull gave that slim, badass smile. “By all means. Prove yourself worthy of the last line. I look forward to it.” He dissolved the sound spell. Energy disbanded and fell away in strips of power to the ground. A messy cleanup. He shrugged. “We can’t all have the power levels of the founding families.”
Thorn stepped up and handed mugs to Bull and Edmund.
Behind him, Haines cursed and stomped off into the night.
Edmund stared down into the black liquid. Goddess, what was this?
“Oil,” the Bull answered his unasked question.
Thorn laughed. “It ain’t oil. It’s beer.”
“Tastes like oil.”
Thorn shrugged. “Coats your insides with the dark just like we contaminate the light.” He raised his glass. “To our new Second and to the dark.”
To catching the bastard who’s trying to destroy my land. To protecting her for the rest of my life.
“To the dark,” he said. No more avoiding the fact that he was one of them.
Now it was written on his face.
Aurora opened the diner’s door, casting a silence spell on its bell. She didn’t need anything heralding her arrival. Hiding was the name of the game today.
Three days ago, the afternoon edition of the
Dispatch
contained an article about her repair shop, resulting in a pandemic of broken appliances across the city. The victims had been rushed to her doorstep by their curious owners under the suddenly watchful eye of the gang. Even now, Thorn sat at a table by the door, having followed her in.
She slumped into her usual booth, fighting the need to lay her head on the table to rest. She’d been working non-stop to catch up on the backlog. Plus, the promise she’d given Edmund meant she’d examined every customer with her mage sense, an exhausting process. Who wanted to look at the world with constant suspicion?
Izzy arrived with a cup of coffee. Her friend tsked. “I knew that article was bad news the moment I saw it.”
The article and its infinite customers weren’t the worst parts. That honor went to the fissures that kept appearing. Yesterday morning, she’d had to ask Thorn to check in appliances and hand out receipts while she dashed madly around the Drainpipe repairing the Rallis bond. She’d been at it ever since, working at the shop between fissures.
It would have been more efficient if she and Edmund had trekked around together. But she had to keep her shop afloat among the flood of customers and Edmund had to do…well, what did an heir do? She frowned at the loneliness she had no business feeling.
For whatever reason, their paths had merely chased each other, one never catching the other. He’d tracked down new fissures and relayed directions to her through his calling charm. She’d gone out alone, sometimes trespassing through private property to get to the fissures, often at houses or businesses of people she knew, as if their culprit knew she’d be fixing them. But that was impossible. And what would she have said if she’d gotten caught? Edmund would have spun the perfect lie, but that wasn’t her style. Plus, she’d missed him keeping her warm one hand at a time.
“You all right, darling?” Izzy put a hand on her arm. “That article really got to you, huh?”
“I can’t even bring myself to open the shop this morning.”
She didn’t have the energy to.
If the fissures continued at this rate, repairing the mark would become her full-time job. With one rip in the bond after the other, her confidence in their victory had wilted under a steady drizzle of fear. They couldn’t fail. Edmund’s life was at stake. Everything was at stake. She rubbed her face, wishing she could lean into his arms…just for a moment.
“You poor girl. Maybe you should ask the heir to sweep you away from all this.”
“Ha.” Her bitter laugh surprised the people at the table next to her. “He’d sweep me away so thoroughly I might never see the Pipe again.” That is, if he ever had time to appear.
“And that’s a bad thing, how?” Izzy asked.
Instead of answering, Aurora took a sip of coffee. Sweet and hot on her tongue. Ambrosia.
The bell on the diner’s door pealed again.
“Careful with that stuff,” the waitress warned Aurora. “I put a little something in it. It should keep you going until about mid-afternoon. After that, expect to collapse face down in a toaster. So make sure you’re not driving after one o’clock, just to play it safe.”
“No driving after one o’clock?” a woman chimed in.
Aurora shifted her gaze to see Lady Rallis prowling forward and calculated how fast she could escape out the back door. She glanced at Thorn. His eyes were wide, helpless to protect her against Lady Rallis.
“I’d be happy to have my driver escort you around town.”
Aurora shrank in her seat even as Izzy, with her enhanced metal bones, straightened as proud as a Mayflower descendant. Her friend walked away as Lady Rallis stopped beside the booth.
“You’re not sick, are you?” The frown did nothing to mar the lady of the land’s sophisticated beauty.
“Just tired.”
“My Edmund keeping you up late?”
“I wasn’t with Edmund last night. I was working.” She could hardly remember half of it.
“Repairing toasters and vacuums at night? What dedication!”
Lady Rallis was styled to perfection. Her black hair was chin length, with pointy wisps that set the trend for women of all ages in the Republic—including Izzy. Her red-skirted suit and matching heels trumpeted her superiority.
The most Aurora could say for her own appearance was that she was clean. Her hair was smashed beneath her ever-present knitted cap because fixing fissures was damn cold work.
“Isn’t that what you do?” Lady Rallis asked.
“Yes, I repair spelled metalworks.” And founding family’s bonds.
With a queen’s grace, Lady Rallis slid onto the opposite seat of the booth. “Why?”
“It’s a job.” She shrugged beneath her coat. She hadn’t bothered to remove it, whereas Lady Rallis hadn’t bothered to wear one.
Izzy returned with an empty mug and a small, squat vase with a single occupant.
Trash vibes and moonbeams. What the blasted hells was she thinking?
Aurora closed her eyes and counted to two. That was all the time she dared. She opened them to find Izzy leaning over the table, placing the vase next to the window. The vibe violet’s heavy blossom pulled at its stem, leaving it at just the right angle to face them. Another party for their conversation.
Lady Rallis bestowed a condescending smile upon Izzy. “The perfect touch.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” Izzy lifted the white mug. “Coffee? Finest in the Pipe.”
“By all means.”
Izzy filled the mug and left. Lady Rallis’s sharp blue gaze followed her. “Pretty girl. Nice hairstyle. Good bones.”
Aurora choked as if her coffee had gone down the wrong pipe. But she hadn’t been drinking.
“Maybe you are getting sick. Edmund isn’t taking proper care of his enchantress. Tell me, how did you learn to fix metal?” Lady Rallis jumped from one topic to the other without a breath.
Aurora sat back, trying to find the right words, particularly ones that would halt further questions. “I’ve always been able to feel the structure and make-up of objects. From living creatures to the stars. It’s my theory that’s how an enchantress’s power works, though I wonder if the others realize that’s what they’re doing.”
A limo materialized outside the diner’s windows.
She hadn’t felt the structure of that. Mother Goddess, it took serious power to render an object invisible for even a second. But she nodded, cool and calm. Never let them see your vibes twitch. That was a rule she’d learned under the Nobles.
“For instance, you have a small dent on the front passenger door of your limo that was repaired with an inferior metal spell.”
Lady Rallis squinted at the window. “You can see through the car?”
“Not exactly. I can feel its vibes. As to how I learned to work with metal, my father taught me.”
Lady Rallis’s face tightened. “Of course. A lucky man to have such a talented daughter.” She narrowed her eyes. “Speaking of children, where is Edmund, enchantress?”
Surprised, Aurora gave a sideways glance at the land’s queen. “I don’t know.”
“He didn’t come home last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that.” She clapped her hand against the table in time with the last word.
“He’s a big boy. I’m sure he’ll find his way back.”
“Why don’t you come home with me and we can surprise him?”
“I have to work.”
“I know he’s in the Drainpipe. I just can’t quite pinpoint his location.” She looked left and right as if she were searching for him, but her focus landed back on Izzy. She pointed at her. “A little digging and I’d know her entire life. One chat and she’d see the wisdom—and the profit—in sharing the knowledge that must circulate in this little place.” She shifted her focus to Aurora. “We’ve been remiss in ignoring the Drainpipe. This neighborhood holds its secrets quite tightly. Especially concerning you. Wise of them, I suppose. When flaunted, treasures become targets and then they must be kept under lock and key.”