Magic Binds

CHAPTER 2

THE BATTERED CORPSE of I-85 stretched in front of me, winding into the distance, flanked by trees. Brilliant blue sky rose high above it, suffused with sunshine. It was barely six and already the temperatures threatened to slide into the nineties. It would be one hell of a hot day.

I glanced behind me at the ten mercenaries parked by Curran. They came in all shapes and sizes. Eduardo towered over everyone except Douglas King, who was enormous, six five, with shoulders that wouldn’t fit through the door and legs like tree trunks. Douglas shaved his head, because he felt he wasn’t communicating his badassness well enough, and he painted what he claimed to be magic runes on his scalp and the side of his face in black camo paint. The runes were bullshit. I had told him that before. He didn’t care.

Next to him, the five-foot-tall Ella seemed even smaller. Perfectly ordinary, with brown hair about an inch longer than her shoulders and a pretty, pleasant face, which was usually free of makeup, she would’ve been at home in a sandwich shop or a vet’s office. People tended to underestimate her. Petite and wicked fast, Ella liked the wakizashi and she cut things to ribbons with it.

The rest of the mercs fell between these two extremes: lean and bulky, tall and short, some carrying blades, others carrying bows. They were Curran’s elite team, the nucleus around which he was building the new Guild.

He’d formed this team when he took a job everyone in the city turned down. Even the Red Guard had bowed out. The Four Horsemen, the Guild’s best team, straightout called it suicide. Curran and I took the gig, Eduardo threw in his lot with us, and somehow the Guild coughed up nine people crazy enough to join us and good enough to live through it. We got the job done, the Guild’s gigs doubled overnight, and the ten of them got a certain reputation. They were the Guild’s best of the best and after that job, they would die for Curran.

Neither of us had a good feeling about the upcoming conversation with Roland. Curran would stay behind. First, it would make the negotiations easier. Things would get heated, and given that my father and my fiancé got into pissing matches over which way the wind was blowing, it would be better to handle this one by myself. And second, if something happened to me, Curran was the only one who could hold the city and possibly get me back out.

He would try. If things did go sour, he would sprout fangs and claws and march his team of hard cases brandishing savage weapons into Lawrenceville to try to pry me loose from my father’s grasp. I had to make sure it didn’t come to that, because it wouldn’t end well for everyone involved.

I leaned over to Curran and kissed him. His arms closed around me and he squeezed me to him for one bone-crunching second.

“I’m off.”

“I’ll be right here,” he said.

“Have fun with your A-team. Sharpen some knives. Clean some guns. Don’t kill anybody while I’m gone.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

I climbed into Cuddles’s saddle. The black and white mammoth donkey twitched her ears.

“I’ll tell dear old Dad you’re sorry you missed him.”

Behind Curran, Eduardo snorted.

Curran bared his teeth. “Not as sorry as he’ll be if I have to come and see him.”

“Hey, Daniels,” Ella called out. “Bring us back some cookies.”

“What makes you think there will be cookies?”

“When I go home to see my parents, there are always cookies.”

If Roland did have cookies, they’d probably make me spit fire. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I started down the road. In its glory days I-85 was a giant of an interstate road, six regular lanes and two express lanes on each side. The magic had fed the tree growth. The pavement crumbled at the edges under the relentless onslaught of magic waves, making it easier for the roots to raise the asphalt, and the once mighty highway turned into a forest road. The huge hickories, maples, and white ashes flanked it, warring for space with colossal live oaks tinseled with Spanish moss. The heat was brutal, the sun pounding the road like a hammer. It would take me about twenty minutes to get to Lawrenceville, and by the time I made it, I’d arrive well-done with a crispy crust. I stuck to the tree shadows.

What the hell could Roland possibly want with Saiman?

Thinking about it made me clench my teeth. He came into my territory. He took one of my people out. No matter how I felt about him, Saiman was an inhabitant of Atlanta. If I had hackles, they would be standing up.

You’d think he would stop screwing with me fourteen days before my wedding. As a common courtesy.

I still hadn’t bought the dress. I’d gone shopping for it three times and come back empty-handed because I didn’t see anything I wanted.

Ahead Derek stepped out from behind a thick ash, moving with the easy gliding grace of a shapeshifter. In his early twenties, with broad shoulders, and a face hardened by life’s grinder, he looked at me with dark eyes. With some shapeshifters the nature of their beast was more obvious. Even in his human body, Derek looked like a wolf. A predatory, solitary, smart wolf.

“I was beginning to wonder where you were.”

The former boy wonder shrugged his shoulders. “I scouted ahead.” His voice matched his looks: low, threatening, and rough.

“Anything?”

“No patrols between us and Lawrenceville.”

I wasn’t sure if that was good—because I wouldn’t have to intimidate and possibly kill anyone—or bad, because my father apparently worried so little about me presenting a threat that he neglected to defend his base.

“You look like you want to murder somebody,” Derek said.

“Don’t I normally look that way?”

“Not like this.”

“It’s probably because I have one nerve left and my father keeps jumping up and down on it.”

I kept riding. Derek trotted next to me.

“Curran told me about the Conclave,” he said.

“Mm-hm.”

“Why does Nick hate you?” he asked.

“You know the story about Voron and me? How after Roland killed my mother, Voron raised me?”

Derek nodded.

“Whenever we came through the Atlanta area, Greg Feldman would visit us. When I was older, I thought it was odd, because Greg was a knight-diviner and Voron steered clear of the Order whenever he could. I asked him about it once, and he told me that he, my mother, Greg, and Greg’s ex-wife, Anna, used to be friends. Then after Voron died, Greg became my guardian. Occasionally he would take me to Anna’s house. She didn’t like me at first, but eventually she helped me. She is a precog. I used to wonder why I haven’t heard from her for a while, but it makes sense now.”

“Okay,” Derek said. “How does Nick fit into it?”

“You remember when Hugh killed the knights in the Atlanta chapter of the Order, and Nick dropped his cover? Maxine called him Nick Feldman. When we got back to the Keep, I asked Jim to look into it. He did. Nick Feldman is Greg Feldman’s son.”

Derek frowned. “You didn’t know he had a son?”

“No. Greg took care of me for about ten years. Neither he nor Anna ever mentioned a child. There were no pictures and nobody ever said his name. So after Jim told me, I called Anna.”

It had taken four phone calls and a promise to come find her in her country home in North Carolina before she finally called back.

“I had always thought that Greg and Voron had been friends. I have a picture of the four of them, Greg and Anna and Voron and my mother, standing together. Apparently, all of that is bullshit. They knew each other, but they weren’t friends. My mother had worked for the Order for a short time before marrying Roland. She met Greg, and Greg fell in love with her. He told Anna, but Nick was two years old and they decided to stay together for his sake. My mother and Greg reconnected again when she and Voron were running from Roland. At the time, I was a baby. Greg left Anna the day he found out my mother died. Nick was six.”

“I don’t get it,” Derek said. “Why leave when the other woman is dead?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what went on in Greg’s head. Maybe he thought he was betraying my mother’s memory somehow by staying with Anna.”

Thinking about it put all those meetings between Voron and Greg in a new light. They weren’t two friends catching up. They were two men mourning the death of the same woman.

“He and Anna shared custody, but when Nick was twelve, he applied to Squire’s Rest. It’s the Order’s preparatory boarding school, the place you go before the Academy makes you into a knight. Nick got in and they never saw him again. According to Anna, Nick hated both her and Greg. When he became part of the Crusader program, Greg was told to remove all traces of Nick, photos, documents, everything, for Nick’s safety and the safety of his family. Eventually Nick went undercover with Hugh for over two years. So my mother broke up his parents’ marriage and my father was the reason he had to do despicable shit for two years. I’m not his favorite person.”

“I get being mad at his parents and at your mother, but you were a baby.”

I sighed. “Maybe if I were the daughter of the other woman his father loved, or the child his dad took in instead of him, or Roland’s daughter, he could deal with it. But I’m all of those things. He will get over it or he won’t, Derek. I don’t really care.”

I did a little bit. Nick was Greg’s older child, and Greg was my guardian and looked over me the way a father would, which meant that in my head Nick hovered perilously close to the “older brother” category. If he ever found out about it, he would probably choke on whatever he was drinking at the time.

The trees pulled away from the road like two hands opening, giving way to a clear grassy plain, with the old highway rolling across it all the way to a short blocky tower. It looked like it was designed to be a good deal taller. A fortress was beginning to take shape around it, its walls three-quarters finished. Damn it.

“I thought you said he agreed to stop building on our border,” Derek said.

“He agreed to stop building the tower. We agreed that he’s allowed a residence.”

“That’s not a residence. That’s a castle.”

“I can see that,” I growled.

And it had gone up fast, too. Three months ago, there was nothing except a foundation. Now there was a mostly finished wall, and the main building and smaller structures inside that wall, and long blood-red pennants streaming in the breeze from the parapets. Made himself comfortable, did he?

A rider shot out of the copse of trees on our left, pushing hard at a full gallop and carrying a long sky-blue standard on a tall flagpole. I would’ve recognized that horse anywhere. Built like a small draft horse, black dappled with light gray, she pounded the road with her white-feathered hoofs. Her mane, long, white, and wavy, flared in the wind. Her rider, slender, blond hair tied back in a ponytail, sat like she was born on that horse. Julie and Peanut, heading straight for Roland’s castle.

I’d told her where I was going this morning and told her to stay at Cutting Edge. Instead she came here and waited until she saw me so she could dramatically ride for the castle ahead of me. Why me? Why?

“I’m going to kill her.”

“She’s your Herald,” Derek said. “That’s your color. Blue for humanity.”

My what?

He made a big show of moving a few feet to the side.

I looked at him.

“In case your head explodes,” he said helpfully.

“Not another word.”

He chuckled under his breath, the rough lupine laugh of an amused wolf. Laugh it up, why don’t you?

My father had had two warlords in the modern age. The first, Voron, left his service to save me, because my mother’s magic convinced him he hopelessly loved her. Hugh d’Ambray was the second, and during his training under Voron, Hugh served as Roland’s Herald. According to Voron, that was the way my father had done things thousands of years ago, before the magic disappeared from the world and his wizard empire collapsed. First, you became Herald, then you became Warlord. Now Julie had decided that she was my Herald. I never told her any of this. She must still be talking to Roland. I didn’t know how, and when I had asked her about it a few weeks ago, she denied it.

Apparently, she’d lied.

I gritted my teeth.

Nothing good would come from Julie talking to Roland. He was poison. I had busted up one of their conversations before, and I did my best to keep more from happening. Logic, explanations, sincere requests, threats, groundings—none of it made any difference. Nothing short of a direct order would do, and I wasn’t ready to burn that bridge yet. Not only that, but that direct order would have to be worded in such a way as to prevent any loopholes. I would have to hire Barabas just to write it out.

Julie was talking to my father and I was powerless to stop it. My father kept coming into my territory, taunting me, and I couldn’t stop that either. And now Julie was riding into his castle to announce me.

I raised my head and sat up straighter. Cuddles picked up on my mood and broke into a canter. Derek shifted into a run, keeping up. Julie and I would have a long talk when we got home. I didn’t want a Herald, but I wouldn’t leave her without backup either. I would ride into that damn castle like I had a Herald announce every moment of my day, complete with fanfare and banner waving.

Four guards in leather armor stood by the entrance of the castle, two men and two women, all trim, grim, and looking like someone had found some attack dogs, turned them into human shape, and groomed them into paragons of military perfection. They bowed their heads in unison. Four voices chorused, “Sharrim.”

Great. This would be a wonderful visit; I just knew it.

I rode into the courtyard and dismounted next to Julie, who stood at parade rest holding the stupid banner. A small stand waited next to her. They brought her a stand for her flag.

A man approached and knelt on one knee. I had seen him before. He was in his fifties, with a head of graying hair, and he looked like he had spent all of his years fighting for one thing or another. Having people kneel in front of me ranked somewhere between getting a root canal and cleaning out a sewer on the list of things I hated.

“You honor us, Sharrim. I have informed Sharrum of your arrival. He is overjoyed.”

I bet he is. “Thank you for the warm welcome.”

“Do you require anything of me?”

“Not at this time.”

He rose, his head still bowed, and backed away to stand a few dozen feet to the left.

Around us, the soldiers manning the walls tried not to gawk. A woman exited one of the side buildings, saw us, turned around, and went back inside.

“You’re grounded,” I said under my breath.

“I don’t have a social life anyway,” Julie murmured. “Barabas called the house before I left. He says not to burn any bridges.”

That was Barabas’s standing legal advice when it came to my father. If I burned this bridge, it would mean war.

“Where is he?”

“He’s at home,” Julie said. “Christopher had a nervous breakdown and burned a book.”

That made no sense. Christopher loved books. They were his escape and treasure.

“Which book was it?”

“Bullfinch’s Mythology.”

What could possibly have set him off about poor Bullfinch?

To the right a man and a woman walked out on the wall from a small side tower. The man wore a trench coat despite the heat. Sewn and patched with everything from leather cording to bits of fur, it looked like every time it had been cut or torn, he’d slapped whatever fabric or leather he had handy over the rip. There was a particular patch on the left side that I didn’t like.

His face was too smooth for a human, the lines perfect, the dark eyes tilted down at the inside corners. His hair was cut short and tousled as if he’d slept on it and hadn’t bothered brushing it for a couple of days, but it was a deep glossy black and looked soft. He was clean-shaven, without so much as a shadow of stubble on his jaw, but somehow managed to look unkempt. The color of his face was odd too, an even olive hue. When most people described skin as olive, they meant a golden-brown color with a slight green undertone. His olive wasn’t darker, but stronger somehow, more saturated with green. The hilt of a sword protruded over his shoulder, wrapped with a purple cord. The same purple showed beneath his coat.

The woman towered next to him. Easily over six feet, dark skinned, with broad shoulders, she wore chain mail over a black tactical outfit and carried a large hammer. The body beneath the chain mail was lean: small bust, hard waist, narrow hips. She was corded with muscle. Her hair, in short dreadlocks, was pulled back from her face. Shades hid her eyes. Her features were large and handsome, and fully human, although she looked like she could punch through a solid wall. A purple scarf, gossamer light, hung from her waist.

“On the wall, the pair to the right,” I said quietly.

Both Derek and Julie kept looking straight ahead, but I knew they saw them.

“That’s human skin on the left side of his coat.”

If things went sour, those two would prove to be a problem.

Forty feet above us, the door of the tower opened and my father stepped out onto the stone landing. Magic clung to him like a tattered cloak. He was reeling it in as fast as he could, but I still felt it. We’d interrupted something.

“Blossom!”

“Father.” There. I said it and didn’t choke on it.

“So good to see you.”

He started down the stairs. My father looked like every orphan’s dream. He’d let himself age, for my benefit, into a man who could reasonably have a twenty-eight-year-old daughter. His hair was salt-and-pepper, and he’d let some wrinkles gather at the corners of his eyes and mouth, enough to suggest experience, but he moved like a young man in his athletic prime. His body, clad in jeans and a gray tunic with rolled-up sleeves, could’ve belonged to a merc who would’ve fit right into Curran’s team.

His face was that of a prophet. Kindness and wisdom shone from his eyes. They promised knowledge and power, and right now they glowed with fatherly joy. Any child looking at him would know instinctively that he would be a great father; that he would be nurturing, patient, attentive, stern when the occasion required (but only because he wanted the best for his children), and above all, proud of your every achievement. If I had met him at fifteen, when Voron died and my world shattered, I wouldn’t have been able to resist, despite all of Voron’s conditioning and training to kill Roland. I had been so alone then and desperate for any hint of human warmth.

Julie was an orphan. She had me and Curran, but we were her second family.

I stared at that fatherly facade and wished I could pry her away from him. If wishes had power, mine would’ve brought down this castle in an avalanche of stone and dust.

“Have you eaten? I can have lunch served. I found the most amazing red curry recipe.”

Yes, come, have some magically delicious curry in the house of a legendary wizard hell-bent on grinding the world under his boot. What could go wrong? “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”

“Come, walk with me. I want to show you something.”

I glanced at Derek and shook my head slightly. Stay put.

He nodded.

I motioned to Julie. She thrust her flag into the stand and followed me, keeping about four feet of distance. I was about to rub my father’s nose in the mess he’d made. He would show his ugly side. I’d seen it before once or twice and it wasn’t something one forgot. It was high time Julie saw it, too.

My father and I strolled across the yard, up the stairs, and onto the wall. A complex network of ditches crossed the ground on the left side and stretched out to hug the castle in a rough crescent. Hills of sand and smooth pebbles in a dozen colors and sizes rose on the sides. I tried to picture the lines of the trenches in my head as they would look from above, but they didn’t look like anything. If this was the layout of a spell, it would be hellishly complicated.

What kind of spell would require sand and stone? Was he building a stone golem? That would be a really big golem. Judging by the amount of materials, it would have to be a colossus. But why use pebbles; why not carve him out of rock?

Maybe it was a summoning. What was he summoning, that he would need a space the size of twenty football fields . . .

“I’ve decided to build a water garden.”

Oh.

“I told you of the water gardens in my childhood palace. I want my grandchildren to make their own treasured memories.”

The recollection hit me like a sudden punch in the gut: my father on a grassy hill, taking away my son as I screamed. I had seen the vision in the mind of a djinn. Djinn weren’t the most trustworthy creatures, but the witches had confirmed it. If . . . no, when. When Curran and I had a son, my father would try to take him. I held on to that thought and forced it down before it had a chance to surface on my face.

“We are diverting the river. The weather is mild enough and with a bit of magical prompting, I will turn this place into a small paradise. What do you think?”

Open your mouth and say something. Say something. “Sounds like it will be beautiful.”

“It will.”

“Do you think Grandmother would like to see it?” Stab, stab, stab.

“Your grandmother is best left undisturbed.”

“She is suffering. Alone, imprisoned in a stone box.”

He sighed. “Some things cannot be helped.”

“Aren’t you afraid that someone will free her?” Someone like me.

“If someone were to try to enter Mishmar, I would know and I would come looking for them. They would never leave.”

Thanks for the warning, Dad.

“She isn’t alive, Blossom. She is a wild force, a tempest without ego. One can only speculate what damage she would cause if unleashed.”

Aha. Of course, you buried her away from everything she loves because she is too dangerous.

We resumed our strolling along the walls, slowly circling the tower.

“How go the preparations for the wedding?”

“Very well. How goes the world domination?”

“It has its moments.”

We strolled down the wall. That was probably enough small talk. If I let him run the conversation, I’d never get Saiman back.

“A resident of Atlanta was brought here. I’m here to take him home.”

“Ah.” Roland nodded.

We turned the corner and I caught a glimpse of Julie’s face as she walked behind us. She was looking at the empty field beyond the eastern wall. Her eyes widened, her face sharpened, and her skin went two shades whiter. I glanced at the field. Beautiful emerald-green grass. Julie stared at it with freaked-out eyes. She definitely saw something.

We kept moving.

Don’t burn bridges. Stay civil. “You kidnapped Saiman.”

“I invited him to be my guest.”

I pulled a photograph of Saiman’s brutalized body out of my pocket and passed it to him.

Roland glanced at it. “Perhaps ‘guest’ was a bit of an overstatement.”

“You can’t snatch Atlanta citizens any time you feel like it.”

“Technically I can. I choose not to, because you and I have made a certain agreement, but it is definitely within my power.”

I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. We’d stopped at a square widening in the wall that would probably become the basis for a flanking tower. In the field, on the right, a man hung on a cross. Bloody, his clothes torn, his face a mess, he sagged off the boards. I would’ve guessed he was dead, except he was staring straight at Roland, his eyes defiant.

“Father!”

“Yes?”

“A man is being crucified.”

He glanced in that direction and a shadow flickered through his face. “So he is.”

It was the same look Julie gave me when she thought she had gotten away with stealing beer out of the keg but forgot about the empty mug on her desk. He had forgotten about the man he was slowly killing.

Julie glanced behind her, at the empty field. Okay, that’s about enough of that. I had to get her as close to the exit as I could now.

“I require privacy,” I told her. “Go back and wait with Derek, please.”

She bowed, turned, and walked away.

“You give her too little credit,” Roland said.

“I give her all the credit. I also never forget that she’s sixteen years old.”

“A wonderful age. Full of possibilities.”

Possibilities that you have no business contemplating. “What did he do?”

Roland sighed.

“What was so bad that you decided to torture him?”

Roland looked after Julie. “The problem with warlords is that the position is fundamentally flawed by its very nature. A general who is unable to lead is useless, but to lead, he must inspire loyalty. When the troops rush the field, knowing they may lay down their lives, they look to their general, not to the king behind him. Sooner or later, their loyalties become divided. They abandon their king and look instead to the one who bled and suffered with them.”

He looked at the human wreck on the cross.

“Is that one of Hugh’s men?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“He refused my orders. I told him to do something and he told me that he was a soldier, not a butcher. The great hypocrisy of this pseudo-moral stance lies in the fact that if Hugh had given him the same order, he probably would’ve obeyed. I merely reminded him that he draws his breath at my discretion.”

And he’d ordered him tied to the cross. So the death would take longer. “That’s barbaric.”

Roland turned to me with a small smile. “No. Barbarism usually produces swift death. Cruelty is the mark of a civilized human. I still have a hundred Iron Dogs in this location. He’s an excellent visual aid.”

And that was it right there in a nutshell. Nothing was off-limits as long as it let him accomplish his goal.

“How long has he been up there?”

“Five days. He should’ve been dead by now, but he’s using magic to keep himself alive despite the pain. The will to live is a truly remarkable thing.”

I wanted to march down there and take Hugh’s man off of it. I wasn’t kind. I could be cruel. I had used my sword to punish before, but at my absolute worst, the punishment I delivered lasted minutes. The man on the cross had been there for days. The Iron Dog might have belonged to Hugh, but there was a line between good and evil, and that kind of torture crossed it. This was bigger than Hugh and me. This was about right and wrong.

“And if Hugh returns?”

“He won’t. I purged him.”

“You what?”

“That which is freely given can also be taken away. I’ve severed the link between us. He still has the benefit of our blood with all its power—that, unfortunately, I cannot strip without taking his life—but we aren’t bound. The light of his gift is no longer precious to me.”

The small hairs on the back of my neck rose. My father no longer cared if Hugh lived or died. “You made him mortal.”

“Yes. Even with his healing ability I expect he won’t last the next century.”

“Does he know?”

“Yes.”

Hugh had been my father’s wrecking ball. Roland would point at a target, and Hugh would smash it, until only blood and ash remained. Then my father would sweep in to rein in his cruel violent Warlord, and Hugh’s victims would rejoice, because anything was better than Hugh. Roland was Hugh’s reason for living. And now his god had rejected and abandoned him.

I hated Hugh for a list of things a mile long. His people murdered Aunt B. He used magic to throw me into my father’s prison and slowly starved me to death, trying to break my will. He murdered one of my friends in front of me. But I understood Hugh. He was an instrument of my father’s will, as much as I had been an instrument of Voron’s. Voron pointed and I killed, without question and, worse, without doubt. It took his death and years on my own before I broke free. I knew exactly how much that rejection from the man who raised you like a father could hurt. I had thought Voron cared for me. When I found out that he’d been training me so he could watch the pain on my father’s face as Roland killed me, it nearly broke me, and by then Voron had been dead for a decade.

“You were everything to him. He committed all those atrocities for you, and you’ve stripped him of your love, the thing he cared most about.”

“Hugh outlived his usefulness. His life had been a series of uncomplicated tasks and eventually he became his work.”

And whose fault was that? “You plucked him from the street. He was raised exactly the way you wanted him to be.”

“He had potential,” Roland said, his voice wistful. “So much magic. He was like a fallen star, a glowing meteor. I melted it down and forged it into a sword. You are right, it’s not truly his fault, but the fact remains—the world is becoming more complex, not less. Some swords are meant to be forged only once. It’s better to start fresh.”

Julie. Julie was a glowing meteor too, young and malleable, easy to melt down and reforge. You fucking asshole. You cannot have Julie. Hell would sprout roses first. I unclenched my teeth and forced my voice to sound even. “It would’ve been kinder to kill him.”

Roland’s smile never faltered, but for a moment, the warmth in his eyes cooled and I glimpsed the icy steel beneath. “I am not kind, my daughter. I am fair.”

I had to get out of here before I did something I would regret. But I also had to spring Saiman free and avoid a war with Roland.

“Return Saiman to me.”

“The frost giant left the borders of your city voluntarily. My people didn’t trespass.”

So they lay in wait and nabbed him while he was traveling. Damn it. “It doesn’t matter. His residence is in Atlanta. His business interests are in Atlanta. He owns property, he employs people, and he pays his taxes in Atlanta. He’s mine.”

Roland pondered it for a long moment. “No. I need him.”

Right. Obey the letter of the agreement but not the spirit. “You’re forcing me to act.”

“You don’t even like him.” Roland’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the harm of me keeping the creature?”

“It’s the principle. I would do the same thing if I had never met him before. Return my frost giant, Father.”

“Or?”

“Or I’ll have to retrieve him. I won’t abandon my people.”

“I hate when we fight.” Roland tilted his head. “What if I offer you that life?” He nodded at the cross. “A consolation prize. It bothers you. I can see it in your eyes. You may take Hugh’s second-in-command, daughter. Do with him as you will.”

“Thank you. I will take him since you’re giving him to me. But I still need my frost giant.”

“Do not raise your hand against me, Kate. All you have to do is walk away.”

All of his promises went right out the window as soon as there was something he wanted. The urge to scream in his face was getting to me. Screaming would accomplish nothing, except plunge us into a conflict we weren’t ready for. “Not going to happen.”

He sighed.

“You’re not giving me a choice. If I follow your logic, then any of the people who leave the boundaries of my city are fair game. Since you’re parked right outside the city border, Atlanta is under siege and a siege is an act of war. You’re in breach, Father.”

Roland laughed quietly.

“This is solved very simply. Give back what you’ve taken. You started this. I’m merely reacting.”

“You’re not ready to oppose me. Don’t open this door. You don’t have the ruthlessness to fight me.”

I’d had enough. “Father, when was the last time you killed someone? I don’t mean with magic, I mean with your hands, close enough that you could look into their eyes? I killed a woman a week ago to keep her from sacrificing her children to some forgotten god. I have killed so many, I don’t remember all their faces. They blend. The door is already wide open and you were the one who opened it. Are you ready for me to walk through it?”

A shadow crossed his face. I felt the magic rise within him like a brilliant new star being born from the empty darkness.

“My proud daughter, my sensitive, kind child, compassionate toward her enemy, you have saved one man from his fate. But what will you do about them?”

Magic rolled from him. The empty field to the left of us shimmered. Crosses appeared, like a mirage in the desert manifesting in the wavering hot air. Men and women, young and old, hanging from the wood. Oh dear God . . . There had to be thirty crosses in that field. The bodies sagged, completely still. Nobody moved.

The odor reached me, the awful polluting stench of human flesh rotting. They were dead. All of them.

Ice rolled down my back. The horror of it was too much.

Roland looked at the lone survivor on the cross. The face of the Iron Dog contorted. His cross was facing the others.

“You made him watch.” They died in agony, one by one, and the Iron Dog saw it all.

“You have no idea of the things I’m capable of. You cannot stand against me. When I ordered him to kill these people, it was a kindness. He disobeyed and would not give them swift death, so I showed him what his defiance cost.”

The ice reached the small of my back and exploded into an inferno. Roland was watching me now to make sure I got the message. Oh no, Father. Don’t worry. I’ve got it.

“But for his disobedience, this wouldn’t have come to pass.”

My magic screamed and bucked inside me, trying to break free, leaking into my voice. “No.”

Roland’s eyes narrowed.

“You speak as if it’s some outside force that tortured and murdered these people. As if it’s some disaster that was inevitable, and you, through your benevolence, tried to hold it off, but your subordinates failed you. But it’s you. You decided to kill them. You decided to crucify them. You. You are the source of this evil. It’s your fault, not his. You are the sick bastard who decided that he has the right to mass murder.”

Roland recoiled. His eyes blazed. His magic shot out in a furious torrent, boiling like a thundercloud around him.

Screw it. I let go. My power burst out of me, matching his. The castle wall shuddered under us.

I glared at him. “You have no right. Have you ever wondered why you always have to burn and kill your way to power? Why nobody ever comes and says, ‘Please, mighty Nimrod, lead us’? It’s because your reign brings pain and suffering. Nobody wants you in charge.”

“YOU WILL NOT SPEAK TO ME LIKE THIS.”

His magic splayed out, shooting up. Wind tore at me, raging out of nowhere. The stones under us rattled. Several stone blocks slid out, tumbling over the edge. In the courtyard, people cringed.

“You’re a usurper, Father. You keep doing horrible things for the greater good, but there is no greater good. There is only this.” I pointed at the crosses. “This is what our family stands for. Not for peace, happiness, or progress. This is your legacy. You’re a tyrant. The evil creature that people use to scare their children at night. On this entire planet, you are the only person who thinks you are fit to rule.”

“SILENCE!”

The blast of magic hit me, nearly taking me off my feet. Oh no. He would not shut me up. I had things I needed to get off my chest. They’d been building for months.

My magic surged back. If it had a voice, it would’ve roared.

“You can’t handle any authority but your own. Even now, it gnaws at you that I have this city. You can’t let it go. You scheme, and manipulate, and push me, and when I’m forced to retaliate, you’ll placate your guilty conscience by telling yourself you gave me a choice. If only I would go along with your blatant disregard for your own word, none of it would happen. You’ll pretend it’s really my fault. It’s yours, Father. Your own sister chose to die rather than live in the world you wanted to create.”

His hand shot out, but I saw it a mile away. He was a wizard, but I was a professional killer. The slap never landed. Roland stared at my hand blocking his.

“I’m leaving now, Father. I’ll come for Saiman. You took him from me, I will take him back, and then we’ll be even and you’ll have a choice to make.”

I turned and walked off the wall. There was nothing else to say. People fled from my path. The two fighters from the wall had disappeared. A storm spun above the castle, dark clouds churning. I couldn’t have cared less.

Derek and Julie waited for me, standing still in the human chaos, as Roland’s people tried to secure the castle against the rising wind. Julie’s face was bloodless. She was holding the reins of her and my horses, trying to keep them in place as they eyed the storm with rising panic. Derek’s expression said nothing, flat and impassive. His eyes shone yellow-green. He was on the edge of violence. I marched past them, out the gates, and to the cross. They followed me. My father was still where I had left him, watching.

I looked at Derek and pointed at the cross. He moved behind it.

I pictured my father’s face in the wood, took a step, and hammered a side kick into the base of the cross. I sank all my strength and fury into it. The wood cracked. I kicked it again and again and again. The cross toppled down, with the man on it, and Derek caught it. I pulled a knife out of its sheath and sliced through the rope on the Iron Dog’s ankles and wrists. Derek pulled him off the cross and slung him over Cuddles’s back. I swung into the saddle and rode off, Derek and Julie following me.

Behind us, dark clouds boiled, hiding the sun.