CHAPTER 15
BRIONY COULDN’T BE SURE if he knew she was awake, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She couldn’t move her muscles fast enough to run. Her heart pounded with the unknown.
“My mother says your voice was taken,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Which doesn’t explain why your hearing failed you when I said you’d be harmed if you crossed the boundary line.”
She glared at his back. “Yes,” she whispered fiercely, voice throaty with misuse. “Because I had every reason to trust you.”
From this angle, she could just barely see his jaw clench.
Briony realized she’d been changed out of the dress from the auction and was now in a soft white nightgown. She hoped it had been a servant to do that.
She hissed through her teeth as she shifted to sit up, hating the way she lay supine before him like a rag doll. “Why is this such a hard recovery?”
His eyes were still on the view beyond the window. “Crossing the barrier should shock the tattooed individual and give them a chance to withdraw themselves from the perimeter. You jumped through the barrier, your entire body beyond it. Then you managed to roll down a hill. You were outside the boundary for almost a full minute.”
She wondered if he would keep his back to her for the entirety of her
imprisonment.
“Certainly took you long enough,” she said.
That did it. Toven blinked slowly and turned to face her with furious eyes.
Why did all self-preservation leave her when this man was involved? She was wearing nothing but a slip, in a bed, in his home. With no one to come running if she screamed. Why did poking at him come so naturally to her?
She swallowed and looked away. A full minute of being electrocuted. Her muscles twitched at the reminder.
“And you brought me where?” She nodded to the small undecorated room. “Is this my cell?”
“The closest location for your recovery was the groundskeeper’s cottage,” he said. “It’s temporary.”
She glanced over the cobwebs in the corners. “And where is the groundskeeper?”
“We don’t have one. Hearst Hall doesn’t require any servants.”
Briony blinked at him. A house that grand with no staff? Briony had heard of households cutting back on staff when gossip began creeping through the walls. Was it out of caution, then? The Hearsts were known to be secretive, but this was extreme.
She wanted to ask more questions, but Toven faced her fully and clasped his hands behind his back, a sour expression on his face.
“Mistress Mallow wishes to see you.”
Briony’s air caught in her chest. Her eyes flicked to the door, her muscles locked as she waited for it to open.
“We are to pay her a call as soon as possible,” he clarified.
Briony glanced at him in shock. “Now? I can barely move.”
“You’ll have to manage,” he said. “She has been kept waiting for three days.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ve been in bed three days?”
“Six, actually.”
Her mouth opened then closed, unsure how to respond. He stared at her, waiting. Would he drag her from the bed?
Briony shifted her legs, stretching them as she threw back the sheets. Her
legs were bare, the nightdress twisted under her thighs.
Toven faced the window again, and she guessed that was all the privacy she would be afforded. With shaking movements, she pulled herself from the mattress, bracing on the wall to help her stand. There was a pair of hard-soled slippers on the floor, so she slid them on. With the bed between them, he turned to her as she tugged her nightdress to fall to her ankles. It was the only thing on her. She had no undergarments.
His unreadable eyes passed over her once before he brought his left forefinger to his right hand and magically sliced the pad of his thumb. She recognized the cast for a portal. On private property, an inhabitant’s blood was needed to create portals in and out. Without, visitors had to portal from outside the front gates.
The portal’s chasm grew wide in the empty room, and Toven gestured for her to come to him.
Briony moved on twitching legs, aware that she was about to arrive the waters knew where in nothing but her nightclothes.
“Your left arm,” Toven said.
Briony looked down at it. The ink on the inside of her elbow glistened.
Toven Hearst.
Toven wrapped his hand around the ink. The cool press of his hand on her hot skin had her wondering if she had a fever. Before she could wish for that sensation everywhere, he tugged her into the portal, and a flash of heat burned over the ink on her arm. When the void finished pressing down on her, she gasped.
She stood on the ledge of a great mountain, overlooking vast peaks and valleys. Briony’s head swam with vertigo as she scrambled back from the edge. When she turned, there was a gothic castle carved into the side of the mountain.
“Come.” Toven started up steep stairs in the twilight.
Briony watched him climb, her body groaning in protest already. She braced herself on the rock to her left and slowly followed him, taking the steps one at a time.
He waited for her at the next level, about fifty steps above her. When she
was halfway up, she had to pause, panting. He made no effort to help her, but she eventually made it to the landing.
Before continuing he turned to her. “Mistress Mallow is now the supreme ruler of all Moreland. You will treat her with the deference she deserves.”
Briony tried to catch her breath. “Or what? You’ll electrocute me?”
Toven lifted a pale brow at her. “I know you’ve been asleep for six days, Rosewood, so you may not have grasped this,” he said silkily, “but heartsprings don’t need tongues. They don’t need fingers. They don’t need legs, even. Disobedience can be punished in whatever way Mallow sees fit, as long as your heart still beats.”
Briony shivered, and it had nothing to do with the wind on the mountain.
He turned and continued up the next steps as she pieced things together.
It had been six days since the auction, and she was Toven Hearst’s heartspring now. That was her only purpose in this world—to make Toven Hearst’s magic stronger.
She slowly followed him up the mountainside.
Between burning torches on the next landing, there were two large stone doors adorned with an ancient Bomardi seal from the first civil war, and Briony realized where she was. Mallow had moved into the original home of the first Seat of Bomard, the Dragon Lord. He had been the first magician to ever take a dragon as his familiar—the same dragon that had bonded to Mallow.
As the stone doors opened, the firelight showed the entry guarded on either side by men in blue cloaks. One of them nodded to Toven as he approached and stepped aside, but the other’s eyes fell over her body. She turned her gaze down.
A second set of doors opened deeper inside the cave-like castle, and Toven led her inside.
It was a grand hall with stone floors and an open ceiling, big enough for a dragon to land inside. One long wall was made of enormous arched windows, looking directly over the mountain range, vanishing into a large drop beneath them.
Veronika Mallow stood at the far end of the hall, staring off out across the
peaks. There was no throne, no “seat,” as was the custom in Bomard for audiences with the leader of the realm. Mallow simply stood in an empty room, wearing tight-fitted breeches, boots strapped up her calves, and a sheer top.
The whistle of the wind through the archways muffled the sound of their footsteps. Briony felt lightheaded.
Toven walked her to a spot on the stone floor, dark with dried blood, and dropped to his knee, dragging her down with him. He bowed his head, but Briony stared at Mallow’s back, watching her turn slowly toward them.
Mallow’s pale skin glowed in the rising moonlight, and Briony couldn’t help but wonder again how old she was. Her eyes were as black as her hair as they landed on Briony, piercing through her.
“Briony Rosewood.” The sound of her name sliding over Mallow’s tongue made her skin crawl. “Welcome to my palace.”
Briony breathed deep, the air thick in her throat. When she gave no greeting, Mallow continued.
“You went for quite a sum at the auction.” Mallow’s eyes glittered as her brows lifted, as if she and Briony had a little secret to themselves. “All those Bomardi men jockeying for you. I’m sure you were quite content.”
Briony pressed her lips together, but then a deep rumble of chuckling chorused through the room. She looked to the archways and realized they were not alone. There were Bomardi guards hidden in the shadows.
“Stand,” Mallow commanded, and then Toven was dragging her to her
feet. “Toven.”
“Mistress.”
“You lost the auction, but then settled accounts with Reighven after,”
Mallow said.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Why?”
Briony waited, wondering why as well.
“I’m always drawn to the most valuable possessions,” said Toven.
Mallow grinned and began to pace the room, continuing conversationally.
“And is she everything you paid for and more? Have you completed the
heartspring bond?”
“Not yet, Mistress.”
The Bomardi guards shifted, whispering. She felt a dozen eyes turn on her as she wondered what the bonding process entailed.
Mallow’s brow lifted.
Toven answered her unasked question. “She injured herself in an escape attempt, as you know. She’s learned her lesson now, but she’s been weakened.”
“Do it soon,” Mallow said swiftly. “What’s the point in having a golden heartspring if you can’t mine that gold?” She smiled. “Your father has resolved the issue with her collar, yes?”
“Yes, Mistress,” Toven said. “All that’s left is the bond.”
Briony’s mind was racing. The golden heartspring. That’s what Vein had called her during the auction. She assumed it was just a reference to the legend that the Rosewoods had gold blood. Was there more to it?
And had Orion fixed the issue with her collar? Was it now properly suppressing any heart magic as well as her mind magic? Briony’s body had been too weak to try earlier, but she reached for the pulsing vein in her chest, searching for heart magic. Then the humming thread between her eyes, her mind magic. Nothing responded.
A horrible thought materialized: Was this collar permanent? Would she never be able to take it off?
“Briony.” Mallow’s crooning voice interrupted her thoughts. Mallow faced her and clasped her hands behind her back. “Where is your cousin, Finola?”
She blinked. She couldn’t hold back her surprise before Mallow saw it.
“What?”
Toven’s head snapped to her. “You will address her as Mistress,” he hissed, eyes burning into her.
Briony almost glared at him. He’d warned her to be obedient.
“Finola Rosewood,” Mallow continued, stepping forward. “Her safe
houses. Her distant family on her mother’s side—the Nottingdales, if I’m not mistaken?”
As Mallow inched closer, the air thinned in Briony’s lungs. Her heart thrummed as she stared into the glinting eyes searching her.
Briony tried to remember the question as Mallow tilted her head like a tiger.
Finola. Finola was Phoebe’s older sister. Finola was the person who’d taught Briony advanced mind magic after the war started—cloaking, blending, advanced subterfuge. Anytime she was home from a mission, she focused all her attention on lessons for Briony. She worked as a top adviser to the Eversun militia and had coordinated many of the strategic attacks on Bomard in the four years since Briony’s father’s death.
Finola was the first person who showed Briony that she didn’t have to just be a pretty face for a political marriage. She could be useful to the militia, to the king’s cabinet—even to a Bomardi cabinet had the war not broken out.
Briony’s throat felt stuck on her questions, but something was becoming clear.
This was the reason why she hadn’t seen Finola in the Trow dungeon.
She’d never been captured.
And for some reason, Mallow was threatened by that.
A fire burned in her gut, something that she thought had been extinguished the moment she felt Rory’s barrier fall.
“Finola was the Eversun army’s head strategist and lead instructor in cloaking,” she said. “Even if I had an idea of where she’d go, I’d be wrong.”
A slow smile spread up her lips. “I’m quite pleased to inform you that if Finola is out there, you won’t find her until she wants you to.”
Mallow’s black eyes narrowed at her, and a moment too late, Briony remembered Mallow could take her tongue for that comment. Mallow’s fingers traced a gesture, and Briony braced herself for painful magic, a punishment— Something slammed into her face, stinging her cheek and snapping her neck to the side. She stumbled, regaining balance and pressing her hand to her face. Her eyes rocked in their sockets.
She searched for the weapon, preparing for another strike. Her gaze refocused as Toven lowered his hand, a sharp stone ring on his middle finger glinting at her. Her lip was wet with blood.
He’d backhanded her. He’d hit her, and she was bleeding.
“Watch your mouth. You are addressing the Mistress of the Realm.”
She shivered at his voice and looked away from his icy eyes.
Though her head rang, it was the least of what could have been sent her way tonight.
Mallow seemed pleased with Toven’s response. “She still has quite bit of fire left in her, Toven. I look forward to watching it doused.” She turned her gaze back on Briony and continued her questioning. “We know Finola Rosewood spent time on the outskirts of Kilwoven, on the coast. Where else?”
Briony stared at her, licking the blood off her lip. She had no idea what kind of answer would best protect Finola.
Mallow tilted her head. “I’ll just take a look for myself.”
She slithered forward as Briony realized what she meant to do. Briony tried to step back, but her muscles were locked. Her throat closed in terror as Mallow circled her, coming around to her front again and leaning into her face. Briony looked into the black tunnels of Mallow’s gaze, pulled to them inexorably.
And then there were daggers in her brain, sinking into her eyes and twisting deep. She couldn’t breathe as memories floated through her head, yanked forward and pushed back.
She saw Finola with a sharp stinging pain, a teenager with wide teeth and braided honey-blond hair. She sat in the grass with six-year-old Briony, blowing dandelion tufts out into the field behind Claremore Castle. Her cheeks puffed wide, and Briony giggled.
Briony’s mind was on fire as Mallow clawed through her thoughts, her memories—using magic only advanced mind magicians knew. Briony had heard of Mallow’s power with mind reading—the benefit of the dragon bond —but this was so much like poorly done mind magic. Briony supposed there was no reason for Mallow to refine the technique into something less
obtrusive and painless, as mind magicians studied to do. Mallow’s magic felt like claws ripping at her cranium, prying open the plates.
Like a rubber band snapping inside her, Finola was now a young woman, standing next to Phoebe at King Jacquel’s funeral.
Briony was a passenger in her own mind, aware of her own presence and Mallow’s presence in every moment.
A ricochet to Biltmore Palace, and Finola was teaching Rory how to call upon their father’s army—Rory’s army now—as Briony took notes.
“Vindecci developed this himself,” came Finola’s melodic voice. She unrolled a large map across the dining room table. “You simply hover your palm over the castle that you wish to call upon.”
She demonstrated by opening her hand over the picture labeled Biltmore.
Twenty-one-year-old Briony gasped as the candles blazed hot, flames jumping to the ceiling, then dimmed as Finola took her hand away.
Finola turned to Rory. “The strategic advisers reside at Kilwoven.” She tapped the map. “I’ll take you there tomorrow—”
And like a whip cracking across her mind, she jerked to see Finola seated on Briony’s bed at Biltmore Palace, with her arm wrapped around eighteen- year-old Briony’s shoulders.
“No, it’s not mutual.” The younger Briony laughed through her tears.
“I’m just an idiot.”
Briony felt her heart hammering in her chest even as the pain of Mallow’s mind cut through her thoughts, sizzling her nerve endings. Her pulse spiked,
and her body tensed further.
No, no, no. Mallow couldn’t see this...
There was a moment of stillness as Mallow seemed to hover, clueing in on Briony’s reluctance to show this memory. Mallow’s consciousness slithered through the scene, twisting around the two women on the bed and examining them.
“You’re not an idiot,” Finola said, pushing hair over Briony’s ear. “I had a crush on a Bomardi boy when I was your age.”
Briony looked up at her with surprised eyes. “What happened?”
“He married the day after school ended, and I begged your father to use
me in any way but for a political betrothal with Bomard. He let me join the strategists’ council instead.”
Briony snorted. “My father? That would never be an option for me.”
“You’ll see. Come with me to Southern Camly this solstice. I have friends there who can teach...you...cloaking...”
Finola slowed, though she hadn’t seven years ago. Mallow was pulling
them backward, replaying the scene.
“...Southern...Camly...”
Through the pain in her mind, Briony felt like screaming for other reasons. She’d just given Mallow a place to start looking for Finola. The country of Southern Camly, across the sea.
She waited for Mallow to release her mind, to be alone in her own head again and deal with the pain from there.
But Mallow was still staring at the two women on the bed with curiosity on her face. She pulled them backward again.
“I had a crush on a Bomardi boy when I was your age,” Finola repeated.
Briony felt her real body twitch with terror, hovering in the receiving room of Mallow’s castle. Her mind screamed at her to close off, like locking doors and shutting windows against a storm.
Suddenly, they were sliding through waves of memories and images.
Briony’s mind was forced to slither backward. She tried to fight, to pull any other moment forward, but Mallow’s curiosity could not be quenched.
Briony was standing behind an oak tree, watching a boy with mismatched socks sit in her favorite spot under the willow on the lake.
Then she was in elixirs class, mixing together ingredients while the same boy read instructions to her.
“The dragonflies need to be more finely chopped—”
“Not for this one,” Briony said. “The more uneven, the better.”
“What are you talking about?” Toven said. He reached for her hand where it grasped the knife. “The bodies, yes, but not the wings.”
Briony’s gaze slid up to him as he showed her how he would cut the dragonfly wings. Her eyes ran over his jaw, his mouth, the way his cheekbones seemed to cut the air.
Briony watched her younger self stare at Toven, everything written on her face.
Mallow’s consciousness hovered next to hers. Briony could feel Mallow inside her head, looking not at the younger her but at the one viewing her own memories. Briony turned inside her mind and met Mallow’s shrewd, smirking face.
In the memory, Toven turned to look down at her, her body jerked away, and the knife fell to the floor.
Like a hook around her waist, Briony was tugged backward in time.
She was at the Bomardi Circus at seven years old, her first time in Bomard. She and Rory were in matching Eversun-green tunics. Her father was shaking hands with Orion, and Serena Hearst stood behind a cool-eyed seven-year-old with gray hair.
“They’ll enter school together, I believe,” her father said conversationally.
The gray-haired boy rolled his eyes.
She zoomed forward, lights bursting behind her eyes. Toven Hearst twirled his fingers and sent a cool breeze her way. She shivered and glared at him.
Mallow shoved them forward. Briony was in an itchy dress and Toven’s hand was pressed to her back as he twirled them around the Biltmore dance floor.
“No?” Toven said to her, lowering his eyes to hers, bringing their faces together. “You don’t know what I’m thinking now?”
Briony felt Mallow behind her, watching over her shoulder. Dancing with them.
Toven’s eyes glittered, and her breath caught. “I never know what you’re thinking.”
Mallow could hear her heartbeat, feel the shiver across her skin.
She ricocheted forward. Her back slammed against a stone wall in a dark abandoned hallway, and Toven’s hand was on her jaw, glaring down at her.
“Don’t speak on things you don’t understand,” he hissed.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Your brother will be a head on a spike one day, and your body will be
dragged through the street once Mallow has her way.” His eyes glanced down. “And such a shame for such a fine body.”
She spat on his face. He glared at her in shock. And then a smile crept across his features, curving and unfurling. Briony’s breath was hot on his face, but his hand was cool against her cheek.
His body pressed up against her, pinning her in place. Her eyes widened to feel the long lines of him as he towered over her.
“If you insist on forgetting your manners, Rosewood, then maybe I’ll be tempted to forget mine,” he whispered against her mouth.
And with an abruptness that echoed of breathing air after drowning, she was alone in her mind. And Mallow was there with her in the grand hall, standing before her body as it hung limply in midair. She examined Briony through narrowed eyes, as if she’d presented an unexpected problem.
Briony’s head felt the absence of Mallow’s mind like a brain freeze, something chilling filling the plates of her skull.
Mallow released her magical hold on Briony’s body, and it crumpled to the ground, legs bending in odd directions. It hurt to keep her eyes open, but Briony stared up at Mallow, seeing a slow idea forming in her eyes, a realization.
She knew that Briony once had feelings for Toven Hearst.
“Oh dear.” Mallow tsked condescendingly. She smiled down at Briony, as if something grand had been given to her. But just as suddenly, her face fell, and she turned to Toven. Her hand shot out.
Briony heard Toven gasp, and his body lurched forward like a puppet on a string. His jaw stretched into Mallow’s waiting hand. His legs struggled to find footing.
Mallow turned her black eyes on Toven’s, and suddenly it was very quiet while Mallow searched Toven’s memories and thoughts in a similar way.
Searched his thoughts for her. Briony was sure of it.
A drop of sweat rolled down Toven’s temple as Mallow performed a thorough examination.
Briony didn’t know how long she had been examined, but this felt longer.
Toven grunted, breath shallow.
And then after what must have been ten minutes, Mallow released him, dropping him to the floor next to Briony. Toven caught himself on his knees
and stared up at Mallow.
Mallow smiled. Pleased.
She turned her gaze back onto Briony’s weak body. And she chuckled.
Briony flinched as the sound of it bounced around the hall.
Briony had—at one time—yearned for the man who would hold her captive and drain her of her magic every day for the rest of her life. A familiar boiling in her gut rose up and choked her—the same feeling she used to have in school whenever she’d have to tear her eyes off him. It was disgusting really. To want someone who thought so little of you.
A thought drifted through Briony’s consciousness as it barely held together: If she had any doubts about how Toven felt about her, at least Mallow had given her reason to squash them. He didn’t feel anything for her.
If he had, Mallow surely would have found it.
Briony squeezed her eyes closed.
“Have fun with her, Toven,” Mallow said. Briony could hear the smile in her voice. “I look forward to how powerful you become once bonded to her.”
A shaking voice to her left whispered, “As do I, Mistress.”
“Southern Camly,” Mallow said triumphantly, reminding Briony that she’d given up more than just her own secrets that night. “Thank you, Briony.
That will be all.”
Toven bowed to Mallow and yanked her up by her elbow, dragging her along behind him.
After they passed the guards at the doors, they cleared the stairs built into the side of the mountain. A sharp tug through a portal sent them back to the grass inside the gates of Hearst Hall.
With Toven’s hand over the tattoo, she felt the thrum of warmth as she was presumably locked in again. She kept her eyes on the ground as if Mallow were still there, bearing down on her. And maybe she was—inside her mind. Crawling and feeding on her. Perhaps she’d never leave.
Toven’s hand didn’t release her arm. His gray eyes searched hers, frantic movements across her face. “What did she find?”
She shook her head. “Nothing of consequence.”
“Whatever it is, she thinks I’m complicit,” he said.
The wind wove through them, casting his cloak in twisting patterns and dancing along her bare shoulders.
Maybe she could tell him. It was nothing really. I had feelings for you. It would be simple, and there would be no weight to it any longer. She could shrug and laugh.
But she was standing in nothing but a nightgown in front of a man whose power over her would go unchecked.
Briony shivered against the wind. She tugged her arm away from him.
“She looked into your head and found you innocent, Toven. So there’s nothing to tell.” She turned hard eyes on the silhouette of Hearst Hall down the long drive. “I’m cold, and I’m tired. My body aches and now my head is on fire. And my cheek hurts for some unknown reason—”
“I warned you not to speak to her—”
“And I’m starving—”
“Once a spoiled brat, always a spoiled—”
“Just let me go to bed,” she begged.
Briony had no idea where the groundskeeper’s cottage was, but she marched through the grass to the right. He’d said it was close to where she
had injured herself.
“Rosewood. This way.”
She looked back and found him standing on the pathway leading to the grand castle.
“It’s time you were shown to where you’ll be staying.”
He gestured for her to follow him down the drive to Hearst Hall.
