Betrayed by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #5)(67)

I stepped over the threshold cautiously, waiting for the ward to kick in. But, thankfully, it didn’t, and Rylan and I passed into the foyer unscathed. The butler led us down a hall, and we passed through rooms of expensive, but dusty furniture and rugs. My nose twitched as I fought against the desire to sneeze, and Rylan looked like he was pretty uncomfortable too. I didn’t smell a single other person in this place aside from the butler, and another male scent that I imagined belonged to Ballos.

“Master Ballos,” the butler said, knocking on the door we stopped at. “Your visitors are here.”

“Very well,” a gruff voice barked. “Let them in.”

The butler opened the door into a large study filled with bookshelves and several desks piled high with leather-bound notebooks, stacks of paper, and what looked to be manuscripts. The place seemed to be in some kind of organized chaos, with Ballos at his desk in the center of the storm, bent over a long piece of aged parchment as he peered at it, muttering to himself. He was as unkempt as the rest of the house, dressed in a pair of faded brown robes. His grey hair and beard were in urgent need of a brush—no way would a comb get through that tangled mess. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on his hooked nose, and though he had the appearance of a madman, the dark eyes behind those glasses were sharp and brimming with intelligence as he immersed himself in whatever magical research he was conducting.

“Yes, so what is it?” he asked irritably as he straightened up from his desk. His eyes widened as he caught sight of me, and he stumbled back a step. “You!” he shouted, pointing a gnarled finger at me. “No, you cannot be in my house. You must leave at once!”

“You know who I am,” I guessed, narrowing my eyes as I stepped over a stack of books to close the distance between us. “You know why I’m here.”

“I am not interested in speaking with you,” Ballos said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am in the middle of some very important work.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” I pulled out a chair from in front of his desk. It was piled high with books, and I lifted them, intending to dump them somewhere so I could have a seat. “I’m parking my butt right here, and I won’t move until you tell me about my father.”

“Don’t touch those!” Ballos barked, his paper-white cheeks reddening. He spoke a Word, waving his hand, and the books levitated out of my hands. I sat down on the chair as he guided them over to a patch of empty space on one of the other desks. When he turned back to me, he looked half-resigned, half-resentful. “I read about your engagement to Lord Iannis in the papers, and perhaps I should have expected some repercussions from that. But I did not expect you to have the audacity to show up on my doorstep yourself.” He looked down his hooked nose at me.

“Yeah, well, I guess you haven’t heard the stories about me,” I said, resisting the urge to be belligerent and kick my feet up on his desk. “I’m pretty audacious.”

“Clearly.” The old mage sniffed, then looked above my head at Rylan. “I suppose you won’t leave until I tell you the sordid tale, but this young man must wait outside in the parlor. I do not wish for him to overhear our conversation.”

I turned in my chair to meet Rylan’s scowling face. “Go,” I told him. “I’ll fill you in later. He’s more likely to open up if we do as he says.”

“I feel like this is becoming a pattern,” Rylan grumbled, but he nodded, then left the room. The butler closed the door behind him, leaving Ballos and me alone in the messy study.

Ballos carefully rolled up the parchment and returned it to its storage tube, then set it aside so he could sit down. “All right,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Ask your questions.”

“What do you know about my father’s affair with my mother?”

“Not very much,” the old mage said stiffly. “Haman was—and still is—a young mage. He was only fifty years old when he came to study under me. So it was not surprising that he spent his evenings gallivanting about the city. I always thought he was socializing with other young mages in society, seeing as how he is of noble birth, but as it turns out, he was spending time in the seedier areas of Solantha.”

I gritted my teeth at that, unsure if he was implying that my mother was a whore, or that everything outside the Mages Quarter was ‘seedy’. But I decided not to press the issue, or point out that he had no room to talk with the dilapidated state of his own house. Doing so would only derail the conversation and make him less likely to want to talk to me.

“Okay, but you knew that my father had an affair that resulted in a child, or you wouldn’t have reacted the way you did when I walked in,” I insisted.

“I did not find out about the affair until after Haman had returned to Castalis,” Ballos replied. “Your mother came to my doorstep asking for Haman’s address, because she was carrying his child. I remember the day well, because it was the first time a shifter had ever come to call upon me. I was so startled that I let her in, and she told me how Haman had been seeing her as a human male. Apparently, he’d disguised both his looks and his scent, which only confirms my theory that he was infatuated. I don’t know why he would have gone to such pains otherwise.” His voice was thick with disgust.

“I see.” I frowned as a question popped into my head, and I voiced it aloud before thinking better of it. “How is it that they were able to conceive? Even during heat, it is hard for shifters to get pregnant—we usually have to take a special potion to maximize our chances. It doesn’t sound like my mother did that.”