Hunted by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #3)(42)

“Oh, that is it!” Annia stomped her foot, looking pissed as hell. She marched right up to Fenris and dug her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him around to face her. “I knew you’ve been hiding something since day one, and I can’t take it anymore. You’re going to spill the beans about what you really are, and you’re going to do it right now.”

“Let go of me,” Fenris snarled, ripping her hand away, but I stepped forward and placed my own hand on Fenris’s shoulder, digging my fingers a little more firmly into his muscles than was perhaps necessary.

“Fuck that,” I snapped, my anger rising quickly to match Annia’s. “You don’t get to hide behind your excuses anymore, Fenris, not after that crazy fireworks show you put on for us. How the f*ck did you do that?” I jabbed my finger in the direction of Xiver’s corpse.

“He’s got to be a hybrid,” Annia declared, her eyes narrowed as she studied Fenris. “No wonder the Chief Mage took you in, Naya. Apparently you’re not his first pet project.”

“I am not Iannis’s pet,” Fenris growled. “Nor am I a project, as you so callously put it.”

“But you’re a hybrid, aren’t you?” I pushed, noticing that he hadn’t denied it. “I understand why you might want to hide that from everyone else, but why would you hide it from me?” I asked, hurt creeping into my voice. “I thought we were closer than this.” I let the illusion spells drop from us, and Fenris’s thick, dark hair and beard rematerialized along with his regular features. “Aren’t there few of us as it is? Shouldn’t we be sticking together instead of hiding our nature from each other?”

Fenris sighed, running a hand across his beard. “It isn’t that simple, Sunaya. I’m not sure that the term ‘hybrid’ properly defines what I am.”

“Well then tell us what does,” Annia said, tapping her foot impatiently. “We’ve got time, and nobody but us is around to hear your secret.”

Fenris pressed his lips together as he scanned the tree line, and I knew he was using his senses to try and determine if anyone was nearby. “This is extremely sensitive information,” he said quietly. “If I share this with you, you must promise to tell no one. My life depends on it, and more importantly, Iannis’s as well.”

“Of course,” I said, my anger dissipating as eager curiosity resurfaced. Excitement lit inside my chest at the idea that I might finally be able to unravel the mystery that was Fenris. “We won’t tell a soul, right Annia?”

“I swear by the Ur-God,” she said promptly. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Very well.” Fenris stared up at the starry sky peeking through the tree branches, and I wondered if he was just gathering his thoughts or looking for guidance. “The truth is that I was not born as a shifter at all. I was born a mage, to a wealthy Federation family in Nebara.”

“That’s impossible.” I gaped at him, dumbstruck. Nebara was two states north of Mexia, located almost directly in the center of the Federation. “Mages don’t become shifters. Why the f*ck would you do something like that?”

“In order to escape a death sentence.”

Annia frowned. “But you said you were from a wealthy mage family. What could you have possibly done to earn a death sentence that they couldn’t have saved you from?”

Fenris snorted. “Money and status doesn’t protect you from everything, Annia. And besides, I wasn’t just a mage from a wealthy family. I was the Chief Mage of Nebara.”

“No f*cking way.” Annia’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “You mean Polar ar’Tollis? The one who was sentenced to death by the Minister’s Office for helping prisoners escape?”

“I believe that’s what I just told you,” Fenris said dryly.

“By Magorah.” I sat down in the dirt, overwhelmed with what I’d just heard. Everybody knew about Polar. He’d helped a human family whose child had tested positively for magic escape across the northern border to avoid execution, and the Federation had decided to make an example of him by executing him in the child’s place. “I can’t believe it. No one was ever sure if you’d escaped, or if the Federation had decided to kill you quietly.”

Fenris huffed. “The Federation wanted to make my death a public spectacle to discourage other mages from following in my footsteps. They would have succeeded had Iannis not intervened.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” I leaned my head back against the tree trunk and pressed my palm against my forehead. “Are you telling me that Iannis turned you into a shifter?”

“Keep your voice down!” Fenris hissed, glaring at me. “If anyone overhears that and word gets back to the Federation, they’ll have us both executed.”

“You’ll have to excuse us if we’re a little shocked,” Annia said, shaking her head. She sat down on a small rock in the middle of the clearing and stared at Fenris with something akin to awe. “It’s not every day that we meet a shifter who used to be a Chief Mage.”

“I didn’t even know there were any mages around that still knew how to pull that off,” I muttered. The practice of creating shifters had been banned nearly a thousand years ago, a long time ago even by mage standards.