Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(10)

As she approached the hacienda she could see a man at the door arguing with a servant. One moment the servant was trying to shut the door on the man, the next he was stepping aside with a polite smile on his face. As the door began to close again, Finn rushed forward and shoved her foot in. The servant opened it, looking annoyed.

“You’re—”

“Late. I know. And so was the other guy,” she said, her gaze locked on his.

After a long moment he sighed. “Fine,” he said, resigned. “Have you an invitation?”

Finn looked up at him and spoke the words she’d watched the woman say for weeks. “A dragon knows nothing of invitations. She roosts where she pleases.”

He stepped aside and Finn strode in, smirking as if she’d owned this face for a lifetime.





4


Cambió


The stranger seated across from Alfie was not a good man.

He could tell by the way the magic flowed through him. The man wore a tiger mask, his thin body a puzzle of sharp angles. With his propio engaged, Alfie saw that the man’s magic was a steely gray. It crept through him, quick and sharp. Predatory. Every movement deliberate. Alfie knew he would have to tread carefully.

To be fair, he would have to tread carefully around everyone in this room. As he sat in the octagonal parlor and looked around the table of masked players, Alfie could see nothing but colored magic that moved through them with dark intentions.

The voice of Paloma, his boyhood tutor, rang in his head: Magic is a pure force that flows through this world, but it needs a conduit, a home. We are those conduits, the vessels for magic to grow in. One cannot survive without the other. We give it life, purpose, and, in your eyes, color. And when we are done, we return the magic to the ether for another to borrow.

Paloma was a due?a, a philosopher who studied magic in all its forms and worked in the development and creation of spells. While most due?os chose to only work in spell creation and intensive magical study, others opted to share their knowledge by teaching the craft of magic to children. Paloma had taught him since he was a young boy, training him until he passed his examinations to become a bruxo—a certified practitioner of magic. She had sowed in him a love and respect for magic that had only grown as he did, from boy to man. Thanks to his propio, Alfie had spent much of his life watching free magic, colorless and shimmering, flow through the air only to be taken into the human body and given color. He focused and engaged his propio to watch the shades of magic in the four players.

Beside the Tiger sat a colossal man wearing a bear mask. Within him swirled a green magic, repulsive and hulking, like mucus. He drummed his thick knuckles on the wooden table as they waited for Rayan to bring tonight’s prizes.

A maid placed chilled glasses of sangria before each player. The Tiger took a sip and grinned at Alfie, his teeth splashed red.

The Bear waved his hand at the woman. His hand was the size of her head. “Tequila,” he growled. The maid hurriedly left the room and returned with a shot glass and a bottle. The Bear promptly snatched the bottle from her hand, snorting at the shot glass as if it was an insult.

When she placed a glass of sangria before Alfie, he didn’t touch it, even though the consequences of not finding what he needed tonight made his fingers itch for a drink. Alcohol made his shadow sway. He needed it to keep still if he didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention. Controlling your shadow’s movements was like trying to control your facial expressions during a conversation with someone you hated. When he focused, he could keep his shadow from moving just as he could train his facial expression into one of politeness, but the stronger the emotion, the more difficult it was. Tonight it was crucial that his shadow lie still.

Generally, those with propio were revered for their deeper connection with magic. But he didn’t want anyone to suspect that his propio could help him cheat to win the books.

Which was exactly what he planned to do.

He focused on the players and watched the magic run through them once more.

Next to the Bear sat a woman wearing a dragon mask. When he looked at her magic, Alfie’s spine straightened in confusion. Hers was red, but it wasn’t one shade like the rest of the magic he’d spent his life watching. Hers was a constantly shifting patchwork of reds, darkening and deepening before brightening once more. A gradient of scarlets, crimsons, and burgundies. He must’ve been seeing things. She cocked her head at him, a smirk curving her lips.

“Got something to say, Fox?” She lounged in her chair as if they were waiting for dinner instead of a chance at illegal goods. “Or should I grip you by the scruff and shake it out of you?”

The other players snickered. Alfie scrambled for a clever retort, but he was saved by Rayan walking into the parlor and shutting the door behind him.

“Welcome, lady and gentlemen,” Rayan said. His short nose widened when he grinned. Like most ludicrously wealthy men Alfie knew, Rayan was eccentric and bored, which was why he held these games and procured the illegal prizes that made them so enticing.

In Rayan’s arms was a stack of four black-spined books—tonight’s prize. Rayan took a seat in the high-backed, gilded chair at the head of the table. He had a flair for the dramatic.

“Are you all ready for a game?” he asked.

The players nodded. A tense silence coiled around them.

Rayan stacked the books neatly at the center of the table. Alfie’s heart leaped in his chest—a beat for each word on each page of each book. The risk of Rayan’s games was that you never knew what game he would choose. If you wanted the prize badly enough, you paid the steep entry fee and found out. And these were not just any prize; some of these books were from Englass—and like all Englassen goods, they were completely illegal in Castallan.