Scorched by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #7)(14)

I spent the early afternoon on my Loranian lessons with Fenris. He was a patient teacher and explained well, but I kept mixing up the eighteen different tenses, so I was relieved when I finally moved onto practicing spells in the training room. Iannis had deemed me sufficiently advanced that he was comfortable leaving me alone to practice, so long as I didn’t leave the warded room. At the moment, I was working on changing a block of wood into a living rosebush, and then back again. I’d already become proficient at changing one inanimate object into another—I could turn brass into stone and wood into gold. But changing a non-living object into a living one was a much tougher challenge.

Focusing my attention on the wood block, I turned my palms toward it, then spoke the transmogrification spell. I envisioned the square of walnut stretching and transforming, carving itself into trunk and roots potted in soil, branches reaching out to the world around it. To my delight, the block complied.

“Yes,” I crowed as leaves began to sprout from the branches, followed by rosebuds. They quickly blossomed, petals unfurling into brilliant shades of red…and then began to shrivel and blacken.

“Dammit, no!” Panicking, I shoved more magic into the plant, willing it to blossom and grow. But that only seemed to accelerate the decay—the trunk and branches crumbled until all that was left was the clay pot with a heap of ashes inside.

Disgusted with myself, I buried my face in my hands and groaned. How the hell was I going to speed up my apprenticeship if I couldn’t master this technique? Iannis could probably do this with his eyes closed from a different room. How would I ever be seen as his equal?

A knock at the door dragged me from my pity party. “Miss Baine, are you almost finished?” Rylan called from outside. I’d ordered him to stay in the hall, so that I didn’t have to worry about accidentally hurting him with a spell gone wrong. “Dinner’s in less than an hour.”

“Coming.” I gave the pot of ash a dirty look, then turned it back into a block of wood. Humph. At least that part was easy, I consoled myself, picking up the object. It looked exactly the same as it had before I’d changed it, right down to the trio of tiny knots on its side.

“You look like you were just slapped by a porcupine’s tail,” Rylan remarked in mindspeak as he escorted me back to my room. “Everything okay?”

“I’m just…frustrated,” I replied, exhaling heavily. “Iannis and I are getting married in less than nine months, and I’m still just a rookie apprentice.”

“No, you’re not.” Rylan playfully punched me in the shoulder. “You’re Sunaya Baine, champion of the underdog and royal pain in my ass. You’ve never been ‘just’ an apprentice, and you’ll never ‘just’ be a mage or ‘just’ Lord Iannis’s wife, either. Your titles, or lack thereof, don’t define you.”

The tension bled out of my shoulders at the familiar words, and I smiled a little. “Iannis said something similar to me the other day.”

“He’s a wise man.” Rylan paused for a moment. “You know, when Fenris offered me that deal to reduce my sentence in exchange for helping you, I came very close to refusing. I was Captain Rylan Baine, an officer of the Resistance, and I didn’t work with the fucking enemy.” He snorted, and I grinned a little. “But I felt really shitty about what happened with the forgetting spell I’d put on you, so I agreed mostly because I wanted to make it up to you. It’s taken me a little while to get used to not running a company of soldiers, taking orders from colonels and commanders and working day in and day out to undermine the very establishment I’m now working for. And it’s been really fucking hard to come to terms with the fact that the organization I’ve worked for these past seven years has always intended to wipe my kind from the face of Recca.”

I took my cousin’s hand and squeezed it briefly. I’d been outraged enough when I’d found out Thorgana’s true plans for the Resistance. I couldn’t imagine how betrayed Rylan must have felt. His whole world, his entire purpose for the past seven years, had been ripped out from under him.

“But, like I was saying to you, I began to realize if I didn’t want to sink into a funk, or drive myself insane, then I had to learn to define myself as something other than a captain of the Resistance. I have to figure out who I am—which is a challenge, by the way, considering I have to pretend to be someone else all the time,” he added dryly.

I winced. “That won’t last forever,” I assured him as we stopped outside my bedroom door. “No matter what, I promise you won’t have to live your days out as my tiger-shifter bodyguard.”

“Thanks.” He hugged me swiftly. “Now hurry up and get ready before we’re late. You don’t want Kardanor walking into the meeting without you there to explain his presence.”



A quick shower and change of clothes was needed after this morning’s excitement—my clothing still had bits of dusty drywall on them, and it was probably in my hair, too. But instead of dressing for dinner in finery, I put on a pair of fresh leathers and strapped on my weapons. Though I wouldn’t admit it aloud, I was still a little rattled from the attack this morning, and I’d been attacked on the Palace grounds before. I wasn’t willing to walk around unarmed and encumbered by a frilly dress, even if that meant offending someone’s sensibilities.