Scorched by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #7)(42)

Rusalia snarled in fury and hurled more fire at us, but I’d done this dance before, and managed to quickly counter her attacks. Fenris deflected a few of them too—even in wolf form, he was more than able to use simple magic like this.

Still, I could tell this was going to get worse before it got better. Rusalia was going to keep flinging around fire until either someone really got hurt, we set the building on fire, or she passed out from exhaustion. Neither of those three options were good.

“Fenris, I’ll cover you, just try and get to her,” I cried, stepping forward and bubbling another fireball.

“Fine,” he growled in mindspeak as he leapt over the stack of books Rusalia was using as kindling. She screamed, summoning more fire, but before she could fling it, the big wolf landed on top of her, knocking her down. As her hands smacked into the ground, the look in her eyes made my blood run cold. Fenris was so close to her that if she hit Fenris with those flaming hands, there’d be nothing I could do to stop her.

“Don’t you dare,” I shouted, taking a step forward and lifting my own hand. Magic crackled at my fingertips as I glared at her. “We’re not here to hurt you, but if you try to harm my friend, I will knock you out myself.” I lifted a hand, magic crackling at my fingertips, and she blanched.

“L-leave me alone!” she wailed, tears running down her face as the flames wreathing her hands vanished into the ether. She tried to squirm out from beneath Fenris, but he simply sat down, putting his not-inconsiderable weight on her chest.

“Fenris,” I chided, drawing closer. “Get off the poor girl. We don’t want to crush her.” I put out the fire Rusalia had started, then used another spell to heat up the air until it was comfortably warm. “Is that better?” I asked as she scrambled away from the wolf and scrunched herself into the far corner, arms wrapped around her knees.

“I…” She frowned, confused. “Did you make it warmer in here?”

“Yep.” I sat down on the hard floor in front of her, wanting to make myself more approachable. “One of the perks to being a trained mage.”

She turned up her nose at me. “A partially trained mage.”

I arched a brow, refusing to let her bait me. “Kid, I don’t think you’re in a position to make cracks like that. You’re in big trouble right now.”

She folded her arms across her chest and glared at me. “What else is new? Nothing I do is ever good enough, not for Ma, and not for Pa either. Why should I care about what other people think?”

I let out a breath—I understood that sentiment very well. I’d had a similar outlook about my aunt, especially during the last few months I’d lived with her. But now wasn’t the time to share that with Rusalia. “It would be one thing if you’d caused an accident or two at home,” I explained as patiently as I could. “But you’ve hurt a lot of other people, setting their carts and other belongings on fire—those are crimes, Rusalia. We’re not going to be able to sweep this under the rug.”

Her chin began to quiver. “Will they send me to jail?” she asked, her cornflower-blue eyes—Comenius’s eyes—wide with terror.

I shrugged, pretending not to feel pity for her. “Probably not. But someone’s going to have to pay for all those damages, and that someone is going to be your dad. And I can tell you right now he’s going to have a very hard time coming up with the money for that, after being away from his shop all those weeks to bring you back here. Also, it’s illegal for the inhabitants of Witches’ End to harbor mage children, so Comenius may be forced to hand you over to the Mages’ Guild. That, or he’ll have to send you back to Pernia.”

“No,” Rusalia cried, tears spilling down her cheeks again. She threw herself to the ground, clutching at my ankles. “Please, please don’t send me back there. I have no one there.”

“Then why are you so mean to your father?” Fenris demanded, and I started—he’d changed back into human form. I always envied how he was able shift without the usual fanfare because I never noticed when it happened. “He is your only family, is he not?”

“Y-yes,” Rusalia mumbled into my boots. “It’s just…it’s been so hard to trust him. Ma always told me he was a bad man, and he just left me with her.”

There was so much vitriol in that last statement, such a sense of deep betrayal, that I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the little girl. Burying a hand in her tangled locks, I gentled my voice. “Why don’t you tell us what happened, Rusalia? From the beginning.”

And so she did. Slowly, painfully, Rusalia told us in a tearful voice about how her mother raised her, neglecting her for days at a time, and then taking her out for ice cream and lavish shopping trips where Rusalia could buy any toy her heart desired. The inconsistent behavior had confused Rusalia—she’d been punished for imagined slights, then rewarded spontaneously and without rhyme or reason. Eventually, the poor child had given up on figuring out what her mother wanted and how to predict her moods.

The woman had also drilled into Rusalia’s head that her father, Comenius, was a deadbeat who didn’t care about her. When Rusalia did something wrong, her mother would rail at her, shouting she was just like her useless, hateful father. As Rusalia grew older and began acting out more, her mother started spending less time with her, punishing her more frequently.