Taken by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #8)(2)

Still, it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Eventually, Iannis and I moved on to mingle with the rest of the crowd. All of the mages we talked to were almost irritatingly polite to our faces. However, a few hung back, eyeing me with barely concealed disdain, and I left a trail of whispers in my wake that I did my best to tune out. I was well aware that not everyone approved of my match with Iannis, but they could stick their jealousy and condemnation up their asses. The only thing that mattered was our love and commitment for each other, and that was as strong as it had ever been.

Still, when I stopped by the refreshment table to fill a plate with crab cakes, tiny salmon rolls, and goose liver canapés, I couldn’t help but overhear a gaggle of women nearby.

“Look at her. That’s the third plate she’s taken tonight. How is she not bursting out of the seams of her dress?”

“I hear shifters have very high metabolisms and can eat whatever they want.” The other mage tittered. “Even so, that dress is a pretty tight fit.”

“Well, it’s understandable that she would not want to wear apprentice robes to an affair like this and remind everyone of her lowly status. One does wonder when the Chief Mage and she find time to practice?”

“He finds time enough to tumble her, I’d bet. Though how he can bring himself to—”

“I know what you mean. Shifters are savages, and she is no different. Just look at those animal eyes of hers. I guess there must be some kind of kinky appeal; there’s no accounting for tastes. And yet she prances around with her head high, as though she were as good as any of us.”

My fingers tightened on the gold-plated tongs I was holding, and I had to force myself to let go before I accidentally bent them. Taking a deep breath through my nose, I forced myself to calm down. I’d heard it all before, and would probably continue to hear it no matter how far I got in life. Bigots rarely ever changed their minds—the best way to ensure that their hatred didn’t spread was to simply not pay them any attention.

“This absurd match cannot go well. I wonder how long into their marriage until the Chief Mage starts looking for a mistress?”

My resolve to ignore them abruptly snapped. Seeing red, I quickly riffled through my magical repertoire, searching for a suitable spell that could be cast at a distance. I hid a smile when I found the perfect thing, then subtly flicked my hand toward their group and muttered the Words under my breath.

While the magic did its work, I sauntered over to an older mage with my plate of finger food and struck up a conversation. It turned out that he was a weather mage, and as I half-listened to his talk about storms and wind patterns, I looked toward the group of gossips out of the corner of my eye. They were continuing to make snide remarks about me, but unbeknownst to them, something strange was very gradually happening to their clothing.

“By the Lady,” one of them exclaimed after a while. “Myrna, you must have washed this set of robes one too many times. I can see straight through them!”

Myrna, who was an older mage with silver hair, gasped as she looked down at herself. I angled my head a little more toward them and saw that Myrna’s deep blue robes had become very sheer, exposing a bony frame and mismatched underwear. But the other woman…

“Stacia!” one of the other women gasped. “You aren’t wearing any underwear at all!”

“What in Recca is going on?” the weather mage asked, craning his neck to look over my shoulder. I turned around fully, and bit back a laugh—everyone else was now gawking at the five women, whose saggy arms and spindly, unshaven legs were on full display for everyone to see. The most amusing were the two who had used illusion to make their faces appear more youthful, while leaving everything else beneath their robes untouched. I guessed they thought they were saving magic, but they wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Why, this is outrageous!” Myrna made a sharp gesture and quickly muttered a spell. The robes immediately returned to normal, though the mages’ expressions did not—all five women were red-faced and in various states of anger and embarrassment. “Who did this?” she demanded loudly. “Come forward at once!”

But no one said anything, and as the snickers from the other guests continued to grow, the women began to shrink back in embarrassment. I was tempted to meet Myrna’s eyes and give her a big smile, but instead, I looked at Iannis. He was on the far side of the room conversing with a middle-aged woman, but when our eyes met, he gave me a subtle wink.

“Try not to make a habit of it,” he suggested as he turned back to the man he was talking to. “If clothes begin to disappear at every event we attend, we shan’t be invited back again.”

“Then I will make every effort to make sure that it happens,” I teased.

I felt his laughter down the mindspeak connection before I severed it, then apologized to the weather mage and gave him my attention again. The rest of the evening wore on, with boring conversation after boring conversation, but the results from my little magical prank were enough to keep a smile on my face. Luckily, most of the mages had a few glasses of wine in them, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to pretend to be interested—some of them were drunk enough that they would have carried on a conversation with a wall without noticing.

Eventually we sat down for a six-course dinner featuring lobster bisque, trout soufflé, roast duck, beef with pineapple sauce, oven-fried buttered mangoes, and marzipan pudding, with different and probably very expensive wines for every course. There would be some dancing afterward, and then Iannis and I would finally be able to make our getaway. Maybe we’d even get a bit of alone time for once. Our sex life had taken a nosedive these past few months, with all the rebuilding efforts plus the wedding planning taking most of our attention and time. Only nine more weeks now—I couldn’t wait for it all to be over.