Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(67)
"That silver," said Zee, "is something I can help you with, Mercy."
I looked at him, my heart still pounding - with anger at Adam, with the release of a magical spell I hadn't really believed in until it left, and with a shadow of memory. I remembered listening to Tad tell us that I'd had my will stolen away, and I had been ... uninterested. I'd felt that way before.
"The silver," Zee told me, his eyes sad as if he knew where my thoughts were dwelling. "Just the silver. The rest is over and done."
"Okay." My throat was tight, and I didn't want him to touch me. Didn't want anyone to touch me ever again, but I knew that made no sense.
"Mercy."
Adam waited until I looked over and met his eyes. "You broke the spell the minute something happened that you didn't want. You were never really in its power. Not once you didn't want to be."
His voice gave me an anchor, and I drew my unruly thoughts back in line. He'd be okay. His lips were healing a lot more slowly than usual, but as I'd yelled at him, he'd had a rough few days. He needed to eat something soon.
"Mercy."
I nodded, so he'd know I'd heard him. I wasn't ready to risk talking right away. Too many things were raw, and Adam and I weren't alone.
"Why didn't the cuff act right away?" asked Asil. Maybe he'd done it to take everyone's attention off me, but I didn't know him well enough to be sure. "The coyote that jumped in and attacked that fae, magic sword and all, was not without willpower."
"It was when Adam came back," Tad said. "It isn't easy to steal someone's will. With Huon's Cup ... before ..." He made an unhappy sound. Looked at Asil, who might or might not know about that incident. Before. When I'd been raped because I could not resist the magic of the cup I'd drunk.
Tad cleared his throat. "The cup that worked on Mercy before used the act of drinking out of it to imply consent, and it was a more powerful artifact in the first place. Peace and Quiet is a two-part spell, each lesser. The first is spelled to make the wearer happy and relaxed. Sort of like the best marijuana ever. That leaves the prisoner vulnerable so that the second one can work to make the person wearing it compliant. The magic continues to work after the cuffs have been removed, so they could be used to subdue more than one prisoner."
I rubbed the wrist the cuff had been on. I hadn't felt anything from it - though I'd been busy at the time. If she'd used the other cuff first, would I just have let her take me? Instead, the magic had snuck up behind me and taken me without giving me a fair chance to fight it. It had waited until the euphoria of having Adam back had left me defenseless, then stolen my will.
"Will the magic come back if I relax again?" I asked, swallowing bile. I was safe. Adam was here, had been here the whole time. Nothing bad had happened - though I remembered the feel of the weeping ghost's attempt to take control of my body. What would have happened if Zee hadn't built wards into the doorway that I could cross and the ghost could not? The walls of the room confined me when the coyote inside me wanted to run until I focused my eyes on Adam again. In his steady regard, I read my safety - as ridiculous as my need for it was. If the ghost had gained control, he'd have dealt with it - as he'd dealt with the fae magic that had turned me into a helpless doll.
"No," said Zee firmly. "It isn't so easy to work magic upon you, Liebchen. One chance was all it had. Probably you'd have recovered on your own after a few days. The Fairy Queen's Gift is weak, a designed weakness that brought about the downfall of the fairy queen who depended upon it too much."
I nodded, and the tightness in my belly eased.
Zee looked at Tad. "It also isn't so easy to destroy an artifact, powerful or not. I would never advocate it because it would put me in trouble with the Gray Lords." He looked at the black blade and smiled a little, handing it back to Tad. "Hier, mein Sohn. You take this for a while. You might find it useful. Be careful, though, it is a hungry sword and likes best to eat magic - and it has a habit of betraying its wielder."
Tad smiled, worked whatever magic was necessary to turn it back into a steel grip with no blade in sight, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. "I understand," he said. "And I know the stories about this sword."
"Good." Zee looked at me. "Removing the silver isn't going to be pleasant, Mercy." He glanced at Adam. "But we have to do it now or maybe never. I don't know if I'll be able to use the mirror gate again." He frowned. "Ariana could attempt it, but her magic is not what it once was. Tad has the magic, but he doesn't know enough to ad-lib such a spell."
"Is magic ever pleasant?" I asked. "I'd rather you did it." I'd been hoping the old gremlin could do something about my little silver problem, and I wasn't going to let a little PTSD moment stop me. I braced myself, closed my eyes, and made sure I had control of my face.
Zee laid his hands on my cheeks and filled me with his magic. It didn't hurt at first. Zee's magic had a flavor, one that spoke of oil, metal, movement, and red heat. I could feel the call of his magic, and it felt very different from the way I'd called the silver out of Adam. Gradually, my feet started to tingle, but as soon as that tingle started to travel upward, the sensation in my feet changed to a sizzle like the bite of a red ant or two that rapidly increased to a thousand. The sensation followed the tingle all the way up my body.