The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,100

run to Alathia.” He stroked a hand down Kiran’s cheek, then cupped his chin. “I’ll enjoy this even more than I imagined. Ruslan has good taste, I’ll give him that.”

Kiran tried to jerk his head away, but the mage tightened his hold. “I won’t be yours, either,” Kiran spat through clenched teeth.

“You won’t have a choice, I’m afraid,” said the mage. “That’s the difference between me and Ruslan.” He touched Kiran lightly on the forehead, and the world went dark.

***

(Dev)

I watched though a crevice between ceiling boards, my stomach churning, as Kiran went limp and the mage stepped back.

Shit. Now I had answers, all right, but I didn’t much like them. Gods, the way the mage had smiled when he’d done—well, whatever he’d done, when he’d covered Kiran’s cut arm with his bleeding hand. Kiran had keened and jerked like he’d been scorched by a burning brand, his head cracking backward into the chair so hard I’d winced to hear it. And all the while, the mage had worn the soft, contemplative smile of a man savoring a fine wine.

Below me, the creak of an opening door. I reapplied my eye to the crack, and nearly fell off my rafter when I spotted a familiar sharp-chinned, coppery face under a mop of dark curls. Pello! What the fuck?

“You summoned me?” He looked thinner than I remembered, and a hell of a lot more exhausted. No fucking wonder—he must’ve killed his horse under him to reach the border this fast. Even then, he shouldn’t have made it, unless this bastard had somehow given him a helping hand.

“This is the boy you shadowed from Ninavel?” The animation the mage had displayed while talking to Kiran had vanished, leaving his voice cool and dry as a desert in winter.

Pello nodded. I grimaced. He’d been working for this asshole from the start?

“What evidence did you detect of a mage hunting him?”

Pello described with a shadow man’s exacting eye for detail every damning incident from our time with the convoy. The unseasonally strong thunderstorm, Kiran’s panicked flight into the catsclaw, and the blackened patches afterward. My searches of his wagon—Shaikar take him, he’d figured out I’d disabled his message charm, though he admitted he didn’t know how. Kiran’s reactions to his conversational goads at Ice Lake—gods, but Kiran had left a lot out of his account—and Kiran’s accidental reveal of himself as a mage. For the first time, Pello’s dry recounting took on an edge.

“You didn’t warn me he was a mage, and a blood mage at that,” he said, in a tone just short of accusation. Ha. At least I wasn’t the only one who’d been kept in the dark.

The mage gave him a look, and I had to give Pello points for guts. He didn’t back down, though his hands clenched at his sides.

“I might’ve died by that lake,” Pello said. “I’d have taken more precautions, if I’d known the boy could kill with a touch. And the next day, the avalanche...” He described the diverted path of the slide, and his own near demise and rescue. The way he told it, Kiran’s intent to kill him wasn’t in doubt.

The mage shrugged. “My protection served you well enough, it would appear.”

Pello’s scowl said he wanted to dispute the point, but he went on with his tale. I wondered exactly what protection the mage meant. A charm? Something more?

When Pello described his search of the unconscious Kiran, and his discovery of both the blood mage sigil and Kiran’s amulet, the mage held up a hand.

“This amulet you describe...he’s not wearing it now.”

I tensed. The amulet lay around my own neck. I’d thought it might help shield me from Gerran’s wards.

“Gerran may have taken it. Or the outrider courier, Dev.”

Trust Pello to bring my name to a blood mage’s attention. I held my breath.

“No matter,” the mage said. “I have seen its like before, and know its capabilities. The boy might well have escaped his master’s control, wearing such a charm. Evidence indeed that he represents a genuine opportunity, and not a trap. Good.” He stroked Kiran’s bowed head, possessively, and waved a hand at Pello. “Continue.”

“I thought the boy lost to you, and his hunter’s arrival imminent,” Pello said. “Your instructions said I must not be discovered, and I knew I’d never conceal my mission from a blood mage. I fled and used your okalyi charm to speed my travel, hoping I might survive to bring you news. I crossed the border not two