Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,16

to human flesh.

At Nelle’s exclamation he looked around, his face nearly as expressionless as the wyvern’s. “Miss Beck,” he said coolly.

Nelle grimaced and slammed the door behind her. “Don’t you go Miss Beck-ing me!” she growled, striding across the room. She set her heavy basket down with a thump beside the wyvern’s tail. It raised its head and rattled its tongue at her with half-hearted menace. “What is the worm doing on the table? We eat here. I may be a Draggs wench, but even I’ve got standards.”

Mage Silveri blinked impassively and bowed over his work once more. He held what looked like an old goose-feather quill, supporting it awkwardly in his misshapen fingers as he made marks along the rip in the wyvern’s wing. “Hush, Miss Beck,” he said. “This requires . . . concentration . . .”

His voice trailed away as though he couldn’t quite maintain that stream of thought while simultaneously focusing on the task at hand. The wyvern laid its head back down and burbled pathetically.

“Ugh.” Nelle flung up her hands, marched to her little alcove bed, and undid the clasps on her cloak. “Wretched wyvern,” she muttered. Shrugging the cloak from her shoulders, she tossed it in a mound on the rug-pile bed. “You watch; I’ll bet that beast is a mess of plague! Don’t blame me if you end up with speckled fever or toe rot or green gripe or . . .”

She turned around. And froze.

Silveri’s shoulders were still bowed over his work. But his head was up, and his eyes peered at her between fallen strands of white hair. His mouth hung partially open, his expression surprised.

Heat roared in her gut and flushed up her neck. Which was stupid, of course, so Nelle quickly masked it with a scowl. “What?” she demanded.

His hand, awkwardly holding the quill, hovered in midair above the wyvern’s wing. The wyvern cast him a baleful look and heaved a sigh. The sound was enough to bestir the mage, who blinked and shook his head. “Miss Beck,” he said, and cleared his throat roughly. “I, um. You look—”

“Bedraggled as a half-drowned kitten caught in the drain? Yeah, I know.”

The ugly scars around his mouth pulled as though he were suppressing an urge to smile. “I was going to say lovely.”

Nelle gaped. Her mind flailed for some sort of response. She’d been called many things in her life—lewd things, most of them. She knew the effect she had on the opposite sex. And she hated it. Mother had always known how to use her physical allure as a weapon, but Nelle always felt as though her natural attributes made her a target for all that was depraved and wicked in the hearts of men.

No man had ever looked at her quite like this.

No man had ever called her lovely.

“Pish!” she said and dropped her gaze. “It’s just this fanciful gown I snatched from the great house is all. Look at that hem? Half ruined by the mud, I’m sure. But I don’t suppose the lady what once owned it will mind overmuch.”

“No. She won’t mind. Not in the least.”

Silveri’s voice was so soft, Nelle couldn’t resist stealing another look his way. He had reverted his gaze to the wyvern, but his hand remained frozen in the air. A single bead of dark liquid dripped from the end of the quill and spattered on the tabletop. Silveri grunted and moved hastily to wipe it up, but his hands were clumsy, and he dropped the blotting rag. He growled, all the softness gone from his voice, and tossed the quill, nib-first, into an open bottle of reddish ink.

“Oh here, let me!” Nelle said quickly and sprang across the room. She crouched and retrieved the rag, then hastily mopped up the spot on the table. As she did so, she noticed the wyvern’s wing. The rip was much improved since three days ago. Still ragged and lumpy, certainly not serviceable for flight. But improved.

What intrigued her most, however, was the pattern of characters written in a blocky script, trailing along the scar, outlining it on both sides. She almost recognized the letters, though not quite. But she felt a certain . . . simmering. A buzz of energy not unlike what she’d felt from the grimoires in Gaspard’s quillary.

“Here, what’s this now?” she asked, pointing at the scar. The wyvern snapped at her finger without any real menace. She flicked its nose. “Down, you!” Turning her gaze to the mage, she realized