Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,30

the sea.

And saw the girl standing just a few yards away.

She waited with her arms crossed, her shoulders hunched against the wind. Stray locks of red hair blew out from under her hood, framing her pale little face.

She smiled at him—a stubborn sort of smile with an edge to it.

Soran’s heart gave a sharp thud. But he drew a breath, controlled his expression, and faced the girl calmly, certain he betrayed nothing of what he felt inside. Drawing his shoulders back, he stepped toward her.

“Miss Beck,” he said.

“Mage Silveri,” she replied.

Uncertain what else he ought to do or say, Soran simply turned left down the path that led along the cliff’s edge toward the first of the ward stones. The girl fell in step beside him, taking two quick strides for each of his long ones. Her pace jostled her hood back over her shoulders, and her hair blew free.

“I haven’t seen the ward stones yet,” she said after a few moments of silence. “Is that one there?” She pointed to the tall pillar on the edge of the cliff.

Soran cast her a quick glance, then refocused his attention ahead. Did she truly mean to walk with him? And if so, what was he going to do about it? He ought to send her away . . . but where? Roseward wasn’t that big of an island. There was nowhere for her to go except back to Dornrise or down to the little abandoned village on the harbor. Otherwise there were just overgrown forests that once had been elegant parks, and a few tumbledown ruins where once stood handsome outlying buildings, chapels, and pavilions.

He realized he’d not answered her question. By now it would seem foolish to say anything at all, so he held his tongue. They approached the first ward stone already anyway.

Carefully averting his attention from the girl, Soran approached the stone and located where the carved spell began at the top. Concentrating, he touched the spell with the tip of one finger and followed the flow of words, slowly circling the pillar to follow their spiral pattern until he reached the place on the stone’s seaward side where the crack broke one of the words in two, compromising the spell. There he paused for some moments, analyzing the depth of the crack, the severity of the split.

The girl appeared at his elbow, bending toward the ward stone, her brow constricted, her gaze thoughtful as she studied the lines of the spell. “This is Old Araneli again, eh?” she said, looking up at him.

Soran nodded and drew the spellbook from the front of his robes.

The girl put out one hand and touched the stone, her palm over the split. She closed her eyes, the knot in her brow deepening. “I . . . I think I feel it,” she said after a moment. “I think I feel how it went wrong.”

“You can see where it went wrong, Miss Beck,” Soran said. “The break is easily discerned.” He reached out and caught her wrist, plucking her hand away from the stone.

She retracted her hand quickly, tucking it away inside the folds of her cloak. “I know. But there’s more to it, ain’t there?”

Soran narrowed his eyes, studying her face closely. What did she see? What did she perceive with those peculiar senses of hers?

“All right,” he said slowly. “Tell me.”

She turned to the stone again and almost unconsciously extended her hand. This time, however, she didn’t touch the stone itself. Her fingers twined in the air in front of it, as though catching at strands of nothing and feeling how they played across her skin.

“There’s magic here,” she said. “I can almost . . . I think I can see it. Magic lines rising from the words, if that makes sense.” She quirked an eyebrow up at him. “Is this the protection spell?”

He grunted. “Go on.”

“They’re broken. Not all of them. Just a few strands here and there. Like this one.” She plucked at an invisible nothing, twirling it between finger and thumb. Then she sniffed and shook her head. “Oh, no. I can’t quite catch it. I can’t even really see it. But am I right?”

She looked up at him again, her face eager and possibly a little afraid.

“There is a spell, yes,” Soran acknowledged. “A warding spell, part of the larger spell of protection surrounding Roseward. And yes, your method of describing it is correct. Some of the . . . of the threads have broken.” He