Burnt Magic, page 4
Stepping off me, the guard waited for me to stand, the bloodied and broken skin around his gut already knitting together beneath the rip in his shirt.
I glared back at him and Percy, unrelenting.
“Get up,” Percy said quietly, focused solely on me now. His voice was so cold, so demeaning.
“Make me,” I hissed back. The slow raise of his eyebrow was his only response, before he shrugged.
“Fine.”
One moment I was on the floor—the next, he’d slung me over his shoulder and was marching me down the corridor like a sack of potatoes.
I began kicking, my nails sharp as they raked down his back, his arms, poised to draw blood. He swore, stopping abruptly—
—then hauled me off his shoulder, pushing me up against a wall and pinning my arms with firm but surprising gentleness for someone who had just been clawed at. Perhaps he saw me as some fragile, weak thing compared to his vampiric state. And if Nolan wanted me alive, unharmed...
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said, his voice low as he met my gaze.
I cocked my head at him and I replied, “Don’t pretend like you care. Like you ever cared.”
He looked away quickly, his hand tightening around my left wrist once more as he turned and dragged me along with that ironclad grip. He refused to respond, to even look at me, and I could feel my heart cracking in my chest. Swallowing hard, I buried that pain deep down and continued breathing steady, even breaths. I would not let this man break me.
Still coated in that fresh spray of blood, the three of us continued the trek down and down and down until we finally reached an elaborate dining room.
The walls were covered in lacquered wood molding that framed the ornate burgundy wallpaper. Gold finishes accented every doorway and window, and the ceiling was covered in classical artwork that had clearly been custom commissioned for the room and looked as if it belonged in an old church.
A single mahogany table stretched the entire length of the room, with matching chairs. Three candlesticks were strategically placed, lit candles burning in each one. A drapery of red cloth with pomegranates and black grapes lined the entire length of the table, though I wasn’t sure why since vampires couldn’t eat human food.
A strong hand pushed on my back from the guard who still followed us, urging me forward as Percy led me through the room. Pulling out a seat for me in front of the only chair that had a dinner setting, Percy finally faced me once more and I scowled at him.
“Sit,” he ordered darkly, and my jaw locked as I considered refusing again. But I was vaguely aware of that guard coming to stand a little ways behind me against the wall, and another one joined him swiftly enough, replacing the one I’d killed and burned all of those floors above.
A move that subtly seemed to say... go right ahead and defy us again. We can do this all day.
So, slowly, I followed his instruction and sank into the seat.
Percy rounded the table in a blur, taking a seat directly across from me. He didn’t meet my gaze this time, and I was grateful. I didn’t think I could bear to face him right now, in such a long stretch of intimate silence.
After a few moments, Nolan entered from a different door situated beside another crackling fireplace, accompanied by a pretty woman in a long emerald-green dress that clung to every perfect curve of her body. She wore her cascading chestnut-brown hair down and had blood-red lips that matched the shade of her eyes.
They both noted the blood coating us but said nothing—as if they’d expected as much.
Nolan sat at the head of the table, two chairs from where I sat, while the woman sat at his right-hand side, near Percy. I noticed how Percy physically tensed at her presence and fought to keep my expression neutral.
A servant then followed from the doors Nolan and the woman had emerged from, carrying two wine glasses full of blood. He placed one down in front of Nolan, the other in front of the woman.
But none in front of Percy, which also struck me as odd. If he cared, he didn’t show it, his expression one of complete calm despite his tense shoulders.
The woman reached for the glass of blood in front of her, drinking deeply, but Nolan had his eyes glued to me. A shiver went down my spine.
“Thank you for joining me,” he began, his gaze studying me carefully. “I apologize for the... methods... we used to bring you here. We can never be too careful with those who come out of the painting.”
My blood singed with anger, the fresh spray of blood barely dry on my dress and face. I deigned not to respond.
“Well then,” he stated simply, leaning back in his chair. “I’m sure you have many questions. As we have for you.” To my surprise, he glanced at both Percy and I as he spoke, before turning his attention back to me. “Why don’t you start, since you’re our guest?”
I honestly didn’t know where to start, and Percy’s expression revealed nothing as he continued to look anywhere but at me.
Finally, swallowing hard, I turned to Nolan.
“What do you want with me?” I asked, my voice like gravel. Nolan barked a laugh.
“Straight to the point, I see,” he mused, shaking his head. “I can assure you, I mean you no harm. At least, not immediately. You are of more use to me alive at present.”
That wasn’t exactly reassuring.
“So, you plan to kill me eventually?” I pressed, and his eyes glinted dangerously.
“Perhaps. We will see what I make of you first,” he answered, and I tried to bury the pit of dread forming in my stomach. Staring at the mahogany table for a few moments, I debated what to ask next. I had so many unanswered questions...
“Do you understand what has happened to you?” Nolan prompted, as if sensing my loss for words. I hesitated for a moment, then shook my head.
“No,” I replied, trying to ignore how small I felt in that moment. I waited a moment before adding relentingly, “I mean... I understand that I was in a painting. But I don’t understand how I got there, or why I was there. Or what that strange version of Monsec we rode through was. Or if any of that time in the painting was even real...”
But it had to have been real. I had grown up there, had a life there, had even made friends there...
Unexpected tears formed in my eyes as I thought of Winona, Darcy, and Margot. I quickly blinked them away given the current company, even as my mind wondered... had my friends even been real?
Or had it all been part of... of whatever that world had been?
“Everything in the painting is real,” Percy answered a moment later, and I looked up to find him watching me with an almost pitying expression. “The real town of Monsec still exists. It’s just been... transferred into the painting and rendered timeless in our world. Along with your friends and Margot. My father is in there too.”
“Ah, yes, your father,” Nolan mused. “And do tell me, what has happened to him?”
Percy shrugged indifferently, turning to face his uncle.
“He’s leading Salvhark’s guild. But like I was, he’s currently unaware of the truth.”
Currently unaware of the truth...
I studied the way Percy lounged in his seat, his callous words. A part of me was finally starting to understand what had shifted, the jarring change in his demeanor toward me.
If he’d been unaware about being in a painting this whole time... then what I was looking at must have been the real Percy.
And whoever he had been in there... the man who I’d yearned over all these years, who had broken down my walls and helped me discover the deepest parts of me... he had been a lie.
A lie that even he hadn’t known he’d been living.
It dawned on me that I was now looking at a complete stranger, and I found that I couldn’t stop shaking my head with disbelief, drawing all of their attentions back to me.
“But how?” I asked, my voice tight as I struggled to keep the emotion out of it. “How is everyone in the painting unaware of the truth?”
“Have you ever heard of blood magic, Fleur?” Nolan asked, and I shook my head in response.
“She knows nothing,” Percy added quickly, almost dismissively, as he leaned an elbow on the back on his chair and angled away from me. “Margot hid everything from her. There was no information, no clues to indicate... the truth. The magic made sure of that.”
A pit of resentment formed in my stomach at his words. Even Percy, it seemed, knew more about Margot, about my life, than I did.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.” Nolan sighed, leaning back in his chair as he addressed me directly again. “Blood magic is a very ancient form of magic that almost anyone can wield. But it used to be favored by witches, which is why you tend to find a history of it among their kind. That being said, it is a forbidden magic—an extremely dangerous magic. One that is discouraged by almost every being in our world.”
“So, blood magic was used to transfer the town of Monsec into a painting?” I asked, remembering how he’d said that the painting had been used to hide me. Nolan nodded approvingly.
“Precisely. Margot used blood magic to paint a separate world—one that would contain you and prevent anyone else from finding you.”
I shook my head again.
“But Margot’s not a witch,” I protested, and the corner of Nolan’s lips turned upward.
“She most certainly is,” he insisted, watching me carefully.
“Even if she was, why would she care about hiding a vampire cure in a world full of vampires—when she herself hunts vampires?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, baring his sharp fangs a little as he sat back, his shoulders wide.
Almost as if he were... presenting himself.
I frowned. Did she hide me so that Nolan wouldn’t find me?
My mind reeled through every interaction I’d had with Margot, since the day she’d found me and brought me to Monsec. She had offered me a place in her home, had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Why? Why do any of it? Why go to such lengths to hide me from Nolan, a vampire, when I’d spent most of my life training and hunting them?
“Now is not the right time in your life.”
That’s what she’d told me the last time I’d asked for access to the Archives. When I’d begged to know the identity of the vampire who had killed my father.
It dawned on me so quickly, I barely had time to keep up with my racing thoughts. What if she had been protecting me? Or preparing me, even, for an opponent like Nolan Salvhark?
I glanced at Nolan again. He was cool, calm, and collected, like nothing could faze him. Like a hundred-millennia-old creature who had seen everything there was to see. Like nothing could surprise him, let alone a young vampire hunter in her early twenties trying to avenge her father’s death.
Nausea churned in my gut all of a sudden.
I hadn’t been ready.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t trusted me. It was that she’d known, despite my best efforts, that it would take so much more than regular tactics to defeat a vampire like Nolan. And that I was impatient, impulsive, desperate for vengeance—that I wouldn’t have listened to her even if she’d tried to tell me.
I suddenly felt like the biggest fool on the planet. I’d betrayed her trust. I’d ruined everything she’d done to try and protect me. Now Nolan knew who I was—and had me right where he wanted me.
“Did you kill my father?” I asked, my voice low as I narrowed my gaze.
Nolan barked a laugh at my words, but I didn’t think the question was particularly funny. My gaze shifted to Percy, whose expression had turned to stone, and my stomach twisted like a thorn had plunged straight into my gut. I thought back to everything we’d been through. The way he’d supported me and discouraged Margot’s behavior.
But now I knew, with his allegiance to Nolan, that I’d fallen for his deceptions too easily.
My hand curled around the steak knife in front of me, and my gaze was drawn once more to Percy’s dinner setting—and the lack of blood offered to him. Despite my wariness, my anger, it bugged me in the way a slight wrinkle in a tablecloth might bug me. Still, I tried to ignore it as I returned to my theory—because the more I thought about Nolan killing my father, the more it made sense.
I needed to know why.
“The letters,” I said out loud as I thought it through. Thought back to every interaction with Salvhark’s guild. “My father refused to join Salvhark. And he and my mother had been running from you for harboring a vampire.”
Well... a vamprich, specifically.
“That’s true.” Nolan nodded, reaching for his glass of blood, and swirled it idly. “But I didn’t kill your father, Fleur.”
“You’re lying,” I snarled. “You were tracking the cure—tracking me.”
“Tracking you, yes,” he stated simply, placing his glass down again carefully as he met my gaze. “But if you’ve found all of the letters, then surely you recall the one from 2000? Where your mother offered you up on a silver platter to me?”
I froze, thinking back to that letter, and that amused smile returned as I remembered what it had said:
I will bring you this cure myself—I only ask that you spare my sister.
I’d forgotten the letter until now... and before now, I’d assumed the cure had been inanimate. But now I realized... it had been me.
She had offered Nolan me.
“And the one that followed ten months afterward, where your father evaded us? Even I could not find him... find you. By the time I realized you’d been hidden away in a painting of a lake house with help from a powerful witch that has since taken refuge on an island near Greece... well, Margot had borrowed that idea for herself and made it impossible for any of us to follow you inside her little world. Not without great consequence, that is.”
His gaze fell upon Percy again briefly, before turning back to me and adding, “I was not impressed by your father’s actions, Fleur. But I certainly did not kill him. If I had, then I assure you... Margot never would have gotten her hands on you, and this ordeal with Monsec would never have ever occurred, for you would have already been long dead.”
Dread seeped through my gut again at his steady, cold words. But thankfully, at that very moment, there was a bustle of motion as the doors behind Nolan swung open, revealing a servant carrying a covered tray. A moment later, a bowl of beef ragu was placed in front of me.
I nearly sobbed at the sight of it, my stomach growling in response to the sight and smell of the hearty food. But I restrained myself, ignored my watering mouth despite my lingering fatigue and aching stomach. I didn’t trust anybody in this room.
Glancing back at Percy, I noticed that he still hadn’t been offered any blood. He was the only one in this room without a meal.
“You mentioned that witches tend to use blood magic,” I said swiftly, my gaze lingering on Percy for a moment as I guided the subject away from killing me. “And that anyone can harness it.”
“Yes,” Nolan confirmed, his tone softer now. “And with your blood, plus some guidance from a seasoned witch... it’s easy to see how your father was able to hide you in that lake house painting.”
“Why my blood?”
Nolan swirled the contents of his glass for a moment, as if debating whether to answer, before replying, “Blood magic is strongest when using it from creatures whose magic is rooted in the darker arts—sirens and vampires are common examples. But to cast a spell on the lake house painting, or even to create a painting from scratch like Monsec... you’d need something particularly powerful. Something that could create a lot of magical paint and sustain the world in an ongoing state.”
“Like a succubus,” Percy finished, whose gaze flicked from my untouched food to me.
My mind was reeling with all of this new information. The woman at Nolan’s side must have noticed because she let out a tsk and said, “Nolie, that’s enough. The poor thing looks like she’s about to pass out. It’s time for my questions.” She turned to Percy and leveled her gaze on him. “Does Jean remember me?”
Percy turned his head ever so slowly toward the woman. I’d thought he’d been cold with me, but the look he fixed this woman with could have frozen over the depths of hell.
“You know,” he drawled, raising an eyebrow at her, “I think the best part of being in that painting was forgetting that you ever existed. Eight years of pure fucking peace.”
She huffed, as if she’d expected this response.
“Oh, how you wound me, Percy. I was hoping that you’d have matured after all these years, but it seems having no motherly figure around has... roughened your edges.”
“My father is doing just fine without you,” Percy responded coldly. “In fact, he’s thriving without you.”
“You will not speak to her like that.” Nolan growled, placing his hands on the table, all hint of charm gone now. Percy rolled his eyes, turning back to his uncle.
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” he huffed a humorless laugh. “Turns out it’s harder than you think.” He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, kicking both feet onto the table and crossing them. Nolan seethed, eyeing his shoes like he wanted to smack them straight off the polished wood, and Percy had the audacity to smirk at him.
Nolan continued, “Like it or not, your father and my sister are mates, which means I tolerate you only as a curtesy to her. But I beg you not to forget your place—you are not of royal blood, and you dare speak to your own mother with such disrespect—”
“Stepmother,” he corrected, not missing a beat.
“Nolie, it’s fine,” the woman added, swirling the blood in her glass and taking a sip. “We knew this was a possibility. And Percy has surprised us all with his competence.”
Despite my anger toward him, hearing her speak about Percy that way pressed something deep inside of me. Nolan’s expression grew cold, but he lifted his hands from the table and leaned back in his chair. “You’re right. We can discuss Percy’s poor etiquette later.”
