Dark Dealings Page 3

  Him.

  The whispers pushed again. Hard and sharp now. Ava pulled in a deep breath and ignored the need she had to sink her teeth into Dorien’s wizened skin. She winced. She reminded herself she preferred healthy meat. Even an elemental tasted foul. Her memory before she came to the Institute was dull and practically empty, but she knew she’d eaten the flesh of an elemental somewhere in her youth. She couldn’t forget the sour taste of earth and brackish blood against her tongue.

  Ava moved on silent feet, the air still, the shadows unflickering. She was a ghost, unseen, unheard. Dorien didn’t look up from repairing the tattered spine of an ancient map book as she slipped past his broad desk. He’d burn red when he realized she’d left without him noticing.

  She wove her way back to her rooms via the bustling kitchens and stopped at her own door. Habit made her check the tells that marked it. The hair, the mote of dust, the greasy thumbprint on the handle. No one had disturbed them. No one trusted her. The feeling was mutual.

  She unlocked the door, the little flicker of power licking around the heavy key to her fingertips, and pushed the door open on silent hinges.

  Light broke across her bed and caught on dust in the cool air. Ava dropped the book on the bed and threw her cloak over the room’s only chair.

  She flipped open the heavy cover. A Treatise on the Nature of Thieves. It was little more than fifty pages and she flicked through the smooth sheets of bound vellum. The author hadn’t known much. Just the same facts the mages already spouted about her and to her. The thief basis in old magic; shortened life compared to other magic users, even ephemerals—the mages’ derogatory term for humans; the need to feed on flesh, whether living or dead, to contain her dark nature; soul stealing; skin wearing. She winced. What she was was...disturbing.

  Beautifully detailed drawings of feeding thieves took up practically all the book. Ava snorted at their increasingly salacious nature. That was the volume’s true purpose. Definitely a book for private reading, slim enough to be held in one hand.

  She paused at one section. Consuming.

  Ava read it through twice. Taking in magic without devouring? Was that possible? She’d always sensed magic, sensed energy—as she had earlier in Eleta’s room—but to take that power for herself without biting, without meat and bone dissolving in her mouth? She’d never considered it.

  Something in the solidity of meat turned within her, the energy she pulled from it filling her. It not only staved off normal hunger pangs, but satisfied the desire her soul had for the life essence of a creature. And whoever had created the ink drawings had truly watched a thief feed. The sharpened teeth, the strange distortion to the mouth, the jaw and the moving darkness within as if emptiness could hunger...

  Her heart thudded hard, pushing pain through her chest. Feeding. Devouring. The warmth of muscle, the crunch of bone, the silky thickness of blood on her lips. The strange ease of a true devouring that left nothing behind but a vellum-thin shell...

  Not that she was allowed to render and husk ephemerals. It worried the mages.

  The section also talked of sex, of fucking the energy into herself. Ava almost laughed. She doubted any sane man would let her mount him. But there. Another form of sexual consuming. Then she closes her fearful mouth. And draws power into herself with the briefest, the barest of touches, almost as if she tasted the very air around you. Breathe with her. You will both discover bliss. Maybe she could find her own satisfaction, because no man would sleep with her. Even kiss her. Perhaps she could ease both her hungers with a sly nip here, or there.

  No one would know.

  There was another of those dark whispers...but it was right. Mages wandered around thick with their hoarded magic, it followed them like the delicious scent of a fresh kill.

  Her insides tightened. No. It would be a betrayal of Reist’s trust.

  Ava shut the book, the hard slap of leather against the vellum pages echoing against the dark stone walls. Reist didn’t know, or he didn’t care how she felt about him. She wasn’t sure which one was worse. She’d wanted him for ten years. An age in the life of a thief. She was unwilling to risk losing his friendship, of him acting as her master, by revealing that she had inappropriate feelings.

  She winced. Inappropriate feelings. From the moment she’d met him, he’d been kind and courteous. He was her first friend. Gratitude had slipped into something more, something deeper. She’d loved him for a long time.

  More fool her.

  And there was the bitterness she had to control. Her hold over it had cracked since Fallon continued to occupy Reist’s bed. It did scare her. She couldn’t become like the worst of her kind, stealing souls, taking until the body was little more than a husk, until the skin became hers to use.

  She dropped the book onto the table and stared at the pitted cover. It was an old book, no doubt hidden in Dorien’s restricted sections. Maybe it hadn’t been taken seriously. Its title was a disguise for the lewd content. Perhaps it was simply a mage’s twisted fantasy, because Reist would’ve told her such a thing was possible. He’d been honest about what she could do. His choice of bedmates aside, she’d always trusted that about him.

  It had to be false. But the niggle of it, the promise of illicit twists of power feeding into her empty soul, thickened her blood. If they caught her...then everything they’d always said about her would prove true. She was a thief to her core. But they wouldn’t catch her.

  Her thoughts rolled around. First, she had to trail after more apprentices on Reist’s watch list. She’d slip the book back into the library while she was about it. On a more innocuous shelf than her own. The mages were focusing on the Convocation that night, and their powers would be a feast trailing after them.

  She’d grab the chance to test her theory. The teken was burning a fierce red on her palm. She had no choice.

  Chapter Three

  Reist was kissing Fallon.

  Ava’s gut tightened. Loitering around the corridors and alcoves that fed into the Moon Chambers was a mistake, but she’d followed the golden twists and turns of magic cast off by the higher mages. Almost as if someone had put a ring through her nose and tugged her along.

  And now she had her first view of them together. Properly together. One she couldn’t avoid.

  She pressed her hand to her mouth. Hard. The fury of the thief burned within her, the one that wanted to test him, to see if she could pull in his power, make it her own and then open her mouth and devour him.

  She wanted to sink her teeth into the innate strength of his sculpted body, but her desire soured as she watched them, heard them.

  His fingers pushed through Fallon’s hair and teased it back from her neck. He smiled, that slow, easy smile, the same one that he’d given to Ava on the first day in the Institute. The one she’d always thought had been just for her. He buried his face against Fallon’s skin, against the curve of her shoulder. There was a...reverence to his every stroke, every openmouthed kiss, and something in Ava died.

  He slid easy hands down Fallon’s back to cup her backside. The woman laughed and said something that had him pulling back and transforming that easy smile into a grin. A wicked curve that changed his face. And Reist had never looked at her that way. With want...and lust.

  Pain and regret twisted in Ava’s gut. Stupid plan. She shouldn’t have been near the upper chambers, the privilege of the higher mages. But it was the one night of the month when their tightly bound magic flowed. Why, she was never allowed to know. Another mage secret. They wouldn’t miss a tiny snip from their power.

  Reist’s new bed toy kept him distracted even over something as serious as a Convocation. Bitch. Bastard. Both of them. She closed her eyes and willed down the fierce rush of bitter anger, the heat that made her nails dig hard into her palms.

  Ava stepped into the shadow of an alcove. It
s darkness wrapped around her, hiding her. She melted back into the stone, unseen, unheard. The skill that made her the perfect messenger and the eyes and ears for the new Highest Mage.

  She let her head rest against the coolness of the smooth stone lining the little alcove. How Reist acted with Fallon drove a knife into her gut. She couldn’t fight it. She’d known he was never...maybe the word was faithful...to her, but she hadn’t expected him to be enjoying his time with Fallon quite so much.

  Reist was all about ambition. Only ancient, imperial wards stopped his further rise, of becoming emperor in Cadmus the Sixteenth’s stead. What did that woman in his bed give him? An insult to Heyerdar? The two senior men of the court had shared mutual antagonism long before Reist had been gifted with the exalted position of Highest Mage.

  She had to stare at them again. She didn’t want to, but the pull was inexorable. The pair courted imbalance. Magic was finding the perfect harmony, perfection in opposites. Reist had to know that. Had to feel it in his soul like she did. Higher mages did not fuck within their caste. Yet there he was, in full view of everyone and for the past month, taking Fallon to his bed. Their powers were too similar. Whereas hers...

  Her attention jumped to the left, the sudden pull in her senses warning her that another magician had entered the wide hall. Whoever it was prickled her skin. Ancient power, pulled from the earth, from the fire of the sun, licked across her empty soul. Panic hit her and she shrank back against the stone. Elemental magic. She swallowed. Heyerdar.

  He was there in the shadow of a side room archway, the burnished breastplate of his senior captain’s armor catching the glints from sconces on the wall. He watched, as she’d watched. His face was bleak, no emotion, just the hard frown that was his mouth regardless of his mood. His meaty fist clenched and reclenched the pommel of his sword.

  A heartbeat later he turned away and disappeared.

  Ava blinked. Now she’d witnessed it herself. This was Heyerdar. The Left Hand to the Emperor. The man who would take a body apart if he thought someone looked at him the wrong way. Yet...he had walked away. Why?

  She closed her eyes, focusing on the brief brush of power that had skittered across her soul. Her heart beat slowly, and the dark calm at her heart grounded her, prepared her. Here was magic to taste. It poured from Heyerdar in waves.

  She put her fingers to her lips as her mouth ached to part. The craving deepened and she denied herself the easy path of eating flesh. With her mouth shut, it was as if the magic was pulled towards her, drawn by the void within her. Magic pressed against her skin, surrounded her and slipped, hot and delicious, through to her greedy soul.

  Ava pulled apart the lick of his bitter magic, finding the shadow of the man within. As the brief flare of it fed her emptiness, her breath caught. Emotion rocked her. Fury and pain hit her hard in the chest, echoes of other emotions fizzling away.

  Heyerdar was a riot of hatred. He wanted Fallon, and Reist had stolen her. Something held him back, but the sliver of magic that had touched her wasn’t enough to reveal more of his thoughts, his soul. Years as a spy for the mages had honed her curiosity. Did the new Highest Mage have something over him?

  Ava wiped a hand across her mouth. The test was over. And the little book had revealed a truth. She could take power without devouring the host’s flesh. It had also brought her something else. A new plan.

  Heyerdar wanted Fallon as she wanted Reist. His pain was as sharp as her own. There was a deal to be done. Heyerdar was elemental. He didn’t follow the strict rules of high magic. He never would. So what she had to offer—the way they would both have what they wanted—wouldn’t have him screaming for the ruling mage to throw her out of the Institute.

  She slipped out of the alcove, her fingers trailing against the stone, her attention fixed on Reist and Fallon. They had eyes for no one else, grabbing time before the Convocation. Her thin boots light and silent, she ran, clinging to the shadows. She had to move before her nerve failed her. Baiting the lion in his den. He’d shoved the apprentices into the wall, only groveling making him release them. She’d have no one to argue her case for her.

  Ava took to the stairs, finding the straight paths and spirals that would take her deep into the lowest chambers of the Institute.

  Each stone was known to her. Even down there. She’d had the time to learn every passage, every room. It was easier to move though the narrow, sconce-lit corridors. She took the maze of minor passages, rather than risk the more-traveled paths and the scorn of mages who saw her as an abomination, a traitor. Her kind were often mercenaries for the emperor’s enemies. And mages had made her very aware of that fact. Her first years had been empty...filled only with Reist.

  Ava pushed back that thought. She had to embrace the thief. Ten years of dedicated service to the mages and the emperor still meant nothing to any of them. She doubted it ever would. Maybe it was the loosened thief in her but she only had a twinge of guilt at what she planned to ask of Heyerdar.

  The air tasted different in the lowest chambers. She was never quite prepared for it, because like everyone else she maintained a discreet distance from the emperor’s senior captain. With her new knowledge, she could name it. It was the essence of the elemental, his magic staining the walls, the air. Layers of it. So thick she could almost eat it.

  She fought to focus. The words of Roald and Kare ran through her mind, of watching Heyerdar grab two boys and bury them in the wall. Of his listening to their screams and doing nothing.

  A shiver ran over her skin but she ignored it. She had a deal that could get them what they both wanted. And if he said no, she could run.

  Her heart in her throat, she slipped through the gap in the heavy doors leading into his rooms.

  Sweat trickled down her spine that had nothing to do with the warm air. She was playing with her life. He was elemental, unpredictable. She’d heard rumors of past apprentices sent on dares and never returning, of him leaving a pile of bones outside the doors to his rooms. They’d looked gnawed.

  Ava frowned, irritated that she’d fall back into myth and rumor. Still, her fingers dropped to the small blade at her hip. It wouldn’t be much of a defense against muscle, armor and steel, but it bolstered her courage.

  She moved forward, her gaze darting over the worn tapestries, the flickering lamp stand picking out the gold threads in the embroidery. Ancient images of the Institute covered the fabric, the symbols of the elementals stitched into each stone. It was a reminder that his was the oldest form of magic.

  She paused at the next door, her heart in her throat. She flexed her fingers before they balled into a fist. Taking a deep breath, she rapped twice on the thick wood and forced herself to wait.

  She clung to her calm as the hinges grated and the door pulled back.

  Heyerdar leaned in the stone arch, his hand draped over the high lintel of the wooden door. He’d removed his armor, the thick linen undershirt stained by rust and dark leather. Lamplight touched his golden eyes and the streaks of copper in his blond hair. He tilted his head, his frown in place.

  “What do you want, thief?”

  His low voice was bitter, the curl of anger she’d felt when she’d taken his trace of magic into herself still there in his voice. Reist had stolen his woman. And nobody took anything from an elemental. Ava didn’t answer. She did what she did best and slipped past him into his room.

  “I didn’t say you could come in.”

  His snarl followed her, echoing in the low arch of the stone chamber. He glared, his golden eyes more animal, more a part of nature than human, caught her and pinned her to the stone wall. Literally. Almost as if the cut stone reached out to grab her, took her body and wouldn’t release her. So much for her plan to run. He was an earth elemental. Of course the wall was his to command.

  She pulled in a tight breath, the constriction of the stone somehow pressin
g tight against her lungs. She could almost taste his magic, and her mouth watered. “I have a proposition for you.”

  His gaze raked over her and he turned away. “I have no interest in you.”

  “Never said you did.”

  “You think I’m not particular?”

  “I know your tastes, Heyerdar. And they’re very particular. Tall. Blonde. A higher mage’s blistering magic.”

  He stood before the blackened hearth, his back to her. His shoulders tensed. “Get out.”

  Ava ploughed on. “A woman no longer in your bed.”

  Before she could move, he’d turned and with inhuman speed forced her hard up against the wall. His eyes glowed, his magic so close to the surface she could almost taste it. It licked at her senses, her own need aching to eat him. He’d be a foul burn, his blood and meat sour in her mouth, but with the new way she had... She pressed her lips together and her heart quickened.

  “Try to take my magic from me, thief, and I promise it’ll be the last thing you do.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She told him a truth. “You’re elemental. I draw your meat and bone and you’d taste like mud.”

  He tilted his head. “Then what do you want?”

  “Reist.”

  His growl rippled over her. “I imagine you want him in one piece. And alive.”

  “Reist is mine.”

  “He has a strange way of showing that.”

  “He’s thick-headed.”

  Heyerdar gave a low, rumbling laugh and released his grip on her. The pressure of the stone at her back eased, and she could pull away. She resisted the need to rub her arms, knowing that his hard hands had left bruises.

  “So what’s your proposition? I’m assuming it’s not getting me within gutting distance of him?” He lifted an eyebrow. “I could’ve done that a month ago. And any time since.”

  “I want him alive and you want her.”

  His gaze was on her again, fury and pain a wild mix before his eyes became flat gold. And there’d been something else she couldn’t name. What he was confused her. He sat in his leather padded chair set before the cold hearth and waved her to the opposite chair. He curled his fingers, a casual flick, and a spark of fire started in the grate.