My heart thumped in my chest. This was it. At last, I would be able to put a face to the man who threatened to destroy everything I had built by forcing me to give up the powers that I had worked so hard to develop for so many years.
I snapped my gaze to the person striding up to stand next to Godric Quill.
We had ended up fairly close to the stage, so I could see the Binder clearly as he finally straightened and turned towards the eager crowd. At first, a flash of panic shot through me, and I had to remind myself that a Binder had to touch someone in order to lock away their magic.
When my mind had reasserted that he couldn’t bind my magic from across the room, a wave of searing anger replaced the worry.
Lance Carmichael. He had golden blond hair that curled slightly at the ends, and bright blue eyes that shone with the ideals and truths about the world that he carried. It made me want to shove my poison magic down his throat. Why did he get to decide what kind of life everyone was supposed to lead? My path in life was no less valid than his.
“Thank you,” Godric Quill said as he held up his hands to silence the audience. “Thank you all for coming here tonight to help us celebrate the start of a new era. It is not often that I meet someone as passionate and brave as the young man standing next to me. Instead of finishing out his studies these final months before he turns twenty years old, Lance Carmichael has agreed to spearhead our operation to at last deal with the dark mages who lurk outside our walls. Along with the entire might of our law force, he is going to ride out the day after tomorrow to end this threat to all of Eldar once and for all.”
Another bout of cheering and applauding washed through the ballroom. Godric clapped Lance on the shoulder in a fatherly gesture and then motioned for him to step forward. When the leader of parliament held up his hand again, the crowd fell silent once more.
“Thank you for that, Chancellor Quill,” Lance said as he gave the older man a nod while a bright smile shone on his face. “You are far too kind.”
Clothes rustled and jewelry clinked as everyone seemed to crane their necks to get a good look at the hero of Eldar. I resisted the urge to cross my arms and scowl.
“My dear friends,” Lance said as he turned back to face the sea of glittering guests. “Thank you for all your faith in me. I promise you that it will not be in vain. As soon as I realized that I was a Binder, I always harbored the hope that I would one day be able to change the world for the better.”
A murmur of approval went through the audience.
“Magic is not meant to be hoarded jealously like treasure,” he continued. “It is not meant to be something that only the privileged few can enjoy. It is meant to be shared. To be a gift to all people. For far too long have these dark mages amassed more and more power, selfishly refusing to share any of it with the ones who were born without it.”
Calls of agreement rose from a few places in the crowd.
“But no more!” Lance declared as he pumped his fist into the air. “I give you my word that I, with the gracious help of Eldar’s constable force, will find all of the remaining dark mages. I will bind their magic so that they can’t hurt anyone, and then we will return them all to Eldar before I unbind their magic again so that they can complete the graduation ceremony that they should have done long ago, and add their power to the Great Current for all to share.”
The people around us were getting worked up now and several of them clapped and whistled.
“These dark mages have terrorized our countryside for far too long.” His voice was rising into a shout and determination blazed in his blue eyes. “They have kidnapped our people and forced them to become slaves out in their mansions in the hills. But no more!”
We had never kidnapped ordinary citizens and we didn’t keep slaves. People sought us out willingly and offered to serve us because they wanted a taste of the freedom and power we had. But that, of course, didn’t fit with Lance’s narrative.
“They have tortured and killed all the heroic men and women who have previously gone into the hills to take them back to Eldar. But no more!”
Okay, that one was true.
“I will never understand why people who are born with power would refuse to share it with the less fortunate. Magic should be shared equally with everyone and these selfish dark mages who jealously hoard it all for themselves are nothing more than ruthless villains!”
People around us called out agreement.
“And I swear to you that I will bring them all back to face justice!” Lance finished as he thrust his fist into the air.
The entire ballroom exploded into cheers and applause and whistles. I studied the expression on Lance’s face as he gazed out across the crowd. Blazing conviction shone in his eyes and he had that confident look that only young inexperienced people had. The one that came from thinking that they were immortal and that they could just go out and change the world as long as they had enough courage and passion. But that was not the way the world worked. Courage and passion didn’t win any battles. Power and strategy did.
As I looked up into his smiling face and thought back on everything he had just said, I realized that I had never wanted to kill anyone as much as I wanted to kill him. Not even my hatred for Callan came close to the fury that rose inside me when I thought about Lance Carmichael’s self-righteous attitude.
By all hell, I wanted to break him so badly. I wanted to shatter his spirit into a million pieces and grind it into the dirt below my feet and watch him weep as he realized that the world wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and people holding hands.
He called us selfish for not sharing our power, but we were not the greedy ones. The true greed came from all the entitled people who reached out like toddlers with their grabby hands and demanded that we give them something that we had worked hard to develop. Something that we had poured years of blood and sweat and tears into. Something that they hadn’t earned.
I would get Lance Carmichael and I would break him, if it was the last thing I did.
“Audrey,” Callan said.
Snapping my gaze to him, I almost bit his head off before I saw the same fury burning like black flames in his eyes as well. So instead of taking out my rage on the one person in this room who, for once, wasn’t actually the object of my anger, I blew out a controlled breath and adjusted the golden mask on my face.
My eyes drifted from the grinning hero who was leaving the stage to join the crowd and towards the door that led to the exit we had counted on. Dread drew its icy fingers down my spine.
“The guard is still blocking the door,” I said.
“I know.” Callan shifted his gaze between the ballroom’s two short sides. “We’re gonna have to improvise. That library you told me about, is it that one?”
The crowd around us was starting to shift as people returned to the seating area while others began dancing again when the music started back up. I discreetly turned to see where Callan was looking.
“Yes, but it’s too far to jump out the window.” I drew my hand over my jaw as a sudden idea popped into my mind. “Though, we might be able to make it work anyway. Listen up.”
Rising onto my toes, I wrapped my arms around him as if I was giving him a hug, and then spoke softly in his ear. When I drew back, Callan looked down at me with raised eyebrows.
“You sure you’ll be able to handle it?” he asked.
I arched an eyebrow back at him. “Are you?”
Huffing out a laugh, he dragged his hand through his black hair and then repositioned the mask across his face. “Alright, let’s do it. I’ll go find the waiter and have him send Lance to the library.”
“Good. Let’s get this over with.”
“Be ca—” He cleared his throat. “Don’t mess up.”
Then he stalked away without another word.
I heaved an irritated sigh and slipped away in the other direction. Moving stealthily through the crowd that had gathered below the stained-glass windows, I snuck towards the small library on the other side. The door was unguarded and there was no red velvet rope that marked it as off limits, so I assumed that I would be able to just walk inside. However, that of course also meant that there might be other people in there.
My suspicions were confirmed when I opened the door to find two people already seated in the leather armchairs. They appeared to be reading something, and they looked up in surprise when I entered. I slammed a hand over my mouth and sprinted over to the window. Throwing it open, I pretended to vomit right out through it.
The two men in the armchairs scrambled out of their seats.
“Oh, by the Current,” one of them exclaimed from somewhere behind my back. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” I croaked, not turning around as I dry heaved again. “I’m just feeling a bit… sick. If I could just have a few minutes to—” I pretended to throw up again.
“Of course,” he stammered. “We’ll give you some privacy.”
Their shoes thudded against the floor as they fled out the door and closed it behind them.
Straightening from the window, I turned back to the now empty room and let a villainous grin slide home on my lips. Men. They never quite knew what to do when a woman was unwell, so they almost always beat a hasty retreat.
I leaned back against the windowsill and crossed my arms while I waited for that waiter Callan had blackmailed to deliver Lance to me.
The minutes ticked away. Five minutes turning into ten which then turned into fifteen, according to the small clock on the side table. A few other people tried to enter the room, but I just pretended to vomit out the window again while begging them for some privacy.
When twenty minutes had passed, I was beginning to wonder if the waiter had just cut and run now that he knew exactly who he was supposed to lure here. But then the door was pushed open.
My eyes shot to the two people who became visible through the gap.
A skinny man with gray eyes and the white shirt of a waiter walked across the threshold while speaking over his shoulder. “Again, sir, I’m so sorry to pull you away from your friends like this, but this young lady was desperate to speak with you and she didn’t want her husband to find out. As I mentioned, I think he might be abusing her so please be gentle.”
“Of course,” Lance Carmichael said from behind the waiter. “I will do everything I can to help her.”
It was actually a pretty decent lie. Right now, Callan was posing as my husband, and given the number of times he had stabbed me and choked me and cut me and just generally tried to kill me over the years, he was definitely abusing me. Though, to be fair, I was just as abusive to him since I had done the exact same things more times than I could count.
I touched my hands together and then kept the magic hidden in my palms as the two of them finished walking into the room.
Blue eyes full of concern looked down at me as Lance approached while the waiter closed the door. The hero of Eldar opened his mouth to speak, but I never found out what he had been about to say because my magic shot through the air and down his throat before he even realized what was happening.
The emotions on his face shifted from concerned to stunned before his eyes fluttered closed and he toppled backwards. A dull thud rang through the room as he hit the floor back first.
The waiter slapped a hand in front of his mouth, presumably to stop a scream.
I moved closer to Lance and looked down into his unconscious face before glancing up to meet the terrified eyes of the waiter.
He swallowed before removing his hand from his mouth. “He said you’d let me live.” His voice wobbled slightly and he stared at me with pleading eyes. “He said that if I did this, you would let me live.”
“I know.” I smiled, which made his shoulders relax and his hands drop to his sides. I gave him an unapologetic shrug. “But I made no such promise.”
Slamming my palms together, I shot a lethal dose of poison magic straight at him. He only had time to suck in a gasp before it hit him right in the face and killed him instantly.
Another thud echoed through the small private library as the dead waiter hit the floor next to Lance. Surprise still twisted his features. I shrugged as I moved back towards the Binder.
We were about to abduct their greatest hero and the leader of their impending attack. We couldn’t very well leave any civilian witnesses who would be able to identify us and tell the others exactly when and where we had escaped.
A hero would have just knocked him out and tied him up and hoped that he wouldn’t be discovered until after we had gotten out of the city.
But unfortunately for the poor waiter, I wasn’t a hero.
I was just a ruthless villain.
