Chapter One
What a beautiful village, Aelys thought as she rounded the bend in the narrow forest track and caught a glimpse of the sleepy mountain hamlet through the trees. I hope I can keep that woman from dying here today!
Daen, one of her three protectors, walked ahead of her, his back slowly stiffening as they drew nearer to the close-set buildings of the village. A large part of her ached to reach out to him, to ask if he was well, to tell him he didn’t have to come with her into another hated town.
But the larger part of her knew he’d only snarl at her in anger and reject her attempts to comfort him. He would see it not as her caring for him, but as further evidence that she didn’t.
I had to set them free, Aelys reminded herself, as she did a thousand times a day, it seemed. No matter what they think they felt, it wasn’t real. It was the magic of the geas making them feel that they wanted me. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t right, and I had to do it.
But oh, I miss them—
Aelys cut herself off from that line of thought and focused on the older man wearing a blacksmith’s apron who stepped out of a nearby house and walked toward them for a few steps before stopping in the center of the track and folding his muscled forearms across his chest.
“What can I do for ye?” he asked in the broad accent common to the villagers and townspeople who lived in these mountains. Aelys pushed away the pulse of homesickness for her own mountain town of Brionne and summoned a smile for the man.
Brionne is not my home, not anymore.
“I am Bellatrix Aelys,” she said, stepping forward. She brushed Daen’s sleeve as he passed and tried to not be hurt as he moved away. “Sabetha sent me to look at a Mistress Barthon?”
“A wisewoman, are ye?” the blacksmith asked.
“I’m a trained herbalist, yes,” Aelys said. They weren’t quite the same thing, but this man seemed unlikely to quibble over semantics. “Sabetha said she thought I might be able to help ease her fever.”
“Be grateful if you can,” the blacksmith admitted. “That your man, then?” he pointed at Daen.
“These three men are my protectors,” Aelys said quickly, hoping to forestall awkward questions about the nature of her relationship with them. She didn’t know if the blacksmith was worldly enough to realize that any Bellatrix should have a bonded Ageon to protect her, rather than three hired guards.
Though they were my Ageons, Aelys couldn’t keep the tiny back corner of her mind from pointing out. And they would be still, if I hadn’t broken the geas…but I had to break the geas. It made them think they loved me when they didn’t. I had to set them free. I had to.
Maybe if I think it enough, I’ll start to believe it.
The blacksmith took his time studying Daen, then Romik and Vil in their turn as they joined the group. Finally, with a grunt and a nod, he turned, gesturing to them to follow. Aelys took a deep breath and stepped forward resolutely, only to have Daen’s hand shoot out to block her way.
“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered in a low, scathing tone. “I can’t be your protector from behind you.”
Aelys bit back a retort that as a master archer, he absolutely could do that and simply nodded. Daen dropped his hand and set off after the blacksmith, leaving Aelys to follow in his wake.
“Daen’s in a mood again, huh?” Romik asked quietly behind Aelys. She swallowed hard and nodded, glancing over her shoulder to smile tightly at him.
“It’s all right,” Aelys said. “Let’s just go see to Mistress Barthon.”
The blacksmith led them to a relatively well-kept cottage near the center of the small town. By unspoken agreement, Daen and Romik took up positions outside the door while Vil followed Aelys in.
“Mistress Barthon.” Aelys pitched her voice in a soothing tone as she approached the supine form of a woman on a cot close to the fire. “I am Bellatrix Aelys, an herbalist. Sabetha sent me to see if I can help you. I would like to make a decoction of herbs shown to reduce fevers for you. May I do that?”
The patient didn’t answer, merely tossed her sweat-soaked head from side to side on her thin pillow. A wide-eyed teenaged girl stood near the foot of the bed, and Aelys smiled at her.
“Hello,” she said. “You must be Mistress Barthon’s daughter.”
“Y-yes. B-but herbs haven’t worked so far,” the girl said, tears hanging in her words.
“What have you tried?” Aelys asked. “Tell me everything, no matter how small.” She shrugged out of her knapsack and set it on the floor next to the bed.
“Um…meadowsweet,” the girl said.
“In a tea?”
“No, dried and ground to powder, then mixed with her food, but she ain’t eating much. And then what she does eat, she retches up again.”
Aelys nodded. “Meadowsweet is very good for fevers,” she said. “But it does no good if we can’t get the patient to keep it down. Have you any ginger?”
“A little,” the girl said, biting the inside of her cheek. Her huge eyes flicked back and forth between Aelys and her mother, and she shifted on her feet.
“Perfect,” Aelys said with a gentle smile. “Fetch it for me, please, along with any meadowsweet you have left. We’ll add a little of both to the tea and see if it helps. At the very least, tea will help keep her hydrated. Vil, could you fill a kettle for me and set it to boil?”
Vil nodded and set to work while Aelys busied herself muddling the meadowsweet and ginger the girl brought back within a matter of minutes. Soon they had a fragrant tea steeping, which Aelys mixed with some cooler water.
“Vil, help me?” she asked. Again, he acquiesced without a word, helping to prop Mistress Barthon up so that Aelys could pour the tea into her mouth and plead with her to swallow.
For a few seconds, all seemed well. But then Mistress Barthon coughed and heaved, and Vil barely got her turned on her side before she vomited out all the tea onto the floor beside the bed.
Fuck, Aelys thought in the privacy of her own mind.
“That’s just what she does,” the daughter said as she darted forward to clean the mess. “Every time. She can’t even keep water down.”
Aelys nodded, took another rag from the girl and absently helped her clean up as Vil resettled Mistress Barthon in the bed. Her mind spun off in circles as she worked.
If she can’t even keep water down, she’s obviously dehydrated, and this fever has reached the advanced stage. Meadowsweet isn’t going to cut it alone. I bet…if I had some carvacra leaves, that could work. They do grow in the mountains…but how am I supposed to get the medicine into her if she can’t even keep ginger tea down?
Aelys bit her lip and studied Mistress Barthon’s wasted face. She handed the dirty towel to the daughter and narrowed her eyes in thought.
I wish…but there’s no healing spell for fevers. I know that. You can’t magically heal illnesses, only injuries. Because healing spells just amplify the body’s own healing processes, and overloading those causes even more problems to occur—
Aelys blinked. In all her twenty-two years—the last ten of which she’d spent studying magic—that law had been immutable. But thanks to her recent adventures, she was starting to wonder. A book she’d been reading lately—one of the ones she’d taken from the underground mage’s study she had found with the men a few weeks ago—discussed artificers and how they made ordinary objects magical by infusing energy into the component materials.
What if instead of amplifying her body’s processes, I amplified the tea? It’s just plant matter, after all, like wood. Artificers infuse wood with energy all the time.
Aelys pulled her thoughts away from the insidious and inconvenient fact that artificers were highly trained mages who spent years perfecting their craft as excitement threaded through her. She looked down at Mistress Barthon and wiped her chin with a clean towel that sat on the table next to the bed.
I might as well try, she thought. She’ll certainly die if I do nothing.
“Right,” Aelys said as she came to a decision. She smiled at the white-faced teenager wringing her hands. “I need to find a local herb to help with the meadowsweet and the ginger. I can’t guarantee it will help with her nausea…but it’s worth a try. My protectors and I will be back as soon as we can, all right?”
“Y-yes, mistress. I-I mean Bella. Please—”
Aelys nodded gravely. “I know. I will do what I can, child, I promise.”
The teenager lifted her hands to her mouth as her eyes ran with tears. But she nodded bravely. Aelys gave her a tight smile and turned to lead Vil back out through the front door of the house.
Romik pushed off the door frame as they exited.
“Finished already?” he asked. Aelys shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I need to find a local herb. It grows here in the mountains.”
Daen scoffed behind her. “‘In the mountains’? Care to be more specific, Bella?”
Aelys drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if there’s any nearby. But I have to try. I’m going to do a seeking spell and then…we’ll see.”
Daen snorted again, but Aelys tuned him out and turned to Romik. “I think it would be best if we were outside the town. It will be easier to concentrate.”
Romik looked at Daen, then Vil, then shrugged. “All right,” he said. “If that’s what you need, Bella. Daen, lead the way.”
Daen turned without a single word and marched back down the track the way they’d come. Aelys exhaled slowly and forced her mind to focus on what she would need to do for her seeking spell.
She could deal with her tangled relationship with her former Ageons later.
Much, much later.