Page 49 of A Kiss of Flame
Hearing him compare her with her mother touched at an old festering wound that sent Levian’s skin burning with raw anger. Merlin looked her up and down appraisingly, reading her visceral response like leaves at the bottom of a cup.
“I wondered once,” he mused when she said nothing, “which side of the tree you might fall. I hoped it would be mine, but I am not sad it was Trislana’s.”
“Do not say her name,” Levian snarled, her ears crackling with fury. “Never.”
Merlin stiffened at her outburst, something like regret flickering across his face briefly before his gaze hardened. He laced his long, tattooed fingers and sat them in his lap before he said, “You’re an Ambassador now, are you not? The Wizen Council cannot know what you’re up to.”
Her blood pounded in her ears. Her voice was pure ice when she replied, “My business is my own, and since when did you begin to care about my well-being?”
The room fell silent for several deafening seconds, and Merlin glared at her. When he rose, he did so slowly, and Levian had to force herself not to slide back toward the door. Even without his powers, Merlin had a dark aura that was oppressive and terrifying. His voice was hollow when he spoke. “That night, I came for you,” he said, holding her gaze. “Do you remember it?”
Levian swallowed the nerves lodged in her throat. Despite herself, she began to tremble. She would never forget that nightas long as she lived. Until her visit to The Prison last year, it had been the last she’d seen of her father.
Fearing Merlin was lost entirely to the shadows, Levian’s mother had fled with her into the night. They’d hidden away in the woods while Trislana had tried to reach Iathana, the Willow Mother, and leader of the dryads. Her mother had been banished from the Veil of the White Wood, the home of her people, after she’d run away with Merlin years before. Trislana had pleaded for Iathana to grant them sanctuary, but Merlin found them first. He’d come to take Levian back.
She glared at her father with pure and utter loathing, her heart pounding in her chest.
“I knew I would not turn from my path,” Merlin told her. “But I came for you.”
“I don’t care,” she ground out darkly.
His jaw clenched, and he scowled down at her. Once, a long time ago, she’d felt warmth in the way he looked at her, but now, it was only a hollow, cold void.
“I knew your mother couldn’t stop me,” he continued, ignoring her, “but then you called to her. Cried for her. And she cried for you.” He tensed at the memory. “I am no noble man, Levian, and I have done horrible things you cannot imagine. I sold myself to the shadows,” he lifted his hands before him and clenched his fists, a mage with no magick, “and it cost me almost everything.”
Levian shifted backward, unsure if she wanted to scream or be sick as a wave of chaotic emotions flooded her. “You knew the cost,” she reminded him, her voice barely audible.
Merlin dropped his hands slowly back to his sides and nodded, his gaze dropping. “I did, but I was unwilling to pay them all,” he grumbled. “You may think me a monster, Levian—Iama monster—but that doesn’t mean I have never cared what happens to you.”
Her skin crackled faintly with dampened magick as the bitter rage inside her boiled over. She felt the pressure of The Prison’s enchantments that kept anyone from doing spell craft squeeze against her. “Im anor doria ilë en’morn sharn,” she said in the Elder speech, her ears crackling.I hope you rot in the black hells.
It was one thing for her to hurl curses at him in common tongues, but to do it in the language of magick held a weight she wanted him to feel to the depths of his bones. Merlin shifted uncomfortably on his heel, his expression darkening.
She was no longer that little girl crying for her mother, afraid of what would happen to her family. Levian was a grown woman. A mage, for better or worse, like her father, and she would not leave this place again without him knowing.
Merlin gazed upon her with something almost like pride before lifting two fingers to his black heart and saying, “Vánath il'curan, selda.”I accept your curse, daughter.
There was no magick to bind what they’d just done, but the act held a heavy weight. Levian was overwhelmed and angry, her body betraying her, shaking with evident emotion as the crackling in her ears subsided.
Merlin didn’t taunt her. He gazed at her for a long moment before he turned his back to her to tend to his fire, giving her a moment to collect herself. Levian tried to calm her trembling, but her nerves were gone, and to her shame, she wasn’t sure if she had the fortitude to get what she needed out of Merlin despite her efforts. She turned to leave.
Her eyes caught sight of a fae title stacked on a rickety table nearby, just as she did,In’sito Celaria. It was nothing sinister, just a book about the Dökk capital city of Celaria and its customs. She’d read something similar in the archive of The Towers once in school, and seeing it resurfaced a memory.
“The Celarian Temple, their priests wore black masks, did they not?” she asked.
Merlin turned back to face her at the strange question before he nodded. “They did.”
The gears in her head began to turn rapidly, bypassing her anxieties and desire to leave. “Why?” she asked, not able to fully recall.
Her father gave a little shrug, in nearly the same way she often did, to her irritation. “Tradition,” he said. “In the shadow, no one is known by their physical appearance but by the essence of their magick. Once the priests took their oaths, they were never seen by another without the mask. They became dedicated to the shadows.”
Levian didn’t care for Merlin’s reverent tone when speaking of the Celarian priests, but she pushed past it. The thieves had used very effective glamours, according to Abigail, so it had puzzled her why they’d also chosen to wear black masks. The only reason she’d deduced was that they wanted the masks to be recognized, but none of the thefts had been particularly public to warrant such a calling card.
Barith had asked her if she thought Merlin might know to what ends the thieves were collecting their items. She’d bristled at the thought of asking her father then, and she wasn’t feeling any warmer to the proposition now. Still, she knew if Barith were with her, he’d grumble at her for passing up the obvious opportunity out of stubborn determination to figure it out on her own. She could almost hear the dragon’s voice in her head. ‘Ye might as well make the most of it since ye’ve frozen yer ass off and had to talk to him already.’ Her heart gave a dull, aching thump thinking about the dragon.
Levian cursed internally at the dragon and swallowed her stubbornness. “A Dökk dagger, the journal of a Dökk Lord, the ring of a Dökk elder, a piece of the Temple in Celaria, and theHeart Orb—why would anyone want all five of these things?” She offered Merlin the puzzle, even though a small prideful part of her hoped he couldn’t figure it out either.
Merlin tilted his head in an unnerving way. “All of those items would be great treasures to a true collector,” he told her, his voice stilted. That unnerved her more.