During her exile she had yearned for the city, like a missing limb. She wanted to experience all it had to offer: live in the great palace, participate in the hectic preparations for the coming season, and dance at the Bal du Drap d’Or, the Ball of the Gold Cloth—an annual gala to commemorate the unification of the two kingdoms and the foundation of the empire. She wanted to see the queen again. Emrys’s magic might be the shield of the realm, but Eleanor was its center, its great beating heart.
Aelwyn took a shortcut down an alley that led directly to the royal mews, heading toward the side and back entrances for staff, ministers, and courtiers. The elaborate and heavily guarded front gates and reception halls were reserved for honored guests only. Here she slowed down her pace, nervous about seeing her father again. Four years ago, he had sent her away as if she had been nothing to him; as if she’d been just a girl from the kitchens, and not his only daughter. She knew she had done something wrong by losing control of her powers and starting a fire, and she understood expulsion was the only punishment the court would accept for the threat and harm done. But because Emrys never once wrote her while she was away, never once indicated that she was forgiven, Aelwyn had taken her banishment to heart.
In his letter, Emrys had invited her back to the palace, but she was still apprehensive about their reunion. When she was younger, she had sobbed bitterly at their parting; and while she was almost grownup now, as well as Avalon-trained, thinking about him made her feel like that sad girl once more. She wasn’t that much different, really, from the group of street kids—grubby little urchins with dirty faces—that had just emerged from the back of a fry shop into the alley. “Want some?” one of them asked with a grin, holding out mushy peas wrapped in greasy newsprint. She shook her head with a smile, and he shrugged, turning back to his meal and accidentally bumping her shoulder.
“Oh, excuse me!” she said, dropping her bag. But when she leaned over to pick it up, it was no longer there.
It was gone.
She stood there, staring at the ground, and realized she had been had. That bump had been no accident. She looked up to see the little thief running away with it, his food scattered everywhere. “STOP!” she cried, horrified. “STOP, boy!” But he paid no attention to her, darting into the busy streets, weaving quickly through the crowd, and was soon lost in a sea of dark coats, hats, and parasols.
Her precious stones, tonics, and herbs. Viviane’s crystal glass: her treasured inheritance from Avalon. Aelwyn pushed up her sleeves, hiked up her skirts, and ran after the little criminal, pushing gentlemen to the side and stepping on ladies’ toes. Her face flushed with anger and embarrassment. Had she looked that much like a rube? Like such an easy mark? It shamed her to think she had been robbed the minute she set foot in London. Her aunt had cautioned her, had ordered the driver to see her safely into the palace, and Aelwyn had only her stubbornness to blame.
She saw the boy ahead of her—he was about to turn the corner—and once he did, she knew he would be lost, her valuables gone forever if she did not act. There was no other recourse. She had to do it. The boy had given her no choice.
She stopped running and forced her heartbeat to slow, her breath to steady. She closed her eyes and focused. She had seen him for the briefest moment when he’d offered her a bite. She touched the stone she wore around her neck—obsidian, deep as midnight—and called up his face in her memory.
His grubby little face; the face of a young street beggar, a naughty boy with shifty cold blue eyes; an operative of a local syndicate, working for a Fagin who was sure to be lurking somewhere, taking whatever he stole and stringing him along with a pittance. She concentrated and called up her memory of his eyes, and looked through them into his soul.
Aelwyn would not have been able to do this to just anybody, but the boy was young and poor, untrained and uneducated. Children from good families were taught how to protect one’s soul from a mage. But the little thief had not had the privilege of learning how to hide his soul from the world, to disguise its nature; and so she had been able to see into his very essence, into the spirit that made him who he was. As she looked into that deep abyss, a calm settled upon her.
The name of his soul came to her mind in a whisper.
Bradai, she called. To me.
She opened her eyes. Just as she had commanded, a thin gray column of smoke, shimmering in the afternoon light, came streaking toward her. She reached out and caught it with her fist. It was small and cold and shivering. His soul.