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.
No one noticed the little boy frozen in his tracks in the shadows, his mouth agape, his foot hovering above the sidewalk in midstep, a large ladies’ valise hanging off his arm. Aelwyn took her time as she walked toward him, holding his soul in the palm of her hand. She looked right into his eyes, which were blank now; dead. He did not know what had happened to him; did not understand what had taken hold of his very essence and frozen him into place.
She plucked her bag from him and slapped him, hard, on the cheek. His soul trembled in her grasp, wriggling—gasping for air, for breath—for release. Aelwyn sighed. He hadn’t deserved this. It was wrenching to perform an extraction on so small a child. He was only a little boy, a desperate, hungry street urchin, and his gang leader probably wouldn’t have even known what to do with the treasures he carried. Most likely he would have tossed the jars of tonics and herbs into the garbage, broken the crystal glass, and sold the stones for a tenth of what they were worth. She turned away. When she was a few blocks safely past, she released her grasp on him and let his soul back into his body.
The Van Alen Legacy
Melissa de la Cruz's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene