The comingled blood turned gold.
Miranda stepped backward once, again, until she stumbled against her chair and sat down. “I begged her to tell me.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll decline the challenge.”
“No,” Sydney said. “You’ll accept it. And you’ll require that it be held soon.”
“Ian could kill you.”
“Unlikely,” Sydney said. “Besides, do you honestly think Shara would let me keep walking around if I went against her wishes? Let me make this easy for you, since you don’t seem to have much of a handle on her character: She wouldn’t. She’d see me dead in a blink. I’m still bound to Shadows—I still owe interest on the debt you sold me into, so when she says ‘jump,’ I don’t even need to ask how high, because my muscles are already coiling.”
“Your father.” Miranda’s voice sounded as if she were speaking from very far away, perhaps even from the past.
“What?” Sharp as the spell that had pooled blood onto Miranda’s desk.
“Your father was the one who took you to that place. He told me you were stillborn. I didn’t find out what he had done until the most recent Turning.” Anger, still. “I wasn’t going to give away any of my children. I had planned to find some unwanted infant and pay our debt with it. But he said family blood kept the magic purer. Stronger. He did this.
“I killed him for it, during a challenge. I made sure a spell went wrong.”
“That’s all well and good, but in the end, it doesn’t matter who walked me through the doors and left me there. Someone did. And you may well have killed him to make yourself feel better, but it’s not like you took yourself over to Shadows to ask for me back, now, is it?” Sydney asked.
Miranda’s face was her answer.
“Exactly. Let you know if I got out, but you weren’t about to try to pull me out early. Not and have to suffer for your magic. And you still use Shadows’ magic—this entire House reeks of it. I made you dance, just like almost every other damn magician the night of the first challenge. You can say you wouldn’t this and you’re sorry that, but words are easy, and your actions say otherwise. So forgive me if I don’t reach out for a hug. Mom.”
“I’ve just found you again.” Tears in Miranda’s eyes.
“And what? I’m supposed to believe you feel some miraculous connection to me? That you feel bad about what I went through, what I suffered to get here, and now you want to make amends? Your entire world is built on suffering—the fact that I lived through it changes nothing about that.”
“That is the way our world is,” Miranda said. “You can’t change that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Accept the challenge, Miranda. If you want some kind of relationship with me, that’s where it starts.” Sydney got up and walked out of her mother’s office.
The House said nothing as it closed its doors behind her.
? ? ?
Miranda sat in the quiet of her office after Sydney left. After some time had passed, she stood up, walked around the desk, and sat in her own chair. She gathered up the desk pad and threw it away—the blood from the Perdita spell had ruined it. It would have to be replaced. Then she straightened the items on top of her desk, making sure they were precisely where she wanted them.
She did not ask the House why it hadn’t warned her that Sydney was there.
Miranda picked up her pen and wrote “accepted” in even script on the challenge. On the line for choice of magic, she wrote one more word: “mortal.”
Then she took the ruined desk pad back out of the trash. The proof of the results of the Perdita spell would be necessary. She picked up the phone and called her lawyers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’m so pleased you had time to meet with me today,” Miles Merlin said. “And thank you for being willing to come here, to the House, instead of to my club. I have some rather delicate news that I wanted to share, and I really felt that it was better to do so here, where we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Of course,” Grey said. He would have preferred the Mages’ Club, where they could have been seen together, but he’d still been thrilled to get the invitation. This was exactly what he’d been waiting for. For someone to acknowledge that he had value as an ally. The fact that it was Miles Merlin, his mother’s biggest rival, just made it sweeter.
“Though, just because we’re in more personal surroundings doesn’t mean I can’t offer you a drink. You’re a Scotch man, am I right?” Merlin set out glasses.
“Neat, please.” Even more flattered then, that Merlin had gone to the trouble to find out what he drank. This was the beginning of his return to his rightful place, to the inner circles of the Unseen World. While he waited, Grey looked around the room. Screens and monitors covered the walls, scrolling data, flashing images. Something happening everywhere, and everything up to date and top of the line. It looked like power—like the sort of room he wanted for himself.
“Very different from House Prospero, isn’t it?” Merlin asked.
“It is. But this—this feels more like the future. I’m more comfortable in a House like this.”
“I suspected you might be.” Merlin handed Grey his drink. “I asked you here because I—well, first because I’ve been very interested in your progress through the Turning. As you know, my own son and I have had a disagreement and parted ways, but he hasn’t chosen to do what you’ve done. He hasn’t chosen to strike out on his own, to attempt to establish his own House. I would have preferred it if he had—I could at least respect his ambition.” The last as an aside, a secret confessed between friends.
“Once I left Prospero, I always knew I’d work to establish myself as a House at the next Turning,” Grey said, glossing over the fact that his leaving Prospero hadn’t been voluntary, making it seem instead like a choice made through ambition.
“No thought of reconciliation with Miranda, then? Although, I suppose you wouldn’t, not after what happened.” Merlin shook his head, the image of a man remembering something he’d rather forget.
Grey set his drink down. “There was a binding to silence put in place over the disinheritance.”
“Oh, no, no. I don’t mean that. I’m not referring to any of your actions. I mean what she did. To your father.” And now Merlin looked at Grey straight on.
“To my father?” Grey’s hand went to the shoulder that had been hurt by the magic that killed his father.
“Yes, of course. That’s right,” Merlin said. “You were there. I apologize for mentioning it. I don’t want to bring up bad memories. I shouldn’t say anything else.”