Magnus lurched up to his feet so quickly that a wave of dizziness hit him. He had to brace himself against the wall to keep vertical. “I have to go. I—I’m sorry!”
Before he could start running down the street and toward his destination, he realized someone else now approached.
The familiar man wore a black cloak, a murderous expression, and a bloody cloth tied over his right eye.
Chapter 6
“There you are, you little bastard,” Livius snarled.
He grabbed Magnus by the throat. Magnus tried to reach for the blade he’d tucked under his shirt again, but, still weakened from the scuffle with the thief, he failed.
Maddox was at his side in a heartbeat. “Leave him alone!”
“Benito took my eye,” Livius hissed. “And this little thief will pay for that loss with his life.”
Magnus strained to look at Maddox, thinking he might use his strange magic again to render Livius unconscious. Maddox’s hands were fisted, his face a grimace of concentration. But his eyes darted back and forth, seemingly uncertain.
Livius shoved Magnus back from him, his attention moving fully to the boy.
“Your magic still doesn’t work on me, does it?” His grin looked more like the baring of a predator’s teeth. “Lucky me.”
“Let Magnus leave. It’s not his fault the moneylender’s men came for you. It’s your fault!”
“I’ll deal with you later.” With a shove, he sent Maddox stumbling backward, and—in a repeat of recent history—Maddox hit the back of his head against the stone wall and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Magnus stared down at his friend, then turned a look of fury on the man. “He’s a boy, and you treat him like a rag doll!”
“He gets what he deserves.”
“No. No one deserves treatment like that. Not from anyone.”
Magnus told hold of the obsidian blade. Was he prepared to kill today? To fight Livius to the death?
As if he had any chance against someone like this. Someone cunning and cruel and ruthless—nearly as much as the king himself.
For a moment, Magnus wished he too could be so ruthless. It would be of great help at a time like this.
He cast a last look at his friend, Maddox Corso, the witch boy with a fortune dark enough to scare a powerful witch.
But Maddox had a good heart, one that Magnus envied. And he hoped—he prayed—that what he’d told Maddox might make some small difference.
He didn’t have to put up with abuse from this horrible guardian.
He was strong. So strong. Magically strong. But even without magic, no one had the right to bully him. Especially not a sniveling coward like Livius.
Please, please let him remember that, Magnus thought, his chest tight.
Livius drew a sharp dagger from the sheath at his belt. “I’m going to carve out your eyes. But first, I think I’ll remove your lying tongue.”
Magnus glared at the man with defiance. “Will you do the same to Maddox?”
“No. I need him alive and well. But he will be very sorry for trying to escape from me today.”
Magnus looked at Maddox, willing him to rise from the ground, willing his eyes to turn black with magic.
Willing him to turn Livius into ashes that would blow away with the evening wind.
But Maddox didn’t rise.
“Farewell, my friend,” Magnus whispered. “And good luck.”
“What did you say?” Livius demanded.
Nothing you deserve to hear, Magnus thought.
“You want to kill me?” Magnus leveled his gaze at this pathetic man who felt the need to bully and torment someone he thought was lesser, weaker, to get what he wanted.
He made coin from Maddox’s magic. But did he really have no idea what Maddox might be capable of?
“Oh, I do,” Livius confirmed. “It won’t return my eye, but I know it will be so very satisfying.”
“Then kill me,” Magnus snapped. “But you’re going to have to catch me first.”
With a last pained look at his fallen friend, Magnus turned and ran as fast as he could, knowing he had to beat both Livius and the sun in order to get back home.
And run he did, as fast as he could—even faster, he thought, than when he’d chased the runaway horse. The soles of his heavy boots, meant more for trudging through snow and over ice, pounded the dirt road. His muscles ached, his legs screamed, but he ran as if his life depended on it—and it did.
When he cleared the city limits, he chanced a look over his shoulder. Livius hadn’t yet given up. He pursued Magnus, albeit more slowly than he had before, thanks to his new injury.
It would have to be enough.
You shouldn’t have taunted him, Magnus chastised himself as he gripped the blade.
Oh, but it had been far too tempting to dangle meat before the face of one who thought himself the most dangerous beast in the land but who was really nothing more than a quivering coward beneath it all.
Because that’s what Livius was: a coward who blamed others for his own mistakes.
Pathetic.
Magnus’s head still spun from being knocked unconscious, his limbs screamed for mercy from being used to their full capacity, but the stinging in his hand forced him onward, along the stone road that led from the city back to Lord Gillis’s villa.