Page 76 of Children of Fallen Gods

“Let’s talk somewhere more private.”

She paused, eyebrow raising. “That’s very flattering, Maxantarius, but I’m long retired.”

Still, I saw the concern in her gaze. Concern— and interest, like a hungry cat with its appetite piqued. Prostitution wasn’t the only thing that Eomara was “long retired” from.

She sighed, then waved me to the back of the room. “Oh, fine. Come. I’m getting us wine, though. We talkanddrink.”

* * *

Eomara’s officehadn’t changed much since I was last here, either. It was jarringly different from the cafe up front, blue-and-purple seductive lights replaced with the warm glow of lanterns, gaudy decoration switched out for bookshelves packed with tomes of every possible color and shape. The room was just large enough for two desks, which faced each other. A middle-aged, spindly man with sandy hair and gold glasses hunched over one of them. He looked up as we entered, pushing the glasses up his nose as his eyebrows leapt.

“Maxantarius Farlione. Ascended be damned, I thought we’d seen the last of you. Actually, thought you’d probably wound up dead in an alley somewhere, to tell you the truth. Until I started hearing those stories about you and Antedale—”

“Max has plenty of time to tell usallhis stories, Erik,” Eomara said, waving a silencing hand at her brother. She perched on the edge of her desk and motioned for me to take a seat, opening the bottle of wine.

“Tell me what brings us the pleasure of your visit. Like Erik said, we did hear all about Antedale. People around here were shocked when it fell.”

“Not just Antedale. I’ve been following all of it — the others, too.” Erik blinked at me, as if his eyes were struggling to adjust to something that wasn’t ink-stained pages. “Took me awhile to realize what you’ve been doing. Taking the cities down indirectly. Seemed like a strange strategy for you of all people—”

Eomara handed me a glass of wine, which was halfway to my lips when I set it down and gave Erik a hard stare. “Me of all people?”

“Well…” Erik shrugged. “You know. With your history.”

Eomara shot him a glare. “Enough talk of the ugly past. We were glad to hear that you were back. Though I will say, I was surprised thatAldrisis the one you came back for. You held a special kind of hatred for him, years ago.” Her gaze went far away. “I always liked him, though. Scrappy, that man. And look where it’s gotten him.”

Look indeed. I took a long drink of wine, mostly to stop myself from getting into an argument that would serve no purpose. Then I set it down.

“Eomara,” I said, “what do you know about life magic?”

Eomara’s face lit up. She set her own drink down and leaned forward, her chin in her palm, looking at me with an interest that was nothing short of ravenous.

“What sort of life magic?”

“Would it be possible for someone to create a spell that bound one life to another? If one person dies, so would the other?”

“That would be terrible,” remarked Erik.

“Oh, yes,” agreed Eomara, a gruesomely delighted smile tugging at her lips. “Terrible.”

“I didn’t think that such a thing was possible,” I went on. “Certainly not something that Valtain magic nor Solarie magic could accomplish on their own. No one can manipulate life force like that. And with such poorly-defined parameters?” I shook my head.

“It’s not possible,” Eomara said, and for a split second I almost breathed a sigh of relief — until she added, “with traditional magic. But…”

“But?”

“But perhaps… with Fey magic.”

I let out a scoff. “So you’re saying that itisimpossible. Considering that the Fey have been extinct for, what, five hundred years?”

Eomara’s dark eyes sparkled with silent laughter. “Come now, Maxantarius. You’ve seen too much to be so naive.”

I hated it, but she was right. I blinked, and as they always did in times like these, my second eyelids seemed so much more noticeable now, a constant reminder of all the magic in the world that I failed to understand.

“So you think that they’re still out there.”

She shrugged. “I have heard stories. Who hasn’t? But even if they are, have a little imagination. Humans have only had magic for a few hundred years. Nothing, in the grand scale of innovation. There’s still so much we haven’t discovered.”

“Like?”

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