Page 76 of The Deathless One
“Does that mean you’ll teach me how to use your power?”
“Not the same way other witches use it, but yes.”
A tiny wrinkle formed between her eyes. “Why is it different from the witches who worship you?”
“Haven’t you been listening? Witches like that are limited in what they can use. They sacrifice to me. I gift them power. It is a give-and-take relationship.” His finger turned into a claw under her chin, the black nail digging into her skin. “You are a gravesinger, and you are mine. Any power you desire is directly linked through me. You can take as much as you want, and I have to give it to you.”
“Then why sacrifice you at all?” she whispered.
He winced. “Because people don’t enjoy having to beg for their power. It’s still my magic, no matter how much you take from me. And wouldn’t it be all that much more wondrous if the power was yours and yours alone?”
He watched the thoughts flicker through her mind, and then she blewout a long breath. “No,” she answered, so honestly it hurt to hear the word. “No, that sounds like more weight than I wish to carry.”
She left those words ringing in his head, walked around him, and started toward the front of the cemetery. But then she paused and stared down at a very small grave. The cracked headstone was little more than a name, split in half and covered in moss.
“What is it?” he asked, meandering up to her side.
“Isn’t this… you?”
He looked down to see his own name on the headstone.
Elric Hellebore. May he forever rest in anguish.
Shaking his head with a snort, he put his arm over her shoulders and dragged her away. “Witches have a funny sense of humor.”
There were more infected than before.
She’d slept in the graveyard before wandering the streets of the Factory District in the early morning to see how these people were dealing with them. It seemed their methodology was violent but effective.
Big men corralled the drooling and moaning creatures into back alleys, then used crowbars or other weapons to bash their heads in. But there were more blockades every day. More houses closed up, and the groaning sounds of infected mingled with the scraping of fingernails against the walls. The Factory District was managing it better than others, but that didn’t make any of this right. Soon enough, the infected would get free because there weren’t enough men to kill them all, and then where would her people be?
Her could-have-been husband had a large project on his hands, and it was a distraction, which worked in her favor. She didn’t know how he’d gotten everyone important in her castle under his thumb, but she would need every weapon in her arsenal for the moment she finally struck at the man who had killed her.
But first, she had to learn to harness her power. And that meant spending more time with the Deathless One.
Even in her head, she feigned disappointment at the thought. Because her favorite thing was working on spells with Elric, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
Magic didn’t come easily to her. It hadn’t with Sybil, and some partof her had hoped that with him teaching her, he would have some divine ability to make her see magic in a different way. That just being around him would make everything easier.
Had it?
Not in the slightest.
Elric taught her more complicated spells than Sybil, with the thought that perhaps she was too gifted to learn the easier ones. Now there were so many rules to follow. So many tools that made little sense. Consecrating tools, symbols and runes to etch into the ground. Chants to be spoken and called out during the right phase of the moon. All that he seemed to think she should have memorized by now. But she didn’t even know what half the words meant! He spoke in a language that she didn’t know, so what did he expect?
Jessamine had never had the talent of learning other languages. Her mother had tried for years to teach her all the other dialects of their kingdom, at the very least, so she could greet visiting dignitaries, and Jessamine had always been terrible at it.
But then she’d thought of her mother, and they had missed an entire day of learning magic because every time she tried to cast a spell, it had the flavor of sadness, Elric said. And then he’d left her alone because apparently he was like all men and didn’t know what to do with a sad woman.
He couldn’t fix what had been broken. But neither could she.
And seven days after she’d asked him to teach her, she met him again in the Factory District’s graveyard at twilight.
Jessamine was nearly ready to give up this idea. Maybe she could find someone to teach her hand-to-hand combat. If she was good with a knife, then she could make someone a little scared if they tried to attack her. It was as good an idea as learning magic, apparently, because she was shit at both.
But this time, instead of carrying some new ritual bowl or anything else, Elric stood next to the tombstone they’d been using as an altar with his hands empty. Her stomach flipped, as it did every time she saw him now; that, or her traitorous heart would start beating harder. Both organs signaled her ridiculous need.
Trying not to sway her hips too much, she approached him and asked, “Have you given up on me, then?”
