A Darker Magic
Starship’s Mage Book Ten
Glynn Stewart
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
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Preview: The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart
Chapter 1
The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart
About the Author
Other Books by Glynn Stewart
A Darker Magic © 2021 Glynn Stewart
Illustration © 2021 Jeff Brown
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published by Faolan’s Pen Publishing. Faolan's Pen Publishing logo is a trademark of Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc.
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1
The Mountain deserved the capitals. If nothing else, Olympus Mons remained one of the largest mountains in the Solar System, its peak rising well above Mars’s magically terraformed atmosphere. Beyond that, though, its slopes were girdled with a city of millions of souls, the bureaucrats, administrators and leaders who managed both the Kingdom of Mars and the Protectorate of the Mage-Queen of Mars.
Over a hundred inhabited planets hailed to the Mage-Queen of Mars and the Mountain she ruled from. Those millions of administrators supported hundreds of thousands more who lived inside the Mountain itself, in hundreds of kilometers of rune-encrusted tunnels and century-old geothermal power generator equipment.
Mage-Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Chambers had never even entered the regular tunnels, let alone the more heavily secured chambers and caverns higher up the slopes where the Royal Family lived. But her ship was in orbit, undergoing a minor refit, and her long-standing relationship with the Prince-Regent had resulted in an invitation many officers of the Royal Martian Navy would kill for.
“Afternoon, Lieutenant Commander Chambers,” the red-armored Royal Guard reviewing the invite told her. “You’re expected, of course.”
The veteran Combat Mage, one of the elite who protected the Mage-Queen herself, grinned down at her from his exosuit battle armor. The armor’s helmet was slung over the man’s shoulder, a sign of the trust he was showing the black-uniformed blonde Mage.
“You wouldn’t have made it nearly this far if you weren’t,” he concluded. “He’s waiting for you, but be warned: he’s a tad distracted right now. This is a social invite.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Roslyn admitted. “Guard-Captain…Romanov, is it?”
“Denis Romanov, yes,” the dark-haired Guard confirmed. He was maybe ten years older than Roslyn’s own early twenties and attractive—in an intimidating way. “I head the Prince-Regent’s security. And like I said, Commander, he’s waiting for you. Just be ready for babies and kittens.”
That was all the warning Roslyn got before Romanov tapped a command. The armored hatch slid aside to reveal the mountainside office of the Prince-Regent of Mars, His Excellency Damien Montgomery.
Even after repeated encounters over the last six years and continued communication, Roslyn was still shocked by how short Montgomery was. She was far from a tall woman, but she towered over his hundred and fifty centimeters.
She had enough warning, as it turned out, to spot a black kitten barely bigger than her hand making a dash for the door. She couldn’t have caught it with her hands—but Roslyn Chambers was a fully trained Jump and Combat Mage of the Royal Martian Navy.
Catching a hundred-and-fifty-gram kitten with magic and lifting the animal to her shoulder was easy enough—and earned her a chuckle from the room’s main occupant.
An occupant who, she now realized, had been prevented from containing the kitten by the baby he was holding on his lap. The small, dark-haired man’s hands were covered in gloves to hide an old injury, but he was still able to keep an arm wrapped around his daughter.
“I’m not sure that getting kittens for babies who barely crawl is a great plan,” the second-in-line to the throne in the Mountain told Roslyn. “But I was overruled.”
“He’s getting used to it,” the other adult occupant of the room observed with a chuckle of her own.
Roslyn registered the baby on the other woman’s knee first—and then registered who the slimly gorgeous twenty-year-old redhead had to be.
“Your Majesty!” she gasped, dropping to one knee in front of Kiera Michelle Alexander, the Mage-Queen of Mars.
“This is a social occasion,” the Queen told her sharply. “Get the fuck up.”
The Mage obeyed swiftly, the kitten somehow managing to maintain its balance and purr into her ear.
“When a junior officer of the Mage-Queen’s Navy gets an invite to dinner with the Prince-Regent, she doesn’t assume it’s actually social,” she admitted.
“Told you,” Montgomery muttered. “You haven’t met my daughters, have you, Roslyn?”
“I’ve seen pictures,” Roslyn replied. She looked at the two chubby girls and wished she was good enough with babies to tell them apart. “Jessica and Samantha, yes?”
“Princesses Jessica and Samantha McLaughlin,” Alexander added, but a chuckle undermined any heat to her correction.
“Grab a chair, Roslyn,” Montgomery instructed. “Watch out; there is another kitten around here somewhere. Persephone was grooming Charon last I saw him—and you’ve met Nyx.”
The office held a massive desk against one wall, but there was a large open space for meetings and similar as well. That space had a section of transmuted transparent metal forming a wall, allowing them to look out over the city.
It had been the Mage-King’s office before. Now it was the Prince-Regent’s—and in another year, it would be the Mage-Queen’s office when she ascended the throne in her own right.
Roslyn pulled a chair onto the rug, realizing there were just the three adults in the room.
“No Admiral McLaughlin?” she asked.
“Grace is about three-quarters of the way back to Sherwood right now,” Montgomery told her. “She can only spend so much time here—she almost missed the girls’ birth,
