We stood there like idiots, smiling at each other, for another heartbeat. Then I was in his arms and his lips descended on mine. He kissed me tenderly, hungrily. Like a lover. Like a soulmate.
“Cass,” he breathed.
“Ugh,” Marcus groaned. “Could you two stop it.”
I pulled away, heat flushing my cheeks. I might have been in the clinch of my short lifetime, but I was still relatively new to all this and Marcus was officially my match, so it was pretty bad form. Life and death notwithstanding.
“Sorry, I forgot.” We had discovered the incredibly mortifying fact that the handfast cuffs conveyed my passion to Marcus, who wore the partner cuff to my own, even when that passion was directed at another.
Marcus’s brows pulled together, and his eyes narrowed as he looked down at the charmed wristband I had given him, then back at the chain around my neck.
“Actually, I didn’t sense anything. Last night I could still… It seems that if we are both wearing charms then I’m not affected with the burning in the blood roused whenever you two…” He waved a hand in the air to indicate the embrace we had just shared.
“You couldn’t sense my feelings just now? But I was wearing my pendant when I tried to escape through Richmond…” The handfast cuffs employed a push and pull technique. Presumably, in a more normal courtship, the attraction and passion felt by the couple fed the fire in each, a reciprocal desire building between the couple which acted to pull them closer together. It also pushed them together by punishing them for parting; being too distant from each other could cause physical pain… as we had learned during my failed attempt to flee, though only Marcus had truly suffered the pain of our separation. Thanks to the triquetra charm, I only experienced some light pangs when we were at our most distant. I was glad my pendant had been returned for me, and I felt for it now. “If we’re both wearing one…”
“It’s blocked,” he finished for me. For all the help this new knowledge was to us.
“I don’t suppose anyone has any bright ideas for how we get out of this one?” I asked, somewhat hopelessly. At which point, the light went out.
Marcus gave a short bark of laughter. “That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?”
Fury at our powerlessness swept through me, a rage that usually found a response in nature since my magic had revealed itself. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of the lights.
Why couldn’t I feel the elements answer my call?
A snarl suggested Devyn couldn’t reach his magic either.
“What?” came Marcus’s voice.
“I can’t use my magic,” I said through gritted teeth.
Marcus let out a humph. “You think after that display in Richmond that everything you’ve eaten hasn’t been laced with the pill they used to give you to suppress your abilities?”
Devyn pulled me close. “Marcus, you’ve still been able to help people. You did a shift before the party, right?”
He was referring to our pre-wedding revels, only yesterday. It felt like another lifetime.
“Yes” came Marcus’s short answer out of the darkness.
“Then whatever they’ve been giving Cassandra probably wasn’t served up to you.”
“I suppose not,” Marcus replied grudgingly, a little less monosyllabic. He was curious as to where the Briton was going with this.
“Then we can have light.” Devyn held me closer to his chest. After the events of the last twenty-four hours, I could do without the darkness. I needed some kind of outline, some relief from the dense black of our cell.
“How?” Marcus asked. “Magic? I only know how to use my abilities to cure the illness.”
“Well, it’s time you learned something a little more. With your bloodline, you should be able to do a great many more things than heal people. The Plantagenet line is one of the oldest and most powerful on this island,” Devyn informed him. “I need you to close your eyes.”
Marcus snorted. “What difference will that make? I can’t see my hand in front of my face as it is.”
“It’ll stop you being distracted as the magic manifests itself. Trust me.”
“Right, I’m going to trust you,” Marcus flashed back. I couldn’t blame him. Marcus didn’t know Devyn; they had barely met before last night. And Marcus would not recall their earlier meeting with fondness as it was the same night he had learned not only that he had the magic so reviled by citizens, but that I was hoping to run away from the city with a Wilder.
Before Devyn came into our lives, Marcus and I had never been accused of so much as jaywalking; we wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything to disrespect the Code. Now we were the accused in what was undoubtedly going to become the most scandalous Mete in a century. Or ever.
“Close your eyes,” Devyn repeated. An exhalation of breath presumably indicated that Marcus had complied this time. “I need you to focus. The power is within you. We gain magic from without, from natural resources most of the time; this is how you pull in energy. Here in the darkness, behind the stone and iron, you don’t have access to that. You need to reach within to the power of your ancestors. Deep inside lies a light, a spark. I need you to bring that up to the surface. Raise it slowly, gently; it should be a delicate light.”
As Devyn spoke, a glimmer appeared in the air beside Marcus. I stifled my reaction so I wouldn’t disturb Marcus, his now visible face creased in concentration.
“The light is bright and true,” Devyn coaxed him, and the glimmer responded, growing brighter. “That’s it. Keep your eyes closed. Now, I need you to tie it off. Let it float free. Make it separate from yourself. You still control it, but it exists outside of you; you no
