He sighed again. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re a wizard.”
“Yes, I am.”
What did that mean? Had he done it or not? He wasn’t denying it and that couldn’t bode well. A moment later, I heard his footsteps heading to the door. I wanted to yell something at his retreating back but didn’t know what:I hate you! I love you! I will curse every wizard I see from now on.All were true. Yelling any of them into the darkness would do nothing but awaken the kitchen staff. So, I lay down again, fuming, and wished I’d pretended not to wake up at all.
I considered sneaking off to the library, then realized Ronan had read all the important books there. I shut my eyes and flipped through incantations in my mind, trying to find one that produced denarites. Such a spell could prove enormously useful. If I performed it enough times and found a plausible explanation for having the money, I could buy my freedom.
As I thought of coins, incantations flashed through my mind. They involved coins by using the metal as part of the spell. Quite the opposite of what I wanted to do.
Or perhaps the spell Ronan used was one of thievery. I began searching those. While reading a spell on ways to attract your neighbor’s livestock to your property, I drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of Cook Lindon telling me the wagon was nearly packed. The rest of the staff had already gone to the kitchen without bidding me goodbye.
Cook Lindon’s red eyes attested that she, at least, would miss me. Her lips trembled with emotion. So very unlike her. She carried a cloth sack that smelled of food. “Put on your boots and fetch your cloak, child. It’s a cold day.”
I sat up and ran my hand under my pillow. Ten gold denarites were there, enough to pay for five years of my servant’s debt to my new master. I could find no comfort in the gift. It felt like Ronan considered this an ample wage for my friendship, the price to clear his conscience of my abandonment.
I stood and handed the coins to Cook Lindon. I planned to tell her to return them to Ronan, a prideful notion that would’ve brought me pleasure anyway, but when she gasped, I realized she thought I meant to give them to her. And really, that was a better use for the coins. I might be too proud to benefit from Ronan’s largesse, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t have her debt paid.
She was still staring at me with a slack jaw so I said, “I didn’t steal them. Ronan will vouch for that if Mage Wolfson questions you. They’re yours.”
But she wasn’t staring at the coins. She was gawking at my face.
“The scars,” she exclaimed. “They’re gone.” She took my chin in her calloused hand and turned my face one way and another. “Not a trace of ‘em.”
My fingers flew to my cheek and the ridges that had puckered my face for months. Only smooth, continuous skin met my touch.
Ronan hadn’t conjured up the coins last night. He’d performed an incantation to erase my scars. A wave of gratitude nearly made me sink to my knees. I wouldn’t have to gothrough life disfigured. I wouldn’t be stared at and pitied. I’d hunted relentlessly in the library for a healing spell and hadn’t discovered one. But somehow he’d managed that feat.
“Ronan…” I said by way of explanation. “He came in last night.”
Her eyes lit up with understanding. “He must’a waited to fix your scars until Wolfson wouldn’t see what he’d done.” She nodded at the notion. “Master Ronan’s not the bad sort, after all. I reckon that’s why he got you sent away. He couldn’t do nothing for you here under the wizard’s eye.”
Her chin kept wagging, absolving Ronan even though she’d never trusted him before. “That takes some of the sting out yer going, don’t it? Just look at you, all lovely again. At Carendale, you’ll have no trouble at all finding a respectable lad to marry you.” She lowered her voice despite the fact we were alone in the room. “No one need know about what you and Ronan did here.”
“We did nothing.”
“That’s right. Deny any gossip that follows you, and I’ll pray that Carendale has a handsome unmarried blacksmith for you. Those are always wealthy. You’ll live a good life yet, you will.”
I hugged her goodbye before she could plan my nuptial feast. I wasn’t sure if her assertions about Ronan’s reasons for sending me away were correct. Wouldn’t he have said as much last night? But why else would he have suggested to Wolfson that I go if not to protect me?
Ronan had waited to cure my scars so Wolfson wouldn’t know he still cared about me. Otherwise, the wizard might have kept me around to use for leverage again.
I put on my cloak and hood to shadow my face, then made my way outside and across the courtyard. I looked for Ronan, searching unabashedly for some sign of him. No one stood in the shadows of the doorways. At the sound of a box being flung into the wagon, a flock of ravens took flight from a tree and scatteredinto the air. They circled the yard before finding perches on a different tree. No peregrine falcon.
Perhaps Ronan was invisible, lurking somewhere in silent mourning. I wanted to believe he’d come to see me off even though it was much more probable he was in the castle, proving to Wolfson he had no interest in my affairs.
During the three-day wagon trip to Carendale, I took stock of all the magic spells that resided in my mind. I could sort through them by thinking of a topic or I could picture a particular magic book and turn the pages to see what each held.
I never came across the spell Ronan had used to heal my scar, which meant I only had access to the spells from Ronan’s memory before he gave me my mark. He had no need of finding that spell until afterward. He’d grafted his magic into me like a limb from a tree. We grew separately from then on.
I imagined him searching through hidden texts in Wolfson’s and Quintal’s private collections in order to help me. Or—and this scenario was more likely—studying the healing spells he already knew and stitching together this part and that to come up with a spell to erase scars.
And thus continued the back-and-forth swing of my heart like a pendulum set in motion between love and resentment. On one day, I was certain he was still the person I’d always known—good and kind and innocent of fires. His parting gift meant he still cared for me. He would send me word.
But after months at Carendale, after so many days weighed down by their utter wordlessness, I was convinced his parting spell had only been a gift of atonement. He didn’t want to feel indebted to me. That was all.