Magic Rises(122)

A power word. Nice. When I used mine, it ripped me up with pain. Hugh didn’t seem any worse for wear.

“I only have a tiny fraction of his power. You have no idea what it’s like to stand behind him when he lets it go. It’s like walking in the footsteps of a god.”

I sat back in my spot. I’d heard that before.

Hugh studied the boulder below. “You’ve been alive for twenty-six years. He’s been alive for over five thousand. He doesn’t just play with magic; he knows it, intimately. He can craft impossible things. If I were to stand against him, he would crush me like a gnat. Hell, he might not even notice I’m there at all. I serve him because there is no one stronger.”

Hugh turned to me. “I’ve seen you fight. I’m a fan. But if you plan to fight the Builder of Towers, you will lose.”

I realized he wasn’t bluffing. It hit home. If Roland came for me now, I would lose. Looking at it now seemed kind of absurd. I wasn’t even thirty. I didn’t know how to use my magic. What few tricks I had up my sleeve barely scratched the surface. In my head I always suspected that I wouldn’t be able to hold him off, but the way Hugh said it made me pause.

“What makes you think he wants to kill you?” Hugh sat down.

“He tried to murder me in the womb, he killed my mother, and he sent you to find and kill the man I called my father. What makes you think he doesn’t?”

“He’s lonely,” Hugh said. “It eats at him. He can age himself. It takes a lot of effort, and usually he stays around forty. He says it’s a good age, mature enough to inspire confidence, young enough to not suggest frailty. He stayed at it for years, but now he is actively aging. Last time I saw him, four months ago, he looked closer to fifty. I asked him why. He said it made him appear more fatherly.”

How sweet. “I’m not buying it.”

“Think about it, Kate. You are deadly, smart, beautiful, and you are capable. Why wouldn’t he want a daughter like that? Don’t you think he would at least try to get to know you?”

“You’re missing the point. I don’t want to know him. He killed my mother, Hugh. He robbed me of the one person every child counts on for unconditional love. Do you remember your mother?”

“Yes,” Hugh said. “I was four when she died. Three years later Voron took me off the street.”

“I don’t remember mine. Not a murmur, not a trace of a scent, no smudged image, nothing. Voron was my father and my mother. The Death’s Raven was an undisputed authority in my life. The only authority. You knew him. Think about what that really means.”

“So it’s vengeance and a pity party at the same time,” Hugh said.

“No. It’s not vengeance. It’s prevention. I want to kill Roland so there will never be another me.”

“That would be a tragedy,” Hugh said.

“That would be a blessing,” I said.

“Let the shapeshifter sail off,” Hugh said. “Stay with me for a while. No strings attached. No obligations or expectations. See if I can change your mind.”

“I thought we already covered that ground. It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“What’s holding you to him? The man does care about you in his own stunted way, but you will never fit in with them, Kate. Deep down you know this. They’ll always look on you as if you’re a dangerous freak. People fear what they can’t understand, but they can work with it. Animals can’t. They shun the strange or try to destroy it. You can bleed for them for a hundred years and you won’t change their minds. Make one small misstep and they will turn on you.”

I turned and looked at the sea. Curran would fight to his last breath to protect me. If I asked Derek to walk into fire, he would do it. But then again there was Doolittle looking at me with horror in his eyes . . .

“It’s slipping,” he said.

I arched my eyebrow at him.

“Your cloak,” he said. “Some of your power is showing. Just how much are you hiding?”

“I guess you’ll never know,” I told him.

Hugh rested his elbows on a table. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“If Roland doesn’t find me?”

“Yes.”

“In the Keep, doing what I’m doing now.”

“How long will that last, Kate?”

“Hopefully for a long, long time.”

“You’re lying to yourself. Voron made us into serial killers. We can be okay without violence for a few weeks, but after a couple of months, the hand starts itching for the sword. You start looking for that rush. You get irritable, life turns stale, and then one day some fool crosses your path, attacks, and as you cut him down, you feel that short moment of struggle when he leverages his life against yours. If you’re lucky, he’s very good and the fight lasts a few seconds. But even if it doesn’t, that short moment of triumph is like getting an adrenaline shot. Suddenly color comes back into life, food tastes better, sleep is deeper, and sex is rapture.”