Heart's Blood(61)

Too bad her eyes were exactly that weak. She wiped them as they entered Harry's cluttered study, hoping Grey at least would not notice.

"Well you should weep, madam," he said, crushing that hope. "All of your scheming has come to naught. I have seen through your manipulation and I am having none of it. None."

"I didn't know-" she began.

"Do not lie to me!" Grey snarled. "You planned every step of the way. You spied on me in the streets, outside the council hall, outside my home, and you even followed me to the opera, by God! And when the opportunity came, you pounced. Did you manipulate that as well? Draw me into the street so I was vulnerable to your plots?"

"No," Pearl cried, but Grey wasn't listening. He obviously heard nothing but the dark constructs of his wounded and suspicious heart.

"Insisting on a blood oath while I was trapped in jail-that's when you did it. Bound me as familiar." He turned on her, roared at her. "Isn't it?"

Pearl flinched, but made herself stand up straight under his attack. She might weep, but she wouldn't cower. "I didn't-"

"You did!" Grey shouted, his hand raised to strike. She didn't flinch.

"Greyson Carteret!" Jax's booming voice brought him up short.

He flung himself away from her. "It was all a lie, wasn't it?"

"No." She had to keep saying it, even if he didn't hear.

"Manipulated into sharing blood oath. Pushed into giving up my blood so you could bind me that much closer, claiming you needed to learn to ride." He put on a show, waving his arms, making faces to mock her and his own behavior. "And then, grasping for the greater prize, you seduced me into taking your supposed virginity. Tell me-" He rounded on her with such ferocity Amanusa jumped. Pearl did not. She wouldn't.

"Tell me, Parkin. Just how many times have you lost your virginity?"

"Once," she said, forcing her voice to clarity and firmness.

"Liar!" He pounded Harry's desk, and a book thumped to the floor.

"Grey." Amanusa interrupted his tirade this time. "That is quite enough."

"Oh, no, it is not nearly enough. She has trapped me." He threw an accusing hand toward Pearl. "Enslaved me and made me into her tool."

"She hasn't." Jax's voice was calm but forceful. "I've been enslaved and I've been a familiar. There's a difference. You are a familiar."

"You-" Grey shook his head. "You're besotted. You don't know-"

"I do. Amanusa is not my first sorceress."

"How do you know she hasn't manipulated-"

"Enough." Pearl walked to stand between the men. "You have the right to abuse me, but they have done nothing-"

"You see?" Grey's hand barely missed striking Pearl when he pointed, but she had the rhythm of it now. She would not flinch. "She admits it. She admits what she has done."

"I did it," she said. "But I did not know I was doing it. I never meant this." Finally, she got it all out without interruption. She wanted him to hear it, even if-

"Liar."

Even if he did not believe it. "Enough," Amanusa said it this time. "We are done with the accusations. You are shocked and angry and hurt, and you are not thinking clearly."

"Oh, I think-" He was pointing again, accusing again.

"We are done." The startling power in Amanusa's voice cut him off. "It happened. You are her familiar. Begin there and move on. What happens next?"

"Undo it." Grey pulled a sheaf of papers from his inner coat pocket and ripped them across. Her apprenticeship contract. "No more apprentice. No more fiancée. No more familiar. I want none of it. I want none of you. I will not be manipulated. I choose. No one else. I do."

Tears poured down Pearl's cheeks. She couldn't stop them, wouldn't wipe them away. She would stand up straight and take whatever punishment he deemed necessary. She knew the truth, that while her actions had created this mess, she had never intended any harm.

"You did choose, Grey." Amanusa fitted her lancet to her finger. "You chose again and again, or it never could have happened. But-" She held up her hand to forestall another outburst. "You are in no mood to hear the truth now."

"I want it done and over with." He thrust his hand at Amanusa, offering up a vein.

She took his hand and stabbed her lancet into his thumb, then turned to Pearl and beckoned. Pearl presented her hand and received the same treatment.

"Call forth your blood," Amanusa said. "Cast his blood from you. You must renounce all that is between you."

Pearl took a deep breath. Blood of my blood, return to me. She opened her magic senses as she spoke the words inside her head. No use betraying guild secrets at this point. A drop of blood welled up from the puncture wound on Grey's thumb. He turned his hand and let it fall on the palm-size square of flimsy paper Jax produced. A second drop swelled.                       
       
           



       

"Cast out his blood." Amanusa sounded a little more urgent.

"I cast the blood of Greyson Carteret from me." Pearl reached for the magic, to pull it out with the blood. Her thumb hurt as the first drop of his blood oozed from her. Odd that it hadn't bled before now. Jax handed her a paper square of her own. A second drop welled up. Had she taken so much of Grey's blood?

She could see the magic shimmer as it poured out of him, surrounding him. She could not hold so much. "What do I do with the magic?"

"Oh my . . ." Amanusa's eyes went wide, then they narrowed on Grey. "Just how many times have you made love?"

"I fail to see how that's any of your affair." Grey came near to shouting.

Jax interrupted him. "Sorcery is sex, too."

"Not quite a guild secret," Amanusa said with an exaggerated wince "But we'd rather you didn't repeat it."

Grey's face remained flushed, but it seemed more with embarrassment than with anger now. "It was-"

Amanusa waved his answer aside. "No, I've decided I don't want to know. Too bad you weren't there for the dead zone barrier. We could have used this in the wall."

"Can't you take it?" Pearl asked her. "So it doesn't go to waste?"

"It's your magic. Yours and Grey's. Only you can use it."

"How? What can I do with it?" She felt on the edge of panic. All that beautiful magic. She couldn't just let it . . . die.

"Give it away," Jax said. "It's life magic. Send it out to give life."

Amanusa found a wry smile. "And hope that no one knows to blame you when there's a bumper crop of babies in nine months."

The thought pleased her. Pearl took a breath and when she blew it out again, she sent the magic out. "Go," she whispered. "Do good. Bring joy. Give life."

It vanished instantly, as if some great thirst drank it down in a single gulp.

"Oh." Amanusa blinked. "My. That was fast."

"Was it not supposed to do that?" Pearl worried.

"I have no idea. I've always had a use for our magic."

Grey cleared his throat pointedly. "Have you finished?"

Pearl looked with her extra sense. The blood had left him, but now that it was gone, she could see a-a binding still churning between them. A glowing construct made of magic tied them together, but it twisted and roiled as if disturbed. Unhappy.

"It is not just the blood that binds you," Amanusa said. "You are a magician in your own right, Grey. You helped make this. You must help break it."

"I am a conjurer," he snapped out.

"As the familiar to a powerful sorceress, you are more than that," Amanusa retorted. "Look at the magic. You must both act to undo it. You must renounce each other."

Grey's lip curled in a snarl as he rushed to speak. "I renounce you, Pearl Elizabeth Parkin. You are nothing to me. Less than nothing."

With his mind, he reached forth and sliced through the glowing magic. He sliced through Pearl's heart, or maybe her soul, and she cried out with the pain. Struggling to stand upright, to make her voice clear and strong, she spoke. "I renounce you, Greyson George Arthur William Victor Carteret."

"Finally, you get my name right," Grey sneered.

Pearl choked down the flare of pain. "You are nothing to me, as I am nothing to you." The pain faded as the searching stump of magic sank back inside her. It seemed to mourn its loss, but it no longer sought its missing half.

"Is it done?" Grey demanded.

"Can't you tell? Can't you see the magic?" Amanusa folded her arms and glowered at him.

He glowered right back. "I am a conjurer. I don't see sorcery."

"You did," Amanusa said. "For a while. Didn't you?"

"I'd rather stand on my own magic than be owned as a slave," Grey retorted.

"Not slave," Jax said.

But Grey was slamming out the library door, not listening.





23




"DO YOU WANT to come back to the hotel with us?" Amanusa asked. "I'm sure we can find room with the-"

Pearl shook her head. "Elinor will be expecting me. Did you mean it about helping you teach?"