Married (10 page)

He steadied Tulah before walking toward the door, a wary expression stamped on his face. Georgie gave him credit, his feet didn’t drag, he didn’t hesitate. He opened the door and waggled his fingers in the sunlight beaming through.

He jerked back with a grunt when red light sparked. He clutched his hand to his chest. “
Shit
.”

“Hmm.” Georgie gave Ileana a little push. “You try.”

“Why? We know what’s going to happen.”

“Eliasz had a weaker reaction. I want to know if the full force hits Ngozis or females in particular.” Georgie stayed by Ileana’s side as they crossed the room. “Does it react to magical strength? Does it—”

“Ngozi men are sent to help the guests with their baggage,” Ileana argued. “We were met out front by the car.”

“So were we,” Georgie replied calmly. “But maybe there’s only a few men allowed to come and go freely. There were no women helping.”

Ileana made a rude noise. “I haven’t seen any Ngozi women, at all, except Tulah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I have no idea where he’s keeping them.” Ileana reached for the door.

Red light oozed from the jamb, flying out from the metal but slowing dramatically on its collision course with Ileana’s arm. Silver spiked into existence, the power of Ileana’s personal magic all but eradicating the spell guarding the exits. The two tones surged against each other, but the silver won out and chased the red back into hiding.

Georgie turned wide eyes on her sister-in-law. “What did that feel like?”

“Awful, but I think I could make it through with a running start.” Ileana turned to Georgie and wiped a shaky hand over her sweaty brow. “I take it you have more in common with me and my brother than I first realized?”

Georgeanne saw magic because it couldn’t be used against her, but Silviu, and apparently Ileana, saw magic because they could influence it. Georgie’s secret couldn’t be held much longer, but that didn’t mean she had to go into explicit explanations. “Close enough. You’re a strong witch, Iley. It reacts with greater force to lesser magic.”

“Almost like an enhancement.” Ileana humphed and let the door close. “Your turn. In Poland, when my grandfather magicked that knife at your head, it hit some kind of force field and slid off without any harm.”

“My life is not a science-fiction movie.” Georgie rolled her eyes. “It’s not a force field.”

“What is it, then?”

“Adam calls it Bane imperviousness.”

“How did you lose your magic?” Tulah broke her silence and Georgie shifted to study her. The color in her cheeks had returned, she was steady on her feet and the faint indigo swirl surrounding her body had settled down.

“I’m not Bane-made.” Georgie watched Tulah’s reaction very closely. “I was born under a Bane moon.”

“You’ve never had magic?”

Georgie shrugged. “I can’t use magic and magic can’t be used against me.”

Tulah’s eyes flashed with pity a moment before she went still. She’d never make a good politician, unless that indigo magic she used gave her an advantage that Georgie couldn’t detect.

Georgie studied the woman for another few moments, wondering. Vague suspicions and soft doubts stole through her mind, but before she could organize them, indigo flickers began to whirl around Tulah’s body. Georgie turned toward the door, leaving her questions unvoiced. She didn’t know whose ears were listening.

In one swift move, Georgie pulled open the door and stepped outside. A sheen of red flashed, there and gone as she passed through. A humming pressure coasted along her shoulders, her vision wavered for a fraction of an instant, then it all stopped. Georgie stood on the front porch, surveying the door from a new angle.

“I think you’re prisoners,” she finally said in a near whisper.

Ileana stared back at her with wide eyes and mimicked her low tone. “Do you think Daniel knows?”

Georgie shrugged and stepped back inside. “He’ll find out the minute he tries to leave. He’s powerful politically, not magically. Good thing we’re here, though. If we left it up to a Levy to undo the spell, we’d be here till doomsday.”

Ileana nodded. “It’s notoriously difficult to undo a spell you didn’t cast in the first place.”

“Then what’s going to happen?” Tulah asked.

Georgie smiled and, judging by the way the woman paled, it wasn’t a nice expression. “Graves obviously fell prey to the typical patriarchal arrogance that all too many witches on your side of the Schism have.”

“Hey!” Eliasz glared but Georgie only lifted her shoulders, not really sorry for pointing it out.

“He didn’t think there would be anyone around who could break the spell. No offense, Eliasz, but everyone knows how magically weak most Levys are, and I bet he never even considered the strength of the Davenolds. We only have a
Mother
, after all.”

“And he didn’t think of me.” Ileana raised her chin. “The Lovaszes may not be influential but, magically, we’re the strongest Family going. Everyone underestimates me.”

Georgie nodded. “He’s a patriarchal man and you’re a patriarchal female. He figured you to be virtually worthless.”

“She’s not.” Eliasz reached for his betrothed’s hand and linked their fingers. “No wonder he was so pissed off about Silviu coming.”

“Silviu could have that spell destroyed like that.” Georgie snapped her fingers. “Even Adam wouldn’t need too long, especially with Chris helping. Graves didn’t bank on that.”

Tulah shook her head. “Maybe that’s all true, but I don’t think you should underestimate Graves, either. He won’t let anything stop him from getting whatever he wants. And I don’t think that’s why he was angry that Silviu Lovasz came here.”

“She’s right,” Ileana said. “He probably doesn’t know how strong Silviu is. Few people understand.”

“No.” Tulah shook her head again. “I mean…the way Graves says Georgeanne’s name…and everyone has heard of your betrothal, a witch from a matriarchal Family marrying a patriarch. Those kinds of marriages never happen. Even
I
know that witches stick to their own side.”

“It’s a curiosity, I know.” Georgie turned from the group and eyed her door options farther down the lobby walls.

“Graves has something planned. He always does. Just…keep your eyes open.”

“I’m not terribly concerned.” Georgie waved Tulah’s warning away. “Let’s get back to the matter at hand. I want to see how far the exit spell extends. Every door? The windows?”

“And does the spell have some element embedded into it that alerts Graves to our attempts at leaving?” Eliasz pulled Ileana with him as he came to stand at Georgie’s side.

“Charles came when I tried to go out into the garden,” Tulah offered. “But that could be because he’s been watching me, especially when I’m downstairs and out of Graves’ company.”

Georgie sent her a searching glance. “Who is Charles?”

“Chief of security.” The woman shuddered.

Georgie narrowed her eyes and chose the path of boldness. “Well, if he’s being alerted, he hasn’t come running yet. Let’s see what we can do to change that.”

Chapter Eight

Silviu

Naturally, Madeleine took the suite meant for Adam, with the small sitting room attached. Silviu wasn’t surprised. She lowered herself into a pretty blue chair that looked entirely too delicate to hold him, but took on the regality of a throne under her.

Madeleine was old, but time had been kind to her. Her cheeks were lined, but pleasantly so, her posture still erect, her speech as smooth as his father remembered from years ago. She looked like a grandmother—a high-class, old-money grandmother who would be happy to indulge her grandchildren in whatever ways she could.

Until a man looked into the old woman’s eyes and saw the icy calm composure of a witch who would ruthlessly wield every bit of the power at her disposal without a single regret.

Silviu felt a pang in his chest. Georgie’s eye were exact replicas of Madeleine’s, dark pools of liquid onyx, blacker than pitch, glittering with intelligence and determination. It was only fair—Georgie had, after all, been molded in Madeleine’s image from the day of her birth. Silviu’s father had made sure of it.

“I want you to choose a date for my wedding, Mother Davenold.”

Madeleine waved him onto the small sofa facing her. “Georgeanne is only twenty-three and you haven’t seen her in ten years. Surely there is no rush. Surely you’d like a chance to get reacquainted before you jump into the creation of a new life?”

His strategy, when it came to Mother Madeleine, was bold bluntness. She would respect nothing else. “Do you regret betrothing me to your granddaughter?”

She considered his question for a moment before answering. “I dislike that your father pushed the issue, but no, I don’t regret the agreement. What I regret is that Georgeanne seems determined to indulge you to an unseemly degree.”

“Indulge me?” Silviu lost the battle with his political mask and felt his brows bounce up to meet his hairline. “Are you serious?”

“Look what she let you do, ten years ago.” Madeleine’s gaze was unflinching. “She was a child and she let you seduce her. If her father hadn’t found her in time you would have taken her then, with no word of refusal from her mouth.”

“Like you said, she was a child, but so was I and—”

“On the verge of manhood.”

Silviu held on to his patience by his fingernails. “I was seventeen, stupid and impatient. Georgeanne was already betrothed to me, and she’s my Magic Match. I lost my head. Trust me, Mother Davenold, I have paid for my crimes and learned from my mistakes.”

Silviu gritted his teeth as the frustration of lost years snarled in his soul. The Davenolds had sent Georgie away, keeping them apart until his grandfather had requested her presence at the betrothal ceremony between Eliasz and Ileana. Her absence had been a gnawing ache, a brutal lesson in endurance.

“And in Poland?” Madeleine’s cool voice broke into his thoughts. “There is a certain softness about her where you’re concerned now.”

“Being the Davenold Mother means everything to her and I would do nothing to prevent her from reaching that goal.”

Madeleine’s voice turned silky. “It means everything to you too, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Silviu met her eyes without apology. “You and my father schemed to finagle me into the position of Council High Seat when you step down from it. But that plot was put into place twenty-three years ago, when Georgie was born and my father pushed you into the betrothal, so that can’t be laid at my door. I was only four years old.”

“You’re only following orders, is that it?”

“What else would you call it?” Silviu jolted forward in his seat, sliding to the edge of the sofa, leaning toward the old woman before he could stop himself. “I have learned every lesson my father asked me to learn. I have learned from every tutor you sent to me, in spite of the fact that it had to be hidden from my grandfather, which left me being schooled in a damp and drafty turret with no light beyond a goddamned oil lantern. I have done everything you have ever asked of me, including not sleeping with the woman who will be my wife.”

Madeleine didn’t back down in the face of Silviu’s irritation, not that he expected her to. “Let’s not pretend you don’t want the High Seat. Don’t pretend you don’t want the power that comes from it, and
don’t
pretend you don’t want to lord it over your grandfather that you’ve achieved more than your brother ever could!”

For his safety and Georgie’s, both. The Reap witch and the Bane, the nightmarish freaks that could inspire fatal fear. If Silviu didn’t control the power, it could be used to kill him or his betrothed.

Silviu abruptly reined in his emotions. He would get nowhere by arguing. “Why did you agree to the betrothal, Madeleine? So Georgeanne could be your second reign? So the Davenolds could continue to rule over the combined covens even though they would officially be out of the running for High Seat? Damn those one-term limits, even when the term lasts for decades.”

A moment passed as the two witches studied each other. To his surprise, Madeleine’s face eased, a tender emotion warming the black pits of her eyes.

“Power passes to the grandchild,” she said, “and for the Davenolds, that is a very good thing. None of my daughters have the patience, the strength or the political intelligence to lead our Family. I didn’t encourage it in them, as I have in Georgeanne and Christiana, because there was no need. They wouldn’t inherit.”

“None of your daughters are stupid.”

“No,” she agreed, “but neither are they as sharp as the Davenold Mother needs to be. The Family is powerful, strong magically and politically influential. My Family has a well-developed network of allies that must be balanced very carefully.”

“Georgie is good at doing that.”

“Yes.” Madeleine turned her eyes from his, sweeping them over the room.

Silviu followed her gaze, noting that the silencing spell he’d laid over the space was still strong and impenetrable. There would be no other ears hearing this conversation. “Which is why you’ll make her your heir, regardless of whether or not Christiana bears a daughter, as you’ve threatened.”

“Christiana was the only option I had for nearly five years,” Madeleine said. “And then my youngest became pregnant. As the birth date approached… Well, Bane witches had been put down to myth.”

“My father believed.”

“His prophets and seers sent him to my door.” Madeleine turned fierce eyes on Silviu. “He had you in tow, a skinny boy who was quieter than I’d ever heard a child be. Your father told me his damned fairy tales and proclaimed that my granddaughter would be Bane.”

“And he was right.”

“Marry my Bane granddaughter to his Reap son, another rare witch. One without magic, another with too much. How could I refuse?”

“Bane-born.”

Madeleine pursed her lips. “I’ve done my research beyond the fairy tales and I’ve gleaned information from the lies your father tries to pass off as truth. You need her as much as she needs you.”

“You didn’t seal the betrothal in blood until Georgie was thirteen.”

“I thought she would gain her magic by the time she went through puberty. Adam and Christiana would tease her by casting spells at her, but she was never harmed. It gave me hope, but I was wrong.”