“She thought she could best me,” Lord Dragon said. He walked up to Starlight and grabbed her breast. Hard. She made no visible response, but I’d have bet half my fortune she felt it. “Churlishness like that deserves a special punishment, don’t you think?”
I kept my voice even. If he wanted to talk, I had no intention of stopping him. “What did you do to her heart?”
“I took it out of her and placed it in this gem,” Lord Dragon said. “She’s mine now.”
I forced myself to think. There were a handful of sorcerers who’d removed their hearts and hidden them somewhere on the theory it would grant a kind of immortality, but it never ended well. A single cancellation spell could break the link, killing the sorcerer instantly. I’ve known a few sorcerers who were heartless—metaphorically speaking—but none would actually survive losing their heart. It could easily happen by accident. A sorcerer who walked into the wrong household might discover the connecting charm coming apart, sentencing him to death. If Lord Dragon had done that to Starlight…
My mind raced. He could hold that over her head for the rest of her life. No, he’d done worse. He’d woven his charms into her helpless heart, giving him complete control over her body. I feared he might also have control over her mind… or did he? He hadn’t made use of her undoubted fighting skill when he’d taken over. Could he? I didn’t know. It was easy to use blood to influence someone’s behavior, or to insert suggestions into their head, but to do that with a heart? I couldn’t see why not, yet he clearly hadn’t.
Unless he wants to be sadistic, I thought. A person as individualistic and independent as Starlight would hate the thought of being turned into a puppet, her entire body controlled by a man who wanted to use her and humiliate her. Even standing helplessly would be humiliating beyond words, unable to keep him from playing with her body as he pleased.As long as he has her heart, she’ll be at his mercy.
“I told her to recruit a sorcerer I could use,” Lord Dragon continued. “What did she offer you?”
I scowled at him. “Half the reward money for your captive. Or do you even have a captive?”
Lord Dragon giggled. It was a disconcerting sound. “She brought you to rescue herself. That was a damp squib, wasn’t it?”
He reached out and pinched Starlight’s breast. “As if I would ever let her go…”
I cursed under my breath as a trio of servants arrived, hauled me to my feet, and half dragged me down the corridor. Up close, I could feel the spells keeping them enslaved. They were profoundly unnatural, their mere presence making it hard to concentrate. And yet I had to.
Starlight had been ordered to find a magician, and she’d done so by recruiting one to save an innocent girl… to save herself. Had she hoped I could free her from the ghastly trap, or kill her to spare her from further torments?
If I’d paid more attention to her as we made our way into the mansion, I might’ve realized she was no longer in control of her body before it was too late. No wonder the defenses had been so ineffectual. Lord Dragon had been toying with us, probably watching through Starlight’s eyes. The pervert had probably been disappointed she’d hired me rather than seducing me. And then he’d lowered the boom.
Think, I told myself. I had no idea why Lord Dragon wanted a magician, but I was sure it wasn’t for anything good. Perhaps he intended to add me to his forest of magic sources, or even use my body in a ritual, or…
I didn’t want to know. There has to be a way out of this.
My knuckles ached. I’d hit her hard enough to make her nose bleed, and yet it hadn’t been enough to put her down. Any adventurer would have shrugged off the blow and kept coming, and in her case, she wasn’t even in control of her own body. I could see her blood on my skin, and that meant…
A thought ran through my mind. I could use the blood to link to her mind and… the thought cut off sharply as the servants toss tossed me into a cell. It wasn’t the worst cell I’d ever been in, but I couldn’t move. They left me lying on the floor as they walked away.
I gritted my teeth and pushed magic into the wood. It shivered against my skin and splintered. I grunted in pain as I pulled my hands free, then did the same to the bindings around my ankles. My blood mingled with hers, creating a link I could exploit if I had time. The cell was designed to make it almost impossible to use magic, but it was very difficult to suppress a blood link.
I forced my thoughts into the link, trying to reach out to her mind. There was no sense of her awareness, nothing that suggested she was awake inside her own body. I couldn’t tell whether he’d switched her off or buried her so deeply inside her mind that she had no awareness at all of the outside world. My thoughts kept moving, expanding further as I tried to see through her eyes. There were no spells barring my way, as far as I could tell, but I still couldn’t see through her eyes. It took me too long to realize her body was still linked to him through her heart.
Bastard, I thought. I’d never been a healer. I knew the basics, of course, but putting someone’s heart back in their chest was beyond me. I didn’t even know what spells he’d used to keep her heart—and her—alive. They had to be incredibly fragile. The merest disruption would kill her instantly. What did you do to her?
I allowed my thoughts to wander onward, into the spells binding her heart. They were fantastical, and yet they could be broken—if I was willing to kill her in the process. I wasn’t, even though I feared she’d rather be dead than a slave.
And she was a slave, as much a slave as the poor collared girls I’d seen earlier. I had to free her without killing her. I forced myself to stand and staggered over to the door, pressing my hands against the stone. This door wasn’t wood, and the lock was charmed against lock-pickers, but I had no trouble opening it with my tools.
I smirked as I stepped outside. The overconfident ass had thought to relieve me of my knapsack, but he hadn’t bothered to actually search me. It made a certain kind of sense—most magicians relied on their own powers rather than weapons or tools—yet it was still an oversight. A very careless oversight.
My mood darkened as I slipped through the corridors. The building didn’t seem to be bigger on the inside, but I still had no idea where to find anything. The blood link should’ve drawn me straight to Starlight, wherever she was, yet there was so much magic in the air, I was reluctant to go straight there.
I walked downstairs into the basement and looked around, noting the workshop and enough tools to outfit an entire crew of magicians. Did Lord Dragon have apprentices? I found it unlikely, but stranger things had happened. There were quite a few low-powered magicians who had just enough power to know what they lacked, just enough power to make them useful to someone with low scruples and lower morals. I’d met a particularly nasty young man who’d been the brunt of his village’s jokes until he’d developed enough power to make them suffer. They’d stopped laughing when they’d realized how dangerous he’d become, but it had been too late. If Lord Dragon had an apprentice…
It didn’t look as though he did, I decided. There was no rhyme or reason to his layout, suggesting he lived and worked alone. Taking an apprentice would’ve forced him to adapt to the newcomer and lay out his supplies so anyone could use them. I shuddered as I saw the pair of charmed collars on the workbench, the spells emplaced and waiting for a victim. They felt worse, somehow, than the spells I’d seen earlier. If I put the collar on, it would be the end. And I felt a compulsion to do just that.