“I. Did not. Curse him.” I stepped forwards, gripping the back of the nearest chair to keep my temper and my magic in check. “I’ve studied magic for five years, and I know as well as you do that a curse must be spoken with intention. I didn’t say anything like that, and on my life, I would never intend anything wicked upon my father.”
“I believe you,” he said. “You didn’t intend to hurt him. But your magic is still afflicting him.”
My stomach dropped “Still? But the flowers—you said there weren’t any left!”
“They poisoned his blood. He will continue to be lightheaded and nauseated and he will possibly experience other symptoms of azalea poisoning. And the flowers may yet return.”
Poison. It brought my mother to mind. It made me hate my power all the more, because it was so like hers. “Can’t you administer an antidote?” I asked, my voice broken and raw.
“If it were merely poison, I could treat him. However, this is magic—your magic specifically. It is only by your words that you’ll be able to fully heal him.”
I crumpled into the nearest chair. “He can only be healed by my power?”
“Yes. I believe if you cast a blessing over your father, with the full strength of your magic, you’d free him from whatever hold it has on him.”
A blessing—a spell only powerful, controlled magicians could perform. The kind that could save someone’s life; the kind that made healers collapse in exhaustion. A spell for the desperate.
“I—I’m not capable of something like that,” I said. “My magic doesn’t listen to me, and more than that, come tomorrow, it won’t be at its fullest strength anymore.” I slumped back in my chair, pulling my curls from my eyes. “And it’s done what we all feared it would do! What if the Council just takes it away?”
“I’m going to ask that they give you more time,” said Xavier. “It’s in our creed to do no harm. If they took your magic, they’d be signing away your father’s life.”
A sob broke from my lips. I clapped both hands over my mouth, my shoulders quaking with the effort. My magic wobbled a teacup on the kitchen countertop.
Xavier rounded the table, sliding a white handkerchief onto the table before me. I gratefully accepted the little cloth, embroidered with an M, and dried my eyes.
He sat across from me, silent and calm as I caught my breath. His straight posture, his neat, black uniform, his serious expression—he was truly the perfect image of a wizard. It was strange, almost dreamlike, to see this person from my childhood now placed in the role of an adult. It suited him.
“Your father can be helped,” he said, soft and soothing. “If the Council gives you time, you can teach your magic to yield to you. Then, you can cast a blessing or any other spell you’d like.”
Flames of magic seared the back of my throat. He didn’t understand. “You heard the Council; I’m hopeless, I—”
I paused.
I remembered peering into the Morwyns’ kitchen with Xavier at my side. Watching his mother and father touch their hands to a patient’s heart, and the room filling with golden light. An old, powerful ritual. The Morwyn family was well-known and celebrated in the magical community. For generations, they’d performed complicated magic and healed thousands of people.
“Your parents perform blessings,” I murmured.
Recognition and worry flickered in his eyes. “Yes, they do.”
“My other teachers didn’t.”
“It’s very difficult magic.”
I leaned across the table towards him, my heart beating faster as my plan made more and more sense to me. “Perhaps they could take me on! They could teach me how to cast a blessing!”
“They—they’re out of the country, Miss Lucas—”
“Then you!”
Xavier blinked rapidly. “Me?”
“They taught you about blessings, didn’t they?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Teach me,” I said, slapping my gloved hand against the table. “You aren’t like my other teachers. You know me. You aren’t afraid of my power.”
He opened and shut his mouth like a fish on land. “I have a prior engagement,” he said.
I glowered at the flimsy excuse. “A prior engagement?! My father is dying!”
His ears turned red. “I have a very important potion due to the Council on Midsummer—”
“Is it more important than my father’s life?”
In the stunned silence, my voice echoed through the kitchen like we were in a concert hall. I drew back, my arms tight around myself. The shock of my words, my anger, my magic, rang through me.
“You’re the only hope I have,” I said. “You don’t have to help me as a favor. I’ll pay you. I’ll give you anything. I’ll work for free, all day long. I’ll clean your house, darn your socks; whatever you like.” I pressed my hand to my face, blotting out the world. Xavier and I had once wished on clovers for our magic to come. And when our powers arrived, mine and then his, we ran about and whooped and hollered and declared we would work together as partners. Morwyn and Lucas. We’d had beautiful, wild dreams of using our powers to save lives.
Now my magic had nearly killed my father.
I wanted nothing more to do with it.
“I’d even give you my magic if I could,” I whispered.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean.” His voice was cold and sharp as ice. When I lifted my head, his eyes were the same.
“I mean every word,” I said. “You’ve seen my power. It’s good for nothing.” It hurt me to say it, my magic burning my throat to punish me for the insult. “I’d trade it away in a heartbeat.”
The severity had vanished from his face. When he met my eyes again, I felt like we were children again. Equal.
“If it were possible,” he murmured, “if you could give your power to another person—would you?”
A chill danced up my back. Magic was a gift that appeared to so few. To trade away such a gift was foolish, was heartbreaking. . . . But for Papa, I could bear such things. “If you taught me to bless my father, then yes, I would.”
He touched his fingertips to his mouth. His thumb, I noticed, had a black band inked around it.
“You made a vow to someone,” I noted.
It was a practice used between magicians when striking certain bargains. Some of my teachers bore black rings on their fingers; promises to coworkers, to the Council. Master and Madam Morwyn had them in place of wedding bands. When we were younger, Xavier and I used to make pretend vows. We’d clasp hands like we had seen magicians do, and promise to be friends forever, or to always share our secrets with each other. We’d mark our fingers with little bands of ink.
But we weren’t children anymore.
“What was it for?” I asked.
He hid his hands beneath the tabletop. “It was for the Council. And it’s a vow I propose to you. If you truly meant it, if you truly wanted to, you could give your power to me.”
I shivered. To make a true vow, as two grown magicians—it felt strange. Our childhood game, made more serious than I could have ever fathomed.