But time might well be running out. Because if servant gossip was to be believed, he’d travelled into the countryside to arrange his handfasting with someone called Maris Garrick. Which wouldn’t suit her at all. She’d have no hope of wheedling him if he brought a wife back to the estate.

Of course, the servants could be wrong. Servants frequently are.

For example, if the councillor’s affections were caught by this Maris Garrick, his pulse wouldn’t race for Barl Lindin, would it? And she wasn’t wrong about that. She knew the effect she often had on men. Barton Haye had been smitten. So had half a dozen other young bucks she’d known in this village, and that one. She wasn’t imagining things. Morgan Danfey was not indifferent.

And neither are you indifferent to him.

Shocked, she fumbled her beeswax-soaked polishing rag. Where had that thought come from? It was nonsense. Nonsense. Morgan Danfey was a councillor, her captor, her prison guard. The enemy.

And even if he weren’t, he’s courting this Maris Garrick and ogling me. What a fine, upstanding example of honour that is.

The man was despicable. So what if he was handsome? What did it matter that when he held her, she felt safe? That was an illusion. She wasn’t safe. She never would be, so long as she was bound. Besides… he was ranked and she wasn’t. There might not be a written law against a ranked mage marrying beneath him, but in Dorana unwritten laws carried the same weight. Sometimes it seemed they carried even more.

And if I’m clever, I can make sure that for once injustice helps me instead of hurts me. If I’m clever I’ll make him feel so guilty for wanting me that he’ll do anything to make the discomfort stop.

Anything like unbind her, or better yet, persuade the Council that she was so repentant it was now safe to send her back to Batava.

Of course, using Morgan Danfey’s interest in her against him wasn’t precisely honourable. But she couldn’t afford to worry about that. She was terrified of dreaming again, of waking the binding fire that slept too lightly beneath her skin. Especially now, with the councillor so far away he’d not be able to rescue her a second time.

One day I’ll see that incant, and all punishing incants like it, declared anathema. Not even the Council of Mages should have so much power.