Why he’d even bothered to look for her up here, he couldn’t say. He’d certainly not expected to find her. But he and Rumm had searched everywhere else, the other rooms in the mansion, the poultry coop and outbuildings, even the flower beds and manure pile. Desperation, not conviction, had sent him up the attic stairs.

And there she was.

Halfway up the final staircase he’d felt it, of course. The unravelling of his attic ward. The neat, precise severing of its threads and counter-threads, its undoing as accomplished as if he’d unwarded the door himself. The shock of it had nearly dropped him to his knees.

Who is Barl Lindin, that she could break my ward, break my binding? Hide from me? What is she, this young mage, that I should look at her and feel… awe?

Feel awe and despair, wretched and wracking, that he could not have her instead of Maris Garrick. For were he and Barl Lindin bound together, what magics couldn’t they achieve?

She’s right. The Council cannot be told. Compared to Barl, Bellamie Ranowen is no more dangerous than a lamb. They will put her down if they learn what she’s done. I’ll threaten as I must to keep her compliant, but her gifts must remain secret. They must remain… mine.

Which meant he couldn’t send her away from the estate. There was nowhere else in Dorana he could keep her safe. And what Maris would say to that—what Venette would say—he shuddered to think.

But none of that can matter. What is Maris to me, or Venette, compared to this?

And this was the sight of Barl Lindin unravelling his warded crucible as easily as another woman might unpick a skirt’s hem. Astonished, he felt the shift in the shape of her magework, how she’d melted and moulded it to echo his own.

With a small, tight smile she looked up. “There. It’s done.”

Such arrogance. He could have slapped her. Wanted to kiss her. His coupling with Maris was a fast-fading dream.

Joining her at the bench, he took the unwarded crucible to examine it. No sign of his warding, the stone washed clean as a window in a rainstorm.

I watched her do it, and it’s still hard to believe. This girl is unranked. What kind of accident created her?

“It might not just be me, you know,” Barl said, watching him. “Perhaps any mage could do this, if they felt threatened enough. If they thought they would die if they didn’t.”

If she threw his imminent murder of her at him one more time…

Throttling temper, he put down the crucible. “That’s most unlikely. Countless mages throughout history have felt threatened, Mage Lindin. The Council would know if they’d defended themselves like this.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “Perhaps not. After all, how likely is it they’d tell you?”