9
THE GIFT
Diana stood before the small looking glass hanging on the wall in her little room and rolled her lips between her teeth.It helped with concentration.
“Pink,” she said.“Pink.”
The color of her hair wavered, but it did not stick.
She shook her hands out and rolled her shoulders.It was not in the physical concentration.Lips and teeth and headaches didn’t conjure a thing.
But light and air did.
She’d learned that in the week since her last long walk with Lord Knightly.In an uncontrollable moment of emotion, she’d changed her hair pink, blamed it on a potion.Oh God, if he ever discovered that potions used to dye hair did not appear as glamours, he’dknow.How would a man like him react?One moment he seemed hard and intimidating yet gentle, like a knight of old, ready to lay his life before his queen.He appeared to be an intelligent, inquisitive man… He might notimmediatelymove to kill her.
Her best-case scenarios seemed rather… dim.
At least he’d given her a clue as to how to control this stolen talent.When he’d spoken of how everyone—transcendent, alchemist, or otherwise—takes from the world around them to create, it had felt… true.She’d tried it.Not consciously.She’d been thinking of how darkness fell on a bright pink sunset, heavy blue-black night sinking, orange-pink light pressing out of existence.And her hair had… changed back.
Nothing had come so easily as that first time.There was a trick to it, a patience.How did all these earls and dukes glamour their entire lives with such ease?Likely because they’d learned how to do it with breathing.It had been their birthright.
She’d stolen her power.
A knock on her door.When she answered it, Miss Maple grinned at her over the top of a large box.
“Package came for you,” she said, peeking into the room behind Diana.“Maybe whatever’s in it will liven this place up.”
Diana eyed the box like it contained a tangle of snakes.“I ordered nothing.And no one knows I’m here.That cannot be for me.”
Miss Maple nudged Diana out of the way and ambled into the room.She set the box on the bed and stretched her arms.“Thought you’d use your off-hours to spend some of your hard-earned money.But here you are.Hiding away.”
“I’m not hiding.”She was practicing because?—
Damn Baron Knightly… he’d given her hope.If she could control her use of the magic, she might not have to hide.She could confront Apollo, then.And give the magic away.
“Well, I’m off,” Miss Maple said.But she hesitated in the doorway, clinging to the frame.“That baron of yours coming round tonight?”
“He’s not mine, and I do not know.”She slipped her hand into her pocket where the stone lay.He’d given her one earlier in the week, and they’d cupped their hands together around it and another stone until their surfaces had burned hot against the skin of her palm, the pads of her fingertips.He’d kept one and given her the other and told her to keep it close and clutch it tight if she needed him.He’d know, and he’d come.
He likely thought he was hers.He certainly acted like it.
And Diana found it… thrilling.She’d always belonged to others.Her grandfather’s nurse.Her cousin’s bride.
And now Lord Knightly washeralchemist.And a powerful one, too—the king’s favorite.Yet if Diana, friendless and hiding, held the stone in her pocket until it glowed, that man would come running.
She was not going to marry him, but… yes, thrilling.
“Too bad,” Miss Maple said.“The rest of us like looking at him.Alchemists always possess the finest shoulders, and the baron’s look right nice walking next to you round and round the square.”She sighed.
“You have a suitor, Madeline.”
The younger woman shrugged.“Just because I admire a set of shoulders doesn’t mean I want any other than Harold’s.Besides, Harold thinks the alchemist’s got nice shoulders, too.”She winked then disappeared down the hallway.
Diana closed the door and frowned at the box on her bed.It could not be hers.She should leave it alone.But the curiosity was suffocating.She would peek inside.Only a little.
As if she were opening a powder keg with a candle held aloft, she lifted the lid.
“Books?Books!”A folded bit of paper lay atop two neat piles within.She picked it up, unfolded it.
