She hissed in a breath when she saw the hexmarks there—just as she’d suspected.
“You rambunctious whore,” the baron said, oblivious to her true aims, capturing her wrists in his hands. The skirmish seemed to stoke his passions. “So eager to get me unclothed, is that it?”
Seething, she spit on his cheek. “Let me go! I’m a queen!”
“Queen, whore, I don’t care. You’re still that same silly girl who didn’t even know what was happening in her own kingdom—”
Fast steps sounded behind them, and then a wall of wind slammed into Marmose with enough strength to send him staggering backward. Bryn was able to stumble away as Rangar attacked again with another blast of the wind hex, one hand tracing the symbol in the air as his lips murmured the incantation.
“By the Saints, Rangar!” The baron shouted indignantly. “You dare use magic? Here, where it is banned? And against me, a staunch critic of its use?”
“You don’t like magic?” Rangar said evenly, striding forward. “Fine. I don’t need magic.”
His fist slammed into Marmose’s cheek. A garbled cry slipped out of the baron’s lips. Rangar pulled his arm back for another swing, but Marmose scrambled a few steps away, holding out his hands. “You brute! You’re as savage as they say!”
Rangar jabbed his finger like a dagger. “Touch my wife again, and I’ll break off each of your fingers and feed them to your dogs, you deceitful fraud.”
Rangar had at least seventy-five pounds of muscle on the baron. And though the baron was arrogant, he was also smart enough to realize that, too.
Clutching his bruised jaw, he narrowed his eyes. Turning to Bryn, he spat sharply, “Stay away from my dogs,girl.” And he strode off as though he could pretend that the fight had merely been about bacon.
Rangar immediately pulled Bryn into his arms, touching her cheeks delicately in case she was hurt. “He had his hands on you.”
“He didn’t hurt me.”
“I will kill him. I swear, I will.”
“Shh.” She kneaded her hands over his tight shoulders. “I provoked him intentionally. You know that was the plan.”
Rangar briefly closed his eyes as he pressed his nose against her hair, breathing in her scent. “I don’t care. I go mad when I see another man touching you.”
“He’s nothing.”
“He almost married you!”
She cupped her hands on Rangar’s cheeks, guiding him to look at her. “But he didn’t. I married you, Rangar Barendur. You are my Savior, and I am yours. I have no such bond with any other man in the world, and I never will. Don’t let your temper guide you. We always knew Marmose was a bastard. He’s only proven it.”
Rangar took a deep, shuddering breath as he tried to tame his rage.
Bryn stroked his scars gently, lowering her voice even further. “He’s proven something else, too.”
Rangar tilted his head. “What’s that?”
“For all his talk against magic, he has hexmarks. A hypocrite just like Captain Carr was.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “But most importantly, he has aninfluencehex.”
Chapter 32
EIGHT ROYAL FAMILIES . . . a mage to battle a mage . . . tense meetings . . . High Priest Red . . . a young queen
Back in the privacy of their bedroom in Hytooth Palace’s tower, Rangar reported what he’d discovered while Bryn was distracting Baron Marmose.
“I found Queen Amelia in the library,” he informed her. “She was just as disoriented as before. When I spent the summer here as a boy, her mind was already dulling, but this felt different. Less like a slipping mind and more like aninfluencedone. She recalled everything about me with uncanny detail but refused to speak of the present situation in the Eyrie. When I pressed her about supporting a free magic society, she repeated the same phrase:Magic is killing our people.”
Bryn’s lips pressed together grimly. “Marmose must have cast an influence spell over her. That’s why she’s siding with him so staunchly. And why the baron seemed so confident.”
Rangar nodded.
Bryn muttered a curse as she paced the length of the bedroom. “Do you know how to break an influence spell?”
