Ambrose hesitated. “Three-hundred and seventy two years, give or take a week.”
Louvaen gaped at him. “Are you jesting?”
His earlier wry smile reappeared. “My powers aren’t unlimited, mistress, but they’re still formidable. We sit in a river of wild magic. Curses cast by vengeful women have teeth, and sorcerers like me can slow time.”
Ice water slid down her spine. She’d known he was powerful. Not just the potions brewer she first assumed or a clever magician who fooled a gullible lord, but he surprised her at every turn. By all rights and every stricture of common sense, she should be terrified of him. The gods knew she’d irritated him enough on several occasions to at least warrant a mute spell. “Tell me something, sorcerer. How often did you imagine me as a toad in your brew pot?”
He flashed her a grin. “Oh mistress, nothing so pretty as a toad. More like a slug and me with the salt cellar in hand.”
She nudged him with an elbow, not quite daring more contact. “For an old squint-a-pipes, you’re useful to have around.”
Ambrose sniffed. “I don’t squint. And for such a scold growing fat on our favors, you give yourself a lot of airs.”
They stared at each other before breaking into grins. The pressure that had thrummed in her chest all day eased a little. She’d needed this bit of silliness, and by the look of him, so did Ambrose.
“For a man nearly four hundred years old, you’ve aged well. When did you start meddling with time?”
“I’m over four hundred years old, and I built that spell once I directed the curse’s symptoms to Ballard. I needed time—time to find a way to defeat Isabeau’s vengeance. Ballard, Gavin, Magda, Clarimond and Joan—and I of course—we’ve seen countless seasons pass. The world moves by in years while we age by months.”
Louvaen calculated in her head and came away confused. “I don’t understand. If times flows around Ketach Tor and you don’t age, wouldn’t Gavin still be a young boy?”
Ambrose swept his arm wide to indicate his surroundings. “He would be if he always stayed here. When he travels beyond the borders I’ve set around Ketach Tor, he’s subject to aging. I’d guess he’s now Ballard’s age when he was born—six and twenty.”
Louvaen wondered if Ambrose realized the gift he’d given Gavin—the chance to grow up and experience the world beyond Ketach Tor, free of his mother’s vindictive legacy, even if only for short periods.
She worried a loose thread on the embroidery of her sleeve. “A small freedom for him and maybe a way to break the curse. That is if you believe in the stories of true love and true love’s kiss breaking curses. I always thought those children’s tales.”
Ambrose blew out a loud sigh. “Interpreted simply, they are. But that’s where you start and work from there. I just wish it were as simple as a kiss.”
A nagging thought tickled the back of her mind, flitting out of reach each time she tried to capture it. “So if Cinnia loved Gavin, the curse would break.”
He nodded. “If her love is true, yes. Or so I first thought. A well-sprung curse isn’t that simple.”
While Louvaen considered Isabeau a spiteful creature, she admired the thoroughness of her wording. That bane was wrapped in layers and tied in knots, a complicated puzzle with deceptively easy requirements for breaking it. Nearly four hundred years later, and the powerful Ambrose still hadn’t defeated it. She jerked the thread free. Lovely. This was just lovely.
The sudden heaviness of the air around her made her stiffen. Ambrose’s expression had turned guarded, his gaze piercing. “Gavin brought to Ketach Tor not just one woman who could break the curse; he brought two.”
Louvaen frowned. Ambrose did love his annoying, cryptic proclamations. She returned his stare and the elusive thought flitting along the fringes of her memory held still. “No woman born will ever love you,” she said softly, repeating the part of the curse that addressed Ballard directly. Her eyes widened. “I’m nonborn.”
Ambrose inclined his head. “Yes you are.”
He didn’t ask her if she loved Ballard. Louvaen understood why. There were rules to curse breakage, and he wouldn’t risk jeopardizing a possible victory. Louvaen recalled the odd ear-popping noise she heard in Ballard’s chamber two nights previous, followed by the pitch and roll of the bed though the frame never moved out of place, the roses’ attack and the sudden sharp rise of the flux. She paled. “This flux—I think it’s my fault.”
Ambrose clutched her arm. “What are you talking about?”
She shook him off and lurched to her feet. He rose with her, far more graceful in his ascent than she was after sitting on the hard step for hours. “I told Ballard night before last that I loved him.”
The sorcerer’s face flushed and then paled. “You did?”
She gathered her skirts and trotted up the stairs with him close on her heels. “He didn’t hear me. He was asleep,” she said over her shoulder. “But something happened after I said it. A sound or...” She snapped her fingers. “No, more like a feeling as when a ship hits a bow wave and you can feel the boards quiver under your feet.”
Louvaen halted just before she reached the kitchens. Ambrose swept nimbly around her to avoid walking into her back. “What is it?”
She wrung her hands. “I said it first. I told Ballard I loved him. What if, by doing so, I actually made the curse work faster to fulfill its purpose before we could unravel the rest? Another flux hard on the heels of this one...”
As if her revelation summoned the event, a familiar pressure thrummed in her ears, and the steps seemed to ripple under her feet. Ambrose looked down and then at her with wide, startled eyes. “Cinnia,” they said at the same time.
Her name had hardly left their lips when multiple terrified cries echoed from the great hall, and the usually unflappable Magda’s panicked voice rose in a shrill plea.
