“Not until everything’s official.”
“Then go fetch paper and a pen from the desk in the receiving room—unless you’ll permit me to put my hands in my pockets.”
She edged around him and backed out of the room. He followed her into the hall, no doubt to prevent her from making a run for it.
The contracts didn’t take long to draw up. His declared:I, Peter William Blackwell, swear to Beatrix Jane Harper that I will take no direct or indirect actions intended to harm Lydia Josephine Harper, to harm her efforts with the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic or to harm the League generally.
Hers was much shorter and more ominous.I, Beatrix Jane Harper, swear to obey Peter William Blackwell in all matters.
“What are the spellwords?” she asked in a monotone as she signed her name.
“Ic gehate. ‘I vow.’”
He pulled black stones the size of half-dollars from an interior pocket and arranged them into two overlapping circles on the floor, each big enough for someone to stand inside. He balanced the contracts on stones serving as intersection points. Then he retrieved something from the small refrigerator where they kept perishable ingredients that didn’t interact well with preservation spells.
A thrill of horror shot through her when she saw what it was. The remains of the pomegranate.
“You told me that spell was dark,” she objected, backing away.
He said nothing, merely set the fruit on the worktable and began plucking out pips. The enormity of what she was about to do was sinking in.Obey in all matters. Where exactly would that end? How would she be made to obey? Her legs were shaking but there was nowhere to sit.
Bracing herself against the worktable, she said: “What do you want from me?”
He handed three pips to her, followed by a pair of maple leaves.
“Step into a circle and cast the spell,” he said. “Then eat the pips.”
“Omnimancer—”
“Now,” he barked, striding into the circle closest to the door.
The setup had a terrible intimacy to it, a parody of a marriage rite. She forced herself to stand where he indicated, close enough to breathe in the faint scent of his aftershave, and tried—against impossible odds—to clear her mind.
“Ic gehate,” she said, more sob than words, aiming the hand clutching the leaves toward the contract she’d signed.
“Again.”
“Ic ge”—her voice caught—“gehate.”
He scowled at her. “Focus, Miss Harper!”
“Ic gehate, ic gehate! Ic gehate?—”
That took.Zipwent the magic down her arm. Her contract glowed, and she stared at it. At the word “obey.”
“Ic gehate,” he murmured at his own piece of paper, which obligingly lit up on the first try. “Into your mouth on three. One, two?—”
The pips tasted sickly sweet and bitter-tart, opposing flavors battling it out on her tongue. She retched but managed to get all three down. Both contracts glowed brighter for an instant, then faded, looking for all the world as if nothing remarkable had just happened to them.
“Give me the aconite,” Blackwell said.
Her hand extended the bottle to him before she had time to consciously think about following his order. She tried to pull her arm back and discovered she couldn’t, not until he’d taken the bottle from her.
What had shedone?
She staggered out of the circle, staring in horror at the arm once again under her control. Her voice sounded thin, all wrong, as she said, “Is your magic binding me?”
“No. Yours is.”
