“Did you see the flames change color?”
I frowned. “No. Why?”
“Because I did. It happens every time I pass a contract through the node. It happened when Cecily cursed me. And just now, it happened when you held your bit of paper into the flames. But no one else has ever mentioned seeing—or hearing—anything.”
The fact that I heard the magic and he saw it wasn’t surprising. People interpreted magic differently. Most people saw or felt it. Hearing it, like I did, was rarer, but not exactly uncommon. Even non-mages sensed power when using certain charms or enchantments. But only when they were the users.
I pressed my lips together. “I suppose, since you are tied to the node, it makes sense that you can always sense it at work. Would I hear anything if you held the paper to the flames?”
I grabbed the pen again. “Probably best to limit the variables,” I muttered, dipping it in the inkwell. I wrote out the wordsMy name is Felix Truthholder.“Sign this.”
The duke read the sentence, then dipped his claw in the ink and scratched out his name. He picked the paper up between his teeth and leapt into the brazier.
The power flared, but I heard no bells. Then the paper dissolved and disappeared.
I gaped. “What happened?”
Six
Felix
???
I stepped outof the flames, draping the front half of my body over the rim of the copper bowl. “The same thing that always happens when I pass a contract through the node. The magic dissolved the original and created a scroll with the same text. It now sits somewhere on the shelves of the archives. This should only happen when I witness a contract. It is a function of the node limited to the primary tie-holder. However, Cecily's curse also disappeared. Also, when I attempted to write out that I would take the form of a man, I saw the node change colors, but the paper didn’t dissolve.”
I waited to see what Isabel would conclude, surprised to find that I wanted to hear her thoughts. Even more shocking, I felt a stirring of hope now that she was at Rose Castle, working to reverse my curse. She wasn’t the mage I had hoped for, but something about her made me believe that my contractual mistake might not have been the disaster I had first feared.
At the very least, Isabel’s presence made my existence more exciting. Even now, when she was focused on getting answers rather than bickering with me, her intensity made me feel more alive.
She tapped a finger on the edge of the bowl. “What is the primary node-tie holder?”
“Me.” She gave me a look, and I decided not to make her ask again. “Anyone with Truthholder blood has a tie to the node, but only the current duke—or duchess—can witness contracts. There is a way to grant that authority to a different member of the family, but it is only temporary.”
She didn’t ask how Cecily had managed, much to my surprise. Cecily's unexpected use of my locked node had been almost all I had thought about since waking up after the transformation. I cared about regaining my human form, of course, but hiding the fact that the blood-lock on the node might have broken took priority.
Being a cat was nothing to triggering wide-scale wars to gain control of node power. The world had gone through that once already, and I knew that if word got out that blood-locks could fail, we’d face such battles again.
Isabel’s thoughts went in an entirely different direction, which was both a relief and a worry. I was glad she hadn’t realized that the node might be unlocked, but it also meant she didn’t know the true scope of the problem I faced. The contract her father signed meant she couldn’t use the node against me nor tell anyone else, but it still felt risky to share the truth. Illogical perhaps, but I’d let those fears rule me a little longer. Of course, even if I didn’t tell her, she could still figure it out for herself.
She was too smart not to figure it out on her own when she was using the node herself.
“So, I can’t witness a contract in that sense,” Isabel summarized, “but I can read the truth of a signed statement. When I hold it to the flames, at least. I heard nothing when you entered the node. Did you still see the flames change color?”
“Yes.”
I watched Isabel’s annoyance and frustration with me disappear as the mysteries of the node engrossed her. “What color did you see?”
“Blue.”
“What about for this?” She wrote out another statement and signed her name. She held it toward me so I could read.The sky is green.
She couldn’t say the words on castle grounds, but the enchantment didn’t keep her from writing the lie. She held it to the flames.
“Orange,” I told her.
“What about this one?” She grabbed the first paper she had held to the node, the hopeful attempt at breaking my curse.
“Pale purple.” A shade far closer to blue than I expected for something so patently not true.
