Blade Bound

   “It’s inspired by alchemy, by what Sorcha did, and by my own style.”

   I looked at Catcher. “What’s your style?”

   “You know the answer to that,” he said, pulling the cork with his teeth, a whisper of smoke escaping the bottle.

   “Weapons,” I said. He’d been the first to train me to use a katana, had used magic and my blood to temper the blade, which gave me the ability to sense steel weapons. Not an unuseful skill given the kinds of things we usually faced.

   “Weapons,” he agreed, taking a swig of champagne and passing the bottle around. “We get to the point that we actually have something to fight, and I’m your man.”

   “He’s being modest,” Mallory said, taking a hearty drink and passing the bottle to Ethan. She sat back on her heels. “That he’s best at weapons doesn’t mean he isn’t great at everything else.” She looked at him, winked. “All sorts of things.”

   “We don’t need the details,” Ethan said, taking a drink and passing the bottle to me, condensation icing over the outside of the bottle. If it hadn’t been for the alcohol content, the champagne might have frozen in the achingly crisp air. But that didn’t affect the taste, the delicate blossom and bubbles.

   Mallory shook her head. “You’ve already been married to Duchess too long.” Then she slapped a hand over her mouth, let out a mumbled swear.

   It took me a moment to cue in to what she’d said—to the fact that she’d just given up his nickname for me. I glanced at Ethan, eyebrow arched in perfect imitation of his own favorite quirk. “Duchess? That’s what you call me?”

   His smile was broad and amused. “Darth Sullivan,” he reminded me.

   “That particular shoe fit,” I reminded him.

   “And ‘Duchess’ doesn’t?”

   “I’m not the princessy type.”

   “No, you aren’t. But that’s not how you earned the name. Recall that on our first meeting you marched into my House, with your pale skin and dark hair, and those hauntingly pale eyes—eyes that were filled with so much pain and anger. You looked like the duchess of some strange and beautiful land. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

   I just stared at him. He’d given me compliments before, and obviously I knew that he loved me. But I’d never heard the story of our first meeting in quite the same way.

   “And then she challenged you to a duel,” Mallory said to him.

   “She did. She was very imperious.”

   Mallory nodded. “And you were like, ‘All right, girl. Let’s go. Let’s see what you’ve got.’”

   I pointed at Mallory. “You aren’t helping.”

   “I disagree, but . . .” She mimed zipping up her lips.

   “And she’s right,” Ethan said. “That’s fairly close to my recollection.”

   “Damn, Sullivan,” Catcher said as I offered the bottle back to him. He declined, so I recorked it, set it aside. “Merit’s got that Angry Master look down pat. You should probably be careful using that particular moniker.”

   Ethan grinned at me. “He has a point, Duchess. You are good at it.”

   I growled. Maybe I needed to challenge him more often, I thought. Just to keep him in line.

   Ethan leaned over, pressed a kiss to my lips. “If it helps, you became Sentinel very, very quickly.”

   I kept my gaze narrowed. “Does the entire House know about this?”

   There was amusement in his eyes. “Fewer than those who know about ‘Darth Sullivan.’”

   “Touché,” I said after a moment.

   “If you’re done flirting,” Catcher said, “should we get on with the magic?”

   “Let’s do,” Mallory said, pulling a match from the box. “I’m ready to get started.”

   “What should we do?” I asked.

   “Seem friendly. We don’t want to scare it.” With that, she flicked the match against the side of the box, spark and sulfur following in its wake. She put aside the box, carefully applied fire to the stick of rosemary. The herbal scent filled the air, made me hungry for baked chicken. But I put that aside.

   Silently, Mallory opened her notebook, scribbled something on a page, tore it out. She folded the page into a complicated arrangement, held it over the smoldering rosemary until it caught fire, too, and dropped it into the platter.

   “For ambience and explanation,” Mallory said, then sat cross-legged, hands on her knees, and straightened her back. And she began winding up her magic.

   Catcher had once told me that sorcerers didn’t make magic—they funneled it. They were capable, for genetic or paranormal reasons, of funneling the universe’s magic, redirecting it for some purpose of their own. That was what Mallory did now, pulling in magic that was warm enough to make steam literally rise from the top of her head.

   She cupped her hands together, blew into them.

   “Is she blowing out the magic?” I quietly asked.

   Catcher clucked his tongue. “She’s warming up her hands, noob.”

   Logical, but how was I supposed to know? I didn’t spend many nights with Mal in public parks trying to contact unseen magical creatures.

   Hands apparently warm enough, Mallory cupped them in front of her. A spark appeared, which grew larger and brighter as she concentrated, lips moving and head bobbing in some silent motion. I’d have guessed she was singing a favorite Muse song, but that would probably also be wrong, so I kept it to myself.

   The spark blossomed to the size of a golf ball, then a baseball, then a softball, the light bright enough to shine blue through her hands, like when I’d held my fingers over a flashlight as a child.