SHE SEEMED DISTURBED that his wand was gone. And why was that? He said easily, “Your wand is gone as well, Brecia. Surely you can feel by now that I don’t have it.”
She withdrew into deep silence, and he knew she was worried, about both their wands. It meant an enemy. It meant Mawdoor. Finally she said, “I know you don’t have it, damn you to demon’s hell. You slept while Mawdoor took both our wands. That bespeaks a fine mind and a keen awareness.”
He looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “At first I thought you had somehow gotten it back from me yourself. But I see that you haven’t. Is that why you searched for me, Brecia? You wanted your wand back?”
She turned her head a bit, and red hair curtained her cheek as she nodded. “Perhaps that was part of it. I must have my wand back, as you must have yours. Do you know where they are?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Without his wand, a wizard is in very big trouble.”
“As is a witch,” he said, but he didn’t seem all that concerned.
“A witch has more tools, I’ve discovered, than a wizard.”
He said without hesitation, “That is nonsense, Brecia.”
She said nothing to that, surely that was another strangeness. He would swear she was looking at him differently, as if he were somehow not himself, but another, and that damned other found more favor with her.
She shook her head at him, not understanding why he was acting so differently, why he hadn’t tried to tie her to a tree and force her to mate with him, why he hadn’t told her she would do exactly what he wanted—she knew he didn’t need his wand to do that, did he? She’d been a fool to come to him and look down at him whilst he slept. A fool to believe he somehow still had her wand, when she’d known, all the way to the soles of her sandals, that he didn’t have his own.
She said, “Mawdoor has our wands.”
He nodded. “Ah, so you have dealings with that wizard.”
“He lives close by. It’s impossible not to have dealings with him. And there’s more.”
“What? What more?”
She shook her fist toward an oak tree, and the prince would swear that the tree shuddered. “Say it or you’ll choke,” he said.
“He wants to wed me.”
The prince threw back his head and laughed loud and deep. He sobered quickly, ga
ve her an insolent grin. “I don’t think that will happen.”
She shook her head again, this time at herself. Her hair danced like flames around her head. He wanted very badly to rub his face in her hair.
He said, shrugging, “My wand will return to me, if it is able. It would take a very strong wizard to keep it from me. And you believe it is Mawdoor?” He spit and laughed. His arrogance—it shimmered off him. He recognized no limits, no beings more powerful than himself, no weaknesses within himself. And most saw him as he saw himself. Strong and invincible. She had always admired that even as she hated him for his specific arrogance, his inborn conceit, for all that was unbending in him—directed at her. Once, he’d repelled her more than he attracted her. But now—because she wasn’t a fool—she recognized that he was the more powerful and she always had to go carefully around him.
She said slowly, “It seems to me that your wand is not with you because Mawdoor came upon you here in the forest and took it. And took mine as well.”
“Aye. I wonder why he didn’t try to kill me? He’s always wanted to.”
“You were sleeping. Isn’t there a long-unwritten code that two opposing wizards must face each other?”
“Aye, the code has existed almost since the beginning of time, its purpose to ensure that the winner of any fight wins only through his skills and nothing else.”
“Would Mawdoor stand by that code?”
The prince shrugged. “I don’t think he would. Mawdoor has always gone his own way, and that means that he didn’t kill me because he wants something else, wants something more from me. A battle on his land? The chance to kill me and have you admire him, accept him?” At her silence, he said, “He knows that you and I will mate; therefore he must rid himself of me.”
“And he mustn’t make me too angry in the process,” she said.
The prince nodded. He saw Mawdoor’s dark, fierce face clearly in his mind, even though it had been at least a year since he’d seen him. At the stone circle—that was where he’d last seen Mawdoor. He was not a nice wizard. He was vicious and vile, stronger than he should be because of his damned demon blood, and the most lustful wizard in many a long year. The prince said to Brecia, “You will never wed Mawdoor.”
“No,” she said and looked down at her sandals, straightened the golden chain around her waist. “Of course I will not wed him. Neither of you has anything to say about that. Prince, I know that you can do magic without your wand, but can you truly protect yourself without it?”