The Fake Dating Spell novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Sight
The Queen's Sight-mage tests them at his door, they share one bed, and Lorcan waits in the snow holding her notebook.
Tavish's town house stood at the end of a lane behind the Guard barracks, narrow and stone and almost bare.
There was a hall with one lamp, a kitchen with one pot, and a stair.
Wynne stood in the hall with her wrist held out in front of her.
The gold thread ran from her sleeve to his and trembled whenever either of them breathed.
"Gold," she said again.
"I heard you the first time."
"It's not supposed to do that."
"What is it supposed to do?"
"Nothing. It's a prank."
She dropped her arm and the thread swung with it.
"I wrote it so my school friends could pretend to be in love for a week and annoy our tutor."
Tavish took off his coat and hung it on a nail.
"And gold means what, again?"
"That one of us wants the other."
"Which one?"
"It doesn't say. It says only that one of us does."
He looked at her over his shoulder.
She felt the look go all the way down her back.
"Then it's broken," Wynne said.
"Probably," said Tavish, in a tone that did not sound as though he believed it.
The knock came before she could ask what he meant.
It was three raps, polite, from someone who expected to be let in.
Tavish opened the door.
The Queen's Sight-mage stood on the step in her grey robe, with snow on her shoulders and a lantern in her hand.
It was not yet dawn.
"I said I would come to your door," she said.
"You said at dawn."
"I said I would come. The Chancellor asked me to come sooner."
She stepped past him without waiting to be asked, and her pale eyes went at once to Wynne's wrist.
She stopped.
The thread glowed in the dark hall, warm and steady.
"What is that?" the Sight-mage asked.
"A Show-Love," Wynne said, because there was no use hiding a spell that was already glowing.
"I wrote it. It's a binding that shows a betrothal."
"I have never seen it."
"I invented it."
The Sight-mage lifted the lantern and walked a slow circle around them.
She held her free hand toward the thread and closed her eyes.
The hall was so quiet Wynne could hear snow sliding off the roof.
"It does not lie," the Sight-mage said at last.
Wynne's stomach dropped.
"It is gold," the Sight-mage said.
"Silver is what a couple shows. Gold is what a couple has."
She opened her eyes and looked at Tavish.
"You have not been betrothed one night, Warden Morrow."
"Does the law say how long a man must wait to want a woman?" Tavish asked.
The Sight-mage's mouth twitched.
"No."
"Then the oath stands."
"The oath stands," she agreed.
"If the thread goes out before Twelfth Night, I will know. If you sleep under separate roofs, I will know."
She turned to go and stopped in the doorway.
"The Chancellor will not be pleased. His daughter's betrothed is a man who lost this contest to a clerk."
The door closed behind her.
Wynne's whole body sagged with relief.
"Gold," she said, for the third time. "In front of her."
"I know."
"She said gold is what a couple has."
"I know."
"One of us wants the other, Warden."
"Tavish," he said. "If you are going to accuse me, use my name."
She wanted very much to sit down.
He pointed up the stair.
"There is one bed."
"Of course there is."
"The spell needs one roof. It does not say one bed. But it stings past ten paces, and the stair is nine."
"How do you know it stings?"
He lifted his wrist and she saw the thread pulling taut as he took one step back.
A sharp, bright ache went up her forearm, and she gasped.
He stepped forward again.
The ache faded.
"Oh," Wynne said.
"I'll take the floor."
"It's your house."
"You're my guest."
"I'm your fake betrothed," she said.
"We will argue about it until one of us falls asleep."
"I'll win," said Tavish.
He did, because she was asleep in the bed in six minutes with her shoes still on.
She dreamed of nothing.
She woke in gray light with a blanket over her.
The thread curled across the pillow toward the man sitting in the chair with his boots stretched out.
He had not slept.
He was watching her, and he looked away too slowly.
"Window," he said, and nodded at it.
Wynne got up and went to the glass.
Below, in the lane, in knee-deep snow, a figure in a blue robe stood very still.
Lorcan Aventine looked up at the window.
In one hand he held her old school notebook, the thick one she had left in his tower, open to the last page.
He lifted it over his head.
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