UNMARKED

29: History Revealed

"Twelve hells, Caval! You can't put me in this kind of position." Blayre struggled to keep her voice down, but remembered that he had blocked the sound from this room, and allowed her volume to increase again. "The up-and-coming crown mage is an undercover rebel. How is that safe for the crown?" She growled.

Caval didn't flinch. "It depends who you are actually trying to protect here. Or what you are actually trying to protect." There was an edge to his usually calm, and friendly voice. "Blayre, you have always struck me as a person with a high moral compass." He looked at her as if asking for her affirmation of the fact.

She sat tight-lipped, fingertips pressing into the leather arm of the chair. The rain picked up its pace, pattering almost violently against the windowpane. "Yes." Was the only response she gave him.

"If it's alright, I want to tell you a personal story. I think that it would help you to understand my position a bit better."

"I'm listening," Said Blayre tersely. She leaned back in the chair, allowing some of the tension to leave her.

Caval clasped his hands across one knee and began, "I came to this country when I was young - very young. What I know of my home country is mostly stories that my mother told me. She brought me here to escape the war on the Southern continent. We spent weeks traveling across land and sea to come here to Emares, the land of peace and prosperity. That I do remember.

"She imagined a better life for me here. A life where I could live comfortably without the fear of being killed. And in most ways my life here has been better than it likely would have been on the Southern continent. I won't deny that. Here I am fed and well clothed. Here I have money and some power.

"My mother does not know what became of the man who fathered me. I was begot one Ritual Night in a fit of passion." He named one of the holidays celebrated in the Southern continent. An interesting holiday, to be sure. Blayre thought, since children were so frequently a result of that night.

Blayre didn't see what all of this had to do with joining a rebellion, but she was entranced nonetheless by Caval's once mysterious history. She had always wondered, in the back of her mind, how a foreign-born mage had been discovered and raised to be one of the most powerful mages in the realm. She'd known, by his speech, that he had been raised at least mostly in Emares. And from seeing him here and there during her years in the academy.

"I had shown signs of the magic gift from a very young age. My mother did her best to mask it. The one bit of reluctance she had about this country, was their regulatory policy toward mages."

"The registering and marking," Blayre filled in.

"Precisely. My mother brought me here for freedom. And when she realized how much of my magic was showing at such a young age, she tried to mask it for as long as she could, but..." He spread his hands, "One day my power exploded and destroyed an entire shop. The Seekers found me of course. And tested me. Finding my level of magic as powerful as it was, they brought me to the palace for training."

A snake of cold trailed down her spine at the word "Seeker".

"I see. And, were you happy about that?" Blayre asked, wondering how she would have felt had someone discovered her Sense and exposed it. Then forced her into something she didn't want to be a part of. She had been able to choose her path in life. And while she had sometimes envied the magically gifted students in academy, Blayre realized that she likely would have been frustrated at the constraints laid down by the Crown, had she been Gifted in that way.

She was lucky that she could hide her Sense and pretend.

"At first I was. Happy, that is. I thought it a great honor. I was treated well by the magic instructors and other academics. But once I graduated from the academy, and began my understudy with Conal and several other mages," His gaze had fixed on some far-off non-existent object, as his voice trailed off. "I tired of being told what to do. And where to go. And when to do things. And I tired of it very quickly.

"Blayre," He leaned forward and reached out, grasping her hands in his, which were surprisingly warm, tingling with his magic. His dark eyes glimmered like two midnight pools in the lamplight. "I have been observing you. I know that you are hiding something - something enormous. I know how you feel. I won't expose you. But I want you to look deep within yourself, and decide what is more important to you - loyalty to a crown that abuses the power it has over its most talented and skilled individuals? Or loyalty to a cause that aims to peacefully grant those individuals their freedom?"

  

A/N: THE END OF UNMARKED IS IN SIGHT. I have a sequel in mind, and I am pretty pleased with the way that book 1 is going to end. Any predictions?