Burned: Weslan's Story (A Destined Series Short)

  BURNED

  Weslan’s Story

  A Destined Series Short & Companion to Book 1

  KAYLIN LEE

  BURNED: WESLAN’S STORY

  Copyright © 2018 by Kaylin Lee

  First Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  Kaylin Lee

  http://www.kaylinleewrites.com

  Editing by Kathrese McKee of Word Marker Edits

  Cover design by Victoria Cooper Designs

  There is no remedy for love but to love more.

  Henry David Thoreau

  1

  I rubbed the back of my neck and looked from the tall, blonde mage to the petite, dark-haired girl beside her. In the past three hours, I’d been stripped of my patronage position and banished from the Mage Division. Now I was at the mercy of this terrifying mage named Zel, and for some stupid reason, I couldn’t stop staring at her gorgeous stepdaughter, Ella.

  We stood in the front room of their bakery. “He knows,” the deathly powerful mage said ominously, referring to the fact that she’d told me about her Touch. Zel placed a gentle hand on Ella’s arm. The gesture was obviously meant to soothe, but her beautiful stepdaughter scowled at me, her brow creasing in clear displeasure.

  I couldn’t help flinching at the sight of their skin touching. What if Zel hurt her by accident?

  I held my breath, but nothing happened. Ella continued to scowl, and Zel narrowed her eyes at me like I’d done something wrong.

  Like I’d done something wrong. True enough.

  Ella refused to look me in the eye. And I was trying really hard to get a second glance out of her. Just a friendly, handsome, flirtation-worthy mage here, I wanted to say. I was at least worth checking out once, wasn’t I? Maybe even smile worthy? Had I fallen so far in just a few hours?

  Cast-off, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to ignore the awkwardly light weight of my unadorned upper arm. Worthless mage. I could still feel the old Procus lord’s talon-like fingers as he ripped off my gold service armband.

  “—going to be helping, I guess you could start by sanding down the front door,” Ella was saying, her green eyes flashing as she stared at my chest. I was tempted to rub my sternum to make sure her angry glare hadn’t burned a hole through my torso. “Someone left me a little note this morning.”

  Zel frowned at Ella’s cryptic words. Before I could ask what she meant, Ella slipped outside.

  I watched her through the bakery’s front windows as she stormed down the street. Even angry, she was stunning. Her dark hair was tucked into a careless bun that was somehow both alluring and sweet. She probably knew she was too beautiful for any additional fussing over her own appearance. Her skin was flawless bronze, and those brilliant green eyes lit up her face like they’d been designed by a master appearance mage. Stunning.

  “So that’s your stepdaughter, huh?” I craned my head to follow her progress as she neared the end of the lane. She looked … familiar. Almost like the mysterious common girl who’d haunted my dreams for nearly a year, back when I still had delusions of being a good man, worthy of a good woman.

  Idiotic, pointless dreams.

  Still. She was gorgeous. I’d get her to smile at me yet. “Ariella,” I whispered to myself. I liked the sound of her name on my tongue, so soft and pretty, so feminine and delicate. Just like her. Just like she probably would be, if I could convince her not to glare at me anymore. “Ella.” When would she get back from—

  “Don’t even think it,” Zel said, her tone as sharp as a knife.

  No. I dropped my gaze to my feet. She couldn’t be the girl from my dreams. Could she? That would be too lucky, and I’d already proven I didn’t deserve decent luck, much less the good stuff.

  2

  “What are you doing in here?” A pretty healer stood in the doorway of Ella’s hospital room, her hands on her hips. “Family only.”

  I was too tired to flirt with her. “Her family sent me,” I said flatly. A hundred different scents from the hospitals healing salves comingled in the air, making me dizzy, but that was nothing compared to the nauseating sight of Ella’s injuries.

  Someone spoke to the healer mage from the hallway, drawing her attention away from me. I returned my focus to Ella. Her entire face was red and swollen, with a huge, purplish-red bruise spreading from under the bandage that covered one side of her face from temple to jaw. She lay in the narrow hospital bed, her hands and legs jerking occasionally. Was she having a nightmare? Or was her pain so strong, it threatened to break through the heavy sedation of sopor medicine the healers had given her?

  “Stay asleep, Ella,” I muttered under my breath as I grabbed a wobbly chair by the wall and dragged it over to her bedside. I sat hard, my legs weak from the long day I had spent searching for her. Panicking for her, if I was honest. Completely panicking. But here she was, injured yet alive. I should get back to Zel and tell her Ella was alive, but the thought of leaving Ella vulnerable and alone in this small, overcrowded River Quarter hospital made me sick.

  A suffio bomb had exploded in Ella’s classroom early in the morning, less than two hours after I’d met her. For the rest of the day, I had searched to find the hospital where the quarter guards had taken her after the attack. Every other student had been immediately shuttled home to their Procus family’s healer mage, but not Ella. No. None of the students had thought to share their compound’s healer with their sole commoner classmate. Some idiotic quarter guard had simply dumped her at a slum hospital and gone about his business without telling anyone where he’d left her.

  The two other patients slept silently in their own beds on my other side. The single, narrow window on the far side of the room was so grimy, the late-afternoon light barely registered. The cheap luminous lamp in the ceiling flickered. It was almost out of magic, and apparently no one here cared enough to replace it.

  She was alive, though. She’d survived the attack. That was what mattered.

  “Family only.” The mage was back, repeating her orders stonily from the doorway. “Don’t make me call the guard.”

  “Her family isn’t coming.” I returned her glare. Charm was not in my repertoire at the moment. There was no way Zel or the twins could risk leaving the bakery. They’d be caught by trackers within blocks of the bakery. “I’m all she has.”

  The mage girl studied me. Any minute now, she’d realize I was a mage without a service armband.

  She lifted her chin. “And who are you?” Her eyes darted over my body, no doubt taking in my tailored clothes, then settled on my right arm. There it was. She narrowed her eyes. “A blacklister? I heard there was a new one today. And you dare to come here?”

  Believe it or not, just yesterday I’d have been the one looking down on you, River Quarter healer. “She’s my employer.”

  The healer pursed her lips. “Mage Helix?” she called over her shoulder.

  I leaned forward and rested my arms on my knees, planting my feet like I could somehow stay seated even if they decided to get rid of me by force.

  “What is it?” An ol
der, black-haired mage with a narrow face and pale skin entered the room behind her. Recognition flashed in his eyes. He curled his lip. “The Fortis boy.” He brushed past the younger healer and stared down at me, his nostrils flaring. “Fraternizer. Your father would be disgusted if he knew what you’d become. I won’t have your kind in my hospital.”

  So he had known my healer father before the plague took him. My stomach plunged. Fraternizer. Because the very thought of a mage kissing a Procus lady was abhorrent to nature, right? Sure it was. I’d heard the statement countless times today, including from the lady herself when she’d realized our secret was out. “I’m not here as a mage. Just doing my job. I’m not causing any trouble to anyone.”

  Mage Helix jerked his head toward Ella’s bruised, unconscious form. “Who is she to you?”

  “My employer,” I said stiffly. “My new employer, that is.”

  His expression hardened. “So she’s sheltering you. Keeping you out of the Badlands. Is that it?”

  The younger healer frowned. “A commoner should know better than to get involved with mage business.”

  Mage Helix nodded curtly. “Just so.” He beckoned to the other healer. “Get her off the sopor. I don’t want either of them in here any longer. We can’t have the Mage Division hearing about this.”

  I shot to my feet instinctively and stood between Ella and the healers. “She was just injured this morning,” I ground out. “You can’t wake her up until you at least finish healing her.”

  The older mage crossed his arms. “Blacklisters don’t make decisions around here.” He looked me up and down, his expression growing sourer by the moment. “How can I use up the rest of my magic on a single patient when there are so many other needy cases besides hers?”

  “We saved her life.” The younger healer raised an eyebrow. “Be grateful and be on your way.”

  “Just get her some of your healing salves,” I growled. “Don’t make her suffer needlessly just to be petty.”

  The older healer smiled thinly. “We’d be happy to do that—if you can afford to pay for the salve on top of the healing fees she’s already accumulated.”

  3

  “The healers didn’t send her home with anything for the pain?” Zel’s voice was quiet and hoarse. It had been two weeks since I’d found Ella in the small, River Quarter hospital. After Zel paid the exorbitant healing fee, they’d agreed to let her stay until it was safe to wake her from the sopor. I’d brought her home that morning. Now I was standing in the bakery kitchen, kneading dough like a common servant and listening to Ella cry in her sleep.

  My back and legs ached from carrying her on our three-hour trek across the city from the River Quarter hospital to the bakery, but I couldn’t stop moving. Bakery work was the only thing distracting me from listening to every whimper of pain drifting through the flimsy door of the pantry Ella called a bedroom.

  I didn’t bother to face Zel. “No. Even if they’d offered, there wasn’t—”

  “Enough money.” Zel sighed. “I know.”

  I kept working the dough, folding it over the way Alba had taught me. Even when I heard Zel’s defeated footsteps on the creaky stairs up to their living quarters, I couldn’t relax.

  Ella cried out in her sleep again. Her weak, terrified whimper hit me like a punch to the gut. Ella. She’d endured a true nightmare at the hands of the Blight, and thanks to the shoddy healing job, she still wasn’t free of it.

  I had to help her. She had no one else. I couldn’t live with myself if I let her down, just as the rest of the city had already.

  The sticky dough came off my hands after a minute under the hot water faucet. I dried my hands on the nearest kitchen towel, then shot magic into my slacks and shirt, banishing the light dusting of flour and a few of the deepest wrinkles in an instant.

  I slipped outside, locking the bakery door behind me.

  It was early evening. The night was warm and damp from the afternoon rainfall, and the narrow lane behind the bakery was dark and dirty.

  I swung onto the back of a trolley as soon as I made it to a major street. Within minutes, we were hurtling past the River Quarter. I jumped off and made it to the footpath easily enough, but I couldn’t help wondering if the Asylian trolleys had always been so fast. I brushed off the thought as I jogged through the narrow streets of the River Quarter. I’d rarely ridden the trolley growing up. What did I know?

  The waiting room at the slum hospital was just as crowded as before, and the same unhappy-looking secretary pressed his lips together the moment I entered.

  “I’d like to see Mage Helix.” I squared my shoulders and tried to look like I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Like I wasn’t desperate.

  The secretary pursed his lips. “He’s not available at the moment,” he said shortly, without bothering to even glance over his shoulder at the healers bustling in the hallway behind him.

  How do you know? I wanted to ask. I gripped the edge of the counter between us. “What about his assistant?”

  It turned out the best way to get the assistant healer’s attention was to stand in the lobby for the better part of an hour while noisily, obnoxiously refusing to leave.

  “You.” The pretty mage narrowed her eyes, gripped my arm, and dragged me down a side hallway. “What do you want? Mage Helix will be furious if he sees you on the premises.”

  “Your patient, whom you abandoned, is in a great deal of pain. I’m not leaving here until you give me something to ease her recovery. If Mage Helix has a problem with that, he can send a message to the Mage Division for help ejecting me. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to learn that he has been offering healing services to a fraternizer and the commoner who sheltered him.”

  “You can’t—” She released me and crossed her arms, her nostrils flaring. “They’ll just—”

  It took her a moment of sputtering, but she finally seemed to realize I wasn’t bluffing. I’d happily risk humiliation if it meant getting some measure of peace for Ella.

  The mage hissed a resigned sigh. “It will cost you.”

  Why was I not surprised? “How much?”

  She leaned back on her heels and raised a speculative eyebrow, her lips tilting up as she realized she still held the upper hand. “Two hundred marks.”

  4

  The night was clear, and faint stars were visible even in the bright lights of the busiest avenue of the Merchant Quarter.

  I stood across the street from the only pawn shop still open this time of night. Breathe in, absorb the magic. The familiar refrain I’d learned as a young man at the Mage Academy did nothing to ease the desperation twisting my stomach. Breathe out, prepare to deploy it.

  I adjusted my shirt and slacks, apprehension making my movements jerky. I’d need to absorb and expel more magic than I’d ever done in the past. A Procus lady’s mage-craft gown had to last for a full season before it was out of fashion, even if she was determined not to repeat her gowns. It had been part of my job to provide a wardrobe overflowing with sparkling, fashionable dresses that lasted the whole season.

  Breathe in, absorb. Breathe out, prepare. But this was different. This time, I needed enough magic to transform the clothes permanently, so the mage-craft details would never fade. I knew our class at the Mage Academy had practiced permanent transformations at one point, but I couldn’t remember participating. No doubt I’d skipped that class because it had sounded like too much work.

  In. Out. More magic.

  I did, however, remember my classmates complaining that it had taken days to recover from the project.

  A little more. In. Out. Now … release. My shirt came first. I expelled enough magic to straighten the wrinkles and cover the stains, then I thickened the fabric to resemble expensive, imported cloth from Lerenia, the kind a young Procus lord not wealthy enough for his own appearance mage would wear to a night of dinner and dancing at Adrian’s exclusive club. The buttons got a thick, ostentatious coating
of gold, and the collar received an extra dose of starch. There. The shirt was now twice as uncomfortable and worth at least seventy-five marks.

  A hollow feeling in my chest robbed my lungs of breath and made me sway dizzily, but I ignored it. Ella was back at the bakery sobbing in her sleep. Surely, I still had more magic to use.

  Pants next. I gave them a similar treatment, thickening the fabric, covering the stains, and adjusting the tailoring to fit the obnoxious tapered legs Procus lords were so fond of this season. With one more puff of magic, I changed their color from brown to coal-black.

  Spots covered my vision, and I blinked to clear my eyes, keeping one hand on the brick wall behind me so I wouldn’t pitch sideways.

  “Fifty marks, at least,” I muttered, casting a quick glance across the street to make sure the pawn shop hadn’t closed yet.

  Shoes. Then I would be done. The memory of Ella’s last pained whimper had me gritting my teeth. I had to fix this for her. I had nothing left to my name but the clothes on my back and the magic in my body. Together, they had to be worth something.

  With one violent gust of magic, I transformed my shoes from simple, brown wingtips to polished boots with gold stitching and thick soles.

  The hollow feeling in my chest made me double over, but the thrill of triumph chased the emptiness away. I’d done it.

  When I finally regained the feeling in my legs, I strode across the street and got into character as a desperate, foolish young Procus lord.

  It wasn’t difficult, considering how close it was to the truth.

  “How can I help you, sir?” The pawn shop’s proprietor had greasy hair and a stubbly jaw. He rested his hand on his generous gut and watched me closely as I shut the door behind me.

  “I need cash. And clothes.”

  His eyes flashed hungrily before he schooled his expression. “You in some kind of trouble, young sir?”