A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

This was the most amusing thing to happen in weeks: a jealous Edwin Courcey trying to wield secondhand academic cattiness against someone who’d fucked his partner. Normally Jack would have enjoyed the show and mocked Edwin about it afterwards. But they needed Manning. Antagonising him wouldn’t help.

Dufay said, “And if the darkness is coming for you?” “You mean this wasn’t it?” said Violet. Edwin was unshaken. “Then we will need our own stars to see by. You told us that and we didn’t listen.” He took a breath. With his thin pallor and his own blue eyes he looked, fleetingly, far closer to a relation of Dufay than Jack ever had. He looked halfway fae himself. Edwin said, “We, the magicians of this land, accept only the wages of the dusk. Everyone bears their own cost.”

It was a new experience, to want his solitude and then find someone intruding on it and be glad. A small gladness, like a mouthful of good wine, but world-shaking in its novelty.

“If I had to choose a moment,” said Robin, “I would say that I decided on Adelaide as the future partner of my life when she first realised I wasn’t a magician and looked at me as if I were a particularly unintelligent species of dormouse.” Adelaide beamed and shook sandwich crumbs from her gloves. “For myself, I can’t decide whether it was Sir Robert’s mound of unpaid debts or his complete lack of interest in women which I found more appealing in a husband.” Violet choked on a mouthful of sandwich.

Jack didn’t have Robin’s optimism. He wouldn’t call this collection of beloved and fascinating chaos uncomplicated, nor did it stand much chance of ever being so. But—as Edwin liked to say, it was the way of magic. Broken items wanted to be whole. Sets yearned to be complete. Twilight fell, and magic spread. Jack could feel it.