A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

Elsie Alston had magic to bring down the wind. She had everything her brother had passed on to her—and more than that, an instinct for wielding the power that dwelled beneath her often-bare feet. She was a girl of dusk and dawn and everything in between.

It fled through the contact and scraped itself wholly into the vast potential that was Elsie Alston, the strongest magician that England had seen in centuries.

Both Blyths were listening to him—one with the same green-eyed interest that she swept over the entire world, and the other with the comfortably besotted gaze that said Edwin could be speaking Chinese, or Old French, or the forgotten language of the fae, and Robin would be just as happy to bask in the simple sound of his beloved’s voice.

He said, “Doesn’t it hurt?” “Yes,” said Elsie Alston’s mother. She went through the gate and closed it behind her.

Now it was Maud’s turn to laugh. She gave Jack an affectionate look from her position on the floor. Intolerable. Jack was never going to rid himself of any of these people.

He wanted to crack open his rib cage and place Alan Ross inside it, the better to warm him with Jack’s own blood.

The past could turn you into a strip of paper with a single side, so that comfort and vulnerability slid away down invisible channels and couldn’t be grasped. Except, perhaps, if you bent your will towards unlearning your own history. If you let yourself soften and be porous. Even if only like this, in silence, and at an angle.

“Cesare,” he said hoarsely, “I am completely at your mercy.”

“Fuck, I love how big you are,” Alan said. Again sounding pleasure-drunk. “Actually, no. I hate it.” His sigh was palpable against Jack’s chest. “Size and strength, station and wealth. All the advantages possible. Do you know how hard it is to believe someone won’t use any of that against you? To put your heart in someone’s hands, knowing that?” His voice was a mere breeze by the end, hardly audible over the sound of his fingers shifting Jack’s hair against his scalp. Jack had quite honestly had no idea that hearts were on the table at all.

Even when they fought, they fit—there was no mockery falling on soft, miserable ground as there had been with Edwin. Only the knowledge that any volley would be met and thrown back, brighter and better. Jack could have said: If there are days in the rest of my life when I don’t have you there to pick fights with, they will be the poorer for it. I could walk into any room, anywhere, and always be glad to see you there. He said: “I would take your heart between my ribs and guard it like my own. Is there any way I could make you believe it?”

A twitch of Jack’s mouth. “I want to see what you become when you’re given the space for it.” It was another devastating nudge in the universe of Alan’s soul. I would take your heart within my ribs.

I would write you into immortality. I would trap you in ink and wear the pages next to my skin until they fell apart. Kiss me until I know you. Kiss me until you know me, and unmake me, and love me anyway.

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.