A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

The Coopers weren’t an army, but they were damn close to one, and Jack knew how armies worked. Atrocities were committed first and legitimised later, if the high brass were forced to acknowledge them at all.

“Crisis,” said Jack, “is an excellent justification for the seizure of power.”

I’ve no idea if it ever reached you, but—” “It reached me.” “Are you sure? I didn’t exactly sign my name.” “How many letters do you think the average anonymous scribbler of illegal pornography gets?” said Ross. “I’ve only ever had the one.

Ross had said that Jack wanted for nothing. False, so very false. He didn’t need this, no; he’d arranged his life and his heart so that he needed no one else. But want was another thing entirely.

He watched the invitation being weighed as Alan Ross weighed all gifts: as if suspecting them of being hollow and containing Greeks.

Alan had learned a new method of lying from Maud Blyth: Don’t say anything untrue. Keep your secrets in the gaps between your words.

I was trying bloody hard not to fuck you, as a matter of fact. Given that it seemed like the worst decision I could make.” “What happened to that plan?” said Jack, down in those dangerous registers of his voice. “My willpower failed and I did it anyway. Christ, you’re a smug prick.” Nothing to lose. He might as well interrogate in return. “What happened?” “To my willpower? I wasn’t exerting any.”

was trying bloody hard not to fuck you, as a matter of fact. Given that it seemed like the worst decision I could make.” “What happened to that plan?” said Jack, down in those dangerous registers of his voice. “My willpower failed and I did it anyway. Christ, you’re a smug prick.” Nothing to lose. He might as well interrogate in return. “What happened?” “To my willpower? I wasn’t exerting any.”

He thought of how Alan had looked when he realised Jack understood his reasons: flayed open by exhausted relief, shadowed with that gorgeous lingering defiance.

“Do you truly think you’re going to die?” Edwin fumbled the pencil. “What?” “Because I’ve known soldiers who are so convinced of their death that they start hurrying it along. And that’s dangerous for everyone around them.” “You think I want to die?” “I think you hate the idea of things you can’t understand and control, and if the opportunity came up to make it fast, painless, and meaningful—to sacrifice yourself—you’d be tempted.”

For a long moment Jack wondered if he was about to be punched. He’d have allowed it out of sheer novelty.

Jack Alston might not have magic, but he was moving through the world again, and had people relying on him again, and it was blood rushing back into the numb flesh of his feelings. Forcing him to live.

Alan had never needed to lean on anyone. It was intolerable that he now kept turning out the pockets of his soul and finding caught in their seams the desire to let someone else take his weight. The desire to be held, even kissed.

“What was that?” asked Oliver, joining them again. “Leo said we should get golden partridges to complement the peacocks,” said Lady Cheetham. “He really should have specified that he was joking.”

And still his mother walked the estate every day, granting recognition to even the place where Elsie had died, no matter how much it hurt. Moving herself above the earth in patient patterns. Carving channels through repetition, just as Edwin believed that the point of ley lines was for magic to flow and renew itself. Magic. Bonds. Intuition. For a moment Jack had the uneasy impression of a large idea that he might be able to touch, to make solid and understandable, if only he could reach in the right direction.

Alan didn’t believe that Adelaide Morrissey had ever been lost. Surely she’d just give the geography a reproachful stare and it wouldn’t dare inconvenience her further.

Would I prefer a world where nobody expects me to marry at all, or believes a man’s name will give my life legitimacy? Of course. But that’s not the world I’m living in.”

Like his cousin, Jack had grown up thinking about his magic as something deserved—far more so than even his title and his wealth, which his politics had gradually led him to accept were representative of a fundamental flaw in any society that claimed to respect the humanity and wellbeing of all its members.

“Another army lesson. Rest when you can. Stay.”

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.

If the enemy didn’t know you had a weapon, you damn well kept it up your sleeve for as long as you could.

There would be long, strange, difficult days to come. Jack was not precisely looking forward to them. But they were owed, and Jack would pay what he owed.

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.

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?”

Jack looked at him unblinking for a few moments. “It’s alarming that forgery is your first instinct,” he said, “but I admire it.” “If the rules are stupid, sod the rules.”

“I want to kiss you until your mouth forgets it exists for any reason but to let me taste it. I want to kiss you so well, and so long, that every narrator in your books will crawl off their pages and die from sheer jealousy.” His lips almost, almost made contact. But didn’t. He sounded like rough gravel and black tea full of sugar. “Will you let me?”

“The true spells of power will continue to need magicians working together, perhaps even more than before, and that’s for the best. It should take agreement to achieve large things.”

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.

Edwin’s face was a crowded portrait of ten questions being asked at once. He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. No doubt the questions were fighting for preeminence.