Free Spellbound by Blake Charlton Page A

attacked a caravan coming in through the Northern Gate. The wounded were brought to the infirmary. A woman named Deirdre claimed she’d been struck by a lycanthrope spell and that only I could save her. By the time I got to her, she was nearly dead. An unknown text was compressing her lungs. I tried to disspell it, but it crushed her heart. She died on my table. A few moments later she came back to life.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe came back to life. She’s an avatar, a creature possessing part of a deity’s soul.”
    â€œA canonist?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œBut if she’s not a canonist, how is she in Avel? Celeste would destroy any divinity not listed in the Celestial Canon. Perhaps she is serving Canonist Cala?”
    â€œI’ve no clue.”
    â€œHoly sky, Francesca, you must know something!” He said the word “something” with the same patronizing tone he had once reserved for their personal arguments.
    â€œOh wait, Cyrus, you’re right. I do know something. I was just too
God-of-gods damned stupid to realize it until some patronizing man with an intelligence rivaled by garden tools told me I do,” she replied hotly, and then for good measure added, “you pretentious bastard.”
    He only laughed. “Haven’t changed, have you? Still all fiery sarcasm or calm compassion with nothing between. And still speaking like an antique. I never heard anyone but you and my grandmother name the Creator as the God-of-gods.”
    Francesca clenched her teeth. “Just shut it and listen.” She explained how she had carried Deirdre to the roof while others lost their ability to speak and began to wail.
    She did not mention Typhon or Deirdre’s belief that the demon had brought Cyrus back to the city as a “screen.” However, she repeated Deirdre’s claim that the Savanna Walker was the cause of the aphasia.
    Cyrus looked at her. “The Savanna Walker’s a child’s tale.”
    â€œThe aphasia curse was real enough.” As she said this, Francesca thought of the text that had spellbound Deirdre’s heart. Suddenly, she knew how to prevent Cyrus’s sense of duty from endangering them both. He wouldn’t like it … if he ever found out about it. She looked at him. “I’m worried a curse might have gotten into you.”
    Cyrus looked at her. “An aphasia curse or the one that crushed the avatar’s heart?”
    â€œEither.”
    Cyrus looked at her. “If I become ill or aphasic, we’ll fall out of the sky.”
    â€œI can cast a countercurse to see if you have any foreign text in your body.”
    â€œWhat about the text I’m writing in my heart?”
    â€œI edit the countercurse so it won’t interfere.”
    He nodded.
    â€œGive me your arm.”
    When Cyrus obeyed, she took his wrist with her left hand. With her right, she cast a needlelike Magnus sentence and jabbed it into one of his arm veins.
    Using her hand muscles, Francesca wrote a compact medical text in Magnus and Numinous. It took a few moments. When it was ready, she used the Magnus needle to cast it into Cyrus’s bloodstream. He wasn’t fluent in the wizardly languages, so the spell was invisible to him. But Francesca watched the silver-gold spark tumble up his arm and into his shoulder.
    â€œHold still,” she commanded and watched the spell flow into the center of Cyrus’s chest and then shoot to the area under his right pectoral muscle. The text had passed through the right chambers of his heart and been pumped into his lung.

    â€œDo you see a curse?” he asked.
    â€œI said hold still!”
    She watched the spell tumble though the lung’s fine capillaries. Then it made sudden, halting progress back to the center of his chest. She tensed. When it reached the left side of his heart, she cast a backhand wave of Numinous signal spells into his chest. One of these struck