Free Breaking Stars (Book 2) by Jenna Van Vleet Page B

burns, stretching the skin around the bone to enclose it. It was grizzly work, and it would not look comely when finished, but it would have to suffice.
    “Gabriel could fix this,” she whispered. Calsifer raised his brows in question. “He could make her a new hand.”
    “Can she travel? Castle Jaden is still a two-day journey,” Calsifer said and adjusted his folded legs.
    “We may not have to go,” Aisling said quietly.
    “What do you mean?”
    Aisling brushed the question off. “Lay her flat,” she told Calsifer who carefully stood and left her in prone position. As a Class Five she could just manage a cloth-pattern, not well enough to make clothes but decent enough to mend and tear the fabric of garments. Laying the pattern, she ripped down the side of Robyn’s dark tunic and blouse as she felt the lightning’s path. The red marks blistered in thicker areas, but the rest was scaring. Robyn would bear the scars forever, for no Mage could heal what was already healed. In a strange way the marks were beautiful, branching like tree roots.
    “You do not propose returning to Kilkiny,” Cordis stated, standing slowly. His knees gave protesting clicks. He had not filled out to his normal stature that she knew so well, and his face was still thin. But it was such a handsome face that she did not mind its gauntness. It was that face she first saw walking down the main hall of the great Madison Library back when he was a Mage-Select. He had been surrounded by a thrall of his cocky companions who thought the foundations of Jaden sat in their hands, but his pretty blue eyes and short black hair made her ignore the rest of them. It had taken him weeks to realize, but eventually he noticed her. The memory made her stomach tighten. Back then he was as fresh as spring, as tough as marble, and as confident as they came. Life had taken little energy from him, but he had learned caution and patience.
    Aisling repaired the rips to Robyn’s clothes and looked up at the curious men. “We need not go to Jaden or return to Kilkiny because Head Mage Casimir is coming here.”
     
     
     
     
    Lex had done a great deal of awful things in his life, and they lingered with a haunting guilt: like running rather than fighting for his mother; like breaking the leg of his father’s horse and blaming it on the mute stable boy; like stepping over the starving child sprawled in the street to find him dead by morning, but this trumped them all.
    He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at it. Dried blood crusted beneath his fingernails, causing him to gag again, but there was nothing left to come up. Falling back against the wall of his small washroom, he reached for the tap to the bath and wrenched it free to fill with boiling water. Two dozen cisterns sat on the roofs dotted around the palace, each laced with Age-old patterns set by Class Ten Water Mages to keep the water forever boiling.
    He pulled at his clothes as if the mere presence of them made his skin crawl. Two brass buttons flew across his bed chamber, and he ripped the arm of his blouse nearly clean off. Panic and anxiety rose as his fingers scrabbled over the laces in his boots. He fell into the bath still struggling with his trousers and underclothes. Scalding liquid brought a sharp gasp to his mouth.
    General Calsifer was a hard man, and Lex feared his father as much as he respected him. They had never been close, spending too many years separated by leagues, but he knew he owed his father and the crown his allegiance when the General gave a command. His father would never have asked it of him, but the General knew what had to be done.
    General Calsifer had already formed the plot by the time he brought it to Lieutenant Shepherd, worked out every detail, and even selected a girl for it. “If all goes awry, it is you who would hold the safety of the Bolt line.”
    Lex scrubbed at the dirt and blood under his nails. His legs hung outside the tub where his