Free Changespell Legacy by Doranna Durgin

Along the wall next to the bathroom was a full-length mirror set into a burnished metal frame with a local-artist look to it. Here, he hesitated, realizing for the first time the extent of his folly.
    The man he looked at was Arlen the wizard. Who else wore such a thing as a university sweatshirt given to him by his lover? Beyond such eccentric items, his wardrobe held habitual dark blues and blacks, fine materials magicked so as never to fade, their sheen never dulled by pilling or fuzz.
    Dump it all at a secondhand store and take up new clothes in trade.
    There was nothing he could do about his height . . . taller than most was taller than most, on horseback or trying to fold his legs inside a coach. But his hair was as distinctive as the rest of him—full and shaggy and never much attended.
    Cut it. Dye the steel grey to a darker color.
    The mustache. He ran a finger across the brushy abundance of it, watching himself do it in the mirror.
    He'd had this mustache all his adult life, and he couldn't imagine anyone would immediately recognize him without it—especially once the pale skin beneath it colored up a little.
    Shave the mustache.
    Nothing he could do about the overbite . . . something that should have been attended to in his youth and had not. But it wasn't a bad one, not bad at all—not enough so people would remember him just because of it . . .
    At least, he didn't think so. He hadn't had a good look at it since the mustache first grew in.
    "The problem is," he told his reflection, "you are so blatantly . . . you ."
    Arlen the wizard. Mild until circumstances called for otherwise, good with a needle, full of hidden humor.
    Easy enough to say he was usually absorbed in work. Of late, often absorbed in Jaime.
    Jaime.
    She was here, now, and had been. Who knows what she thought of his absence. The general impression he'd left was that he'd gone off on Council business— She'd think him dead.
    Jaime. She was the one person he might manage to contact. She had no skill with magic, but she had what everyone in the Council lacked . . . his love. She had his intimate trust. And of late, she did indeed respond to casual direct communication within the hold, the kind of magic that held only a whisper of a signature, closer to raw magic than anything else a wizard might do.
    He took a deep breath, still watching himself in the mirror. The mustache removal could wait, he decided. It was evening, and quiet; a time Jaime often used to read. She'd be the most receptive now.
    Then the mustache, and tomorrow the clothes. "Good-bye, you," he told his image, and turned away from it. Tomorrow he would become someone else.
    Tonight, he reached for Jaime. And tomorrow night, and the night after . . . until he was close enough to touch her.
    Carey rubbed his fingers across both eyes, trying and failing to wipe out the gritty feel of fatigue at the end of a day that wasn't even over yet. Lowering himself onto Arlen's couch next to Jaime's suddenly and miserably curled-up form, he hunted for words— Are you all right? Do you feel any better? Can I do anything? —and couldn't find any to which the answers weren't resoundingly obvious. No, no, and no .
    He settled for resting a hand on her arm, but even that made her wince. He sat back against the far-too-comfortable pillow softening the arm of the couch and took a deep breath, trying to put things in perspective, trying not to worry too much about this one more thing. It was a winter illness, probably; everyone got them.
    Except there wasn't anything going around right now.
    Just plain grief and stress, then, giving her a sick headache that the hold's healer hadn't yet been able to touch.
    Except she'd never reacted this way to grief and stress before . . . and the guides knew they'd seen each other through plenty of it.
    Arlen dead, the Council gone, Camolen shut down, his couriers riding way too many miles a day, his horses starting to show the strain, and the ache of missing Jess