Free Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) by Skye Malone, Megan Joel Peterson Page B

watched them do it.”
    “You watched them do something,” Sebastian cut in. “And most likely that thing was manipulate you.”
    “Excuse me?”
    From his position at Darius’ right hand, the suit-clad man glanced to the other councilors and then gave her a look tinged with pity. “With all due respect, your majesty, you’re young. Inexperienced. Your father bound your magic at age eight, and you haven’t grown up in this world. Everyone at this table knows the cripples could have told you any number of stories, and you would have had no reason to disbelieve them, because everything here is new to you anyway.” He shook his head at her. “You were an easy target, your highness. They saw a chance to convince a naïve young wizard to attack random humans on the street in an effort to corroborate their fantasies, and they took it. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but try to be reasonable now.”
    She stared at him. “That’s not what happened.”
    “That’s what they wanted you to believe,” he countered. “They’re broken , your majesty. And not simply because they don’t have magic. They want to be part of a world they can never have, and each one of them is more than willing to lie, cheat, and manipulate their way into it, if necessary. I’m sure they made themselves sound like victims. They always do. The whole world is after them, to their mind, when in reality, all the world wants is for them to accept their place.” He scoffed at her enraged expression. “And yet you still want to defend them as innocent. But did they tell you how they murder our kind too? Or did they justify it to you, with their imaginary crimes and vigilante heroes? Did you actually meet Carter and his little–”
    “The Hunters?” she snapped. “Yeah, I met them. Who do you think kept me alive this past month?”
    Breathing hard, she stared around the table. “Do you all even know what’s going on out there? Ferals are butchering people in the streets – the very people who can see the Blood wizards and help you take them out. There’s a whole other war going on, and while you were writing it off as rumor and mocking the cripples for their ‘fantasies’, it went out and killed my family!”
    Sebastian gave her a wry look. “No disrespect, your majesty,” he said, his voice twisting the last word perilously close to an insult. “But in your one entire month of suffering from this war, I don’t believe you’ve earned the right to speak to the years of loss we’ve had to endure. And before you let a bunch of defectives convince you how to see the world, perhaps you’ll heed the advice of wizards who’ve been leading their people since before you were in diapers, and who actually know what wielding magic means.”
    She blinked, struck speechless. Around the table, council members shifted, their expressions lost in a gradient of meticulous impassivity and discomfited agreement.
    “That,” Darius said, razors edging his tone. “Will be quite enough, Councilman Monroe.”
    Disgustedly, Sebastian looked away.
    “My apologies, your highness,” Darius continued, glancing at the rest of the council before returning to Sebastian with a look that could have pierced steel. “For the opinions of some of our members. I assure you they are not shared by all.”
    For a moment longer, he pinned the other man with his gaze, and then turned back to her as though dismissing Sebastian from relevance. “Will the cripples listen to you?” he continued.
    She paused and then nodded, still shaking with residual fury.
    Darius echoed the motion thoughtfully, his eyes moving occasionally to the wizards nearby. “Then you have done better than us.”
    Her brow drew down.
    “It is true that eight years ago, Josiah tried to tell us the same information you’re passing along now. And it is true that, at the time, we refused to believe him. It could even be said that we were, as you put it, mocking. But that disagreement sent Josiah