Free Marissa Day by The Seduction of Miranda Prosper Page A

stability.”
    “And for power,” added Corwin. “For ever more power.”
    Miranda shuddered. “I find that difficult to comprehend.”
    “Do you?” The corner of Darius’s mouth curled up. “So, what did it feel like when you held Corwin’s magic inside you?”
    Miranda opened her mouth to say it had been hellish, but she stopped herself. That was not entirely true. At first, it had been amazing. She had been filled with strength and life. She was as great as the sky overhead, burning like a hundred stars. Nothing could touch or harm her, not her body, not her spirit. To feel so again, to feel so always ... that would be a true temptation.
    “What happens now?” she asked. “You have what you need and you will go?” She tried to speak the words calmly but a tremor crept unbidden into her voice.
    Corwin exchanged another long glance with Darius and once again Miranda had the unaccountable feeling of much more passing between them.
    “Ordinarily that is what would happen, yes,” said Corwin. Miranda tightened her jaw to keep it from trembling. “But this is not, even by our standards, an ordinary situation.
    “You are powerful, Miranda,” he went on. “The most powerful Catalyst I’ve ever encountered. If you want ... it is possible for us to teach you to how to use your gift. To draw and channel magic safely.”
    “To become our Catalyst,” said Darius gruffly. “He is asking you become our Catalyst for the duration of this fight.”
    Miranda felt her eyes bulge in their sockets. She was being invited to join them? To stay with them, learn more about . . . about magic, about sex, about these two powerful, magnetic men who stood with her now. Her mind reeled at the thought.
    “What if I say no?” she asked. “What if it’s too much and I do not want this?”
    “We can take it away,” said Corwin. “I fear we cannot heal your maidenhead, but we can . . . gentle the memories of how you lost it; give you a more ordinary and acceptable encounter with a more ordinary and acceptable man to hold on to. All memories of magic and ... us, will leave you and you will be free to carry on with your life as normal.”
    Normal. Miranda looked down at her own hands, which her mother called unalterably coarse. Her normal life was sitting on hard chairs in ballrooms watching her mother lay siege to every man who was available—and quite a few who weren’t—then going home to listen to Mother carp and snipe about Miranda’s inadequacies. To leaven this, there would be the perpetual round of calls and shopping and teas, with no purpose to any of it beyond filling the endless, gray London days.
    She looked at Corwin, and at Darius. What they revealed to her was exciting and enticing, true, but they also spoke of danger beyond her ability to imagine. If she said yes now, she would not later be able to turn back. She might be giving up her life and her sanity to escape from nothing worse than the boredom accepted by thousands of her sister spinsters.
    But if she said no, she would not see Corwin again. Or Darius. She would never know the feelings and sensations she had discovered with them during the night. She would never again take part in the wonder that she had been shown—neither the magic nor the sex. A whole world had opened before her, and she wanted to know more, to do more. She did not want to run back into that smothering place her life had always been.
    I will not.
    If it cost her life, then so be it. A short and purposed life would be far better than the longest life in her mother’s house could ever be.
    Miranda squared her shoulders and faced the two Sorcerers. “I am with you.”

Seven

    Dawn was just breaking over the roofs of Mayfair as Corwin and Darius walked down the empty street. They had clothed themselves again in their evening wear, so that they appeared to be nothing more than two gentlemen strolling casually home from a late night out.
    Not that there was anything casual about