Page 33 of Unexpected Magic

“I did,” Delia agreed. “Did you have trouble finding someone?”

“One translocates by finding the unique magical trace of the person one wants. Or place, if enough magic has been worked there to give it its own magical trace. I found Findlater’s signature easily. He was exactly where I expected him to be. But when I tried to reach Sister Louise, she was not at the castle.”

“Not at the castle,” Delia repeated, nonplussed.

“I had to reach out further,” said Jasper, “and try to guess where she had gone. She is three quarters of the way to London, and if they are using seven-league hoof wraps, she’ll be there tonight. Captain Harewood is with her, so once I found her, it was easy to find him.”

“Surely they would not have left Polly and the babies.”

Jasper nodded. “That is what I think. So, I assume Polly and the babies are with them.”

“Then,” said Delia, “I need to go to London.”

“I expect we shall receive our orders in the duke’s reply,” Jasper said.

To Delia’s mind, he looked somewhat smug. But if he thought her going to London with him meant she was changing her mind about marriage, he had another thing coming.

Chapter Fourteen

The answers cameback the next day, Captain Harewood’s and Sister Louise’s together in the mid-morning, and the duke’s just before noon.

Jasper had been out in the open all morning, working on combat magic. His efforts while he was still in dragon form had been focused on changing back, and while he had also vastly improved his translocation skills, that had been a byproduct of keeping Delia comfortable.

Combat magic seemed the next logical skill to master in both dragon and human form. From the sounds of it, Uncle Percy was gone, but Jasper was convinced there were traitors in London, and he wanted to be certain he could adequately protect Delia.

He broke off his exercises to take Delia her letter. She was treating him with a measure of reserve, but at least she was still talking to him. He would open the letter from Harewood and let her read it, and hope she would do likewise with Sister Louise’s message.

She was sitting in the sun by the entrance to the cavern, reading one of the books he’d fetched for her. “Sister Louise’s letter,” he said, handing it over.

She took it eagerly.

“I have one from Harewood,” he offered. It was a single sheet, folded into three. He read it through. Nothing unexpected.

Delia’s letter was longer, but she soon looked up from it, relief evident in both her face and her voice. “They are safe,” she said.

“Harewood says, ‘Pleased to hear you are both safe. After half the castle saw you change and carry Miss N. away, we worried. With Lord P. dead, the Prince of Wales and the Council of Mages ordered me to bring Miss N.’s charges to London. Sister L. and her nuns are with me.’” Carefully phrased to avoid naming Jasper as a dragon lord, or Sapphire as a killer.

As he had hoped, Delia responded in kind, paraphrasing the nun’s letter. “Sister Louise says that her order has agreed to take charge of Sapphire and the babies. Polly, too. They are going to the English motherhouse in London.” She frowned slightly, and Jasper wondered what about that bothered her. Was it that she had lost her role as a unicorn maiden?

“I’m sorry, Delia,” he said. “Everything is changing for you. Again.”

To his surprise, she laughed—a somewhat wry laugh, but amused, nonetheless. “One might say I brought it on myself. You know the saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for?’ I wished for adventure, Jasper, and look what has happened! First, becoming the unicorn’s maiden, then finding out I was a catalyst, and now this.”

“And was it what you wanted?” Jasper asked, somewhat warily.

She sighed. When she spoke, she looked away into the middle distance, and seemed to be addressing herself rather than him. “I think I didn’t know what I wanted. As it turned out, it was more of the same. People telling me where I could go, what I needed to do, what I ought to want. And how it was my duty and obligation. Just once… just one single time, I would like to have a choice. That is what I want. Is that too much to ask?”

Oh, help.Jasper thought back to yesterday’s proposal. The hole he had dug for himself was bigger than he had thought. “It is not too much,” he said. And then added, after a moment’s thought, “We are all bound by obligation, but within the constraints of that, we should be free.”

She smiled, sadly. “Women—at least women without magic—are seldom free.”

Jasper had never given the lives of women much thought, a fact that shamed him even as she spoke. He instantly saw she was right, though. “Women with magic have power,” he commented. “Men who don’t respect that soon learn better.”

That remark earned him a look of approval. “Except me,” she said. “I have a magical gift I can neither control nor direct.” She waved toward the book she had set down when he gave her the letter. “I’ve found nothing to say one way or the other whether other catalysts could manage their gift.”

Which, he realized, made her a target for the Welsh mage and others who wanted to benefit from her gift. Did she think he was one of them? “I can teach you the exercises young mages are taught,” he offered. “Sensing power. Directing power. Modulating power. They may help.”

He had his reward in a dazzling smile. “Would you? Is it allowed?”