Spellbreaker

A chill bloomed between her shoulder blades and coursed down her limbs. She was the one who’d fled to the stonemasonry shop from Squire Hughes’s household. She had led the Cowls right to Ogden. They had learned his secret, and made him a prisoner.

Had Elsie stayed put, he would never have been their victim.

Oh, if only the carriage would swallow her whole. She pressed her hand to her chest, as though she could force her heart to stay in one piece by the pressure of her palm. A decade. A decade of having his will usurped by another, all because Elsie hadn’t wanted to scrub dishes for a pompous nobleman.

Put it away. She tried to bury the realization deep. She needed to get all the pieces in place before she let them fall apart. Put it away, for now. But God help her, the anger hurt.

“Why did you not register?” Her voice was a harsh whisper, despite there being no way their driver could overhear. She needed to push on, to save her despairing realizations for another time. “Why have you pretended to be what you are all this time?”

He shook his head and leaned back in his seat. Stared at the crack of window between the door and the curtain.

“Ogden, I deserve to know.”

“You do.” His fingers dug into his knees. “I’m a liberal thinker, Elsie. Always have been. I used to be on the parish council, even.”

She nodded, recalling that bit of history. She focused on it, to keep herself from darker thoughts.

“Did you know all registered aspectors, spellbreakers included, must report to the queen whenever summoned? To work on whatever she needs? To go to war if she demands it? The idea that I could sway a political ratbag with the power of my mind, without him ever realizing it, was intoxicating. At one point, I believed I could sway all of them to create just laws, my laws, and never get caught. And then, the idea that I could convince someone to love me . . .” His voice choked, and his hand went to his neck as though he could fix it.

Elsie pressed her lips together, her own throat tight. The folded opus page beneath her bodice poked her collarbone.

A full minute passed again before he continued, “You might have noticed. I don’t love the sort of people I’m supposed to. When I started on this venture, I was young and foolish. I didn’t respect the will of others. But don’t worry. Life has a way of teaching us wisdom, when we’re ready for it. I didn’t get into too much trouble.”

Elsie leaned forward and touched the hand still on his knee. “I don’t blame you.” She understood the desire to feel wanted, needed.

Ogden sighed.

“I never detected it before,” she said.

He lowered his other hand from his neck to his heart. “You rarely got close enough. Even I knew it was well hidden. And when he was watching . . . I could make you not see it. Do it quick enough that you wouldn’t sense the spell.”

Hadn’t she suspected as much? With his ability, he could turn her mind away from its presence, pluck the memory right from her brain. How often had that happened? Had she connected her work for the Cowls to the opus crimes before, only to have that knowledge washed away? How many times had she heard the song of the spiritual spell on Ogden’s person, only to forget its tune completely?

“Then how do I remember now?” She couldn’t face the other questions yet. “How did I get it off you?”

Ogden shook his head. “He was worried. Stressed. Elsie, I was fighting him as hard as I could.”

The shaking. The stalling.

“And he, in the end . . . he wanted you, too.”

Elsie pressed her lips together. That explained the contradictions in the rational spell he’d put on her. It was Ogden telling her to go home and this spiritual aspector’s influence telling her to come with him. The Cowls wanted Elsie now, just as they’d wanted her when they’d taken her from the workhouse. How utterly ironic, for them to finally pull her into their fold. After years of Elsie pining for their approval. A few days earlier, Elsie would have readily joined them. She would have done so blindly.

That must have been why Ogden had told her about the St. Katharine Docks in the first place. Because he knew that’s where he’d go if his controller ever decided to pull him from Brookley.

“I haven’t openly fought it in so long,” Ogden went on. “I wanted to appease him. I tried to make my efforts subtle. Thus all the churches.”

Elsie straightened. “That’s why we hop from cleric to cleric?”

Managing a weak smile, he said, “I wanted to study the spiritual aspectors. I wanted them to see me. I don’t know. I was fishing for anything. It took me years to figure out the rune without him noticing. And years to tell you.”

“Without him noticing,” she finished.

He nodded.

She hugged herself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”