Chapter 174: Seven Of Hearts. Think About It.

"Now. Quick question for the room." Brennan stopped pacing. "Who here has ever had back pain?"

Nicholas closed his eyes. When he opened them, every single elder had raised their hand.

Every. Single. One.

The oldest raised both hands which was either emphasis or a cry for help.

Brennan grinned at the sea of elderly hands. "Gorgeous. Every one of you. You’ve been underserved. Back pain is a solved problem. Magic has been solving it for thousands of years."

He moved to the elder who had just raised two hands in the air, and pulled a card from behind his ear.

"Is this your card?"

"I didn’t pick a card," the elder said.

"And yet." Brennan held it up. "Seven of hearts. Think about it."

The elder stared at the card. Then at Brennan. Then, with the slow, dawning expression of a man encountering true genius: "That IS my favorite number."

The other elders erupted into applause. Full, sustained, enthusiastic applause.

Brennan’s chest puffed like he’d been knighted, the praise washing over him.

"Where was it? Was it really in my ear?" the elder asked.

Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose so hard his fingers went white.

Brennan took a bow. The bow was longer than the trick.

"Excellent," Damon said, jumping in. "Now that you have seen what he can do, we can get on with the meeting."

"Show us more!" an elder called. "This is the most interesting council meeting I’ve been to in fifty years."

Damon gave Brennan a look that said: You haven’t fucked this up. One more card trick. That’s it.

Brennan enthusiastically nodded. He raised his hands. Blue light pooled in his palms.

The elders clapped again enthusiastically.

"Can he come to every meeting, Alpha?" one asked. "This is the first time I’ve been awake past the second agenda item."

"Young man," Elder Marley leaned forward, "can you make things disappear as well?"

"Absolutely," Brennan said.

Marley pointed at the elder across the table. "Him. Make him disappear."

"I am sitting RIGHT HERE, Marley."

"Yes. That’s the problem."

Brennan rolled the blue light between his palms, stretching it into a ribbon that looped and spiraled above his head. The elders watched it climb with the wide-eyed wonder of children at a fireworks display. He spun it faster, added a second ribbon, then a third, weaving them into a braid of light that hummed and crackled.

The elders clapped in rhythm.

Nicholas and Damon exchanged an identical look of stunned disbelief: they are reacting to the magic better than anticipated.

Brennan, because he was Brennan, took the applause as permission to escalate.

He added a fourth. A fifth. The braid thickened, spinning faster, glowing brighter, the hum climbing into a whine that made the water glasses vibrate on the table.

"That’s enough," Nicholas cut in. "Well done. Let’s all thank our Master Mage for stopping by."

Too late.

The light bloomed outward, filling the ceiling, beautiful and deeply unstable, and Brennan’s grin shifted from showman to the specific expression of a man who has just realized he’s added one ribbon too many.

POP.

Blue sparks exploded across the council chamber like a glitter bomb with ambitions. Every elder flinched. Marley’s eyebrows were singed. Another had sparks in his beard.

Silence.

"Part of the show," Brennan announced, brushing a spark off his own nose. "Planned that. Every bit of it. Completely intentional."

A puff of smoke rose from the floor.

Three elders stood up.

"Sitting down would be advisable," Brennan said, palms still raised, sweat forming on his temple. "The pops are a known characteristic of my casting style. Think of them as... signatures."

"Signatures," an elder repeated.

"Yes. Like a painter’s brushstroke. Distinctive. Identifiable. Mine happen to be percussive."

A few elders nodded, drinking every word. Unfortunately, at that moment, plaster dust rained down on everyone’s shoulders.

Nicholas looked at Damon. Damon looked at the ceiling. Both of them were calculating the exact number of seconds before the elders voted to have Brennan removed from the Keep, the kingdom, and possibly the continent.

Brennan stood in the demonstration space, hands still raised.

"That," he explained, "was the stress test. Who was scared?"

All of the elders raised their hands.

"Now you see how magic can be dangerous too." He smiled reassuringly.

Behind him, a candle sconce detached from the wall and hit the floor with a clang that echoed through the chamber.

The silence that followed was the silence of twelve men deciding how they felt about magic.

Then the eldest elder started clapping.

A second elder joined. Then a third. Within five seconds, all twelve were clapping, some with conviction.

"Thank you," Brennan said, bowing. "Thank you, Elders. The stress test is a hallmark of my methodology. I perform it at every new posting. Your ward system will be in excellent hands."

Nicholas blinked.

Damon blinked.

The applause continued. Brennan bowed a second time, deeper, milking it.

Damon leaned towards Nicholas’s ear. "Do we... go with this?"

"We go with this," Nicholas sighed.

"The ceiling has a crack in it."

"We go with this, Damon."

✦✦✦

They were halfway back to the east wing when it hit.

Brennan stopped dead, his head tilted like a confused puppy.

"Something just changed," he said.

Before Nicholas could ask what, pain hit him like a fist to the sternum and his knees buckled. He caught himself on the corridor wall, one hand flat against the stone, the other pressed to his chest.

Gold light erupted from his skin. It climbed his arms, spread across his torso, raced down his legs, and Nicholas Shadowfell stood in his own corridor glowing.

Then the gold shifted.

White replaced it, brighter, hotter, foreign in a way that made his wolf snarl and his human brain scramble for an explanation that didn’t exist in any language he spoke.

Nicholas.

He heard it. Felt it. A word that had no voice and no sound, but was the loudest thing he’d ever heard in his life.

He fell forward.

Damon caught him before he hit the floor. "NICK. What’s happening?"

Brennan observed this calmly. "You’re glowing, Alpha. Are you fated to the glowing wolf princess?"

It was the most competent thing the mage had said or done all day.

Nicholas looked up at him. "Yes."

"Fated to you, but she merged with dragon flame. That is very interesting."

"What is happening to her that is causing this?" Damon asked.

"I may not have the answer to that. But I can make you a portal to Velkaris and we check on her," Brennan replied.