Sarah Brennan - The Demon's Covenant

The mark was black and terrible in the hollow of that baby’s little hand: It looked like the magician’s sigil, but not quite enough like it. It showed a hand, forming a fist around someone else’s heart.

Gerald must have invented two different marks. A variation on the magician’s mark, which drained power from people instead of circles, and this one.

“This is the magician’s version of the demon’s mark,” Gerald said, his eyes on Sin. “I have complete control over anyone who wears it.”

He’d put the mark on Toby at the Goblin Market. He’d handed the baby over to Mae when he had no further use for him.

“I hold this child’s life in the palm of my hand,” Gerald said in a clear, carrying voice. “My Circle is walking out of here tonight.”

“Toby,” Sin said in a strangled voice, reaching for him. “How—”

“I wouldn’t,” Gerald advised. “I called the child here. I can make him go anywhere I want him to go. I could make him walk off a cliff. I could have him possessed. I could stop his breath with a thought. Have your people stand down.”

“Get back!” Sin commanded.

But the Market could taste blood. They finally had magicians at their mercy, and Sin was not the leader yet.

“The child’s as good as dead anyway,” said Matthias the piper, his bow still strung. “It’s not like he’s ever going to take it off.”

“Matthias!” Sin exclaimed, but there was a murmur of agreement around the square.

“And we don’t want a leader who can be blackmailed!”

Toby started to cry, his soft, wailing voice rising above the slanted roofs of the buildings around the market square. Jamie gave Mae a look she couldn’t read, not with his magic-hot eyes, but then his hand sought hers and she realized he was horror-struck.

“I take no pleasure in this,” Gerald told Jamie, but Jamie continued to look as sick as Mae felt.

The piper was right, though. Mae could see no way to make Toby safe.

Sin stood with her back straight and her knives still drawn, her mouth trembling.

“Kill them,” said Matthias, and the crowd surged.

Alan said, “Wait.”

He came forward, made it almost to Gerald and the baby in a few long strides, and then Toby gave a long cry of pain. Alan stopped, hand outstretched.

“What good is the child to you?” he asked, his voice wrapping sweetly around every word, less guiding than simply making you want to follow him. “You can hear them. They’ll kill you anyway. You need a better hostage than that.”

He slanted a dismissive look at Toby’s small head. Gerald was starting to look thoughtful.

“You need collateral to control the demon,” Alan said, and he turned his hand palm up, reaching out the other for the baby. “Hand over the baby. Transfer the mark. You can have me.”

“Alan,” Nick said in a terrible voice. “Alan, no .”

He started forward, knocking down everyone in his path.

“Now,” Alan commanded, and Gerald reached out and clasped his hand.

It was over that soon. The baby was held gently in Alan’s arms, and the mark was branded on his palm.

“Shhh,” Alan murmured to the child, who was quieting already in his arms. “You’re safe now.”

He took two steps toward Sin and put her brother in her arms. She accepted him almost numbly, her face blank but her arms going around Toby tight.

Alan did it just in time, an instant before Nick reached him and spun him around, one hand clenching tight on Alan’s shoulder. For a second Mae thought Nick was going to punch him.

Nick held on for a moment, in a tight grip that looked more like violence than anything else, and then he turned to Gerald.

“I’m going to make you sorry,” he whispered in that demon’s voice, like chains settling on your hands and feet, like a chill getting so deep into your blood it would never leave and you would never be warm again. “I’ll make time longer, just so you can suffer in it. I’ll never let you die. You’ll live to the end of the world, crawling, bleeding, begging, wishing you had never even thought of touching my brother.”

Gerald didn’t answer in words, but Alan gave a short scream between his teeth and sank to his knees, and Mae knew exactly how much pain he would’ve had to be in before he let Nick hear that.

When Alan rose, he almost staggered. For a moment that seemed normal, and then Mae remembered he was meant to be healed now.

“Your brother was whole for all of five minutes,” Gerald said. “Was it worth handing over any of your power for that?”

Nick shivered in one tight, controlled burst, as if someone had hit him.

“My ring,” Gerald commanded.

Nick yanked it off his hand and threw the silver circle to the ground at Gerald’s feet. He did not look away from Alan.

“Yeah,” said Gerald, stooping to pick it up and sliding the bloodstained ring onto his finger. “I think we’ll go now.”

“Who said you could go?” asked Matthias. “Now you don’t even have a child of the Market. Let the traitor die.”

“It’s worth a sacrifice,” said a woman Mae remembered from the chimes stall. Alan looked at her, his face startled, and she turned her eyes away. “It’s one life,” she said. “We were all willing to risk ours.”

The square seemed to turn upside down as Nick snarled, tipped into a darker world. Everyone shivered as the wind rose. Mae saw her breath on the air like a dragon’s.

“You dare,” Nick said softly.

The Market people cleared a space around the demon now, unity dissolving, tables turning, only a few of them left standing with Nick. Alan, Mae, Jamie, Annabel. And Sin, trembling, with the child in her arms.

“Wait,” Sin said, sounding uncertain. They paid her no attention.

“Wait, you idiots!” Mae shouted. “Let’s give the magicians a chance to surrender.” She let her eyes move significantly to Jamie. “We’ve seen how useful they can be.”

There was sudden murmuring among the Market people. Mae did not think they sounded largely in favor of the idea, but at least they were talking. Seb uncurled from the ground, green eyes alight.

“You must be joking,” Gerald scoffed, but Mae saw that a couple of the other magicians looked thoughtful.

“I for one think it’s an excellent idea, Gerald,” said Celeste Drake, moving from the shadow of the church with the Aventurine Circle behind her. “Why don’t you surrender to me?”

The Market people flowed back toward Nick and Jamie, toward them all. They were united again, trapped between two magicians’ Circles.

Celeste paid them no heed at all. She sailed forward, serene as a china swan on a glass lake, until she was standing before Gerald with her hands held out to his.

“I told you that you would reconsider my offer.”

Gerald regarded her coolly. “And you told me you’d take everything I had.”

“True,” Celeste admitted. “But in light of other contributions you can make …” Her eyes slid to Alan. “I’ll make you the same offer I made before. Will you take it? Last chance.”

“I will,” said Gerald, and put his hands in hers.

“Circle of my circle,” Celeste said. “You are mine, and your marks are mine, and your magicians are mine. I will brand you with the sigil of the Aventurine Circle, and no loyalty will come before your loyalty to me.”

“I’m yours,” Gerald told her, his head bowed.

“And your enemies are mine,” said Celeste, her icy gray eyes sweeping the Goblin Market army. “And you will be leader of the Circle when I die. The bargain is struck. Do any of you dare stand against the Aventurine Circle?”

Everyone stood silent. There were just too many magicians, Mae thought. There was Helen the magician with her swords bright in her hands, Gerald with his marks: the union Mae hadn’t wanted and hadn’t planned on. Even with Nick and Jamie both, there were far too many to fight. Celeste wasn’t likely to start fighting until she had the Obsidian Circle safely branded as hers.