Shards of Glass by Ruth Nestvold

Author:Ruth Nestvold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Dragon Books

Chapter 23

Containing a talkative captive and a witch with misgivings

* * *

London, January

* * *

“What are you going to do with me?” Vanna’s prisoner said from the chair where the magic blanket held him hostage. She wished Pasquale wouldn’t talk so much. After capturing him, she’d had to cloak them both in magic in order to get him to her rooms undetected, and she was exhausted.

When it came right down to it, she didn’t even know what she was going to do with him. Her plan reached only so far as taking him away from Chiara, to get revenge on them for destroying her mirror.

But now that she had him, what next?

“I know you are not a bad person,” the handsome young glassmaker continued. “You helped me and Chiara to escape Venice after we lifted the spell on Minerva.”

“More the fool me,” she muttered.

“You felt guilty about the spell the Dowager Princess forced you to cast, did you not?”

Vanna whirled on him. “Yes, I felt guilty. That is probably why I fell for my vision of Chiara freeing us from having to perform such evil in the service of the Venetian nobility. And what has she done? Destroyed my looking glass!”

“But you are good at heart,” Pasquale persisted. “It is not in your nature to hold someone prisoner, let alone harm them.”

She wished she had some magic to shut him up. His words were too close to her own misgivings. “Perhaps I can change my nature,” she said. “Yes, I helped you and Chiara — but look where it got me. On the run and my beloved mirror gone. The Dowager Princess now sees me as a traitor just as she sees you. I too am an exile who will never be able to return to Venice.”

To Vanna’s surprise, the glassmaker stared at her in silence. Relieved, she began to slice bread for her supper. It occurred to her that she would have to give Pasquale some as well if she didn’t want him to starve. Feeding a healthy young man would deplete her meager funds even more rapidly. But it was Chiara she wanted, and hopefully she would come and get him soon. The young man bound by the magic blanket was no more than bait.

“We thought you were helping the Dowager Princess pursue us,” Pasquale finally said slowly. “That is why we destroyed the mirror. We believed it would lead Zilia to us. And she wants us dead.”

Vanna looked up from her simple meal of bread and cheese. “How could you think I would still work for her after what she made me do?”

Above the blanket enfolding him, she could see his shoulders shrug. “I’m sure there were any number of things she made you do before you created the spell entrapping Minerva. And yet still you were working for her. As you worked for her long after that.”

“What else was I to do? In the Venetian Empire, we witches are forced to do the bidding of the nobility!”

“Exactly,” the charming young glassmaker said with a rueful smile.

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