Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

Wasn’t morale something an officer was supposed to address? To make certain his men were ready for whatever lay ahead?

Milo didn’t think he was a good speaker, certainly not the type to rouse the troops. He supposed he ought to do something, but what? What words could he offer either of them or even himself that weren’t hollow platitudes and lies? Some people might appreciate such sentiments, but not these two. How do you encourage a Nephilim nearly two hundred years old and a fey older than most civilizations?

Milo looked down at his black coat and felt the card in his breast pocket. He shouldn’t have felt it, the card not being big enough or his clothes thin enough to explain it, but he was aware of it all the same.

Quietly, Milo reached inside his coat and drew out the folded card. His fingers played over the ragged edges he knew better than he did his own body, and he felt a terrible certainty steal over him. Like a crank gaining momentum, his thoughts worked around and around, coming back to the same point faster and faster.

If he couldn’t say something encouraging, at least he could say something true.

“I’ve got something,” he began, his voice a horrible bleat in his ears. “Something to show both of you.”

Ambrose and Rihyani both stirred, looking first at Milo’s downcast face and then at what was in his hand. Ambrose recognized the tarot card, and a mixture of interest and bemusement played across his face. Rihyani, to whom he had never shown the card, narrowed her eyes at the object in Milo’s hand but said nothing.

“I know we are heading into what could very well be the belly of the beast,” Milo said, the words clumsy things tumbling from his tongue. “And if that is the case, my head shouldn’t be back in Berlin, stewing over the choices Jorge is making about Stalin.”

“It wasn’t right for him not to talk to us about it,” Ambrose offered helpfully, offering Milo a supportive nod.

Milo’s head shook slowly, and Ambrose’s face contorted into a frown.

“Jorge is the superior officer, and he sees things differently than we do,” the magus said, catching Rihyani’s eye. “And it's nobody’s fault that he makes the decisions he does. We need to respect and trust him.”

She bowed her head slightly in appreciation, then her head rose, and he felt her appreciative will brush aetherically past him as her head tilted to one side. She’d felt something in that brief contact, and it gave her pause.

“But?” she asked slowly.

“But Jorge has his concerns and perspectives and I have mine,” Milo continued. “I want access to Stalin, not just because I think I can get him to talk about Zlydzen, but because when we captured him back in Georgia, he said a name in reference to me. A name that proved he knows something about…about where I come from.”

Milo took a deep breath, feeling more uncertain than ever about this confession.

“He called me Petrovich,” the wizard said as he unfolded the tarot card and held it out for them to examine.

The card was a woodcut, its dark lines leaving distinct marks pressed into the stock. The entire card was framed in domino diamonds that encased whorled spirals which gave the impression of a storm or possibly a fire. At the center of the card, a figure sat upon a throne whose legs were tree roots and whose armrests were human bones. Over the back of the throne a banner hung, with the words Petrovich Burned in Russian script. The banner was held by a fine, delicate hand on the right and a bestial black claw on the left. On the throne sat a man in dark princely furs, a broken sword across his lap and wounds on his hands.

The features of the figure, wrought in the woodcut’s strict lines, were Milo’s.

Ambrose and Rihyani squinted at the face on the card, then back up at him, then down again.

“When Roland and I were picked up by German soldiers, this card was my only possession.” Milo quietly told them what he’d told only one other human being. “Only the person on the throne was me at five.”

He took a shaky breath.

“Like me, the picture didn’t stay a child.”

His companions exchanged concerned looks, then Ambrose slid back in his seat while Rihyani held out her hand, long fingers scant centimeters from the ragged, curling edge of the card.

“May I?” she asked, looking into Milo’s face.

Milo wanted to say yes and hand the card over, but he found that his mouth wouldn’t form the words and his arm was locked. A thrill of fear rushed through him at his sudden paralysis, his eyes widening in horror that his body would not obey him. For an instant, he wondered what new and insidious magic he was facing, but a hurried examination of himself using what he knew of both the Art and necromistry revealed nothing. Yet he hung there immobile, even as Rihyani continued to look at him with beseeching eyes, fingers extended.

“Milo?” she said softly, leaning forward as she studied his face, fingers drawing closer to the card. A surge of panic that was almost painful gripped his chest, and an instant later, he felt a corresponding flood of low, burning anger and resentment.

Didn’t she know what she was doing? Didn’t she understand how this made him feel? To think she could snatch something he’d hidden in fear all his life! How dare she!

“Magus, what’s wrong?” Ambrose asked, sitting up in his seat. Both of them were staring at him with looks of concern.

Milo realized his chest was heaving with rapid breaths.

What was happening to him? Why did he feel this way?

Rihyani’s hand withdrew even as she leaned closer. Milo felt rigid lines of tension he hadn’t noticed before melting along his shoulders and neck.

“Milo, it is okay. I am not going to take it from you,” she said softly.