Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

eyes as he nestled in the blooms like a dog enjoying a roll in the grass. Even so, he nodded slightly at Rihyani’s assessment.

“Radicals like Dazk aren’t going anywhere,” she continued. “But they’ve played their hand, twice now if I hear correctly, and failed both times. They’ll have to consider other methods to challenge the Bashlek and get rid of you. Subtler ones, and if Dazk is any evidence, it is something they are ill-equipped to do.”

Milo wondered if sending a Si’lat after him in the food delivery counted as subtle, but before he could say anything, Bashlek Marid cleared his throat as his eyelids rose to half-mast.

“Yet for all that, there is still the matter of your army snooping around my mountain,” the old ghul said, his gaze sliding to Milo. “Which is why your tutelage will have to be adjusted. Now, just a moment. This is the good part.”

“But I just started!” Milo blurted and instantly regretted it. He sounded petulant even to his ears. “I, uh, mean, my mission is to learn magic, and so I just can’t, you know, stop.”

Marid brushed the protest aside with a flick of two claws, eyes sliding closed again.

“No one said you’d stop,” he muttered distractedly, nestling a little deeper into the fungal fronds so that nearly half his face was concealed. A shiver ran through his wiry form, and there was a subtle spicy scent in the air. A light dusting of pink and white particles fell from the fungus-encrusted wall to land stark against the Bashlek’s inky skin suit.

There was an awkward silence, and Milo, confused to the point of embarrassment, looked at the contessa, who was looking away discreetly. The silence continued, and Milo looked at the other fey, who just looked bored. He finally glanced at Ambrose, who shrugged helplessly.

Another shiver ran through the Bashlek’s form and he straightened, opening bright, almost burning eyes. Milo fought the urge to recoil; he knew the eyes of an addict when he saw them.

Subconsciously, he glanced at the fungal patterns on the wall.

“Ohhh…ahhh, yesss, that’s better,” the ghul purred in a way that made Milo feel dirty as it brushed his ear. “I swear, it gets better every time.”

“Nazahr, please,” Contessa Rihyani murmured, the words as soft and unhurried as ever, but Milo felt the subtle tonal shift. Was she embarrassed by the Bashlek?

For his part, the Bashlek stared at both of them, mortal and fey, for a few seconds, blinking slowly. Then he looked at Rihyani, who still had her face turned away.

“Oh, fine. I suppose you are right,” the ghul monarch groused, drumming his finger on his knee rapidly. “Business needs to be handled.”

He suddenly looked around, seeming confused, and then with a stricken look, he turned to the contessa.

“What were we talking about?”

Milo would have laughed if this ghul hadn’t saved him from a mob of his enraged fellows less than an hour earlier and remained his best hope of holding those monsters at bay. The latter fact made this scene downright terrifying.

“The adjustments to the magus’ education,” Rihyani replied in a long-suffering voice. “You were laying out your plans for how he could assist you and still maintain his studies.”

Marid nodded, claws drumming on his knees even faster.

“Yes, yes,” he hissed, running a tongue over his teeth and then grimacing. “I remember now. Yes, I had it all figured out before I sent you in to deliver the news about the airships. Yes, yes, yesss.”

The Bashlek began to rock, his fevered gaze turning to the luminous fountain. The wrinkled folds of his eyelids rose farther then Milo would have thought possible, his face becoming a google-eyed mask fixed on the transition of colors.

“Care to share, your M—” Milo never got to finish his sentence.

“Contessa Rihyani will take you and an entourage of my daughter’s,” Marid declared in a distant voice to match his increasingly remote gaze. “Your education will continue on the road to your people’s camp, then they will establish a base of operations to continue the tutelage as you confer with your superiors. The situation requires your presence to secure our interests, and by extension, your mission. As per my arrangement with your superior, his intervention needs to be at specific times to be effective.”

Milo absorbed the eruption of instruction with a scowl.

It very much seemed there was a good deal to Jorge’s interaction with the monster that the colonel had not told Milo. Milo had almost assumed that was the case, but having the brunt of his ignorance bear down on him like this was a distinctly unpleasant experience.

“I suppose,” he began, trying to keep his head above the surface of this pool in which he was scared to find the bottom. “It couldn’t hurt to reestablish contact with Nicht-KAT. That is, as long as Contessa Rihyani is okay with it. I mean, after all, she just got here. If she has other business to attend to, I wouldn’t want to make the lady feel rushed.”

Milo looked at Rihyani and saw her smiling. An ugly snort and an uglier chuckle rose from Bashlek Marid.

“The lady’s business was coming here to escort you,” the ghul said. “Do you really think those clumsy flying machines could wander through my domains without me knowing?”

Milo met Marid’s hot stare, refusing to be cowed by the mad intensity he saw there.

“It seems you know a good deal more about everyone’s business than I do, Your Majesty,” Milo replied flatly. “When you’re done playing your games, let me know.”

The tension thickened, and the air seemed to seethe around the Bashlek.

“Do you find my treatment of you less than hospitable, Magus?”

“I think you’ve been using me to bait your political rivals since the second I got here,” Milo said, his voice sinking lower and growing harder. “And you don’t much seem to care what kind of danger that puts Ambrose or me in.”

Marid sniffed, somehow managing to show more of his teeth.

“It started before you came, actually,” Marid replied with