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k_a_webbPart 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
All Mirica could do, as she tried to work out how to reply to what Nico had said, was stare at him. By stealing magic to sell at auction he was earning enough to help at least a few of those who needed sanctuary – and if he’d have been doing it any other way she would have agreed that she was doing a good thing. “Who do you take magic from?” she asked, eventually, because she did want to learn more about him, even though there was a voice inside her screaming that she was being an idiot for letting herself believe the story he was weaving for her. He just wanted her to feel sorry for him. “Is it from anyone who has magic?”
“Do you want me to say that I only take it from those who will die anyway? When you know for a fact that I was in your house, looking for your brother, because I wanted to steal his magic.” Nico shook his head. “Like I said, I’m not a nice person. I don’t pretend to be. I just like to even the scales a little.”
“I don’t actually know why you were in my house – I assumed you were there to steal my brother’s magic and you let me keep thinking that, Nico, but that doesn’t mean that really was why you were there.”
Nico smiled. “Your brother, Rica, is a bastard. The time would have come when he decided that you were too much hassle to look after and he would have done the same thing he’s done to so many other magic users – taken your magic. It wouldn’t matter to you that you were his sister, in the same way it never mattered to him that he had killed your parents when he took their abilities. He sold them on, in the end, the same way he would have sold yours, but he never wanted you to know what he was doing or what he’d done.” He shrugged. “Not all thieves live in the Hideout and not all of the thieves in the Hideout are the sort of people you think we are.”
Somehow, even though she didn’t know quite how she managed it, Mirica managed to keep the disbelief she felt to herself, as she went back through her memories, trying to work out if what Nico had said was true. Her brother had looked after her since their parents had died. One day she walked in to their bedroom to find both their husks lying on the bed and she didn’t know how it had happened. Neither, apparently, did her brother, who’d found her there three hours later, sitting with them so they didn’t have to be alone any more. After that it had just been the two of them and the occasional member of staff to look after them, who, in the end, would become the target of one of the thieves. She shook her head. Had she really been that stupid?
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.