Page 42 of The Fate of Black Hearts

“Deeply sleeping, were you?” As if he were a top Korean model, Dojin wore colorful, expensive clothes with gaudy accessories like the thick silver band on his right middle finger. He shook a handheld bell again. “What were you doing to use so much energy that it knocked you out?”

“What do you want from me? Do you think I did something again? Was there another ripple in the Source that, of course, had to be my doing?” He scanned around. “I’m too tired to deal with a sneak attack by you and Marik today.”

“Just me. I’m sorry about that time long ago. I wanted to have a meal with you back then and tell you what they wanted, but then he showed up.” He lowered his voice. “You pissed him off something awful when the truth potion didn’t work. He sure as shit didn’t want to see that you’d ascended to becomea level three mage. Did you do something last night that we should be concerned about?”

“Piss off.” Dom kept his mind blank, which wasn’t hard considering he felt weak enough to pass out.

“Can I come in?” Dojin peeked past him into the dark house.

“No.”I won’t have you put some sort of monitoring device or spell in my house.

“How about we sit on your steps? I need a few moments of your time.” Dojin cocked his head. “You look like you’ll fall over if the breeze picks up.”

He pulled the door closed behind him and leaned against the side of the house.

Dojin took his place next to him, leaning on the opposite side of the wall, the doorway between them. “You look like shit. You’re not eating enough vegetable-based protein. If you don’t eat, you won’t recover. There’s this chef out of Japan that just put out a vegetarian cookbook I can send your way.”

“Do I seem like someone who enjoys cooking?” Mages avoided animal-based proteins. It clogged their pathways.

“You look like someone who probably hasn’t gone shopping for food, much less eaten any, in weeks. I anticipated such and brought you some.” He waved at two cloth sacks filled with food.

His mouth watered at the thought of eating the carrot hanging out of one bag. Why would Dojin bribe him with food?

“Last time, you tried to poison me.”

“That wasn’t me.” He blew it off as if attempting to murder a fellow mage was normal. “Cooking isgood for the soul. To learn the alchemy of ingredients?—”

“I know how to cook. I learned the art from my master before he died. I don’t do it often because I find it tedious.”

“Would it surprise you to know I care that you not die?”

“You care about not losing your cushy job. It’s always seemed to me that the Conclave would throw a party if I was destroyed.”

“Cushy job, my ass. You’re tough to follow or understand. I’m the only one who would accept the position after you led my predecessor into a pixie-infested mountain.”

He chuckled. That mage had been way out of his depth when having to battle spirit-possessed pixies.

“They spend too much time worrying over you when they should work on sorting the magic of the world.” He crossed his arms to put his hands in his armpits. “No one can figure out your relationship to the Fates, but the fact the three deities chose you…let’s just say they want a contingency plan for how to contain you should the prophecy come true.”

“Maybe the Fates send me to do their errands because the other mages who could make a difference are too obsessed with bullshit.”

“Were you on an errand yesterday in Afghanistan? I gather a blood curse was cast?”

“Perhaps.” He forced his mind away from what it wanted to think about, focusing instead on the red clay and the dry earth.

“Tell me what happened.” The hardness of Dojin’s eyes said the wide smile was all show, anattempt to lure Dom into revealing secrets.

“I was sent there by Atropos to monitor the curse that was cast. I had to make sure only the ones who were supposed to be cursed got cursed.”

“You did that.”

“Yes.”

“Nothing else happened?”

“A bunch of lycans got cursed into working for the queen of England.”

“Do you think they pose a problem we need to eliminate? Doesn’t sound good to have a human in charge of a bunch of lycans.”