Page 30 of Unexpected Magic

Clothes. He needed clothes. He had been reaching further each day for the items Delia needed, lest he place too great a burden on the locals. Could he reach his own room at the castle? As easily as that, his mind was there, dispelling his fleeting thought that the power he had as a dragon might be confined to that form.

But his possessions were gone. Packed up and put away, he hoped, but that remained to be seen, and he had no time to pursue it.

His room in London could also supply what he needed. He cast his magic in that direction, but the distance was too far. He could feel his power thinning, as if it was pulling away from him like toffee between the fingers of a confectioner. He reached London, but his power was hair thin. He could barely see his room, and he could not pick anything up.

Something closer, then, and quickly, for Delia was tapping her foot, as if she was itching to turn back and face him. He sent his magic questing into the nearest village and soon found a pair of trousers and a shirt drying on bushes near one of the cottages.With a mental apology to the owner, he fetched them and put them on.

Once he had something more suitable, he’d return these, because they were well-made and hardly worn at all. “You are safe to turn around now, Delia,” he said. “I may call you Delia, may I not? And would you do me the honor of using my Christian name?”

She smiled at him. “Welcome back, Jasper. I know you have been here all the time, but it is not the same.”

“I’m afraid I have not been much company. I apologize for that. I was having trouble learning how to change back.”

“I have watched you working,” she admitted. “I was not certain what you were doing.”

“Exercises,” he told her. “Did you learn piano, Delia? It is like the finger exercises that musicians learn.”

Delia nodded. “Building dexterity, control, strength, and the ability to move fingers independently,” she said.

“Yes, but imagine that the dexterity, control, strength, and independence of your fingers fluctuated wildly every day. No, every minute. Such a musician might know the exercises, and what results to expect, but sometimes he cannot even press the keyboard hard enough to make a sound and at others, he breaks the key. Such a musician could not reliably complete the basic exercises, let alone play a symphony.”

“Your magic is like that?” she said.

“It was. My power has always been mostly hidden from me, trapped somewhere inside, surging out at unreliable moments. None of the exercises I was taught worked for me, and none of the mages my uncle and I consulted could tell us why. When the wall broke, I had all this power at my fingertips, and no idea how to use it, so I went back to the exercises.”

“And it worked,” Delia sounded as pleased as he felt.

“It worked,” he confirmed. That was the short version. The long version had required him to relearn all his old spells from scratch, testing and experimenting to find how they behaved, or failed to behave, with his kind of power.

It was tempting just to hurl the immense force he had at his disposal at any problem. He’d blown a wild boar into tiny pieces doing just that, when he had intended merely to stop it in its tracks before it could gore him. Which would have been much like a cat being bitten by an ant, given his size at the time. A minor wound, and ripping the poor beast into minute tatters was an overreaction.

That and a few other experiences had taught him the importance of a gentle touch. A whisper of his power was enough in most circumstances—to start a fire. To fetch a loaf of bread. To change pebbles into gold.

In addition to the need for precision, spells he thought he knew did something he hadn’t planned when he used them now. Becoming human again was a case in point. He’d tried every spell he knew to return him to his normal shape and had remained resolutely dragon. Only when he turned the spell on his head, and tried to transform himself into something else, did he finally succeed. He took the lesson that his true self was both dragon and human, and once he understood and accepted that knowledge, he suddenly knew how to take his human form.

Just like that, he was once again a man, naked and both shivering slightly in the cold wind off the mountains and heating at the look in Delia’s eyes.

He was a man and subject to the appetites of a man. Another one made itself known as he realized that it was six hours since he had been fed, if he counted only the hours he’d spent in human form since he last broke his fast.

Delia must have heard the rumble. She didn’t comment directly, but she did say, “I have duck stew on the fire. Enough for both of us. Shall we eat, Jasper?”

“Definitely,” Jasper said, and followed her back to the cavern.

Chapter Thirteen

The stew waswonderful. Succulent pieces of duck cooked in a gravy with root vegetables, wild onion and herbs, and thick slices of crusty bread. How lucky Jasper was that the catalyst who matched his dragon lord, the lady who stirred his soul (and his heart and loins), and the woman who could cook like an angel was one and the same person.

“Tell me what happened at the castle,” he said, once he had satisfied his appetite, or at least one of his appetites he was permitted to sate at the moment. “I remember sensing danger and being sure it was directed at you, and then I heard you in my mind. You were calling for help. That’s when I turned into a dragon, and I only have snatches of memory after that.”

Mostly memories of the power surging through his body, setting fire to his brain more than any alcohol had ever done, making it impossible for him to think. He had the impression he had batted someone across the garden with one taloned paw. He had squeezed someone’s skull until it cracked like a walnut shell—the mage, he assumed, for the man was holding Delia.

“We heard the sounds of battle,” Delia said. “Then Lord Percival came. He said you had sent him, and that I was to come with him out into the garden. I remembered what you said about not trusting anyone, so I didn’t move. He grabbed my hand and Sapphire…” She shuddered.

“He objected to you being touched by a man.”

“He only wanted to protect me, Jasper. You cannot let them blame him for killing the castellan.”

“The king is more likely to hang a medal on him for defending you,” Jasper assured her. It was a relief to know the man was dead. “He was a traitor, you know. He was the one who placed the hexed copper box, and I certainly didn’t send him to take you to the Welsh mage. Was that why you went into the garden? Because you thought I wanted you there?”