Page 3 of Unexpected Magic

Delia, though, was frozen with shock. This was a disaster on so many levels. The mare, Nettleford’s Lightning was one of their most important dams, the mother of champions. A unicorn meant not only the loss of an entire breeding year, but a lower price for future offspring, since the propensity to produce unicorns passed down through the generations. It was rare, though. If Delia remembered rightly, the entire royal herd of unicorns consisted of only a dozen beasts, all born in different years, and all sent to the queen.

This colt, too, would have to be sent to the queen, as would the girl who could handle him.

Her. The girl who could handle him would be Delia. Father was jerking his head urgently towards the stall door.

“Quickly, before he hurts himself or his dam.” His eyes narrowed and he lowered his voice to growl at her, “Unless… Cordelia Nettleford, have you been with a man?”

Everyone knew that unicorns could not tolerate the smell, sound, or sight of men, or of women who had been with men. Only an untouched maiden could approach them.

Even then, if the unicorn was upset enough, he might attack a maiden. Still, he was a newborn. How much harm could he do? And presumably her father would have her rescued. Mind you, he and his men should not be standing so close to the stall.

“I have not,” Delia answered. “Take the grooms to the far end of the stable, Father. Or outside. He can still hear and smell you all. Once you move, I shall go in.”

Father’s head reared in indignation at being given an order by his daughter, but the grooms were all nodding andwere already walking away. He gave an abrupt nod. “Slow movements. Gentle words.”

She knew. She had been helping in the stables since she was a small child. “Yes, Father.”

He walked away, and Delia took a deep breath, opened the stall door the barest minimum to let herself inside, and slipped through the gap. She had a bare second to take in the sight of the little colt before he charged her. White coat. A scream of sound. Eyes red with anger.

The charge would have been more effective if he were not still shaky on his long baby foal legs, and if the knob on his temples were pointed and larger than a crabapple. Even so, she would have a bruise where he connected with her hip. She flung her arms around him and began babbling soothing nonsense, while twisting her legs out of the way of hooves that tried to kick and trample.

He continued to fight for a long moment, then suddenly the battle went out of him and he collapsed against her with a huff of breath. She patted his neck. Poor frightened baby.

She hadn’t seen Millie among the men outside the stall. Another girl would be helpful. Millie could clean out another loose box, and Delia could move the colt there while Millie and perhaps some of the manor’s maids cleaned the mare.

But Delia could not go and find help until the colt was more settled, so she sat leaning up against the wall of the loose box, the unicorn half in her lap with his head against her chest, and scratched him on his neck while murmuring nonsense.

Chapter Two

London

Jasper Thornton, nephewof the Duke of Findlater—and his probable heir if an unreliable magical gift ever amounted to anything—had one of those annoying premonitions that told him nothing. Something was happening. Something that would, at some undisclosed time in the future, have an unknown impact on him.

That was it. No specifics.

Could it be the war with France? On the continent, the battle mage Napoleon continued to conquer territory after territory, and everyone knew he had his eye on Great Britain. There were even rumors that the man was a dragon lord, or that he had a dragon lord in his court—and if that were true, Britain was doomed.

Everyone Jasper knew was desperately hoping it was just French propaganda and would come to nothing, as the rumors several years ago about a Welsh dragon lord had also come to nothing. It was probably untrue. Dragon lords were vanishingly rare, though the Welsh did have a very powerful mage who had taken the name Emrys, after the dragon lord the English called Merlin.

In fact, the only reason there was more than one in the entire world was that they lived for hundreds of years. None of thesix currently alive was a European, and the one in Ethiopia, the youngest of the six, had already passed his first century mark.

If it were not for the war, Jasper would visit one of them. Perhaps they had lived long enough to know someone like him, with a powerful gift and no control. But here in Europe, the war dominated everything, although in Findlater’s London mansion, life went on as usual. Jasper had been begging to be allowed to go and fight. Even if his magic was unpredictable and near useless, he could still swing a sword and shoot a gun.

But the duke refused permission, so here Jasper remained, useless gift and all.

He had still been in the nursery when he first worked magic—usually the sign of a strong gift. However, it had never amounted to much. His ability to work a spell changed more frequently than the English weather. His tutors used to complain that he was lazy, undisciplined, just not trying. The duke ordered them to whip him, and that made it worse.

Thank goodness for Mr. Fellowes, the tutor who stayed. The tutor who realized that Jasper was trying as hard as he could to follow magical rules and practices that just didn’t fit his type of magic.

“It is not that Master Thornton does not know the spells, your grace,” Mr. Fellowes had told the duke. “I have observed him closely. His words, his actions, his tone of voice—he does everything precisely as he has been taught, and the results are—at best—unpredictable. Your grace, the young master is strongly thaumadiversus, as those who tested him in childhood discovered. But he has a type of magic that does not work by any rules we have yet discovered. For example, a weather spell for a gentle rain might, in Master Thornton’s hands, give us a day of sunny weather or a thunderstorm, and we can have no idea which.”

The duke had grumbled that such a gift was more like a curse, and Jasper was inclined to agree with him. But Mr. Fellowes was confident there must be patterns and rules to be discovered, even with unexpected magic like Jasper’s. “With further study and practice, my boy,” he had said, “I am hopeful you will learn to control your magic.”

Ten years later, Jasper was still trying.

He could reliably manage to start a fire now. He could levitate long enough to walk over a puddle dry shod, provided it was not too wide. He could cast a truth spell, at least well enough to know whether someone was being honest with him. Though sometimes even that backfired, and the person he was questioning wanted to share their sins all the way back to the cradle.

Still, these were skills that most mages acquired in the first year after their magic initially manifested, after which they focused on their particular strengths. Jasper did not appear to have any particular strengths. Or, on different days, for unpredictable periods of time and with frequently undesirable results, he was good at a whole range of different gifts.