Cast in Hellfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 2) by S.M. Reine Read Free Book Online Page B

battles.
    Marion did almost remember a garden, though. And a boy in the garden who looked much like Seth.
    No matter how Seth denied it, there was something to those memories.
    “I’m not the same as I was before Genesis.” Seth took a sip of the wine and grimaced. “They changed me when they brought me to life again. I need to know how more than why. The symptoms…” He trailed off, staring hard at his hands. “I’m getting worse. I need you to ask Elise and James what they did to me.”
    So that was what Seth valued more than his anonymity, more than getting away from the mage who’d been dropped into his emergency room.
    He wanted his identity.
    She couldn’t blame him. Marion was aching pretty hard for the same thing.
    “I doubt I’ll need my memory for that,” Marion said. “If I’ve been able to contact Elise and James in the past, then I should be able to do it now, too.” She twirled the glass between her forefinger and thumb. “You said you’re different since Genesis. Different how?”
    Seth finished his wine and set the glass on the coffee table beside the apple. The remaining drops of wine pooled in the bottom of the bulb. “Different.”
    “Is this another of those secrets you claim has nothing to do with me, even though it clearly does?”
    “I don’t know all the ways I’ve changed. But look at me, Marion. Just look .” He pointed at his face. “Do I look like I’ll be hitting forty years old soon?”
    He didn’t. If anything, he looked younger than when Marion had met him a week earlier.
    “And that’s the only difference you’ve discovered since Genesis,” she said.
    “It’s one of the big ones.”
    “Very well.” She set her wine glass beside his. “I’ll see if I have any way to contact my half-sister. Are you in a rush to leave?”
    “Not at the moment,” Seth said. “Charity was planning to hit up tea time at the Empress Hotel. She’ll be entertained for a little while.”
    She scooped the apple off the table. “I’ll pick through my journals, then. Make yourself at home.” Marion dropped the apple into his hand. They both held it for a moment, touching through the apple without making any kind of contact skin-to-skin.
    “Thanks,” he said. The state of his agelessness wasn’t the only thing that had changed since Marion had last seen him. His irises had gone from very dark brown to black.
    She turned to leave. “You’re welcome.”
    “Marion?”
    “What?” she asked.
    Seth twisted the stem off of the apple. “I am sorry. I didn’t want to lie to you.”
    A smile twitched at the edges of her lips. “I was wrong.” She swirled to leave, striding up the stairs.
    “About what?” he called after her.
    Marion shot a grin at him over her shoulder. “Your apology did make me feel better.”

5
    T he library in Marion’s home was larger than her private pool, the kitchen, and the master bathroom put together. That was where she’d found all of her personal journals last Wednesday, which she’d systematically yanked off of the shelves and arrayed on tables for easy reading.
    “I’ve been studying myself in my free moments, of which there are few.” Marion moved stacks of journals off of one table so that she could reach the oldest ones at the bottom. “If I can’t get my memories back, then I assumed that I’d be able to fake it in the meantime. I’ve been doing well, if I do say so myself. Few at the summit seemed to realize anything was awry.”
    Seth wandered into the room behind her. He was gazing around her shelves with some awe—the first time he seemed to have been impressed by her home. He’d had quite a few books in his old house too. A man after her own heart. “You still haven’t told me how things at the summit unfolded.”
    “Terribly. The majority voted to keep the angels out of the Winter Court.” She waited, but Seth was walking through her room, inspecting the spines of her books. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I