Curse of the Celts Clara O'Connor (new reading txt) 📖

It fell on fertile soil. Nobody has ever circumvented the handfast before. Calchas was fascinated by the fact that you had done so; he was obsessed with it. What had tipped Marcus off that Devyn Agrestis was in Barts? How had you gone from being a good, compliant citizen firmly in the grip of the handfast to one who was clearly lying? What was it between you and Agrestis that managed to bypass a compulsion which has enabled the city to dictate and socially engineer the population for centuries? After Richmond, when Alvar brought in the pendant, he had the tapes reviewed and he knew you hadn’t been wearing it when Agrestis broke into the hospital,” he explained grimly as he casually navigated the river. “Calchas loves control; he is the ultimate puppet master. Everything and everyone in this city is on a string, and he makes us dance. You broke free, and he had limited time to figure it out. The temptation to dress you up and have a little private, scripted theatrical night once he had all three of you in his power would have been irresistible to him. I encouraged it; all I asked in return was the opportunity to speak to my son one last time. I’m just grateful he didn’t drug all three of you; I wouldn’t have put it past him. Though I suppose there was only one of you he couldn’t guarantee would play along, and after the events of the last months, he must have enjoyed ensuring he had control of your Briton. Speaking of which, there is a flask in that trunk over there. Give it to your Briton; it might help.”

I retrieved the drink and handed it to Devyn. His dark eyes, a little glazed, still burning, were more interested in watching me than following the life-saving escape we were making across the city. Marcus appeared to have recovered more successfully, and he was far more interested in surveying the other traffic on the river as our hovercraft slipped silently through the night.

My hand reached for the comfort of my pendant, the gesture changing as I anxiously rubbed at the bare skin of my neck.

Matthias flashed his thin-lipped smile my way.

“I’m afraid we couldn’t get the necklace back. We’ll have to rely on the handfast to keep you with Marcus and ensure you don’t try to make your way back to the city at your first opportunity, despite the fiery stake that awaits you,” Matthias warned.

Even without the charmed pendant, I was confident I wouldn’t be relying on the handfast to keep me with my companions. Devyn’s presence was more than enough to negate the compulsion to comply with the wishes of my match and the city; as long as he was near I was operating under my own will. And that would never lead me back to the city. Marcus still wore the other charm and it seemed wiser to leave it in his possession in case the cuff did cloud his judgement and urge him to return to the city. As long as he had the charm, and I had Devyn, we would be fine.

“The handfast is not just technology, it’s wrapped with magic and it will continue to work outside the walls.” Matthias misread my confidence that I would be able to resist the handfast compulsion beyond the walls.

“I don’t understand. There’s magic in the cuff? But handfasting is codified.” Even though we had suspected this was the case, it still came as a shock. The city abhorred magic, had fought wars against the magic-wielding Britons for millennia, had eradicated every trace of it within the walls.

“It was a joint venture between the Britons and us. The handfast was the glue that held the Treaty together,” Matthias offered cryptically.

“What does it have to do with the Treaty?” Devyn had given me the short version of this but it couldn’t hurt to play dumb and see if there was more to be learned.

“Without the Treaty, there would be no Marcus. Marcus’s existence is living proof of the Treaty.”

Matthias had grown bored with my questions and slipped back into being the supercilious ass with whom I was more familiar. I frowned as if I didn’t follow.

Marcus took his eyes off the river to look at me. His hand came up to trace the etchings on the cuff that sat on his upper arm.

“They were created to ensure the Treaty would stick because the marriage that bound it together would itself be solid,” he elaborated. I shook my head as if still not understanding, and Marcus went on. “Think about it, Cassandra. The Empire had been at war with the Britons for ever. My great-great-great-grandfather would have hated everything about the York princess he had to marry. And she him. They had spent their lives shedding the blood of each other’s friends and families. Both sides were invested in that marriage holding, in them having children of mixed blood who would be living symbols to the city of the peace.”

“Oh.” This was pretty much what Devyn had been able to discover, that the handfast cuffs were a legacy of the marriage that had sealed the Treaty just as much as Marcus was. The device was created to bind together a couple forced into a union that both of them must have hated, then used to manipulate generation after generation of the city’s sons and daughters. It was a band locked on your arm that instilled in you a desire to please your parents, to comply with the Code, to want to be with the partner your parents had arranged for you. It was diabolical. Our society was built upon lie after lie and it was a cycle that was repeated over and over. My chest tightened as I surveyed the banks of the river. The wall of towers constructed right up to the river’s edge seemed to loom more oppressively than ever. I lifted my face to the night sky,