Read Online Blades Of Magic: Crown Service #1 by Terah Edun - Free Book Online

Cormar had impressive control over his gifts. It took skill not to send small objects like the medallion and dress laying on the bench just feet away from them flying. As he targeted Ezekiel and Ezekiel alone, she thought about what to do. 
    Sara looked around desperately and spotted the area of the roof where she knew the metal pole rested on the other side. She raced over and noted nothing out of the ordinary. The roof was whole and no entrance showed to her eyes. She became agitated. Even as nervous as she was, the only sign of stress appeared in the tic of her lower lip. Her sharp eyes never wavered from their target. Ezekiel was screaming now. She cursed. The secret entrance wasn’t where she thought it was. She almost turned away when she noticed something odd on the ground. Every single one of the regular benches had five artifacts of various sizes and shapes on top. Always five. Never more. Except the lone bench below the spot she’d noted outside.
    She came over and quickly looked at the six objects on the bench. Evenly spaced out, only one sat where she’d expect the thieves to drop down through a hole in the roof. The object was a large, round egg the size of her head and made of pale golden amber. It sat on a pedestal of jade and looked no more out of place than any of the other objects on the bench. But she had her suspicions and she acted on them. Hands trembling because she didn’t know what she was picking up, Sara lifted the egg and the pedestal from the bench gently. As she did, a magical field she didn’t know existed lifted as well. Looking up with her hopes in her eyes, Sara spotted a man-sized hole now visible in the roof. From the hole spilled a rope, and she knew she had her second entrance.
    The egg had been some kind of illusion device. Whirling quickly, she called out, “Cormar! I found it. I found the way the thieves have been getting in. Let Ezekiel go.”
    Cormar looked over at her from where he stood. Irritation lined his face when he spotted the hole in the roof. “So you have.”
    To Ezekiel he snapped, “See! The watcher found the entrance. Why didn’t you ? You’ve been on my payroll for weeks. One might wonder if you planned this all.”
    Ezekiel was too dizzy to say much. All Sara heard from his mouth was, “No, no, no,” over and over again. She put the egg down and strode forward. This had to stop. Fortunately, Ezekiel chose that moment to throw up and the waste rained down on the floor. Cormar took a step back and pulled a cloth from his pocket to wipe away a speck that had landed on his shoulder. With a cold look up at Ezekiel, he stopped his wind tunnel. Ezekiel dropped to the floor with a thud .
    Sara raced forward to help Ezekiel sit up while Cormar wrinkled his nose at the stench now atop his artifacts.
    “Are you all right?” she asked the dazed curator as she pushed him up by his back.
    “What?” said Ezekiel, his head lolling to the side. He clearly wasn’t coherent yet.
    She looked up at their boss as he walked past them without a word.
    Cormar picked up the egg and jade pedestal she had hastily set down and studied it.
    “Well, well. A refraction egg. Haven’t seen one of these on the market in a good two weeks,” Cormar said.
    Cormar looked over at the man standing beside him. “Wainwright, didn’t I bid on an egg like this at the auction just last month?”
    His secretary quickly stated, “Yes, sir,” while pulling a notebook out of his pocket.
    Shifting through the papers, Wainwright elaborated, “Thirteen days ago, sir, at the Giles Manor auction. It was described as a pale amber egg with an attached jade base. Bidding started out at two hundred shillings. We lost out at five hundred and fifty-six.”
    “So we did,” said Cormar with a Cheshire cat smile. “Well, it seems that I’ve gotten my little prize for free.”
    He set it back down and came up to his watcher and curator.
    By this time Ezekiel was sitting up on his own and she had stood.