Ethereal Entanglements by Lee French

drowning in magical power. Men and women, born with the ability to manipulate it, played at being gods. They used it to fight their own battles, to settle scores and toy with normal people. Caius and I both have this gift. I met him in my youth. He was already…” She squinted and let her hand fall. “I’m not sure of a word you will understand.”
    “How am I understanding you at all?”
    “This place. It does that if you know how. In my case, I helped create it, making such things simple.”
    “Wait. You helped create it? Why did you drug Caius and break the seal, then? I don’t get any of this.”
    “Drug Caius?” Iulia laughed. “As if Knights can be drugged. Your sprites all counter the effects of poisons and sleeping draughts before they cause any real harm. What mad story is this from?”
    Though Claire didn’t know Enion could fix poisons and other drugs for her, she knew he could heal her. Iulia had no reason to lie about that. “I notice you don’t deny breaking the seal.”
    “Of course I broke the seal,” Iulia snapped. “We had to. It was too flawed to last. He wanted to wait until it broke of its own accord. I wanted to deal with it as soon as possible. When he refused, I grabbed his sword and broke it to force the issue. Drug him indeed. I’m sorry to spoil his fantasy version of what happened with the truth that women with power who disagree with him are not inherently evil.”
    Finally, Claire had outside confirmation of something she already knew—Caius was a jerk. The rest of this, she needed to think about. She paced in front of Leeloo.
    “Iulia is tainted? Corrupt?” Enion asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Iulia cleared her throat. “Returning to the main point, Caius and his men hunted ghosts and gorgons. He used his skills with magic to lead his men to victory over them, but had no luck eradicating them. My mother and I discovered a way to ward our village against such things. In the autumn of my sixteenth year, he and his men encountered a nest of flying gorgons they could not defeat and found a safe haven in our village.
    “Caius demanded to know how the village was kept safe. My father, wary of losing his wife, instead offered up his daughter. He had other children. No one was shocked when Caius, after questioning me and discovering my power, declared I would be his wife. He tossed my family a handful of coins and threw me on the back of his horse.
    “With my help, they defeated the gorgons and returned home. Along the way, I considered fleeing my fate, but I had nowhere else to go. If I ran home, Caius would find me and punish my father. I had no money or status. He had both. I married him.”
    Iulia sighed and stared into the distance, her eyes haunted. Claire wondered how many horrors the woman had lived through. She also wondered if anything she’d been led to believe about Iulia was true. Probably not.
    “He put me to work right away. What Caius wanted more than anything was to be hailed as the hero who saved Rome from the monsters and ghosts. I persuaded him to help me construct the reverse of a ward—a seal. It would do nothing about the ghosts, but it would bind the living creatures. It took a year to create.”
    “Caius discovered, quite by accident, that by tapping into the seal, he could enchant his sword so it affected magic, ghosts, and magically inclined creatures more than normal steel. He enchanted weapons for his men without regard for the effect on the seal. Cracks formed and the creatures within noticed. I told him to stop. I told him we had to reforge the seal if he wanted to use it that way. Then I made the grave mistake of telling him it would likely be a century before it broke.”
    Iulia huffed a hollow laugh and shook her head. She scooped a handful of dirt and let it slip through her fingers. Claire had a feeling she knew how this story went, but it still held her transfixed.
    “He didn’t care.” Iulia brushed her hands together and braced against