by Diane Farr
I was freezing, too, in my little silk dress. Lance gave me his jacket, but my legs were bare. It was pretty awful, because we couldn’t concentrate on our escape, maintain a glamour that made our passage look like wind in the trees, and cook up a warming spell while we were at it.
Eventually, the air around us grew lighter with dawn’s approach. It was easier going, once we could make out the trees and the contours of the land, but I worried that we, too, were more visible.
Lance picked up my worry and gave me a reassuring smile. “They’re not going to catch us now, cupcake.”
Cupcake again. He had spoken out loud for the first time all night, and he had to call me ‘cupcake.’ I winced. “What makes you so sure?”
“They haven’t caught us yet.” He held up a low-hanging branch so I could pass under. “We haven’t heard any pursuit for a long time now. Which probably means they’re not trying anymore. I wondered when it would occur to them that we’d be cloaking ourselves. My guess is, they figured it out several hours ago. No point in trying to track us. They’re probably sitting around arguing about what to do next.”
Anxiety gnawed at me. “What do you think they’ll decide?”
“No clue. But I doubt if this is the end of it.” He pulled me over to the side of the path—we were following some sort of animal track—and stopped. “Listen.”
I listened. There was a faint rushing sound that wasn’t coming from the treetops. “What is it?”
Excitement was thrumming through him; I could feel it. “It’s the river. We’re almost out of Spellhaven. Careful, now. There’s a cliff around here. Probably right in front of us.”
The light was stronger every minute. A good thing, too, because Lance was right. The trees abruptly thinned and a steep chasm yawned at our feet, with a river snaking along the bottom of it. “That’s it,” he said. He pointed across the river. “Once we’re on the other side, we’re out. This river marks the border.”
“How do we cross it?”
Lance’s face, I could see in the growing light, was weary and frowning. And filthy. I stared at him, appalled. He was so thickly coated with dust now that it was impossible to tell what colors he was wearing. His clothes were torn up, too, from our scramble through the forest—full of little tears where brambles had caught at him. Twigs and seeds and who-knows-what were sticking out everywhere, including from his hair.
He caught my stare and looked back at me. His brows lifted as he took in my appearance. My condition was doubtless similar to his. “Wow,” he said. “You look awful.”
The sun rose behind us and lit us up as we started laughing. There may have been a slightly manic edge to our laughter, but I still thought it was a good omen. We were dirty and hungry and exhausted. Our powers had been weakened. We were friendless and hunted and alone.
But we were alive. And free. And laughing in the sunlight.
Lance had thought we’d be able to skatch as soon as we were out of Spellhaven proper. Unfortunately, he was wrong. So we spent the day on a long, miserable hike—through the prettiest country I’d ever seen, but beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. The most beautiful sight to Lance and me would have been a pair of golden arches rising before us radiating the smell of French fries. Alas, all we got was more scenery.
Every half hour or so, we’d stop and test whether or not we could skatch. Lance said to try a place that was super-familiar, so I kept trying to skatch to my bedroom. Nothing ever happened. Lance’s two easiest places normally would have been his skatching stone, back at Spellhaven, or the well in the apartment he shared with Rune. Both places were off-limits now, for obvious reasons. So he tried various spots—a different spot every time we stopped. He had no more luck than I did. So we trudged on.
We were going mostly downhill, and in places it was wicked steep. Walking downhill, I discovered, is hard on the ankles and calves. It was tough going, but I was so giddy with relief at being out of that tube cell, I almost didn’t care. It was harder on Lance. He was deeply angry that his kinsmen had stripped so much power from him. He couldn’t get past it. To me, it had been imprisonment and all, which was bad enough, but to Lance it had also been betrayal. He was silent, brooding, as we hauled our footsore bodies down the mountain toward civilization.
And then, just as the sun was getting ready to set, we had a breakthrough. We stopped for another rest. I tried to skatch, and nothing happened. Lance tried to skatch…and he disappeared.
My mouth fell open. It had worked! I jumped up, ready to cheer—then sat back down. Alone.
Completely alone. In the middle of the woods. With no clue where I was.
It was a very, very bad moment. And as it stretched into minutes, it got worse.
I didn’t dare leave. Even if I’d known which way to go, I couldn’t leave, because Lance would return here to look for me.
If he could.
My palms started to sweat. I remembered him trying to skatch to me in the park and being unable to, because of that crazy banishment I’d cooked up. I was pretty sure it was gone now, but what if I were wrong? What if it were still in effect and, in my weakened state, I had no power to undo it?
What if Lance had been able to skatch away, but couldn’t skatch back?
Why hadn’t we thought of this before?!
Too late, I realized Lance should have just tried to skatch a few feet away, not all the way to wherever he was. I didn’t even know where he’d gone!
I jumped up and paced. I sat down and shivered. I tried again to skatch to my bedroom, and failed.
My eyes had filled with tears of pure fright by the time Lance reappeared. But he reappeared. I rushed into his arms with a sob, then pounded my fist against his shoulder. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
His arms went around me automatically, but he was so happy he was laughing. “It worked! Zara, it worked.”
“Where did you go?” I pushed away, ashamed of my panic, and hugged myself instead—trying to get a grip.
“I have a motorcycle stashed in the woods near a gas station in this little town—just a wide spot in the road, really—but it’s near the Avenue of the Giants. I went to check on it. It’s still there.”
“Where is that from here?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. When you skatch, it doesn’t matter.”
“I can’t skatch!”
“You wouldn’t be able to anyway, since you haven’t been there.” He was actually rubbing his hands together, he was so exultant.
“So now what?” I tossed my tangled, nasty hair behind me. “You go roaring off on your motorcycle, and what do I do? I hope you brought me a map. It’s gonna be a long walk out of these freaking woods.”
“I don’t know where we are.” He didn’t sound bothered in the least. “I’ve just been leading us downhill, figuring we’d strike a road or a town. Eventually.”
“Great. Okay. So I’ll just keep heading downhill. No worries. Nice knowing you. Bye-bye. Have a nice trip on your motorcycle.” I wrapped his jacket more tightly around me and started off.
I got about five steps before he caught me, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“You already did.”
I was still mad because I’d been so scared. But I was already a lot less mad than I was five seconds ago. And when he turned me around and held me, locked against his chest, I looked into those green, green eyes and was lost. All my anger melted away, forgotten.
“I’ll never go anywhere without you, Zara,” he whispered. “Never again.”
And I believed him. Because he meant it. Maybe it wouldn’t always be true, but he meant it right now.
When his mouth touched mine the world fell away. I wasn’t cold anymore, or hungry, or tired, or mad, or scared. My entire being, everything I was, shot right to my lips and our kiss became the center of the universe. It was beyond electric. It was like nothing on earth. The connection between us was a miracle, pumping knowledge and power through our
veins like a drug. But more than that, this was definitely a kiss, with all the sensations and pleasure that a kiss should bring.
It was shattering.
His lips slid along mine and the feeling was almost a burn, it was so intense. His mouth was a marvel. He was a marvel. I was a marvel, too, experienced through him, because his perceptions echoed and doubled and ricocheted off my own; I could feel what he felt. I knew what he thought. I knew where he was taking the kiss next and could meet him there, perfectly in sync.
He lifted his face from mine and cupped my cheeks with his fingers. We stared into each other’s eyes, watching the light pulse there, green and violet.
An image of Tres’s kiss flitted briefly across my memory. What a joke that had been. No, I thought. I’ve never been kissed before.
The corner of Lance’s mouth quirked up into a half-smile. In his mind, I read a blur of half-remembered kisses from more girls than he could easily count. Me neither, he told me.
In the end, he had to force-skatch me to where his motorcycle was. Even held in Lance’s arms, and even cooperating as much as I could, it was brutal. But I made it.
He thinks we’re about four hours from Cherry Glen now.
I’m on the seat behind him, with my arms around his waist and my cheek pressed against his upper back. The wind roars past us. We’re gliding and swooping through the turns, leaning together, flying. With my body pressed against Lance, I am already home.
But we’re heading to Nonny’s house. Where my power stone is.
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