And the advancing river of fire.
A Kelt clips our shield, then howls in agony and falls to the ground, his arm exploding into sparking blue flame. Haphazard flashes of geomancy spear out from all over Crykes Field to no effect, the lines of color exploding in a harmless kaleidoscope of puffs against the shield surrounding our dragons.
They’re flying low now. Low enough for me to see her.
She’s astride the lead dragon, wand raised and throwing down fireballs with a passionate vengeance. A golden shield flows from the palm of her other hand and streams backward over the other dragons like a flaming current of air. Her face is twisted into a bloodthirsty war cry.
The fire of her bloodlust rocks through my magic-stripped body.
Like a dark flame, her long black hair flickers behind her as she swoops in close and fills the valley with fire.
Through a break in the smoke, I can see her face clearly, and our eyes meet. Her face is so much like Vale’s—sharp lines, glittering Mage skin, fierce eyes.
Vale’s mother.
She swoops up, the line of Mages sweeping up with her, following the curve of the bluff, rising over our ditch, her dragon’s belly momentarily so close I can make out individual shard-like scales. Her fierce wave of fire crashes into our shield and crests over us, the flames overtaking our shield with a deafening roar.
Heat radiates through me. I’m so empty of fire, so painfully cold, and I cry out, unable to control my fire-lust, desperate to merge with the fire magic I’m stripped clean of. I strain toward the shield, toward the fiery river, struggling to pull my arms free of my bindings.
Vale’s arm is tight around me, restraining me as I struggle for release. I’m dizzy with desire for the flames, light-headed, disembodied. Vale’s arm trembles against mine as he fights to both hold the shield and keep me away from it as fire engulfs the world.
The world blazes orange, then yellow. Then searing white.
Then black.
Chapter 10: The Dryad
The entire world is altered.
A bleak landscape surrounds us—scorched earth as far as the eye can see, smoke turning the dawn light a sickly yellow. Everything lifeless. Barren.
Scorched by her.
I’m on a horse, slipping in and out of consciousness, and a strong arm wrapped around my waist is the only thing keeping me upright. My head hangs, limp as a rag doll’s, and my body feels cold and scoured out, my affinity stripped bare. The only comfort is a radiating warmth at my back that tells me it must be Vale in the saddle behind me.
A large number of Gardnerian soldiers ride around us at an unhurried pace. Fain’s horse plods alongside ours. His chest is bare, and as he rides past, I see that pale, raised lash scars cover his entire back.
I glance down, my head lolling in time with the horse’s slow trot. I’m in a sooty soldier’s tunic, a rumpled silver sphere over my chest.
Fain’s tunic.
He gave me his clothing. A wave of gratitude washes over me.
A wagon rattles by beside us, and I turn my head, the world swaying and tilting as I do.
“Tessieee.” The sound is muffled and low, as if slowed down and stretched out. I numbly register that my brother is in there, restrained by the Gardnerian adults who surround him and keep him from launching himself clear off the wagon and onto me.
My grandfather is just behind Wren, looking at me in shock, tears coursing down his haggard, lined face. He’s bobbing his praying hands up and down as he cries, then makes the star sign of holy blessing on his chest over and over and over.
I list to the side as the wagon passes, and the arm tightens around me.
Vale.
His cloak is wrapped around me over Fain’s tunic, another barrier between us, but I can still feel the heat of him—just enough heat to keep me from slipping away.
That fire. Like his mother’s. I remember her fire, coursing over the entire world.
I’m hungry for it.
But not just hungry for the fire. Hungry for how Vale and I match, our affinity lines in perfect symmetry.
Except mine are now empty of magic.
“Vale...” My head lolls, my teeth chattering lightly, the edges of my molars tapping out a choppy, uneven rhythm.
I’m so cold.
I push back against him with what little strength I have, easing into the shape of him, reveling in how well I fit against his hard chest.
I forget to be shy. To be proper. My mind is clouded, and I forget that Gardnerian women don’t press themselves against unfasted men, even if they’re desperate for warmth. Desperate for fire.
I’m listing in and out of consciousness, and he’s so warm. My hand slides down to grasp at his thigh. His leg is warm, his fire affinity coursing through it. I sigh and pull at his warmth, my fingers grasping tighter, tendrils of his fire straining toward my hand, warmth flowing up my arm, muting the cold.
“Tessla,” he says, in gentle but firm censure. He slides his hand down to grasp mine, to pull it away from his leg.
The minute the skin of his hand touches mine, my affinity lines shudder. Vale’s breath hitches, and I melt into him, like seeking like, my affinity in perfect proportion to his. So perfectly aligned. I give out a long, chattering sigh as my hand warms. The magical void in me is like a bottomless chasm, ready for him to pour himself into me.
“Ancient One, your fire...” He’s like a dream. The void in me is so great, it’s overwhelming. I breathe in, grasp at his hand and pull.
A strong, long tendril of Vale’s fire floods into me, through my hand, up my arm, into my chest. I groan and throw my head back, meeting his hard shoulder. My cheek slides against his hot neck.
More skin.
“No, Tessla,” Vale cautions, but I barely hear him.
I press my forehead to his neck and pull, this time harder, inhaling deeply as I drag a strong edge of his fire, his complete affinity, toward me.
Vale flinches away, jerking his hand from mine and wrenching me away from the skin of his neck. Breaking all contact.
“Stop,” he snaps sharply. “It’s too much.” His tone is coarse with shock.
I’m breathing heavily now, and so is he. My teeth are no longer chattering, but the world is spinning. The stolen fire kindles inside me in uneven fits and starts, exposing new pain where it flares, but melting the ice.
“We match,” I slur, in a heated fog. “I fall right into you.”
“You can’t make a...” His words are seethingly tight. He breaks off, as if deeply angered and reining it in. “You cannot ransack my power. You’ll throw yourself even further out of balance and drag me there with you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say weakly, catching my breath. Too Magedrunk and disoriented to be fully ashamed of my brazen grasping of his magic. It’s an intimate thing I’ve done, like stealing a deep-seated, secret emotion. The very essence of a Mage.
He’s stiff and uneasy now. I can feel how tense he is, recoiling from me.
A small part of my brain, some part of me far away on a distant shore, feels chastened and small. Fearful that I’ve angered him so intensely, that he finds me to be a grasping, repulsive parasite of a thing.
But there’s a kinship in this affinity match—something I’ve never felt before. It makes me want to cling to this stranger Mage, because he doesn’t feel like a stranger at all. I feel, instinctively, like I understand him better than anyone on Erthia ever could. And his sharp rejection hurts with a spearing pain that rivals the agony of Fain’s purging.
The regular rhythm of the horse lulls me into dulled, shamed oblivion. Vale is balancing me carefully at the far end of his shoulder, his fire closed off now, tightly banked to keep me out.
A chaotic tendril of green forest winds out toward us from the mountains
where an expansive forest once stood, the rest of the central mountains charred to soot. The remaining forest winds out to a point, the tip of it almost reaching the road.
I look into the trees, and that’s when I see it.
A Dryad.
The Forest Fae is camouflaged by the leaves, blending in perfectly with the last stand of brush and trees. Its skin is a pale, glimmering emerald, accenting its piercing forest-green eyes. Its black hair is tied back, revealing pointed ears, and it’s clad in armor made of leaves.
They’re supposed to be extinct, wiped out years ago by the Kelts. But the figure before me is starkly real, looking just like a picture I once saw in one of Jules’s books. Except this Dryad is staring out at the charred landscape and weeping.
Then it meets my gaze and narrows its eyes. Its hatred rocks through me, like venom coursing through my veins.
I lift a weak, trembling finger toward the tendril of forest as we ride close.
“A Dryad,” I weakly rasp out as the creature’s anger pounds against me. Then I blink, and the face is gone.
But the echo of the Dryad’s fury remains.
Chapter 11: Untethered
I am unconscious and untethered, grasping in the black. Flailing, my center gone, the drawn-out lines of my affinity shattered.
Stripped bare.
I’m spiraling down into a bottomless void. Crying out into the nothing.
Vale’s fire firmly grasps hold of me, and I hang on for dear life. His flames are tentative at first, then flare as he finds me, his heat burning hot and steady.
I hang on, as if dangling off a cliff. Desperation courses through me.
I hang on for Wren. For my grandfather. For Jules.
I can’t die.
Vale holds tight, his fire looped like a burning crown around my wrist.
* * *
I’m no longer falling. I’m lying down, suspended in the darkness. Vale’s fire is still tightly wreathed around my wrist, his heat rising through my arm.
My lifeline.
But it’s not enough to hold on to. Not enough to bring back my core. My own fire.
The cold, black void pulls at me, my balance destroyed. I’m a broken scale, listing, tilting this way and that.
Without a center.
I don’t know how long I lie there, tethered by the arm to his fire.
Slowly, I become aware again that I’m more than just a wrist, an arm, a shoulder. His warmth courses through me, warming my heart, strengthening my heartbeat as the heat spreads.
But it’s his heat. Only his. If he withdraws it, I will spiral down into the void. I have no more power of my own. No affinity strength to anchor me.
And then his fire is at the base of my neck, close to my pulse. The heat flares, radiating with each beat of my heart, pulsating up and down my neck, down through my chest. It floods through me in a shuddering blaze, lighting me up, hurtling straight down my limbs.
There’s pain, just on the edge of a burn. Another great flare radiates from my neck, echoing deep in my center—and then a throbbing explosion, igniting in a fierce rush, catching fire.
Suddenly, it’s there.
Small, but there. In the core of me—a circle of fire. Light and wood and air swirling in a thin layer around the edges. And over that, a trace of water. All five affinities, but fire at the core. Small and strong and hot.
My fire. There again, but perilously fragile.
The darkness swirls around me, like I’m caught up in a huge vortex of black smoke. Then it abruptly flows to the background, and Vale is before me, his form made of shadow and limned in an outline of flickering fire. One of his hands presses his wand against the side of my neck, the other steadies my head. His face and neck are slick with sweat, his expression rattled, his breathing labored and uneven. His fierce eyes glow orange with flame.
“Tessla,” he says, his voice rough, surprise in his tone.
“I can see you,” I tell him weakly, my head clearing. “You’re outlined in fire, but I can see you.”
His intense stare doesn’t waver. There’s an urgency there. “I’ve pushed as much fire into you as I can summon,” he says, “but...it’s not enough. I... I’d like to try one more thing. It’s...unorthodox.”
“What?” I force out, weak but fully aware.
He hesitates, eyes searing. “A kiss.”
I’m barely tethered to my small circle of affinity fire, but still, the tiny flame gives a leap as surprise flashes through me, the flame straining toward Vale.
“Kiss me, then,” I tell him, tilting my chin slightly up, wanting his fire. Wanting to live.
Vale hesitates for a split second, the glow of his eyes heightening. He leans in and brings his lips to mine, his mouth gentle and warm. A stream of his fire flows in with the kiss, straight to my core, merging with my affinity lines. My whole body arches toward him.
“Yes,” I murmur, my own voice strange and low. “That’s it. Do that.” I pull him close.
He brings his lips back to mine, his kiss more insistent this time. The stream of fire he’s pushing into me ignites all over my body, scorching through me.
We both gasp into each other’s mouths as our affinities merge tight.
Our kiss turns hard and hot as we grasp at each other’s magic lines, a torrent of fire coursing down my throat, shattering through my body. His fire is hungry and seeking, pressing down through my mouth, on the edge of scalding.
The core of me is hot and strong now, my center fully returning as his heat burns hot on my lips, pouring into me, blazingly strong.
I can feel my whole body now—battered, exhausted, weak and ragged.
But whole.
Whole, and with a precarious balance restored.
Vale’s heat draws off my mouth. But I don’t fall.
It’s back. My own fire. My own affinity. Solid and sure.
The shadows pull in from the edges of the room, and Vale’s form recedes into the dark.
* * *
After what seems like an eternity, flowing magic slides around my wrist, cool like a spring river—tentative, searching.
Water magic.
My eyes flutter open a sliver.
Fain.
“Vale,” I rasp out, still barely able to speak. “Where’s Vale?”
“He’ll be back,” Fain reassures me, his voice a warm lull. “Don’t fret, love. You’re going to be fine.”
“What happened to me?” My mouth is dry and hot, my body slick with sweat.
“You’re Magedrunk, sweetling.” He props me up and presses a small cup to my lips. “Here, drink this,” he says, his arm tight around me, keeping me from tilting as the room spins.
It’s warm and pine-bitter, with an undercurrent of sweet.
“Beeswellin,” I murmur, sloppily running my tongue over the edge of my upper lip. “And arniss root. And honeythistle.”
“Very good, my little apothecary,” Fain says approvingly, guiding me back down onto the pillow.
I half smile at his affectionate tone and kind touch. “When can I see my brother? And my grandfather...?” My head feels strange, lolling about, as if it’s disconnected from my body.
“Soon,” he gently croons. He brushes a tendril of damp hair off my face. “But first you need to sleep this off, Tessla. Let your affinity fully restore itself...”
His voice fades far away, the scene blurring...
To nothing.
Chapter 12: Wandfasting
I’m awakened by the sound of Fain’s voice. My eyes are sticky, the lids unnaturally heavy, and I can manage to open them only a sliver.
I’m leaden with exhaustion, half sleeping, but I can breathe normally now, and I feel only slightly hot with fever, not
trembling and burning up like before. Still, the images before me seem ephemeral, the colors deepened and heightened.
“She fought off an ax-paladin, apparently.” Fain’s reclining against a silk-cushioned divan, sumptuous red tapestries lining the walls and ceiling of the immense tent, a deep crimson rug on the floor patterned with sweeping gold and violet inlay.
I blink, confused.
Am I dreaming?
My mind is as sluggish as my leaden body, but I know we’re supposed to be at the nearest military base. Instead, I’m surrounded by luxury.
An exquisitely carved bookcase lines the wall directly in front of me. It’s filled with leather-bound volumes with gilded lettering, some written in Alfsigr. Gleaming brass nautical equipment lines the top shelf—compact telescopes, a complicated sextant. An iron woodstove engraved with a branching River Maple design pumps out warmth, the tent toasty even though its flap is tied open.
A cook fire blazes just outside the tent, and a young, bespectacled Gardnerian sits by it, tuning a violin. He’s stocky, his hair mussed, his civilian’s tunic finely made but wrinkled and haphazardly belted.
It’s twilight, the sky a deep blue fading to sapphire and hung with a waxing moon.
Vale is seated near the tent’s entrance, holding a glass of deep green liquid, unlike the crimson drink Fain is balancing on his knee. Their crystalline glasses glint in the amber light of a hanging lantern and the golden firelight emanating from the woodstove.
Heat stabs and twists deep in my core at the sight of Vale, and I’m thrust into unsettled confusion. I can still feel his fire on my mouth like a ghostly brand, still resonating, still flushed warm.
Vale and Fain are both clean and pressed, not sooty and worn like they were after rescuing me. The silk of their black uniforms is smooth and new, the silver spheres on their chests bright and unmarked. Their Mage cloaks are thrown casually over the backs of their satin-cushioned chairs.
“Seems the ax-paladin was rough with her,” Fain tells Vale, his tone flat.
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