Decisively he grabs me by the wrist and yanks me into the passageway between the nearest pair of houses.
“What are you—?” I bite my tongue mid-question, glowering as I trip along behind him. We emerge on a smaller road. Demetrios leads me past several homes and into a large tent.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s the same large tent that I awoke in when I first arrived. The fire burns at the center of this main room. A low couch surrounds it, with two branching rooms hidden behind curtains. He checks them for unseen occupants as I stand stiff-backed near the exit.
“Aitana is my friend,” he says as he pushes aside the flap that hides the second room from view. “It’s not my place to expose her faults. She was upset, yes. But it has nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing?” I challenge.
He meets my gaze. “It’s not your doing.”
I have no mental filter at this point. I’m too angry to consider the prudence of my words. “No, it’s yours. You flirt with me to make her jealous.”
“To make her jealous?” he echoes, disbelief upon his face. He jabs an accusing finger toward the exit. “She wishes I were my brother. She would trade me for Cosi in a heartbeat.”
My indignation swells. “And I’m not a toy you can use to punish her for that.”
“I’m not punishing her.”
“Then why was she crying?”
He rakes one hand through his hair as he paces the length of the room. His path runs too near me. I step closer to the fire pit, stubborn in my silence as I wait for the explanation he’s cooking up.
“Aitana is a good person, but she is spoiled,” he says at last. “From the time she first came to the Helenai, she has received everything she has ever wanted—everything except Cosi.”
The statement hangs in the air. I expound upon it. “And now she wants you instead.”
Demetrios explodes with frustration. “I don’t care what she wants! I care what I want.”
“What you want?” I say, hardly believing my ears.
“What I want,” he confirms. “I want you to look at me, Anjeni. Not at Cosi, not at Moru of the Terasanai, not at your dozens of spark-bearers, and certainly not at a bowl of dumplings! Only at me!”
The intensity of his words roots me in place. He meets my stare, holding my gaze, never wavering in the wake of this impassioned declaration.
Why is the air so close in here? The charged silence between us smothers me, so that I blurt the first thing that comes to mind just to break it.
“Why would you want that?”
He throws his hands up and paces the opposite direction. “Because you fascinate and confound me. Because in the same breath you’re both fragile and formidable. Because whether you admit it or not, you need someone to want you. Why should I not?”
Half a dozen reasons bounce through my head, but none of them stick. I panic. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m asking for the fates to align,” he replies without missing a beat.
My ears buzz, my thoughts clouded. I shake my head to clear it, but the muddle remains.
Demetrios, meanwhile, approaches, his gaze intent as he takes my hands in his. “If you are an ordinary woman, as you’ve claimed, you have no duty to play the role of goddess forever. I want you to look at me, to hold me dearer than anyone or anything in this world as long as you remain here. And that is the whole truth, Anjeni.”
I stare, speechless. I have heard his words, but my brain can’t wrap around them. What manipulation is this? What political game? Nothing makes sense to my mind, though my leaping, jittering heart telegraphs a ready response.
Demetrios reads my silence as skepticism, it seems, because he fidgets under my prolonged gaze.
“It’s not the whole truth,” he admits.
To my heart’s dismay, he releases my hands and steps back a pace. My confusion mounts as he fishes into his pocket. He extends a fist to me and turns it upward to reveal its contents.
Upon his palm sits a small, silver case.
My lighter—my lighter that’s been missing since I tumbled into this world.
Memories clobber me, bitter and sweet jumbled together with a pang of homesickness. A sob squeaks in my throat, but when I reach for my treasure, Demetrios jerks his hand away.
“No. It’s an object. Don’t look at it like it’s your long-lost child.”
I glare. “That is mine. Where did you get it? How long have you had it?”
He tucks his hand behind his back. “It’s an object, Anjeni. Objects can be destroyed. They can disappear. They’re meaningless.”
I lunge for his arm. “It means a lot to me. Give it back.”
He twists around, evading my grasp. “Everything you love can be gone in the blink of an eye. Why do you fixate on objects instead of flesh-and-blood human beings?”
I freeze, hanging upon him, my hands wrapped around his fingers as my brain processes his question. My voice creaks, barely above a whisper. “Everything I love was gone in the blink of an eye. When I passed through the Eternity Gate, I lost everything and everyone I love.”
But I had lost them long before that. Bitterness had infused my soul for years. I had wallowed in misery, compelled by my self-hatred to hate everyone around me, too consumed by what I didn’t possess to appreciate my own family and the many other blessings of my life.
What had I loved?
Nothing. I had loved nothing at all.
My emotional barrier cracks. Tears tumble down my cheeks on this stark revelation.
Demetrios reaches for me, but I recoil, retreating halfway across the room, my eyes unfocused as I wipe my face with the back of one hand.
“Anjeni—” he starts.
“Don’t. Don’t offer me false comfort. I don’t deserve it.”
He stands still, tense as I rein in my despair with a shuddering gulp.
In the wake of my returned composure, he extends his hand, offering my lighter to me again. I’m not sure I want to receive it, not with the venom it represents.
Decisively he crosses the distance between us and presses it upon me, the metal warm against my palm. Demetrios closes my fingers around it and cups my hand between his.
“I should not have kept it from you. In the beginning, it was a curiosity. I only wanted to study it as something from another world, something that a goddess brought with her from her native realm.”
My eyes remain unfocused, my voice dull. “When did you find it?”
“It fell from your pocket when I carried you from the battlefield.”
I jerk my gaze up to meet his. “You had it from the first? And you kept it, knowing it was mine?”
He opens his mouth, a defense on his tongue, but he shuts it again without a word. A simple nod answers my query. He withdraws his hands. My fingers feel suddenly cold.
I move to the low couch and sit. Deftly, mechanically, I flick the lighter open and strike a flame upon its wick.
Demetrios starts but catches himself. “How did you do that?”
“What?” I say, bewildered.
“How did you create the flame so quickly? It took me weeks to discover it even made a spark.”
I flip the cap back in place and open it again, my thumb snapping against the flint wheel. “Really? Weeks?”
“Yes, weeks,” he shamelessly says, still riveted on the lighter. “Do it again.”
I flip it open and shut in quick succession, summoning a flame every time. Demetrios stares. I can practically see the gears in his brain turning: he itches to try it himself.
Suddenly he is the one fixated on an object, and I am fixated on him—exactly as he wants, and exactly as I never should.
“The Bulokai,” I say.
He looks up from the lighter in my hands, accepting my change of topic without protest. “We should go back.”
“Yes.” I rise from the low couch, turning the silver case over and over again. As I pass him, Demetrios puts out a hand to stop me.
Self-consciousness crawls up my spine to my face. I nod and avert my eyes. Demetrios falls in step beside me as he always has, as if the whole world didn’t just rearrange into something new and terrifying.
Chapter Twenty-One
Etricos meets us on the way back to the watchtower, concern on his face. “Where did you go?”
“To get some fresh air,” Demetrios answers before I can speak. He sounds nonchalant, as though our contentious scene had never occurred. I half marvel up at him before I catch myself.
“Has something happened with the Bulokai delegation?” I ask, hiding my still-reeling emotions behind an indifferent façade.
Etricos falls in step beside me. “No. Some of our warriors are getting restless, though—especially those who come from tribes once conquered. The longer the delegation remains, the more likely it is that someone from our side will make a preemptive attack.”
“I will deliver the return message immediately, then,” says Demetrios.
“I will go with him,” I add. Both brothers wrench around to stare at me. I’m not about to explain that my nerves can’t handle watching from the tower a second time as Demetrios ventures out on his own. I have a viable reason to participate in the errand. “If their magician attacks, I need him in full view. The watchtower is too constricting for an effective counter-attack.”
They exchange a glance. I hold my breath as I wait for their assessment.
“You cannot come with me,” says Demetrios.
“But—”
“Goddess, we cannot put you so directly in harm’s way,” says Etricos. “You may not approach the Bulokai, but perhaps we may send a small group of warriors to wait outside the wall, and you among them to guard against an attack, as you propose.”
It is a better option than remaining in the tower.
“What of Aitana?” Etricos asks his brother.
Demetrios maintains his unreadable expression. “Has she returned?”
“Yes, and with two of the other spark-bearers. They wait in the tower.”
The two others must be Ria and Ineri. “What is she doing with them there?” I ask suspiciously.
“I believe she was instructing them. They were repeating phrases back and forth.”
If that little minx has taken it upon herself to instruct in the first superlative, I’m going to wring her neck. Even from a hundred yards away an enemy magician might seize control of their magic should they choose to practice the principle among themselves. I increase my pace.
Demetrios drags me to one side by my elbow. “Watch your step.”
He has nicely skirted me around a handful of dusty nails lying in the road. Grateful as I am to avoid such an obstacle, I glare at him.
“Shall I carry you, Goddess?” he asks blandly.
With utmost dignity, I train my attention upon the ground and continue on my own strength.
Warriors line the interior wall, with archers ready to climb to the defensive positions. Etricos parts from us to join a cluster of tribal leaders. I proceed to the watchtower, Demetrios at my side.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I tell him. “You don’t need to follow me up.”
He arches a brow but does not protest the command. As I mount the ladder, he stands attentively below.
I surface on the platform to find Aitana with Ria and Ineri crouched in one corner, deep in discussion. They start upon seeing me. Aitana looks first guilty and then defiant.
“You haven’t done anything foolish, have you?” I ask.
Conveying the principle itself isn’t a problem. I had the full set memorized ages ago. I couldn’t manifest a spark, though, so there was never any danger of hurting myself in unsupervised practice.
“We await your demonstration, Goddess,” says Ineri, her nervous gaze flitting toward Aitana and back. She at least realizes that they should not be here.
But, as long as they’re receiving instruction, I might as well make it worth their while. “I will demonstrate below with the Bulokai, should the occasion arise. You three may remain here and observe from the tower.”
Rebellion streaks across Aitana’s face. The other two look relieved. I cross to the observation point and check the delegation. They yet wait astride their horses, the sun beating down upon their full body armor.
The gloveless warrior at the far end flexes and clenches his hands—a common exercise among magicians to keep their joints limber.
I descend from the tower again.
Etricos and the other tribal leaders have chosen a group of warriors—archers and pikemen—to accompany me beyond the city walls. Demetrios leaves me in their midst to retrieve his horse.
“Goddess, do you wish for some armor?” Moru asks.
I doubt they could find anything small enough for me, but it doesn’t matter. “Metal conducts magic too easily,” I reply. When performed in armor, it can readily get out of hand. The Bulokai magician in his spiked battle-wear must have incredible control over his skills. Perhaps he uses the armor to amplify his attacks outward. I tamp down the flutter of nerves within me as my mind races through the possibilities.
Agoros would not send a faulty magician to face a fire-god. I cannot underestimate this one. I must remain vigilant.
Demetrios is ready too soon. He climbs astride his horse and waits at the gate. Tension mounts in the midst of my small contingent of guards. Archers scale the ladders to defensive points along the walls while the remaining warriors fall into lines to await orders should an attack occur.
The gate opens on its pulley, and Demetrios rides through the gap.
I swallow hard, my hands trembling as my group passes to the other side.
Breathe, Anjeni.
A hundred yards away, the Bulokai messengers straighten in their saddles. As Demetrios canters toward them, I recite the superlative principles in my mind. He is only halfway across the divide when I sense it: the build of magic that precedes an attack.
And Demetrios draws steadily closer to its source. My breath hitches.
The second superlative of magic is that it answers from afar.
With a twist of my wrist I seize the gathering spark and flare it back upon its bearer. The explosion of power, amplified within his shell of armor, throws him from his saddle to the ground in a steaming, hulking mess.
Demetrios stops short and whips his sword from his belt. For a split-second, deathly silence reigns upon the scene.
As one body, the remaining Bulokai warriors tear their gloves from their hands, power flaring on their fingertips.
Horror seizes me. They are magicians to the last man.
“Demetrios, get back!” I scream, shoving past my contingent.
The sixth superlative—or the seventh—?
I snatch at several sparks at once as I barrel across the ground, but there are too many for my mental grasp. I’ve never actually practiced the sixth, seventh, and eighth superlatives, the principles that govern catching magic from multiple users at the same time. Shouts sound behind me, and arrows fly across the void toward the Bulokai cluster, but the shafts incinerate before they reach their targets. A flare of power—the fourth intermediate—jets toward Demetrios on his horse, but I shove it back into the Bulokai ranks, my feet pounding across the scrubby earth.
Chaos, fire, and smoke. Voices shout warnings and battle cries. Magic is so thick upon the air that I can hardly breathe.
A crack of energy shoots from behind me into the midst of the Bulokai. Aitana in the watchtower has unleashed her attempt at the seventh intermediate. As it strikes one of the rogue magicians, another snags its spark and twists it back to its origin point. A flare of magic rips through the tower, splitting my attention before and behind me.
The Bulokai magicians know at least the first two superlatives. Her attack was weak. The rebound couldn’t have been fatal. I swallow my terror and refocus on the b
attlefield. Half a dozen intermediates course through my brain, but if I invoke one, I risk their master-magician snatching it from me. It is safer to deal with the superlatives, manipulating from afar. I catch another set of sparks and flare them out upon the enemy.
The Bulokai abandon their horses as the animals turn skittish in the cloud of magic. I can’t see all of them anymore, my eyes dazed by their movement and my mind overwhelmed with the divided threads of power. Another fourth intermediate rockets from their midst, headed straight for me. I divert it into the ground. Rock and dust explodes into the air, and a circle of dry grass succumbs to flames.
“Anjeni!” Demetrios shouts. He has dismounted his horse and runs with the animal as cover. Three more intermediates arc from the Bulokai, honing in upon him.
And I panic.
“Get down!” I scream, sweeping my arm to deflect the attack. Three intermediates I can catch. Three is a reasonable number.
A seventh intermediate blindsides me, like being hit by a train I never saw coming. The force launches my body sideways. I slam into the hard-packed ground, my head smacking against a low-lying rock.
“Anjeni!”
Demetrios calls as though from a distance. For the barest moment, my body refuses to respond. Shock suffuses me, my mortality never so palpable before as it is now.
But the beast within its cage howls. I jolt free of my stupor and sit up, adrenaline pulsing through me. Blood streaks from my forehead down my face, running into my left eye. I swipe at it with a tremulous wrist. A smear of crimson decorates my arm.
“You’re hurt.” Demetrios skids to his knees beside me, grabbing at me to pull me back toward the presumed safety of the gates.
I shake off his grip, my attention fixed upon the enemy. “Go back. I will finish them.”
And I will, even if I must die in the effort.
The Bulokai have banded together, rallying their magic. Three of them incinerate the barrage of arrows from the city wall, while all the others cluster amid a thickening miasma of energy. It’s a prelude to the eighth superlative: their strongest magician will pool and augment the multiple sparks in a destructive attack.
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