“You lied to me,” Ben replied. “I was angry.”
Something hot stung Drake’s eyes and suddenly he was so tired. During the chaos before, he’d been too distracted to notice how exhausted he was, and how much he hurt. He wanted to sleep for a decade – at least. He wanted to wake up and realize this was all a dream, with Ben smiling beside him in the golden morning light.
“Why’d you come back here at all, then?” Drake ground out in a hoarse whisper.
Ben thrust the cloak into Drake’s arms. “You’ll need this.”
“Ben–”
“I was wrong,” Ben said. “It was dishonorable of me to turn my back on you when you needed my help, and for that, I’m sorry.”
Drake gritted his teeth. He knew what was coming. “But…?”
A deep sigh escaped the other man. “But the fact remains that you are a…” He grimaced. “A mage.”
“Are you truly so prejudiced?”
Ben went on as if Drake had not spoken. “You lied to me, for the entirety of our…connection. I could maybe learn to accept your…heritage, in time, but I can’t abide dishonesty. I can’t love someone I can’t trust.”
No point hiding the bitterness now. The best Drake could hope for was not to shout. “Well, then you’re doing us both a favor, because I can’t trust someone who hates what I am.” He dug his fingers in the cloak’s fur lining, now damp with his own sweat. “Just go with the others, so you can praise yourself for being the bigger man and showing pity to the filthy, devious moon-blood who–”
Drake’s voice failed him; the rest of his words died in his throat. His hands shook and he tossed the cloak to the floor lest he shove it back into Ben’s chest. Ben said his name, not without gentleness, but Drake didn’t reply. All his focus coalesced into not making any more of a scene.
“I think you should find someplace else to be,” Stonewall said as he came to stand at Drake’s side.
“I get it, Elan,” Drake muttered. “You hate me.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Now Drake looked up to see his brother beside him, glaring daggers at Ben. No one could glare quite like Stonewall. Ben glanced between them; if he noted their shared features, he made no comment before he slipped away.
Stonewall did not watch him go, only bent to pick up the cloak. “You’re going to need this,” he said, offering it to Drake. “Rook couldn’t find any gear for you.”
Drake accepted the garment numbly, and then met his brother’s eyes. “I hated lying to you,” he whispered. “It killed me, every day. But so did living as a sentinel. I’m sorry, Elan. I’m so sorry. You’re right to hate me.”
Stonewall’s gaze flickered to some place Drake could not see; for one moment, his brother’s expression was strange and distant.
But then he met Drake’s eyes. “I can’t forgive you yet. One day. But for now…” He sighed. “Blood is blood, relah. I love you.”
Everything else fell away, even Ben. Drake could only stare at his stubborn, intractable brother, uncomprehending. “You…don’t hate me?”
“I never did. I just…” Stonewall sighed again. “You’re a royal pain in my ass, sometimes.”
“Some things’ll never change, eh?” Drake managed a smile. His relief was too big for his body to contain. Surely it would shine out of his skin like sunlight behind a sheet. “I love you, too, relah. And you’ve always been a pain in my ass, ever since you were a babe. But I won’t hold it against you.”
As Drake had hoped, Stonewall grunted at the teasing, but a faint smile curved his mouth. “Suit up as best you can,” he said. “I’ll give you my sword. It’s almost time to leave.”
*
A familiar weight pressed into Kali’s gloved hand; she glanced down to see her battered viol case. She looked up, into Sadira’s pale-blue eyes. The Zhee mage offered a tentative smile. “I thought you would not wish to leave it behind.”
Kali flipped open the latches and withdrew the viol. Her heart sank at the snapped silver strings that gleamed in the firelight, but otherwise, the instrument was whole. Only because she knew where to look did she notice the seams in the woodgrain from her previous repairs. A brief examination of the viol’s particles revealed their true essence: no simple object, but a solid, faithful companion. She glanced over at Stonewall, who was buckling on the last bits of his gear. He did not look her way, but she felt the warm song of his love ripple through her all the same. Everything would work out. She could always get new strings, and if the viol broke again, she would fix it. Carefully, she tucked the instrument back within the padded case, on top of Stonewall’s letter.
“Thank you,” Kali replied. “And thanks for gathering all my other things as well.” She nodded to the traveling pack at her feet, from which she’d already pilfered her warmest clothes. Her knee brace rested on top of the pack; she’d had to remove it to dress in her lined leather leggings.
“Are you…?” Sadira hesitated.
Heat crept up Kali’s face and, on a whim, she took Sadira’s hand, trying to ignore the persistent, lingering memory of the Fata’s hunger for magic. “I was awful to you, before. I’m so sorry. I didn’t…” Her face burned like the other mage had lit her on fire. “The Fata wanted your blood—your magic—and I wasn’t sure I could control myself. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
Sadira looked at their joined hands in bemusement and then met Kali’s eyes. “You were not you.”
“That’s no excuse for my behavior.” Kali squeezed her friend’s hand. “Please forgive me, Sadira.”
The Zhee mage placed her other palm over Kali’s, sending a gentle warmth through Kali’s entire body. “Pree, khaar diyah.”
“I hope that’s a ‘yes,’” Kali managed.
Sadira smiled. “Your hope is well founded.”
Gratitude filled Kali’s heart, echoing the warmth that her friend had given. She offered what she hoped was a wry smile. “Will you be warm enough in that?”
She gestured to the dyed wool clothes that Sadira wore; her tunic and trousers were shades of brilliant blue, woven in geometric patterns, and her cloak was pale gray.
Sadira, used to Kali’s teasing, offered another, broader smile and a bundle of cloth filled with cheese and bread in return. “I will thrive. You should finish preparing yourself for our journey.” With that, she went back over to Milo, who still lay sleeping upon one of the tables.
Across the room, Eris watched the exchange. When she met Kali’s gaze, she took a single step toward Kali, who rose as well. They had so little time, but she might not get the chance to speak to her old friend again. She gave Eris a small but friendly smile: a peace offering to “Silver Girl.”
Then Eris glanced at something over Kali’s shoulder, scowled, and turned her back to Kali to speak with the other mages. Confused, Kali went forward anyway, but her knee made her stumble, knocking over her pack. Books, spare clothes, and her knee brace tumbled to the floor. Kali knelt to retrieve her belongings, but her knee screamed in protest, sending her to the floor in a pile of disarray with the rest of her belongings. Tears of frustration and embarrassment pricked at Kali’s eyes. She swiped them away as she righted herself and crawled onto the nearest bench, and then picked up the brace. She tried to stuff her knee inside, but the thick layers she wore prevented the brace from closing properly, and when she tried to force it, one of the metal pieces snapped off and clattered to the floor. Knee throbbing, Kali stared at the ruined brace. It was foolish to cry over this, for tears wouldn’t solve anything. She swore, hurled the brace away, and ducked her head.
“I knew it’d happen one day,” Stonewall said.
“What?”
“You’d get angry enough to chuck something at me.” His voice was easy, but Kali could read the concern in his eyes and feel it wavering on the unseen thread that bound them. He stepped toward her, neatly evading the pile of clothes and books at her feet, and knelt at her side, the brace in hand. “What’d I do, this time?”
>
They were relatively alone in their little corner of the common room and no one paid them any mind. Kali swiped her running nose and managed a weak chuckle. “Quite a lot.”
Stonewall began to collect the items spilled from her pack, shooting her another cautious glance. “Are you…all right? I heard… Well, not heard, exactly, but felt…” He sighed. “How are you?”
Kali pretended to be engrossed in the food Sadira had provided. “It’s Eris.”
He was silent.
“She doesn’t like you,” Kali added.
“Can’t imagine why.”
She chuckled again, although her humor fled as quickly as it had come. “I don’t think she’ll ever understand,” she gestured to the space between them, “this. Us.”
“I suppose I can’t blame her.”
“Nor can I.”
He hesitated. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Understand,” he rose to set her pack on the table and took both of her hands, “this? Us?”
Within his words was that warmth she’d felt earlier, although laced with uncertainty, and an idea struck her. She was certain that she was no longer a thrall, but she and Stonewall could still communicate silently, sharing words and emotions along the thread that bound their hearts. Was it a residue of her Fata possession and his Fata blood, or was this connection something more?
Soul-bonded, her heart whispered.
Rather than respond to him aloud, Kali looked into his honey-brown eyes. Concentration was difficult, at first, but she focused on the gratitude that had grown in her heart, and the love that felt as if it had always lived there. With a mental push, she sent the feelings through their bond. His eyes widened before a grin spread across his face, transforming his usual serious expression into one of such joy that Kali could not help but smile too. An answering swell of love filled her to the brim; love and courage, and a resolve for something she could not quite name but recognized anyway.
“I don’t understand this—or us—at all,” Kali managed. “But I don’t care. I suppose our…silent speech is odd, but I don’t mind. What about you?”
“I don’t think anything between us will ever be normal,” he replied. “But I don’t mind, either. It could be useful, too. And who knows what’s normal, anyway?”
Kali laughed aloud. “Perhaps we’ll have to make our own normal.”
“That works.” Stonewall squeezed her hands again and then glanced down at her feet. He knelt again. When he rose, he held the ragged copy of Fata legends containing Alem’s Wish. He sat beside her and flipped through the pages carefully, as if wary of accidentally ripping them free of the spine, as his lips moved along with the words he knew.
At last he looked at her again. “Are you certain you’re…better?”
Kali closed her eyes. If she concentrated, she could sense Sadira and Eris’ different but potent types of magic, and too well did she remember the desperate, driving hunger for that power. Although she could feel no trace of the Fata, how could she be certain the Fata’s presence was completely gone?
“I think so,” she replied.
His expression was utterly solemn. “What you said in the garden, about the Fata sensing me…” He grimaced. “Do you still think that?”
“I do.” Her heart fell at the stricken look on his face. “But I think I know why.” She laced her fingers with his. “Stonewall, I think you may have Fata blood.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“Sort of. But much of it is just a sense. A feeling.” She sighed in irritation. “I can’t quantify how I know, only that I do. I can—could—feel what the Fata felt, and just…know. Sort of like how I can feel you in my mind. The Fata recognized you as their kin.” She squeezed his hand. “There’s more.”
He tensed, as if preparing for battle. “Let me have it.”
Kali bit back a smile at the wry humor he emanated and pointed at the little book sticking out of her pack.
“Alem’s Wish? What about it?”
“I think there’s some truth to the glimmer story. The Fata told me they can walk between worlds, and they mentioned something about ‘shadow selves.’ And I saw you vanish in the shadows in the bathing room. You remember our journey from Starwatch, when we escaped the Canderi? How we somehow traveled a great distance in the blink of an eye?”
“Hard to forget that,” he muttered.
“The second time we fled the thralls, after we left Riel and Jennet’s farm, I tried the trick again. But it didn’t work. And I think… Stonewall, it wasn’t my magic that moved us that first time, but yours. I think I gave you energy, but the actual act of getting us away was your doing.”
She expected him to rebuke this idea, unwilling to believe such a wild notion. But to her surprise, he only nodded, as if she’d told him the time of day. “Well, it’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard lately.”
Quickly, he explained his encounter with “Tor,” and although Kali was hard-pressed to believe him, she they didn’t have time to discuss the matter in depth. Before he’d finished, Kali’s thoughts were already racing forward. “If it’s true that you do have Fata blood, and that you are the reason we could travel so quickly, do you think we could do it again? On purpose?”
“I don’t know.” He frowned in thought. “You really think that you helped me send us across the province?”
“I do.”
He sat up, shaking his head. “Well, that nearly killed you. I’ll not risk it again.”
“But doing so could save our lives. All of us. Eris’ plan is risky, to say the least, and you know as well as I do that we ought to have another plan in our pockets in case hers goes ass-up.”
“Right, but I don’t know how we could perform such a feat again. Whether I’ve got any sort of magic or not, I don’t know the first thing about it.” He sighed and shot a glance across the room, where Drake was speaking to Leal. The Sufani woman was gesticulating at the door, eyes narrowed, while Drake looked grim
Kali shifted so that she could better face him. “We don’t have much time, but the most important thing to remember about magic is to focus on what you want. Keep a single desire in your mind and concentrated upon it. When we fled from the thralls that first time, all I could think was away. I just wanted us to get away from them.”
“Ea’s tits…” He sighed and looked at her. “Away. I thought that, too. It was all I could think of to survive.”
A hopeful, half-smile crept to Kali’s face. “It’s worth trying again.”
But he was a stubborn lout. “Not at the cost of your life.”
“It didn’t kill me before. And I’ve a better understanding of my magic now. I know my limits.” She gave him her prettiest, beaming smile. “Have a little faith, Sergeant. We can do this.”
He smiled too, but the expression did not reach his eyes. “I hope you’re right.”
Thirty-Three
“Relah, wake up.”
Milo groaned and shifted on his sleeping pallet, which was much firmer than he remembered. Uncomfortably firm. A dull ache throbbed in his chest and gooseflesh prickled over his skin. Sweet Mara, he’d barely set his head down… Was it time to wake, already? He tried to convince his eyes to open, but they ignored him, so he surrendered to slumber, hard pallet be damned. Whoever was pestering him could wait.
“Come on, Mi, wake up. We’ve got to go.”
“I’m sleeping,” he tried to reply, but the words came out more like, “Hmm sshleeming.” Not good. Maybe he should have been more concerned that his mouth and eyes were being insubordinate, but he was just so tired…
“Milo!” Flint barked. “Open your fucking eyes and look at me, you sorry sod!”
“Shut up,” he managed to slur, and this time the words sounded a tiny bit like they should have. “What’re you doing in the men’s barracks, anyway?”
“We’re not in the barracks, Mi. We’re in the bastion.”
It was the last thing he expected her to sa
y. Sheer bewilderment made him open his eyes to try to see for himself. Everything was blurry at first, but the world gradually came into focus with a few strong blinks. Judging from the dark circles under Flint’s eyes and the sickly tone of her skin, she needed to go back to bed.
“Are you well?” he asked. “You look terrible.”
She pulled a face. “You’re not winning any hearts right now, either.”
“Why am I on a table? And what’s–” He tried to sit up, and then hissed as pain stabbed through his chest. Flint called out and several hands gently steered him back down, where someone had bundled fabric beneath his head as a makeshift pillow. Milo looked into the worried faces of his squad-mates, as well as Mages Halcyon and Sadira. There was no sign of Rook.
“You’re in pain?” Flint asked him. Without waiting for an answer, she looked between the mages. “Why is he hurting? Didn’t you fix him?”
Gods above and beyond, she sounded worried. About him? Or had something else happened? His thoughts were muzzy and slow, and he could only call up a vague recollection of the garrison’s detention area.
“We did as much as we could,” Mage Halcyon replied. “Any more, and neither of you would have survived the process.” She swept her dark eyes over Milo. “How bad is the pain?”
“He’s all pale and sweaty,” Flint answered. “So my guess is really sodding bad. What are you going to do about it?”
The mage ignored Flint. “How bad is it, Milo?”
“I dunno.” He shifted his left side and was rewarded with another hot stab of pain that made sweat prick along his lower back and forehead. “Not great,” he managed through clenched teeth.
“You still have some healing to do, but Sadira and Mage Halcyon took care of the worst of the damage,” Beacon said in the soothing way of menders.
Mage Halcyon toyed with her unraveling braid. “I’m not sure either of us could have helped you, Milo, if not for–”
“What matters is Milo’s awake now,” Flint broke in. “So we can finally leave this shithole.”
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