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“What did she say?”
He dropped his hands to his sides. The fire was hot against his back, the sensation telling him it was time to turn back around again. Yet he couldn’t. So he stood, letting the flames wash him in their blistering heat.
“She asked if I was hurt.” And for that small second, he’d thought her only a kind stranger who’d found him and was there to offer help. Until he saw the matching mark on her hand. “Then she told me that this wasn’t a game to her, though she didn’t admit to the reason she’s hunting me. Then she told me…she told me to run.” A shiver ran down his spine as he recounted it.
He tried to let go of the memory, not to let himself dwell on the feeling of her sword and the fear of dying that had been so damn overwhelming. Instead, he looked over the forest, a mixture of bare trees and the occasional evergreen. He listened for the heartbeat of nature, the thrum of life that came with the pitter-patter of small animals and their wild calls. The sound of the river rushing would have once felt calming but now it only felt like falling.
“Do you think since she has this connection to you that you could use it the same way she does? That you could appear to her and talk to her?” Percy asked.
What if he could see her surroundings and figure out where she was? That could give him warning as to how near she might be. Then she might be easier to avoid. What magic connected them couldn’t be a one-way bridge, right?
Furthermore, what if he could see her? Truly see her and the face she was so carefully hiding. It was a chance to be more familiar with the woman seeking him out and an opportunity to be closer to her. Goosebumps rose over his flesh at the mere idea of it. What if he could touch her like she could touch him?
His fear was dampened by the sudden spike of anticipation. Perhaps then he could find answers or quell the rising need in him to know her. Maybe her face would jog his memory and he’d know why she wanted him dead.
Though he wasn’t particularly skilled in his abilities he was certainly more advanced than the average person. Somehow, he doubted she knew that. It would give him the element of surprise if he could somehow summon enough magic to get across the bridge and into her mind.
Turning around, he grinned at his friend. “It’s worth a shot.”
The crunch of leaves underfoot signaled Merritt’s return. It was accompanied by a cheery whistle as he weaved through the last of the trees and held up a rabbit whose neck was cocked at an odd angle. It wasn’t the most appetizing of meals, but Remis’ stomach growled nonetheless.
Percy recounted their discussion as the rabbit was skinned and the meat prepared to the best of their knowledge. Mostly, it was Percy inserting instructions between bits and pieces of the story when Merritt looked up a little lost. By the end of it, there was a nice little puddle of blood that they’d drained and Merritt’s clothing was splattered with bits of red. What felt like hours later, they finally had the meat roasting above the fire.
The clouds overhead were getting darker with the promise of snow. Remis’ clothes had dried though, and he was able to bundle himself back up. All three of them inched toward the flames, their mouths watering with the promise of something to eat.
It was later when the sky was spitting snow and they’d torn every bit of meat from the bones that they’d all grown quiet. Remis sunk his hands into the dirt around him, calling to the earth in the same way he’d reached out to the water. He felt the pull of magic that held everything together, that breathed life into the trees, and created caverns for animals and insects alike to live through the winter.
“I want to try and reach her mind. I want to talk to her again,” Remis announced, his quickening pulse giving away his excitement.
“Are we sure that is such a good thing?” Merritt picked at his teeth with a slender twig.
Remis dusted his hands off before pushing his fingers through his hair to slick the strands out of his sight. “It’s worth a try.”
“Then by all means.” Merritt waved a hand. “Continue.”
19
Remis
Joining with the magic of this world was an awful lot like sucking in a deep breath before tumbling down a great hill. It was pulled up through the stretch of his fingers and grew into a nice warm bubble within his chest. He had to be careful with such a fragile thing though. He needed to think constantly about cradling this kernel of magic and not allowing it to burst.
With his eyes closed, he tried his best not to think about his friends sitting so near him and watching, though their gazes were as warm as the fire on his skin. Instead, he encouraged the bit of power in his chest to grow. He guided it upward until it slipped into his skull. Here the power felt less like a bubble that needed to be guarded; here it felt like pressure that threatened to make his head explode.
If gravity ever had a hold on him, it was loosening its grip now. His body was light, his limbs wanting to float up at his side. He inhaled slowly and forced himself to dig his fingers further into the ground. More power flowed up his limbs, into his chest, then slowly slipped farther up into his head. His heart began to pound, a sweat breaking out across his forehead.
This was more magic than he’d ever held before, more than he dared try to use. His hold on it felt feeble, any wrong move and it might all drain from him into the world again. He’d experienced that a few times and the way magic could rip itself from the human form was never pleasant. Each time he’d passed out from the pain of power tearing itself from his body. Every single nerve ending had been set ablaze. Then when he woke it took hours for him to be able to move and then to walk without falling over. Merritt certainly couldn’t carry him and Percy both. If he messed this up then they’d be stuck.
For that second, he considered letting the magic slowly go and refusing to even try. Were the risks worth the reward? Yes. Yes. He needed to know more, if he wanted to survive this he needed his questions answered.
Remis’ teachers had always told him he was nothing short of exceptional—though his father’s opinion drastically differed. He was a good swordsman, a decent fighter in hand-to-hand combat, well-studied, charming, and the heir to a growing inheritance. This connection between him and this strange woman was painfully unknown. There were too many variables that he was unfamiliar with. This wasn’t an equation he could solve with only a few missing pieces. He couldn’t take nothing and multiply it by the knowledge of nothing and divide it all by more nothing. His only conclusion was that this was all some sort of weird spiteful game that really had nothing to do with him and had everything to do with the whims of the wicked.
“Here we go,” Remis exhaled the words.
He thought only then of the witch, of what he knew and how it had felt to have her inside his head. Worry made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t want to open his mind up to have her enter it again; he wanted to cross whatever this link between them was and enter her mind.
The expansiveness of his thoughts were dark flashes of images. He pictured her leather boots and the sense of awe he had felt as he’d let himself look up at the female body that had towered over him. She’d been sensual power then, all curves and intimidation. There was that hazy glimmer that had fallen over the edge of his vision and then winked out as the darkness came upon him. It was that flicking glow that he stretched his thoughts toward. He was able to touch the edges of his memory as they slowed, reaching out with a mental hand to brush mental fingers over it.
His thoughts lurched forward, flinging him into darkness at first. Phantom winds whipped at his soul. He dug his fingers tighter into the ground, aware of his body sitting near the fire and the power he still gathered within himself, though it felt distant, nearly forgotten and the darkness in his mind turned to gray clouds.
