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His bare hand. I had registered it before, but now the warmth of his skin was flooding through me as I gripped his hand, staring at the small section of his face. Stared at a jaw line that was perfect and unblemished.
“Wait,” I pleaded, the sound a whisper as he froze. I lifted my free hand toward that strong line of his jaw, to the stubble that had been left a few days. It was so dark, so rough. It made me question if I knew his age at all.
The line of his jaw flexed as I reached up, my fingers fluttering before his cheek as he exhaled, his breath hot and tingly on my palm. I had felt that same exhale before, that had always been in my ear when things were crumbling around me.
The Boy that was always there, was right there. Not a boy. A man.
Heart clenching painfully in my chest, my fingers touched his cheek with a feather-light brush, the heat from his hand that was still entwined with mine flaring as a warm rush of tingles moved down my arm. His skin, soft and yet prickly, flexed under my touch as he leaned in, a soft groan echoing from his throat.
He was there, he was real. For the first time.
My heart rattled in my chest, my pulse a loud drum in my ear as I reached up, ready to pull the whole abhorrent thing off his head and see him completely when I froze.
When he leaned into my hand, his head turned, his ear and neck pulling into view, giving me a clear view of the skin there.
Thick red lines of raised flesh pulled painfully down the side of his neck toward his collarbone, and up toward his ear where a rippled line of brutalized skin ran the length of his ear. Almost as if someone had tried to cut off his ear and failed. Even though the scars were clearly old, it did not look like anything had been treated or allowed to heal properly. The jagged flesh made my teeth clench.
All of that nervous rattling in my heart picked up in a staccato beat as my fingers moved from his cheek toward those scars, all thought of removing the shroud gone.
“Who did this to you?” I whispered, my fingers barely touching along the edge of his ear before he stood, the shroud shifting enough that I saw one green eye focused on me in a panic before he turned and left, cape rippling behind him as he bolted from the room. The door closed with a bang, the click of the lock near a slap in the silence.
Still, I sat there, staring at the door, listening to the breathing of the Boy on the other side. The panic and pain were clear with each of his exhales. After a minute the sound faded to silence, leaving me alone in my room with a destroyed bureau and a heat that was radiating over my body.
I had seen him. Well, I had seen part of him, and the emerald depths of those eyes burned through me as I sat there, still reeling over what had happened.
Not just him, but what I had done.
Turning from the door to the destroyed bureau, I blinked, my hands still warm and tingly from where the Boy had held it, from where the power had exploded out of me.
I had magic.
I had done it completely on my own.
Chapter 14
Caspyn
The city of Turin had always been a bustling cesspool. The streets were a maze that twisted this way and that, weaving through buildings and enclaves that had been built throughout the centuries. There was no pattern to the chaos of the streets and you would find yourself walking along cobbled roads lined with quaint bakeries that suddenly faded to dank alleys filled with orphans desperate to find food or coins with no warning to the change.
It was possibly the only place in all of Okivo that Requisites swarmed with their Catalysts, the red-robed wielders tailing behind their masters like pets. The haughty Requisites were everywhere, darting through streets and in shops with their noses in the air, anytime they moved too close a familiar chill of a thousand skittering legs jittered up my spine.
The first time I felt the chilled pull of their magic I was sure there was a Fae only steps behind me, but it was only the feeling of the magic that Requisites and Catalysts shared.
In Requisites I could feel their power, the taste of char in fíra, the fresh sharpness of wôder, the sharp taste of soil in a vio. Each one of those powers grew sharper the closer I moved to them, the same sensation present in Catalysts, but fainter, as though it was smothering, as though the sensation of them was caged.
I could usually tell who was matched with who based on that, on the way I could feel their magic pull against each other. None of it was the strength as with the Fae, when that tingling power led me to them like a roadmap. It was enough that I knew if I was walking into something that might be dangerous; which was common in this place.
The first time I had been in this city was to find a swordsmith to train with, perhaps forty years ago now. Then, I had stayed near the edge of the city, in the streets that were teeming with death and starvation. Now, I moved through those twisted streets toward the center of the great city, where the wealthy lived in an effort to be near the royal family, or perhaps to have a chance for some great love affair between their daughters and the Sun Prince.
That chance was over. The streets were lined with roses, banners hung from every window in the colors of the royal family and of the family in Spryv. That poor girl would be married off to the Sun Prince’ in a matter of days. My lip curled at the moniker, at the reality of what he was, and of what would happen to that girl.
Puppets for a Dark Queen, the lot of them.
Even I would be if I did not cut off the head of the snake before she had a chance to strike.
I needed to find the princess; I was sure she was plotting how to end her mother by now. She would need me.
Babbling crowds of women amid their daily shopping mixed with the sounds of men selling everything one could imagine until the sound roared around me. I pushed my way through the busy marketplace, toward the line of carriages that had been placed on the road leading up the great black stone gates of the Runturin as though they were waiting for something. Each ornate carriage was covered with the colors of Spryv, the ground littered with flowers around them. Even as I watched, a mother and daughter dressed in what looked to be their best dresses walked forward and placed a clutch of flowers by a wheel. If not for the bright colors of their dresses, the expensive dies and fabrics on display for everyone, I would have guessed that someone had died.
