Page 102 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“You never failed.”

“Snow—”

“Darling, I have the mind of a rock and no sense of danger. It is no one's fault but my own. Please,” I said, pulling him to me, “let me wear my own consequences and regrets.”

His lips lingered over my own for a while until Visha cleared her throat. “If you two are quite done.”

Thora giggled. “Hells hath no fury like a woman who gags at the sight of love.”

My witch did not do anything more than just blink at us to signal that she was already bored to bits and wanting to get out of here.

I let go of Kilian, stepping back, and so did he. He’d chosen to train us in Amaris since the land was already used to absorbing massive lumps of magic. Though the Fogling had not resurfaced since Cori’s death, we were still weary of drawing heavy magic within Olympian grounds from caution that it would attract them back.

Overwhelm crowded me when I felt the gates of my magic slide slightly open and power I’d so rarely let myself feel filled the air around me. Clouds gurgled and warned of unnatural thunder gathering above our heads, like metal drawn to a magnet, I was the eye of the storm.

“That is as far as I can get it open before it becomes a problem for me to close down,” Visha informed us.

Electricity powered through me and gathered around all my limbs. Black tattoos curled and twirled over my skin as I tried to reign control of it and channel it to my command. It obeyed somehow, clinging to me just slightly even though it hammered around me uncontrollably. Were Kilian’s exercises working?

Kilian’s eyes veiled black and darkness slithered under him and over the grassy floor, turning the air and ground to cold, grey ash. When phantom tendrils of darkness touched the electricity around me, sliding against it and eventually enveloping all of it and me under it, I felt a flutter of absolute control. The deeper Kilian’s shadows slipped inside of the lightning barrier, intertwining and bracing against it, the lighter the weight of my magic felt and the more control I reigned over it.

Like a switch.

The shield of lightning around me shrunk and enlarged at my command like the flick of fingers. A switch rather than a damn that endlessly poured and needed heavy gates to be pushed and pulled each time I wanted to command it.

A stuttering laughter left me when I kept playing around, letting my magic dance across my body, pull and push it back inside the bounds it came from entirely too easily.

“Love?” Kilian asked, almost panicked and it made me smile a little.

“Yes, my darling?”

His sigh was loud enough to hear over the magnetic sound of our magic colliding.

Our magic fit like a glove.

It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.

From the look on Visha’s face, she thought the same.

The strain I usually felt when I used magic had slipped off, it felt like I could flex my joints after never being able to before. It easily floated when I wanted it to float, turn how I wanted it to turn. It obeyed with ease.

“More,” I said to Visha.

“No,” my husband said sharply. “The more darkness absorbs, the more it seeks. If you feed it too much, it will aim to take it all. My heart, I beg, enough for today. We’ll progress gradually.”

The desperation in his voice made my black heart break and bleed a little. I’d promised to stay within bounds.

“You’re right.”

“I will pull back,” he said when I maintained the pull of lighting, and the arms of darkness began retracting away from around me. When all of his magic was safely tucked within him again, Visha summoned the seal to close entirely.

A breath whooshed out of me, and I collapsed to the ground, dizzy while my ears rang with a thundering noise that threatened to burst my brain open.

So this was a little taste of what I was keeping prisoner.

Warm arms wrapped around me and I sagged onto him, counting my inhales as I breathed his scent in to calm me down.

“Did it hurt?”