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His nostrils flare before he speaks. “I can’t break the rules like that.”
“Rules,” I parrot back, as if it’s the most ridiculous word I’ve ever heard. “You care about rules?” That doesn’t add up at all. He might have claimed to be showing me all his cards, but he’s keeping some up his silk sleeve.
Still holding the mirror, I toy with the handle as I try to work out his magic and his secret. Magical artifacts aren’t real objects. They can be deciphered.
My thumb hooks a sharp edge, and I press on it. If I can’t just…
He offers me his hand again. “Yes. Now, before that Alpha of yours returns, I suggest that you—”
Pain lances through my left side without warning, stealing the breath from my lungs, and I fail to hear the rest of what Arwan is saying.
I can’t think.
I can’t blink.
Pain hazes over everything, immersing me in raw agony that grips me by the throat and makes my lungs scream for air. Since I can’t scream aloud, one resounds inside my head.
When I open my eyes again, the mirror is gone, but my thumb is on fire where I had caught a sharp edge and broken the skin.
His magic burns through me like a vine with thorns, hooking into my flesh everywhere it touches.
I just saved my own life… or made a terrible mistake. I’m human. I’m not designed for being a vessel to magic.
But I’ve been digesting magic all my life. If anyone can survive it, it’s me.
The entire world is buzzing like I swallowed a thousand bees. I groan and test a few short breaths. The air is sweet, but it burns through my lungs as the left side of my entire body throbs with residual pain.
I realize only a few moments must have passed, but now I’m on the floor. I blink up at Arwan as horror makes a pitiful mewling sound escape from my throat.
His blue eyes have somehow darkened, taking on an onyx shimmer that fills me with terror.
Does he know what I just did?
Is he going to throw his own life away just so he can strangle me?
His shadow drapes over me as he watches me with an expression I can’t read. But there’s a measure of calculation in his gaze.
The only movement I notice is the flexing of those dark fingers on his magic-infused hand as if the joints pain him. Without years of body-language training in a world where messages are passed in a blink of an eye, with a flash of a tongue, or a shift of the most minute glance, I would have missed the signs.
Arwan’s jaw flexes.
His body is unusually stiff for someone built for grace and seeping with confidence.
He’s surprised.
I have a feeling that not much surprises him.
He backs away and his shadow retreats, leaving me panting under the sunlight. It’s far too quiet in the tent now. I have the strange urge to scream just to fill the void.
“Coming here was a mistake,” he says. “May the Gods have mercy on us both.” He flexes those dark fingers again before he disappears.
He didn’t exit the tent.
He just… vanished.
I’m left gaping at the place where he had been standing. The only evidence that he hadn’t been some sort of fever dream is the lingering blue motes drifting in the air and the hum of foreign power in my veins. The motes gently float downward, puffing out of existence as if they’re helpless snowflakes melting the moment they touch the ground.
My brain is sluggish as I try to process what just happened. I’m not sure how long I lie on the floor, but eventually a shadow overtakes me again, and I curl my shoulders inward as I finally glance up.
