Mal sat on the throne with his legs spread enough to make room for a barely clothed Shadow to lounge between them. Shadow hummed quietly in the otherwise vacant hall with her head kicked back against Mal’s shoulder. Her humming stopped abruptly.
Mal’s face was vacant. Void of any emotion she could see.
Shadow’s head lifted from his shoulder and slowly placed her gaze on Maeve.
“I asked you a question, Emerie,” said Shadow, her eyes narrowing more with each word.
Maeve’s stomach plummeted. She was in Emerie’s mind. Emerie, who was alone on the Throne Room floor, wounded, and being questioned by Mal and Shadow without an audience.
“Have you gone deaf?” asked Shadow icily.
Shadow’s eyes widened with a dangerous realization, in synch with Maeve’s own sudden understanding. “She is learning to move through minds without jumping.”
Maeve had to retreat. She had to pull back, for Emerie’s safety. Maeve yanked herself out of Emerie’s mind, as she had done in many minds while jumping. It was so small, so fractional, but Maeve could have sworn something like fear split across Shadow’s face.
Reeve’s armory in Aterna slammed back into Maeve’s view.
Reeve’s face, hovering just above her, held a firm expression of shock, a look she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him wear.
“I jumped,” she said, but judging by the look on his face, he knew that.
Her eyes fixated on a spot on the floor as the weight of her words took root. But jumped wasn’t the right word for it, not for what she had just done. In the past, she’d used others to travel through paths of the mind, connections, and memories.
She had moved from her mind to occupying Emeries. And that was it.
She looked back up at Reeve. “How is that possible? I jumped into Emerie’s mind. She was with Mal and Shadow.”
Reeve’s lips turned under in a thin line, and he stepped away from her, giving her his back. “Holy shit,” he muttered to himself more than her.
Her jumping abilities were her own. Truly her own. Not part of her Dread Magic, as she always assumed and was told. No, this, like the lightning running freely in her arm, wasspecial.
Reeve laughed. “Yet another ability that makes you just that much more of a pain in my ass.”
“I always figured I’d reach that eventually,” she said defensively.
Black Magic swirled like fire around him, creeping higher and higher in solid form, expanding like wings—
“Oh,” he turned back on her, “did you? You didn’t even mean to do that. You were suppose to put lightning in the fucking crystal.” The Vexkari running the side of his face and neck flared, pulsing with ancient Magic she didn’t understand.
Rage.
Shedidunderstand.
That beast takes rage kitten. Do I look enraged to you?
His old words slammed across her mind. From when, she couldn’t particularly remember. But he said it all the same. And gods, did that rage call to her.She desired to touch those markings, to see what it would show her. It pulsed again, louder this time, drawing an audible breath through her. She desired to feel that rage.
Firm fingers pressed against her wrist, forcing her eyes away from the Magical scarring on Reeve’s face. Her gaze slid to where he held her wrist in the space between them, just inches from his face. She tensed, not even realizing she had reached towards him.
His eyes were already on hers when she looked up at him, an apology on the tip of her tongue. It was swallowed by his grip, remaining one moment longer than truly necessary.
Two moments, and the pulsing from his Vexkari lessened. His eyes remained steadily on hers.
Three moments, and it retreated further.
Four moments, and it was gone completely.
But as five, six, and seven silent moments passed between them, Maeve’s shoulders relaxed and her fingers uncoiled from her fist in his tight grip. A small relent.
