“Not a bit of it,” he said cheerfully. “Otherwise it would limit who I could spar with. No repulsion for me, thank you!”
“You just used Talent on me, making me strike in the way you wanted.” She studied him, realizing something else for the first time. “And you have been moving faster than is normal, each time you demonstrate.”
“Impossible.” But he sounded worried. “I feel no repulsion to you.”
“No one does. Dragon companions are immune to repulsion.” How could she tell for certain, though? When Lady Anne had tested her abilities, she had thrown a ball of light at her.
It was such an easy skill that even she could do it. She gathered some energy from the air and spun it mentally into a thread, and then a sphere. She tossed it at Jasper, trying to hit him in the chest.
He caught it reflexively, then stared at it in shock as it melted away in his hand. Then he raised horrified eyes to hers.
“Magery, I fear,” she said apologetically.
He turned away from her. Drawing a longer blade in his left hand, he attacked the straw bag with both knives. His body whipped back and forth as he made a flurry of strikes with inhuman speed.
By the time he was done - perhaps only a few minutes - the center of the sack was in tatters, and his face was beaded with perspiration. Breathing heavily, he let his head droop forward. And then he said wearily, “Is this why I have been feeling so odd since that day? What did that damned High Fae do to me?”
“That, or the healing.” Most likely the latter, but if Jasper would rather blame the fae than Georgiana, she would not argue the point. Surely he would rather have a strange new Talent than be dead.
He made a visible effort to rally himself. “You should try again.”
She kept hitting the target until her arm ached, and she begged for a break until the next day. Otherwise he might have kept her drilling for hours longer.
So no one would see her in her borrowed breeches and shirt, Elizabeth wrapped herself in a cape for the walk back to the house. When she and Jasper left the stable, a fox was waiting for them.
Just sitting there, only a few feet away, for all the world like a tame dog.
“That thing again!” Jasper exclaimed. “He has been out here every day. Someone must be feeding him to make him so tame.”
But the skin on Elizabeth's arms prickled, and not with fear. Magic was in the air. “Jasper, would you try holding out your hand?”
“To a wild fox? Are you mad?”
“I think this may be... something else.”
Her tone of voice must have convinced him this was important. With a sidelong glance at her, he stuck his hand out.
The fox paced towards him, steadily, and without threat, stopping only a foot from Jasper's outstretched hand.
“Now you must offer it to him – and let him bite you.”
“Biteme? Now I know you are out of your mind!”
She said slowly, “I am not an expert on familiars, but I know it is a very bad idea to refuse if one offers himself to you. And that one is definitely offering.” She could feel it clearly, the magic whirling past her. Whatever this was, it was significant.
He had to have heard the same thing from the mages in his family. With a deep sigh, he dropped gracefully to one knee and switched to holding out his left hand. “Not my fighting hand,” he muttered.
Did Jasper ever think of anything but his next bout?
The fox took a single step forward and gently placed his mouth around Jasper's wrist, giving him a good minute to pull away. Making it clear this was not an attack. Then he sank his teeth in.
The wave of power coming off the two of them was strong enough to make Elizabeth stagger, but she stood her ground. Jasper would need her when this was done.
Whenever that would be. The fox's jaws opened again, and he licked the trickle of blood coming from the puncture marks on Jasper's arm. Jasper stared at him as if entranced, and the fox sat, seemingly just as fascinated by the man before him.
The man who had become, unexpectedly, a mage.
And perhaps something more. None of the other mages she knew could move abnormally fast or could take control of someone else's body to make it move in certain ways. Had that strange fae healing turned him into something else completely?
