She flushed, her face going pale as she looked away.“I…I paid the taxman.”
But he sensed she concealed something.The magic deep inside him shifted, cold tendrils reaching for the truth.“And?”
“For my family and…” She tugged her lower lip through her teeth.“Others.”
“Others?”His brows rose.Shock rolled through him.
She kept her gaze downcast.“I paid for another family so they could keep their home.”
Color bloomed high in her cheeks at her admission, as though she were afraid to tell him the truth.He gaped at her.She had used the extra not for herself, but for others in need.A piece of the magic inside him fractured a little more as guilt wracked him for taking her precious memory of her mother.
This was most unexpected.
And now she stood before him with another request.Not for herself, he’d wager.Though the magic within him would not allow him to refuse, the compassionate side of him wanted to tell her to go home.
A knot formed in his gut.His throat constricted.Try as he might, he was unable to stop from saying the words.
“What is your wish, Serena Windriver?”
She lifted her imploring gaze back to his.The lantern lit her face with hope.“My father.He’s sick.Dying.Can you help him?”
Magic stirred within him.Ready to collect.“Of course, I can help him.What ails him?”
“When he coughs, there is blood,” she said.
If he did not grant her wish, then her father would surely die.How could he refuse?“Speak the words and it will be done.”
A pang of sorrow went through him.Because of what he would do to her when she said the words.That human part of him that barely existed.That he thought long dead.But there it was—alive.Surfacing.Becoming.
Because of her.Because he hated the price he’d have to collect from her.
“I wish for you to save my father.Please.”As she said it, she clutched the lantern tighter in her hand, her knuckles leeched of color.As though she were afraid he would refuse.
He would not refuse.
“And so it will be done.”
He removed his gloves, placing them aside on the crumbling stone, and lifted his hands to the Well.As before, light danced upward, swirling and curling around his fingers.
The runes carved along his skin from the cursed magic pulsed in their bright golden glow.The magic was stirring, creating, becoming deep inside him.And every time he chanted the words and brought it forth, it sent a searing pain through him.
Shimmering threads looped through his fingers as he thought of the girl’s father lying sick and dying in his bed.Apprehension pulsed from Serena as she waited and watched him create the magic that would allow him to live.As the light danced up from the Well and it swirled about, it formed a glass bottle.Inside, the golden light shimmered and sparkled, danced and swayed, filling up the small bottle to the curve of its neck with its thick golden fluid.Then a cork sealed it.
And the magic finished.
He extended the bottle to her, his hand steady but his heart stuttering.
She hesitated, peering at it with doubt clouding her eyes.“What…is that?”
“An elixir.He drinks it,” he said.
“And when he does, he’s…cured?”
He nodded, watching and hoping she would not take it.She would not accept the magical gift and he would not have to take another piece of her.
But she reached for it.She slipped it from his hand, their fingers brushing for the briefest of moments, she likely didn’t notice.But he did, and the touch burned through him, cutting him to the core.
Years had passed since he touched another.
