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“What the hell is this?” Orik entered his quarters, wading waist deep in sparkling foliage and the cloying perfume of magic. Vines creeped up the walls, crawled over counters, and completely overtook the kitchen. Tendrils disappeared through the bedroom door, and he justknewhis room had been invaded as well.
Phoenix’s head popped up from a thick bushel of glittering buds, her ears twitching this way and that. She half purred, half chirped as though greeting him and then hopped through the growth like a fish jumping in a lake.
“Dammit, Jessie!” He slammed the door behind him.
She stumbled in through the balcony doors looking haggard, twigs sticking out of her hair and clothes, that blade of hers in her right hand, a bundle of cut greenery in her left. “Oh, shit. You’re back already?”
Already? He’d been gone all day. Night had fallen. The moons were out. He’d been anticipating his return, hungering for her since the moment he’d left, while she’d been here, defying him. Yet again! “Why can you never obey me?”
“It got a little out of hand, I know. I was only trying to make it grow. Just a leaf or two. Then, well, this happened.” She swept her hand around the carnage.
He felt his face heat and his blood pressure rise. “Why were you even trying that much? I thought we had an understanding.”
She cocked her head in confusion. “Well, I was thinking it would be useful if I learned to control my magic. I could be, like, an ambassador for the kingdom. Help to create an open dialogue between you and the witches.”
“We were just attacked by their kind and you want toopen a dialogue?”he scoffed. “You must truly be insane if you think I’m going to let that happen. I’ll eradicate every last one of them before I’ll let you near another witch. Especially not with that mark on your hand.”
She glanced at the offending glyph…was it glowing brighter than before? The sight of it sent icy terror straight through his heart. He’d scoured the woods in search of the culprit who’d tagged her. Lord Gideon’s men claimed to have spotted a band of witches to the west, heading toward the Castion Mountains. Setting out shortly after, Orik and his soldiers discovered evidence of an enclave of witches camping near a mountain base, but they’d moved on. The camp had been stripped but for a mess of footprints and a handful of firepits, along with the faint scent of magic. It was almost as if they knew when to make themselves scarce.
Facing him, Jessie dropped her hand, threw her shoulders back, and put steel in her voice. “Look. You can either accept what I am, or you can’t. It’s your decision. We can try to make this work, or we’ll just go our separate ways. One thing you’re not going to do is tell me what I can and can’t do, who I can and can’t be. Though I haven’t been using it long, magic already feels like a part of my essential being, and I plan to explore it thoroughly and extensively, and there’s nothing you can say or do that will stop me.”
The dagger she’d just tossed wedged deeply in his chest. “I could send you back to Earth. Apparently, you canna use magic there.”
She cut him such a somber look of betrayal that his gut twisted with instant regret, but his anger was too raw, too sharp and jagged to recall his words now. When the overhead lights flared bright—another defiant display of her power—he set his jaw stubbornly, bracing for her scathing response.
Instead, she simply frowned, then marched to the bedroom via a path she had already carved into the shrubbery and softly closed the door.
Slogging through the thick brush, he tested the knob. Locked. With a tight fist, he banged on the wood. “Open this door.”
“No,” came her muffled, obdurate reply. “You can sleep on the couch.”
“Woman, I will break it down.”
Thick crystals of ice formed around the frame, growing rapidly until the entire door was covered in a glossy sheet of ice.
His jaw dropped. Had she literally just frozen him out? He sneered, “I’m adragon, love. Do you really thinkicecould stop me if I really wanted to get in there?”
“Leave me alone! I don’t like you right now.”
“Well I doona like you right now, either,” he grumbled.
When she didn’t reply, he hammered the door again. Ice cracked under his fist, then reformed. “Let me in!”
No response.
Cursing, sighing, gritting his teeth, he turned to face where the couch should be and went to work furiously clearing away the glittering shrubbery.
* * *
In the morning, after washing up, Jessie donned her armor, readying for battle. She had all the equipment she needed. She picked a pair of ass-hugging suede-ish leather pants, black as night, that laced up the sides, showing a hint of skin; thick-soled boots with one-and-a-half-inch heels, so as to display her legs and backside to their best advantage while still giving her an edge; and a forest green fitted top that cut a V into her cleavage and hung loose and low in the back.
After taking a closer look at all the clothes, she was surprised by the difference in hersecondwardrobe. Much of what had been provided before was glitzy. This stuff she would actually wear. No more garish ballgowns…well, not as many, anyway. It was as though someone had assessed her style and adjusted her wardrobe accordingly. Edel wouldn’t have done that for her, would she?
Jessie left her hair down, the natural waves cascading down her shoulders. After checking herself in the mirror, she was ready to take on anything.
“Anything” was currently cursing up a storm in the living room. She pictured Orik trudging through her unintentional field of glistening flowers, pissed off as a bull with a slapped ass. Another spat curse filtered in through her icy barricade. She hadn’t even meant to create it, but when he’d threatened to bust the door down, frost had begun to coat the wood frame, building on itself to form the solid blockade that now muffled Orik’s clamoring.
But now she needed out, and she wasn’t sure just how to make that happen.
