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Warily, Carnon rose, prowling up the length of the bed and sliding beneath the covers next to me. He moved gingerly, as if afraid any sudden movement would scare me away. I tried to stifle a smirk, watching him approach me like I was the dangerous beast and he the helpless maiden, as he shifted to his back, his head propped in his hands as he lay back against the many pillows.
“What happens if I accept the bond?” I asked, resting my head in the crook of his shoulder. His tattooed arm came around me.
“You’ll feel it more strongly,” he said, tracing a finger up my sternum. “Here. Some mated pairs claim to feel each other's emotions. Some can communicate wordlessly. Some share power. It’s different for every couple.” He lifted his head, looking down and narrowing his eyes at me. “Why does this feel like a test, Red?”
I shrugged, reaching up to kiss his jaw, then snuggling back down into his arms. “Maybe it is.”
???
“Remind me why exactly you think this is a good idea?” I asked skeptically, watching Carnon with my hands on my hips as he drew a circle around a small group of trees with a stick.
I had woken wrapped in his arms, the smell of the forest clinging to him as his chest rose and fell in deep, steady breaths. I let myself lie there as he slept, trying to decide what exactly I felt and thought about being his mate. About the possibility of accepting the bond.
I still wasn’t sure how a witchcouldbe the fated mate of the Demon King, but Carnon had woken while I contemplated this mystery and distracted me thoroughly. After a too short interlude, he groaned and declared that it was time for training.
Cerridwen had shot me a meaningful look as we had grabbed a quick breakfast in what appeared to be a sort of elevated dining hall, but Carnon had whisked me away to find someone to fly us down to the stable without giving me the chance to talk to her.
He had ridden us out a good hour away from the Sacred City, where he decided we were far enough away from its inhabitants that I could practice.
“Because, my delicate dove,” he replied, chuckling at my grimace at the horrifying endearment, “you need something larger to practice on. And,” he added, closing the circle and tossing the stick aside, “you need to learn to control the area of your magic. Containing it to a single piece of fruit is easy. Containing it to only a few trees in an interconnected forest will be much more challenging.”
I frowned, thinking that maybe Carnon hadn’t thought this all the way through. “What happens if I rot the whole cursed forest?” I asked. He dropped a light kiss onto my lips, and I scowled harder.
Carnon laughed. “You won’t,” he said, far more confidently than I felt. “Focus, Red. Rot only the trees in the circle.”
He stepped back, crossing his arms to watch me. Akela, who had rejoined us this morning, happy to see us on the ground, huffed impatiently.
“All right, all right,” I said. “Impatient creature.”
“Rather like someone else I know,” Carnon quipped. I shot him a scowl over my shoulder, my stomach doing a little flip at his unbothered smirk. “This is the opposite of focusing.”
“Stop distracting me then,” I grumbled, turning back to the circle of trees and trying to concentrate. The demon magic—my magic, I supposed it was time to admit—curled demandingly inside me. I hadn’t tapped into it since the ball, and now that I had woken it, it wanted to play. I spooled it out, trying to control the flow of darkness as I envisioned it wrapping around the trees in only the circle, spreading rot up their trunks and throughout their leafy branches.
I was only half successful. I managed to focus the magic mostly on the trees in the circle, but two remained untouched by the withering, and the rot had spread across the forest floor outside the circle, inching toward another grove of trees.
“Reverse it and try again,” Carnon commanded, clearly in no mood to be playful about my first failure of the day.
I sighed, trying to pull the darkness back while releasing the healing magic into the woods. I overcorrected a bit, accidentally shrinking the pinecones on the trees as I de-aged them in my attempt to heal them. Panting from the strain of pouring out so much magic so quickly, I turned to Carnon with a murderous look.
“Maybe you could offer some clearer instructions than just ‘try again’,’' I suggested acerbically. “If you’re not going to help then you’re free to slither away.”
He raised a brow, lips curling at the corners in what was almost a smile. “How do you think I learned control, Elara?” he asked, gesturing to the trees. “No one helped me. The king was dead, and no one else has this kind of power.”
“I don’t want it,” I reminded him, frustration and fatigue making me snappish. “So if you won’t help me, then why even bother?”
Carnon nodded, as if considering this as a legitimate option, before striding over and wrapping his arms around me.
“What are you—” I said.
“Here,” Carnon said, turning me in his arms so he was flush against my back. He grasped my wrist with one hand and slid the other across my chest.
“Now is really not the time for this,” I quipped.
He huffed a laugh, his hand stopping just below my breasts. “Feel your magic in here,” he said, breathing the words into my ear and sending shivers down my spine. “Feel the two halves of the gods-magic twining in here, like living serpents?”
“Yes,” I breathed, heart pounding with his nearness and his breath on my neck. I felt him smile against me, as if he knew exactly what effect he was having on me. Pig.
“You are their master,” he rumbled, hand still over that ball of magic that squirmed inside me. “You release them and you pull them back. Picture them like serpents. Direct them and hold them back by the tail. Try.”
