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No matter. I pull in a breath, my rib cage expanding to touch stone on both sides, and reach for my magic. It’s still there, exhausted and beaten like the rest of me, but still responsive to my call. I call forth the illusion in my mind, just a simple refraction of the light, something to mask the crack in the stone that’s sheltering us.
But my gut tenses, and I hesitate. My fingertips dig into the cold stone even as sweat traces a path down the back of my neck. If I call this illusion forward, is the woman at my side going to rip it away from me?
I open my eyes and glance down. Alindra has her eyes shut and her forehead pressed against the stone. She’s shivering against me, almost like she’s cold, although I don’t think the wordcoldhas ever applied to this strange world where heat seems to radiate from the very ground itself.
She doesn’t look like much of a threat, this woman who was so willing to abandon her life and dive through a portal with me. Still, a low voice hisses in the back of my mind. She is a magician.
Another shout bounces off the stones around us, and something hot and bitter rises in the back of my throat. Alindra is a magician. Like Lythienne, who swore she’d find Rowan and instead sent me here. She’s a magician like the ones back home who are betraying our entire kingdom to conspire with Rensivar, the same dragon who trapped us in the Lands Below. The dragon who stole Rowan.
She’s a magician, and only fools trust magicians.
Another voice booms through the air to rattle around the crack in the stone where we’re hiding. It sounds further away this time, and it’s followed by the thunder of what must be horses galloping down the road. I grit my teeth and release my tenuous hold on my magic. If the horses are moving, then now is our chance.
“Hey,” I whisper as quietly as I can.
Alindra’s body trembles and she pulls even closer, her leg against mine, her hip pressing into the dull ache of my scarred torso and missing arm. And, fuck, my body decides to take that soft pressure entirely the wrong way. Heat rises in my core as my cock suddenly decides to make his presence known.
Shit. I close my eyes and try not to think about sex for once in my entire life. The woman currently pressing herself against my body is terrified, she’s running for her life, and she’s a voids-damned magician. I can have my pick of women once I’m back at home—
Oh. My sudden bolt of arousal curls in on itself, then fades away like smoke. Because that’s not true anymore, is it? I don’t even want Rowan to see the horrible mess of scar tissue binding the right side of my body together. I can’t imagine undressing in front of anyone ever again, let alone a woman I want to impress.
“Yes?” Alindra’s whisper is scarcely louder than the soft rasp of her breath.
I want to ask her how she’s holding up, or if she thinks she can climb a bit further, but I hesitate. It’s not like we have any other options if she refuses to climb.
“We have to move,” I reply.
Another tremble ripples through her body. Her breath catches, but she doesn’t protest. She’s silent just long enough for my brain to paint an especially vivid picture of what it would feel like to be burnt alive in this little cave if the man in black should wander back into the canyon. And then Alindra shifts her weight away from me, and in another moment she’s at the mouth of the cave. She pulls in a deep breath, closes her eyes, and then she’s gone.
With the echoing scrape of boots against stone, I follow her. She’s waiting just outside the cave, her face pressed against the mountainside, her shoulders trembling. The rich mahogany of her cheeks has faded to a gray, ashy color. Something cold tightens deep in my gut. If she falls—
No. No, falling isn’t an option. I shuffle forward until our bodies are almost as close as we were inside the cave. Her eyes are squeezed shut; a bead of sweat traces a path down the grit on her cheek. My missing arm throbs, and I ache for everything that I lost when that monster prince attacked. If I were my old self, I’d reach forward, wrap her chin in my fingers, and tilt her face up to meet mine. Voids, I might even kiss her, just to pull her out of wherever her mind has taken her.
I clench my jaw. Might as well wish for the stars to dance on the ceiling of the world, as they say back home, and that stupid expression brings a flood of memories with it. The smoky World’s End pub. Rowan with his chess board, his eyes dancing as he suckers someone else into a losing game.
Rowan. My brother would know what to say here. He’d have some way to turn this entire situation into a joke, to make it sound like he’s the one laughing at the world and then to make her laugh too. What would Rowan say right now?
Oh. My gut drops as the answer comes to me. I force myself to smile anyway.
“Hey,” I whisper again.
Alindra’s eyes crack open, ebony against her ashy skin.
“Just follow me,” I say. “Put your hands where my feet are. And—”
I hesitate; am I really going to make a joke about this?
“Don’t look down,” Alindra whispers, in a voice as gentle as wind through grass.
I grin. Yes. Yes, I am.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “And listen, if I can climb this with one arm, you can sure as hell climb it with two.”
That does it. Her eyes snap up to meet mine, and for a moment her face holds that delicate mixture of surprise and sudden attention that I imagined she might give me if I kissed her. I try to give her the kind of cocky grin my brother gives the entire world, something to suggest I make jokes about my maimed and broken body all the damn time.
“Let’s go,” I whisper.
Her throat flashes as she swallows, and I reach forward with my arm, feeling for a solid hold on the canyon wall. Above us, the cliff widens and then pulls back, like a sheet folded over a blanket. It shouldn’t be too difficult to follow the crack of the cave all the way to the top of the canyon.
