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“Nice to meet you,” the dragon adds, with a delicate little bob of her massive jaw.
Her scaley head vanishes. There’s a harsh scraping sound from beyond the trees as she pulls away from the little grove. The sky above the grove has turned a beautiful, rich shade of turquoise, and only a few stars still shine against that backdrop. I watch them wink at me as I breathe in, then out, and some part of my mind whispers that perhaps I fell off that cliff after all and hit my head quite hard on the way down, and this is all a very long, very bizarre hallucination I’m having as my body and mind try to decide if I’m going to stay alive.
I swallow hard, then turn back to Rowan, and the thought evaporates. No, my subconscious might have invented an oddly polite red dragon, but there’s no way I could hallucinate injuries like this. Phaedron’s magic purrs under my skin, begging to be transformed into something else. Something useful. I take a deep breath, place my hands on Rowan’s burning cheeks, and do what I can.
The world fades away as I sink healing magic into Rowan’s body. Time becomes soft, as malleable as warm butter, and I’m only dimly aware of the way the world changes around me. The sky turns from turquoise to the delicate pale flush of a flawless summer day. Shadows spread themselves across the carpet of pine needles, then shrink away. Voices rise and fall; figures weave in and out of the trees.
And, beneath my fingers, the damage done to Rowan’s body slowly reveals itself. Blood and bruises are easiest; I mend those first, knitting the skin with delicate threads of magic, remembering the sun-filled room in the healer’s wing where I first learned this trick.
Fever is harder. I lean back on my heels as the sun-smeared world blurs around the edges. When I hold my hand out, Phaedron’s magic fills my palm once more, and stars, his sweet magic sings to me. A bitter twist of longing rings inside my chest as Phaedron’s magic sinks beneath my skin, like the dull ache of a wound that will never truly heal. Magic calls to the emptiness inside of me, whispering with the things I can never have. Magic of my own. A home of my own. A family that can’t be stolen by the whims of a king—
I shake my head and try to drag myself back to the real world. Rowan’s breathing has steadied, his bruises have faded, and the cut across his lip has mended, although the left side of his face is still marred by the thick, angry scar across his empty eye socket. But that’s not the kind of injury I can mend. I don’t think any magic could fix that.
But magic can heal a fever, damn it. I’ve never done it before, although I know it’s possible. And I have to try. With a sigh, I rest my palms on Rowan’s chest, then send Phaedron’s magic into his skin, beneath the spread of his ribs, to all the places where the fever hides. Magic hisses and foams beneath my hands, the fever inside Rowan’s body writhes like a living being, and the world slips away as all of my attention narrows to the man beneath my palms and the magic pulsing through his body.
When my eyes finally open, shadows spread across Rowan’s chest like the bars of a cage. For a moment, fear jolts me upright.
Rowan gasps. His eye opens, then fixes on my face. Exhaustion crashes over me like a wave. I sag backward. The ground beneath me feels like it’s swaying.
“I-I’m sorry about your eye,” I stammer. “I can’t fix everything. I’m not… not enough.”
Rowan frowns, and then his lips twist into something that’s almost like a smile.
“Thank you,” a deep voice says from behind me.
Phaedron. I exhale in a huff, then collapse. The ground is still pitching and rolling beneath me. And Phaedron is still here. My eyes close.
Of course, Phaedron is still here. Didn’t he say, once, that he couldn’t leave me? Although something went wrong after that, didn’t it? But before I can remember what exactly it was that went so wrong between the two of us, sleep closes over me like water clasping a sinking stone.
* * *
“Horses again,”someone grumbles.
Rowan, my mind whispers. That’s Rowan’s voice.
“If you would prefer to walk—” an unfamiliar voice replies.
Wind gusts around me, carrying away the rest of the words. I open my eyes to find stars dancing just beyond the tangle of pine boughs. I’m covered with something soft and warm and, when I turn, I realize there’s something soft and warm beneath my head too.
I sit up slowly, frowning as the world gradually takes shape. This is the same little pine grove where Rowan opened his portals, but now I’m wrapped in a velvet blanket that’s far too nice to be on the ground. And the pillow— Is this silk?
I grab the pillow, brush off a handful of pine needles clinging to the smooth red fabric, then shake my head. This can’t possibly be silk. Why would there be a silk pillow in the middle of the mountains?
Beyond the trees, the orange flicker of torchlight laps against the shadows. A low murmur of voices ebbs through the grove, drifting across the pine needles and the wrinkled blanket heaped across my knees. I don’t recognize any of the murmured voices.
Until I do. Phaedron’s voice rises above the others, deep and strong, saying something serious aboutthe negotiations.
I freeze. My hand makes a tight knot in the velvet blanket as that hollow ache sweeps over me once again, the one that rang through my chest as I twisted Phaedron’s magic into something that could mend Rowan’s body. Healing magic is so closely tied to the heart; it always dredges up a nasty knot of emotions.
What I felt while healing Rowan was a longing for magic of my own, of course, that impossible, secret wish of all magicians. But it was more than that too. It was the deep, desperate hunger for a different sort of life, to be a different sort of person. To have more of what I felt so briefly with Phaedron as we stood together by the window of the human inn deep inside the Silver City, or shared roast trout beside a campfire in the Barrier Mountains, or watched the sun set over the Ever-Reaching River. To have a life where I could go where I wished and do what I pleased, with a companion who cared about me for something other than my ability to twist someone else’s magic like a sentient corkscrew.
I snort as bitterness curls in my gut like smoke rising from a fire. Idiot. None of that was true with Phaedron, ever. He told me the truth the moment he appeared out of nowhere inside my bedroom. He needed me to get his brother, and that was that.
That’s why he couldn’t leave me in the Silver City, I realize with a sick pang in my chest. He couldn’t step through that portal in the old god’s prison without me, but it wasn’t because he’d somehow magically discovered feelings. No, it was because he hadn’t used me yet to bang down the door into his brother’s cell.
My pulse throbs inside my skull as my mind howls and my fists dig into the blanket. It all makes sense. I was just too stupid to realize it. The kisses, the disaster of a night we shared in his cabin in the Lands Below— Why would I assume any of that meant anything to Phaedron? That’s what I assumed with Balmyr, after all, when he showered me with sweet words as he hitched up my skirts, and look how well that played out.
The back of my throat burns. For a heartbeat, I think I’m going to be sick. I shove my way out of the thicket of blankets tangled around my ankles, stumble to my feet, and push through the trees. Stars wink above me as I suck in a deep breath and try to wrestle this mess of anger and loneliness back down where it belongs.
