? ? ?
As I made my way to the far edge of the campfire’s radius, Quentin blocked my path.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I felt a surge of guilt rushing up my throat for how relatively little I’d been thinking about him since the Mandate Challenge started. During the mundane portion of the long weekend our only contact had been fighting, but at least it was contact.
I’d missed him on a visceral level. We hadn’t touched in so long. Our usual method of traveling from place to place literally required squeezing each other’s bodies. I could have that again, right now. The cost was simply opening up.
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you think what happened with Princess Iron Fan was weird?”
Guh. I was such an idiot.
Somewhere between now and our moment at the pool, Quentin had learned to hide his crushing disappointment with me. “How so?” he asked calmly.
His forbearance was disturbing, a bad sign. Quentin was supposed to be my equal in temper, not an emotionless statue. “What was she trying to do exactly?” I said, wincing internally. “If you think about her actions, it’s like she was picking a fight for no discernible reason.”
“You said it yourself. We defeated Red Boy. Maybe she wanted revenge for her son.”
“That can’t be it. You and me being there seemed like a surprise to her. She wasn’t interested in us. If anything, she was overly interested in Guanyin.”
Quentin shrugged. “She said she was looking for the strongest among us. And Guanyin’s incredibly strong. Especially when you consider the reserves of good karma she’s stored up over the millennia. I wouldn’t be surprised if she represents the greatest total amount of spiritual power in one god.”
He wasn’t using this as an opportunity to bicker about the mandate and the merits of Guan Yu. Quentin not wanting to bicker? A huge red flashing light was going off. The seawater was rising around my ankles.
And yet I was still ignoring it, fiddling away on the sinking deck. “It doesn’t add up,” I said. “Especially when you consider all of us getting sent to this mountain-plane as a group. What are the odds of that happening? There’s a piece missing here.”
His arms rose and fell with a slap against his sides. “I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t.”
That came out with too many layers of meaning. I floundered for more things to say to keep him talking to me but left too big a gap. “You should get some sleep,” he said, before he turned and slipped into the woods, disappearing behind the trees.
“Hey!” I said. “That’s not safe! Quentin!”
He left me alone, gnashing my teeth in the fading light.
I thought about heading back to the others to lie down by the fire they’d made, but that wouldn’t have settled the roiling in my throat. I wasn’t going to give up like this. If it took me a million years of standing awkwardly in front of Quentin to result in a productive conversation, then that was what it would have to take. The two of us could fossilize together, our sulking faces preserved in amber for eternity.
But first I had to find him. It was growing darker fast, and the woods were a labyrinth of choices, trees obscuring the view past a few yards. Using true sight would have blinded me. I felt like a puck dropped down on a board embedded with nails in a carnival game. Random bounces would take me anywhere but to the prize.
In an act that was mostly fueled by spite, I half closed my eyes until I could barely see the ground under my lids and stepped forward slowly and surely, taking lefts and rights with complete confidence. If Quentin could find me by my aura, then I could find him by his. I refused to let him win that contest.
I knew it had something to do with how our energies interacted and amplified each other. Mine was like sound waves generated by an iron bell; his was a roaring golden torch. I’d learned this back when we spent most of our time training together. When it felt right, I opened my eyes again.
In a little clearing nestled in the roots of a large tree, the perfect spot for someone to meditate in the embrace of nature, was . . . nothing.
Quentin wasn’t here. I’d struck out.
That I couldn’t make our connection work the same way he could nearly broke my heart, until I remembered a crucial component: I wasn’t the greatest expert in mystical auras, but I knew my boyfriend’s habits.
I ran forward and kicked the tree. It vibrated from the impact. I heard a yelp come from above, and an object plummeted from the top of its branches. I caught Quentin in my arms, bridal style. He was still the heaviest thing I’d ever carried, but the strain was worth it.
“You jerk!” he shouted, his face adorably grumpy. I’d never held him like this before, but I was going to do it a lot more from now on. Whenever we were fighting, I’d just scoop him into my arms. I put a stop to his wriggling escape attempts by leaning forward and pressing my lips gently to his forehead. If I couldn’t put words to my feelings, then I could act, and hope the translation was good enough.
“Put me down for a sec, will you?” he said. I relented and set him on his feet. He surprised me by turning me around and hugging me tightly from behind, pressing his face into my back.
It was like today was hold-each-other-weirdly day. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” he said, his voice shaking so hard I could feel it through my skin. “I’m about to cry and I don’t want you to see it.”