Chapter Thirteen
When I woke, I feltlike something shoved me in a toaster on the frozen bagel setting. I clutched my head and sat up. It took me a few minutes to unclench my eyes, and then blink them open. All together too long since I wasn’t in The Chief’s house anymore. And that meant Echo had access to his magic inside all along.
I sat on a fluffy green velvet couch, the kind that hugs you into it and refuses to release you. Echo sat on a coffee table across from it. Every inch of the room burned too bright. Like a hospital without the antiseptic scent.
“What the hell was that?”
“Training,” he said. His fingers grabbed my chin and I slapped them away.
“It’s not training unless you tell me what the hell we are doing. Besides, how did you access your magic? Even Fin couldn’t do that when he stayed there.”
He shook his head and grabbed my chin again. This time I let him lift it so he could angle my face as he looked into my eyes. When he finished, he released me. “I thought I explained that all magic is different. Every magic has a flavor, a code, an energy signature if you will. I can see them, feel them, sometimes manipulate them, rather like a tuning fork matching a tone. It’s one of the reasons I don’t need to have more power, because mine can match any that I come in contact with, if I’m able to isolate the tone.”
“And you what? Isolated the one in my magic, or whatever was built into The Chief’s house?”
“A little of both. You’ve spent a lot of time there. The house had built a sort of cocoon around your energy. It just took a nudge to burst it open and the house accepted it as if I were using your magic.”
I shoved out a long breath. “Great. So what does this mean for me? How is this training me, other than not to trust asshole mages even if I think I’m safe?”
“I said I wouldn’t hurt you. Calm down. I just wanted to get a feel for your power without Hawk breathing down my neck.”
I chuckled. “He’s out there in the real world right now with a gun to the back of your head. I guarantee it.”
He didn’t look the least bit concerned. “Then I guess he better not shoot, or I don’t know what will happen to either of us.”
I told myself to calm down, to relax, to learn what he had to teach me, but I still didn’t trust him enough to have given him such an intimate look at my power. Fin would be so angry if he knew about this. For the first time, I felt guilty about doing something I knew he wouldn’t approve of. I’d be upset if the tables were turned.
“Let’s just do this so we can get out of here. Sendings make me itchy since the first ones were from Esteban and I didn’t even know what was happening. He’s good at them. His don’t feel like a dream, they feel like reality. One where you want to stay forever.”
“Then his power must be very mentally focused. As I told you, a lot of mage craft is mental fortitude, focus, discipline. Have you seen any other demonstrations of his power?”
I thought about it. To be honest, every encounter I usually ended up grievously injured so my memories were pretty hazy. ‘I’m not sure, honestly. I had to have, right? Fin would have better answers for us. I’m sure he’s gotten a first-hand look multiple times. Maybe more than I have.”
He glanced away and it took me a moment to remember he didn’t like Fin. “Oh, sorry, I forgot about your drama. Are you going to be able to work with him on this without killing him?”
The room rippled around us, and then I gasped awake on the couch in The Chief’s house. The sensation wasn’t great. Smack between getting blown up and having ice water thrown over your head.
Hawk loomed in my blinked vision and patted my cheek a couple of times. “If you keep touching me, you’re going to lose that hand,” I ground out to get him the hell out of my face.
“She’s fine,” Hawk said, and gave me my space.
Simultaneously, I realized the ache in my chest had changed into something feral and clawing. Also that Fin held Echo down with a knee to the neck on the coffee table.
I lurched up and grabbed his arm. “Let him go. He wasn’t hurting me, he was trying to train me.”
Fin took a long time to drag his gaze from Echo to mine. Then with a shudder he released him. Echo, to his credit, didn’t move until Fin came around the coffee table, captured my head in his hands, and crashed his mouth down onto mine with zero gentleness.
The kiss was brutal, slicing, and painful. More teeth than lips, until I clung to him, off balance in a new way. When he released me, he had to lift me back onto my feet.
Reality crashed in and I shoved him away. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I hunt you down and find him with his hands on you, the day after you ran off after meeting alone with him. What was I supposed to think other than he did something to mess with your mind? It was the only reason I could conjure that would explain why you left us in the middle of this mission to save your stepfather.”
Swampy liquid shame washed through me, and I shook my head. “He didn’t do anything to me. I left on my own. Let’s go somewhere else so we can talk about it.”
He took one resounding step backward. “No. We can talk about it right here. What’s going on, what’s happening in your head right now that you’re hiding from me?”
It wasn’t as if I didn’t deserve this. Humiliation might help clear the sludge packed tight around my heart right now. So I lifted my chin and forced myself to look at his face. Every line was set like the forbidding ridiculously handsome fae who basically kidnapped me all that time ago. Today, he’d pulled his hair back half up, so his cheek bones stood out, highlighting his eyes, all of it threatening to crush my resolve.
Fuck. I didn’t know where to start. “Did you, have you looked at our bond, really looked at it, and how it entwines our magic?”
“Of course I have, what does that have to do with you walking away from me yesterday? Because if this man didn’t have something to do with it, then it sounds to me like you walked away on your own, ran away.” He clenched his hands against his thighs and headed toward the bedroom. I followed, my eyes on the back of his head, so I didn’t have to see the pity on anyone else’s face as we passed.
Once inside my old bedroom, now seemingly too small with the both of us inside. He spun to face me and pulled me into his chest so tight my shoulders ached from the pressure. I didn’t think about wrapping my arms around him and squeezing him with the same intensity.
“I made a mistake,” I whispered into his chest. “I’m sorry. I saw what my magic was doing to you and I feared that I was a ticking time bomb of your worst fears, and one day I’d take all of you.” The last came out on a sob.
His hands burrowed into the hair at the nape of my neck, and he tugged my head back to force our gazes together. “The moment our magic entwined I felt that power there. Potentially, I could use it myself. It’s part of our bond, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But now, we need to clear something up. Because I need to make sure you understand without a single doubt.”
“What,” I whispered, tears clogging my throat.
“I love you. You are my entire world, and you will be until I take my last breath. There is never anything you could do to change that for me. Even if one day you decide you want to leave me, and hate me, I will never not feel this way.”
The force of his emotions poured through me along our bond. So strong and bright I squeezed my eyes shut and let it wash over me like a tidal wave.
“I didn’t mean to worry you or hurt you. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed his thumbs along my cheekbones until I looked at him again. “You, Zoey Salix, apologizing? The world truly must be ending.”
Every jagged edge I’d been avoiding inside myself since I ran away from him eased. All sanded away along the smooth shining surface of his unwavering conviction. Where I doubted, he held strong. Where I faltered, he supported me. Where I failed, he was there to pick me up again.
“I love you too. I hope I didn’t make you doubt that.”
He rubbed his chest. “I never did. All I felt when we were apart was your hurt and the pain you harbored from being apart from me.”
Maybe I needed to hear all this. While I still worried I wasn’t strong enough for what was coming, I no longer feared it quite so much. Not with this man at my back.
I hugged him tight again and asked. “Should we get back out there and see what else Echo has to offer.”
He tilted my head again to look at me. “Are you sure he wasn’t hurting you, controlling you, trying to steal your power?”
“No. He wanted to read my tone or something. I don’t know. He was testing my abilities I think so he could figure out how to train me, or what I needed to learn.”
The expression on his face told me he didn’t look convinced, but I pulled out of his arm and left him to follow or not.
It wasn’t just Hawk and Echo in the living room when we came back out. Melinda and Helix crowded by the door as if they were ready to make a run for it any moment. Both gave me accusing glares as I met their eyes. Well, okay then, I guess Fin wasn’t the only one I’d need to apologize to today.
I waved at Echo who stood with his back to the wall nearest the fireplace now. Almost as far away from anyone else as he could get. “Echo is here to help me train and he’s going to help us take down Esteban.”
Helix, Melinda, and Fin all started speaking at once but I folded my arms and let them talk over each other until they finally stopped.
“I already agreed. We shook on it. It’s done.”
“You shook on it,” Fin echoed.
I ignored that comment and turned my attention to Melinda. Not wanting to scare her, I dragged my hands along the couch and stayed a few feet away. “But I did want to ask you about the magical circle on Esteban’s floor. It was meant to trap magic, or hold it, or something, maybe? Can you tell me anything you know about it?”
She shuddered. “That piece of magic almost killed me. He forced me to use other’s power to supplement my own until I completed it. Then he’d make them stand there and suck up their power like a giant whirlpool. He used it mostly on his enemies, but also his friends. If they helped him, he might take power and give it to them in exchange for their loyalty.”
I tried to think about the last time we’d spotted him with anyone else. Where were all these friends now? There were the endless goons we’d met plenty of times, but never anyone I’d assume was highly placed after our first run in with Olivia and his friends at the mansion.
Gentling my tone, I continued. “I’m sorry to ask you to think about something so painful. Do you think it’s possible for it to hold too much power?”
She dragged her lip between her teeth and stared off into space. When she finally answered she nodded. “I suppose, but it would take a lot. Or maybe a variable the metal wouldn’t be calibrated to expect.” When her eyes narrowed, I got the feeling she had picked up where my brain had been headed.
“I can’t make another one. Not like that. It would kill me, and that was even if I had access to my powers. I’ve got nothing.”
I waved around the room. “You have us. Three other people who can use magic. Maybe we can feed it to you like the contract you did for Fin and me?”
She didn’t look convinced, and Helix appeared to be on the border to hauling her outside and away from us for good. “Let me think about it,” she said after a moment.
I’d take that over a drop dead no, any day. “We should go to the safehouse or another one. The Chief’s house is too small to hold all of us, especially with training and strategizing.”
“What are you talking about?” Echo asked from his corner. He still looked ready to bolt, but I counted this as some progress.
“Esteban has a magical sort of cage, metal, built into the floor of his mansion. I think to have taken Helix and Melinda’s powers he had to have somehow figured out how to make it portable.” Out loud it kind of sounded silly.
“Are you talking about spell work crafted into metal?”
I nodded and waved at Melinda. “She could do it, but now she’s lost her powers thanks to Esteban. So...we need another option.”
Echo nodded slowly and took a tentative step toward the group. With his eyes on Fin, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I have a friend. Someone like me, who we can trust, who does spell work with metal.”
Fin jolted behind me. “Another fae with that gift?”
“No, a mage. But he has no interest in more power. He just likes to be left alone to tinker.”
Could we risk bringing in another mage? Would he be trustworthy, or another avenue of betrayal? But it didn’t seem like we had a choice in it.
I glanced at Fin and then made eye contact with all our friends. When no one objected I gave Echo a nod. “Call him and see if he wants to talk. But I don’t agree to anything until we meet him and get a feel for him.”
“He’s kind of skittish. His kind of power is coveted in the mage world.” He glanced at Melinda and muttered, “sorry.”
We watched as he pressed the button on his phone and then stepped outside. Once we were all alone again, I let out a long sigh, ready to apologize and clear the air.
But I didn’t have a chance. Hawk stepped into the middle of the room and put his hands on his hips. “Who’s hungry?”