Chapter 19

Joining with the magic of this world was an awful lot like sucking in a deep breath before tumbling down a great hill. It was pulled up through the stretch of his fingers and grew into a nice warm bubble within his chest. He had to be careful with such a fragile thing though. He needed to think constantly about cradling this kernel of magic and not allowing it to burst.

With his eyes closed, he tried his best not to think about his friends sitting so near him and watching, though their gazes were as warm as the fire on his skin. Instead, he encouraged the bit of power in his chest to grow. He guided it upward until it slipped into his skull. Here the power felt less like a bubble that needed to be guarded; here it felt like pressure that threatened to make his head explode.

If gravity ever had a hold on him, it was loosening its grip now. His body was light, his limbs wanting to float up at his side. He inhaled slowly and forced himself to dig his fingers further into the ground. More power flowed up his limbs, into his chest, then slowly slipped farther up into his head. His heart began to pound, a sweat breaking out across his forehead.

This was more magic than he’d ever held before, more than he dared try to use. His hold on it felt feeble, any wrong move and it might all drain from him into the world again. He’d experienced that a few times and the way magic could rip itself from the human form was never pleasant. Each time he’d passed out from the pain of power tearing itself from his body. Every single nerve ending had been set ablaze. Then when he woke it took hours for him to be able to move and then to walk without falling over. Merritt certainly couldn’t carry him and Percy both. If he messed this up then they’d be stuck.

For that second, he considered letting the magic slowly go and refusing to even try. Were the risks worth the reward? Yes. Yes. He needed to know more, if he wanted to survive this he needed his questions answered.

Remis’ teachers had always told him he was nothing short of exceptional—though his father’s opinion drastically differed. He was a good swordsman, a decent fighter in hand-to-hand combat, well-studied, charming, and the heir to a growing inheritance. This connection between him and this strange woman was painfully unknown. There were too many variables that he was unfamiliar with. This wasn’t an equation he could solve with only a few missing pieces. He couldn’t take nothing and multiply it by the knowledge of nothing and divide it all by more nothing. His only conclusion was that this was all some sort of weird spiteful game that really had nothing to do with him and had everything to do with the whims of the wicked.

“Here we go,” Remis exhaled the words.

He thought only then of the witch, of what he knew and how it had felt to have her inside his head. Worry made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t want to open his mind up to have her enter it again; he wanted to cross whatever this link between them was and enter her mind.

The expansiveness of his thoughts were dark flashes of images. He pictured her leather boots and the sense of awe he had felt as he’d let himself look up at the female body that had towered over him. She’d been sensual power then, all curves and intimidation. There was that hazy glimmer that had fallen over the edge of his vision and then winked out as the darkness came upon him. It was that flicking glow that he stretched his thoughts toward. He was able to touch the edges of his memory as they slowed, reaching out with a mental hand to brush mental fingers over it.

His thoughts lurched forward, flinging him into darkness at first. Phantom winds whipped at his soul. He dug his fingers tighter into the ground, aware of his body sitting near the fire and the power he still gathered within himself, though it felt distant, nearly forgotten and the darkness in his mind turned to gray clouds.

When the witch had visited him she’d been in full form. Her body had been visible and she’d touched him. Remis, however, was nothing more than a soul floating alongside the massive wings of a blue-black dragon. He felt his heart rate jump in the body that was miles away and a shout burned at the back of his throat, but whatever form he was in now made no noise.

The dragon, with its wide wing span and stretching spike-tipped tail was far larger than the dragonis he’d encountered. A Bold Wing then, Remis thought. Its long face which ended in a rounded snout with large nostrils and a mouth with snapping teeth, turned toward him. Remis swore it looked at him and when it exhaled a cloud of smoke, he passed through it and felt its humid warmth.

Upon the animal”s back sat the witch. She cocked her head, one of her braids falling out of her cloak and down over the curve of her breast as she twisted in her seat. There was more than just the hood to cover her face now. Black fabric was pulled down over her features, almost sheer enough he could nearly make out the shape of her nose and full lips.

You play with magic you do not know.Her mouth didn’t move when she spoke, or where he assumed her mouth would move under that thin veil. Her voice whispered into his thoughts.

Remis tried to speak but he couldn’t, not in this form at least. He settled for thinking his response with the intention of letting her hear. I know enough. He knew more than she thought. The witch underestimated him and that left him in an advantageous position.

The Bold Wing tilted in the sky, the woman’s body leaning into the motion. Of all the places he imagined finding this witch, he’d never once thought he’d see her on the back of a Bold Wing. Only scale riders were known to have tamed the beasts and rode them. The thought of facing someone as powerful as a scale rider and as terrible as a witch made his distant body tremble.

You have a dragon?Remis thought.

Are you going to tell me I’m a witch next? Are we only stating things that are clear to us?

She was right. He was wasting his time and ruining what element of surprise he had by coming to her and marveling at all she was instead of doing as she’d done. So Remis tried to focus on her surroundings. The dragon straightened its body, and through stringy clouds before them, flashes of color appeared before hiding amongst the haze again.

More Bold Wings. His startled mind tried to count the forms as they dipped toward the ground in uniform precision. From this height, he couldn’t make out the details of the ground much more than the dark stain of the forest and not far away the glittering gray waters of the Mitus River.

More movement under them took his attention. Four Bold Wings flying miles below them? Each with a rider on their back. Feminine laughter rippled through his mind.

What is your name?Remis finally thought to ask. It appears that you know mine and I only think it fair that I know the name of the woman hunting me.

Why would I want this hunt to be fair?Now he could tell, as she turned into the wind, that her lips were moving clearly behind that fabric, they twisted up into a sneer.

Annoyance and was it…amusement…was quick to take hold of his chest in its iron grip. To breathe was to force the air through what little space the clenched hand would allow. She had a smart mouth, he’d give her that.

Bold Wings came into view as the group tightened together well below the cover of the skies. They neared the others that circled above the canopy of trees. Remis counted them, ten in total. Each dragon was larger than their lesser cousins, the dragonis, though they all still varied slightly in size. From what Remis could tell, there was only one beast bigger than that of the one that carried his witch. Their scales, some shaped in half circles, others more pointed in triangles or elongated into diamonds like the Bold Wing Remis’ soul glided alongside, came in an array of shades. Gold, like the details of the warlord’s home. Dark crimson that reminded him of spilled blood. Emerald greens that shone like gems under the glittering sun. But her dragon…her dragon was the most beautiful. Even his fear could not dampen his awe of watching the ripple of muscle up close. The Bold Wing’s scales were muted, as though they soaked in the sun and refused to release any of its light. A beautiful blue-black that only changed enough for him to catch the different shades as the animal moved.

Mrithun is considered a great beauty amongst the Bold Wings, the witch said. Don’t let her beauty fool you though. She is as deadly as she is intriguing. She undid the leather strip that was wrapped around her hand, tugging up a sleeve to reveal pale scars that ran the length of her entire arm. She got me once when I first attempted to bond while I was entranced with her.

She’d been bitten by a dragon and survived. Now she rode the thing through the skies. His mind drifted to his shoulder where the dragonis had pierced him. That was enough for him to never want to interact with those terrible monsters ever again, much less attempt to ride one.

Why would you warn me when you only want me dead?His soul felt tired, his vision unfocusing before he forced himself to remain here in this conscious space with her.

When you die it will be at my hand. It would really be a shame for Mrithun to get to you first.She was smiling again. If he’d been more than this incorporeal thing hurtling through the skies next to her, he’d reach out, tear that fabric from her face, if only to see her. If only to touch her. He knew so little. His soul begged to know more. That grin fell, her body going taut. You’re bleeding. Go back to yourself. Do not play with this magic again or you’ll ruin your mind.

The forest below wasn’t visible any longer, nor were the other Bold Wings and scale riders around her. It was all blackness now. His world narrowed down to the pinpoint of light that was her and Mrithun.

Go. Her voice resounded in his head, bouncing around in his skull with the severity of the demand. Go and do not come back, Remis.

His spirit hurtled away, that small spotlight of her presence shrinking and then gone like a fire dying out. Air was knocked from his lungs as his consciousness was slammed back into his physical body. Awareness came in one tidal wave of pain. His fingers were ice-cold, his feet blazing hot near the fire. The ache in his shoulder was renewed and he felt the dampness of blood coating his upper lip and dripping down toward the dirt under his head.

“Holy shit. Remis.” Merritt”s voice was somewhere above him.

Lifting his eyelids was a heavy task, exhaustion weighing him down with the need to drift off into a deep sleep. Something at the back of his mind demanded he wake, sneered at him, and told him that if he didn’t he wouldn”t wake up again. Not for a long, long time.

Dark branches dusted with snow framed Merritt’s face. A deep wrinkle formed between his brows as he watched Remis with large worried eyes. The dark bruise from the fall was even more terrible to look at up close. Purple and blue swirled together accented with spots of near black. His eye was still swollen, a few red busted capillaries at its corner.

At some point, Remis must have collapsed onto his back. His hands were still arched into the ground, his fingers digging into the earth. Inhaling, he caught the copper tang of blood as he shook his hands free. Dirt was caked underneath his nails, a dusting of it coating his fingers and part of his arms. Large white flakes also gathered along his arms, his torso, and his legs. The sky had opened and fat clumps of snow fell rapidly down around them.

He groaned, wiping at the wetness with his arm, watching as his forearm came away smeared in red. She’d known. Somehow the witch could sense what he could not. Was she that powerful? Was it the connection of this curse that allowed her to know what he could not? He hadn’t any understanding that his physical body was anything other than safe here while he was with her.

Remis felt goosebumps rise all over his skin as realization struck him. He had been able to feel the distance between them when he’d traveled by her side. And the witch was much closer than he’d thought.