Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

For all his excitement, Arkon stared at Zarya’s door for a full five minutes before knocking on it. He still felt an uneasiness under his skin from the previous night. If she had been a normal woman, he might have kissed her cheek goodnight after dinner. She was not a normal woman. He wasn’t a normal man. They were sorcerers, and that meant all the usual niceties were wasted on them.

It wasn’t a date, you idiot, Arkon reminded himself. It had been easy to forget that sitting across from her and listening to her talk about her life. It had been hard for even the best of his spies to find out anything true about the illusive Wolf Mage. To have her willingly give up everything he wanted to know was irresistible.

Arkon’s hands thrummed with leashed magic. She had promised to show him her power today, and he hadn’t been so excited about something in years.

Arkon was lifting his hand to knock again when the door was pulled open and the Wolf Mage was suddenly staring at him. She looked unkept and haphazard; she was wearing a pair of pants and an oversized shirt that only had half the buttons done up, and those were crooked. Her hair was sticking up at odd angles, and she had charcoal smudges on her nose and fingertips. Her eyes were silvery with magic, and Arkon’s mouth went dry as dust.

Gio’s voice was suddenly shouting in his head, Forbidden fruit! Forbidden fruit!

"Oh. It’s you. What time is it?" Zarya asked, her eyes blinking rapidly.

"About ten? What have you been up to?" Arkon replied with a slight hitch in his voice. He knew the signs of a magician distracted, and she had been up to something.

"Come on in," Zarya said and waved him inside. There was a half-eaten tray of food and an empty carafe of coffee on a table that had been shoved up against the wall. All the furniture had been moved about from where it had been the day before, and the floor was covered in half-finished sketches. On the walls were pictures of the men she wished to kill and a few others Arkon didn’t recognize. It all seemed...familiar.

"Re-decorating? I love what you’ve done with the place. What’s that smell?" Arkon searched the room and spotted a smoking bowl.

"Incense I made from things in the kitchens. There has been a lot of people that have lived in this apartment over the centuries. I could feel their energy clawing at me all damn night," Zarya replied. "I had to do something about it, and then my mind woke up."

Arkon crossed his arms. "You went wandering through the palace on your own?"

"I wasn’t spotted if that’s what you are worried about." Zarya gestured at the sketches. "I was busy, and I didn’t want to wake people up to politely see if they would get me what I needed."

"You could have woken me up," Arkon said. He thought about how he would have reacted if he had been roused by Zarya in the night. A silvery Viking nymph with those impossible eyes climbing into bed beside him… Arkon slammed the thought down. Hard. He was having a difficult enough time concentrating with her looking so adorable and disheveled as it was.

"Waking you up because I wanted a midnight snack seemed like a good way to get a fireball in the face," Zarya said. Her hand went to her hair and scrunched the ends. "I’ve been thinking about how I can disable the effect of the blood mages’ power. There has to be a way because it’s technically not their power. It’s not innate to them like ours is."

"Which means there should be a way to take it from them or block it," Arkon said, picking up her train of thought. He looked down at the sketches she had spread out on the floor. He leaned closer and discovered the patterns were actually series of rune marks. Some he recognized as belonging to the Elder Futhark, but most he’d never seen before. He squatted down and picked up a sheet of paper.

"Is this your magic?" he asked. Zarya shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot. "Come on, we are almost friends remember? You can show me."

Zarya pushed her hands through her hair and exhaled roughly. "It’s...hard to explain. What do you know of the Norns?"

Arkon frowned and searched his memory. "They are the Norse equivalent of the Fates or the Morai. There’s one who weaves the past, one the present, and one the future. They weave the destinies of mortals. How is that relevant?"

"It is. Trust me." Zarya started to pace.

Arkon didn’t push her. She was wired, and he didn’t want to scare her off. He had wondered for so long how she’d always managed to counter him, to be able to keep him on his toes, to have him forever wondering what she would do next.

"Do you know of the story when Odin All-Father went to Freya to ask her to teach him seidr?

Arkon shook his head. "I know seidr is a type of magic?"

"Traditionally, women’s magic. Odin wanted to know it, but because he was a man, he had to sacrifice himself for it," Zarya explained, still pacing. "After nine days and nine nights on the World Tree, Odin could finally read the runes."

"And they became the Elder Futhark?" Arkon said, looking at the sketches again.

Zarya stopped pacing. "That is only twenty-four of the runes that Odin taught mankind. There are...more than that."

Arkon rose back to his feet. "What are you saying? How many more?"

"A lot." Zarya stepped closer to him, her expression grim. "It would be easier to show you. I’m just nervous about doing it. It’s more than anyone has revealed to an outsider before."

Arkon risked moving into striking range of her. "If we are going to do magic together, I need to understand how yours works in order to integrate my own with it. You can trust me, Zarya."

"We were enemies for so long," she said, biting her bottom lip.

Arkon reached out and rubbed the charcoal off the end of her nose. "I know, but we aren’t anymore. I won’t share it with anyone else, I swear it."

He was surprised to realize that he was telling the truth. He would betray a lot of people to keep the Republic safe, but he wouldn’t betray her. Zarya was still frowning at him, so he added with a suggestive grin, "Come on, lupa, if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine."

A pink tinge spread over Zarya’s pale cheeks and ears. Arkon’s pulse stuttered dangerously. He could flirt his way out of just about any awkward situation, but this was the first time he felt it backfire.

"I need you to close your eyes and calm your energy," she said, and he did it without questioning her. "Where do visions sit, Arkon? How do you read them? Through soul or spirit?"

Arkon frowned and remembered an old lesson from childhood. "According to Mary Magdalene they sit in neither. They sit in the mind which is between them."

"Very good," Zarya replied, the obvious surprise in her voice making him feel like he’d won a prize. "Magic sits in the same place, but its source is in the heart." She rested her small palm on the center of his chest before resting two fingers to his third eye. Winter chocolate tickled his senses as she whispered under her breath. "Now, open your eyes and see the world as I do."

Arkon sucked in a shaky breath and opened his eyes. Lines of runes were running like quicksilver over the room, over their skin, through Zarya’s eyes and hair. It was like a layer of shining magic covered everything. Arkon tried to focus on the runes that were threaded together in complex weaves, but they shivered and danced too fast for him to follow.

Zarya was so close that they were almost touching. "Look at me, Arkon. Don’t get caught up trying to read them, or they will make you mad."

Arkon tore his gaze from the woven silver threads to her face. Her hair was lifting on an invisible breeze; magic was a silver smear on her lips.

"What is this?" he whispered.

"This is the weaving of the world. The magic of all things that bind it together. This is what the Norns weave to create destinies." Zarya’s voice had deepened and seemed far away at once. "This is my magic."

"What... What are you?" Arkon dared to ask.

Zarya smiled softly at him. "My magic comes from my bloodline. We are the descendants of the Vanir, from Freya and her brother Frey’s children they had with mortals. Our magic is that we can see this energy that makes up the world. My magic is still energy and intent, like all magic is, but I weave my will with these runes."

"Holy shit," Arkon stammered. "You really are divine."

"My magic is, but I am not," Zarya said.

Arkon stared about the room once more. "No wonder I’ve always found you so fucking fascinating. This is... This is beautiful."

It didn’t seem the right word. He couldn’t think of another with her power pulsing around him, showing him this secret webbing. He suddenly felt very naive and young in a way that he hadn’t in a long, long time. He wanted to run as far away from her as he possibly could and pin her to the floor and demand every secret inside of her all at once. He stared at her impossible eyes and wanted and wanted and wanted.

"Please say something. You’re looking very lost and confused right now, and it’s making me nervous," Zarya said, the silvery lines of power wrapping about her. "Tell me what you’re thinking."

Arkon fought the urge to kiss her. Thankfully, that need was below a far more urgent one.

"I’m thinking that I’d very much like to do some magic with you, Zarya. If you will have me."

Zarya’s face lit up, and all the shimmering runes flared around her in delight. Arkon bit down a whimper. His self-control was only so good, and every moment he was around her, it weakened.

"I’d like that too," she replied. She placed her hands over Arkon’s eyes, and when she moved them again, the room was back to being its usual mundane self. He didn’t move away, and neither did she. "But fair is fair. I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

Arkon smiled. "It would be my pleasure."