23. Captivity

23

Captivity

Safira Chastain

I went to bed still full of joy, and woke up the same way. The breathlessness of riding a water-horse carried me through my morning routine, everything around me seeming more vivid than usual. Even the stunning beauty of the greenhouses, usually my favorite place to work, couldn't hold my attention the way they usually did. I called it quits before the day was half-finished, skipping my way down to 1 Sky and the wide-open outdoors.

One nice thing about having a lake for a lover was that he was easy to find. I didn't even bother pretending that I had other reasons for going outside; the gardens had been winterized long ago, and my tasks never took me onto the island anymore. But Celyn was outside, and so were blue skies and flights of swans.

Though everyone at Barixeor knew Celyn and I were involved, I still didn't like having my relationship be the topic of the day. Leyweaver always got a contemplative look, and Marin a concerned one. Only Bash let me be, and even then I knew he had thoughts. As a result, I'd gotten used to going to more difficult beaches than the low one where the rowboat lived; if they couldn't so obviously see me spending time with Celyn, it was less tempting to ask me about it.

A small cove with a hot spring had become one of my favorites as the year cooled—and now, with a dusting of snow on the ground from the night before, the lure of a hot spring beckoned. I picked my way down the rocky slope, grateful to my Barixeor-supplied boots for their excellent tread. Every step made my breath come faster and my heart beat just a little harder, the anticipation of getting to see Celyn again brightening everything.

Before I even made it to the bottom, Celyn showed himself, pushing himself up out of the water like a swimmer breaching the waves before taking a seat on one of the icy rocks, smiling up at me with his feet trailing in the water.

I laughed, picking the rest of the way down with care before plopping down on a stone and starting to take off my boots. "Brr!" I said with a tease. "It will never cease to amaze me that you can put your bare ass on ice and enjoy it."

He laughed, a bright sound.

My fingers stilled, my face going slack with surprise as I stared at him. "Celyn," I said, his name coming out with not a little bit of awe. I'd never heard him laugh before.

Celyn touched himself on the chest, looking down at himself before looking back to me. A smile spread across his face, sheer joy marking him the way it marked me. "I never knew I could hold such brilliance beneath my breast," he said with an edge of wonder. "I have always wanted to know what you felt when laughter escaped you."

"Now you do," I said, propping up my chin on my hand.

"Yes. Now I do." His expression softened as he regarded me, warmth on the face of a wintry alpine lake. "Do you know what elemental consorts are?"

My brows pulled together at the change of subject, but I turned back to tugging off my boots anyways. "Never heard the term," I replied. "What is it?" My second boot came off, and I dropped my feet into the water at the base of the spring, enjoying the way the hot water from the spring swirled with the cool of the lake.

Celyn slid off his rock back into the water and swam over to my shallows. He rested his head on one hand and wrapped the other around my ankle, his comforting warmth sinking into me as he stroked my bare skin. "When two humans join together, it is named a marriage," he said, looking up at me. His expression sharpened like a hunting-hawk, ice-blue eyes holding me in an endless gaze. "When a human joins with an elemental, it is called a consortship, instead. I know not why."

My mouth went dry. The pleasant bubbliness of being in his presence evaporated, my skin going cold beneath my layers. To be Celyn's friend and lover was one thing. But we'd never spoken about relationships, or tried to define things. To put a label on it now meant that he was thinking about things in those terms.

"That's nice," I said, trying to get the terror under control—trying not to remember another face, another smile, another hand's possessive grasp.

How long had he been thinking about this? What did he want from me?

He smiled so easily, the expression resting lightly on his face. His expression softened, that predatory look easing away. "You have seen my waters, and ridden upon me. You know who I am," Celyn said in that voice, the one I'd once thought could lure someone into doing anything. He'd lured me , despite all my fears, and now I sat with his hand around my ankle. He could make that hand a manacle if he wanted. He could drag me into the water, hold me there, put me in a prison worse than anything the wizard had ever concocted—

"Safira?" he asked .

I jumped, making myself smile at him. "I'm sorry," I said out of reflex. "I, um, just have a lot on my mind. Go on."

The worry eased off his face again. I must have hidden it well enough—the hammering of my heart, the fear-sweat turning my skin slimy. I'd learned well under the wizard's tutelage.

"I once believed myself pleased to stand alone, watching the patterns of the world," he said, falling back into his allure. "I ate the fresh spring grass and I watched the reflections of the does. I drank the rain and watered the creatures in turn." Celyn smiled again, an expression of vivid affection that made the fears beat in my chest like caged birds. "But you fed me apples from your fingers and showed me what it is to desire a doe. Offering you my water in turn was all I thought I could give, but there is more to me than water, and you may have it all."

A small object washed up between my feet, borne by the waves. Celyn picked it up, holding it up to me. Light glinted off of black, metal catching the sunlight. I took it, nausea twisting in my gut.

The wizard, leaning his head on one hand as he lay in bed with me, calling something to his hand. Holding it up, the gold and sapphires gleaming in the mage-lights. Putting it on my finger with a smile, sharp eyes bright with victory.

"If you would like to be my consort, it is a gift I would give you with joy," he said. "You could see the years in their thousands if you stayed with me."

The words drew my eyes back to him. He was smiling, a hopeful expression, an edge of worry tensing his eyes. My hands started shaking and I closed them, the black metal of the ring biting into my palm like the shackle it represented.

"That's a lot of time," I said, trying to buy some.

Celyn's slot-pupiled eyes, once so comfortingly inhuman, crinkled in the corners with his smile. He traced his fingers down my shin, leaving cold lines of wet in his wake. "I am used to seeing the ripples from decisions, and counting them until they are swallowed by the waves," he said, the words coming smoothly, the sound soothing. But even that could be a trap and a lure, getting me to lower my guard. "You have not had such time yet. You need not answer this moment; your words will lose nothing for being spoken later."

"Then I can think about it?" I asked, a shrillness creeping into my voice.

He flinched, a tiny motion I would have missed if I hadn't been wholly focused on his reactions. But then he smiled again, pushing away his reaction. "Yes," he said, the word spoken with care. "I will not demand an answer from you."

I pulled my feet from the water, a surge of relief leaving me trembling as I escaped his grasp. Celyn let me go, his eyes searching my face. I saw the hurt, and I couldn't trust it. I had to... had to find out more. Had to know what he wanted from me. "I have a bunch of work I have to do in the greenhouses, still," I said, not quite a lie. "I'll come back later, okay?"

For a moment, he reached up towards me, then lowered his hand. "As you like, Safira."

The sound of his voice, lost and sad, haunted me as I scrambled back up the steep hill, not even bothering to put on my boots. The cold bit at my feet, my toes protesting the snow, but I had to get away from him. I couldn't even look back down at the water, certain I'd see him looking up at me, those pale blue eyes watching me like he'd never look away.

My hands shook when I reached the top of the bluff and escaped the view of the cove to yank my cold socks onto my wet and dirty feet. I almost left the ring sitting there on the stone, not wanting to touch it, but that seemed worse than knowing where it was. What if he asked about it? What if he expected to see me wearing it?

I shoved it deep into my pocket, tears stinging my eyes and memories haunting the edges of my vision, and tried not to run for the safety of the Spire. He was only a water-horse. He couldn't touch me if I didn't touch him first. The spells of Barixeor Spire, raised by sorcerers and maintained by a volcano, would repel even someone like him.

I blessed every god that I could think of that I didn't encounter anyone as I went up to my bedroom. Behind the safety of spells and stone walls, I pulled out the ring and stared at it. Wherever he'd gotten it from – whatever drowned body or loving offering it had come from – it hadn't been harmed by its centuries beneath the waves. It gleamed as if shaped from obsidian, but with the particular reflective quality of metal. Someone had carved words into the inside, glyphs that swam in my vision.

Mages had a secret language, one they swore had been given to them by Tissit, the deity of magic. It could only be spoken, read, or written by mages. Whatever had been carved into the ring had been written in glyphic Tissiten, made by a mage for another mage.

There was a mage in the Spire. She'd been kind to me, and spoke to us as if we were equals. Leyweaver would know what sort of thing Celyn had given me.

Before I could second-guess myself, I closed the ring in my hand and went in search of the sorcerer, floor by floor. I found her at last on the study floor of the library, an arc of books spread out in front of her. She didn't even look up when I came in.

After at least ten minutes of standing there, waiting for her attention, I finally managed to squeak out, "Um, magus?"

Her head came up fast enough that I jumped, her eyes snapping to me. But she relaxed after less than a second, giving me a reassuring smile. "Safira. I didn't expect to see you. Do you need something?"

"Um," I said again, then held out the ring before I could second-guess myself. "Can you read this? Celyn... gave it to me. "

Leyweaver's gaze sharpened, a focused expression coming onto her face before she took the ring. "Did he tell you why?" she asked, turning it so the engraving caught the light.

The question sounded placid, but there was a pointed inquiry behind it. I flushed, my cheeks warming, and looked down at my boots. "He was asking me a question."

"Mm," was the only response I received. Her lips moved as she read the inscription, her brows tensing for a moment as she focused. After a moment, she huffed out a small laugh, and held the ring back out to me. "It's written in an archaic form of glyphic Tissiten," Leyweaver said. "There must have been a spell in it once, but it's long gone. Roughly translated, it says something like 'we are more alike than different.'" She shrugged one shoulder. "It's a pretty common Tissiten blessing, even today. I'd be willing to bet a mage tossed it in the lake as a pacification offering. That used to be a pretty common way of preemptively showing an elemental you meant no harm."

I took the ring back, looking down at it lying there in my palm, black against my skin. "He must have had it for a long time, then," I said slowly, trying to imagine a time when mages would appease elementals.

"Thousands of years, most likely," Leyweaver said in agreement. "It's probably worth a pretty penny to collectors, and it's in bang-up condition. He must have taken good care of it. Doesn't seem like he's much into destruction, that one."

"He's killed people," I said, closing my hand around the ring.

"Probably, and with good reason." When I gave her a startled look, she barked a laugh. "Some people need killing," she said, darkness lingering behind the words. "Anyone who tries to enslave another deserves it, for sure. But that's neither here nor there. Is there anything else you needed?"

She was looking at me with such pleasant helpfulness that I blurted out, "I want to find stories about water-horses."

Leyweaver gave me a thoughtful look, pursing her lips. But before I could regret the words or the adrenaline sweat wetting my underarms, she smiled again. "Of course," she said. "You're a Spire resident as much as me, so you might as well enjoy the library. Let me show you how to use the assistant."