Chapter 16

16

G urlien bullies Ambra into dressing in more layers than she thinks is probably necessary, but she lets him, an odd sort of contentment in the growing familiarity of his actions. He makes her take his large wool coat, which dwarfs her comically, and he layers on a few extra sweaters.

“I can’t practice with the leash if it’s tucked under my coat,” he protests, which after the discussion she laughs in his face.

“It definitely goes through solid objects and that includes clothing,” she informs him when he has the temerity to press his hand against his chest, offended. “Or else I could just go to the other side of the world and be safe.”

“Still,” he replies, packing one of the backpacks with a change of clothes and his gun. “I’m not putting nearly as much faith in my ability as you are.”

She narrows her eyes at him, some hint of the past conversation threading through her mind.

He had been changed, just as her .

“One day,” she starts, tugging the lapels of the wool coat closer to her skin, “I want to know the secret of how you lost your power.” His face falls, dropping into a mask. “Maybe you can tell me when we get to the library.”

He scowls at her, before pulling on another wool sweater, and the collar of his maroon shirt peeks over the top, still drawing her eyes to his complexion. “It’s not a secret.”

“You can tell me now,” Ambra nudges him with her elbow, as if the brief physical contact could soften the world as quickly as his hand on her shoulder did. “I’m not gonna turn down free information.”

“Of course you’re not,” he mutters, then straightens. “You promised me an abandoned mining cavern in Alaska.”

There’s some small tenderness in his words, some nuance she hadn’t heard before, and it’s just as warm as the woolen coat.

And a mining cavern in Alaska. She could do that.

She clasps her hand over his wrist, right over the knot of the leash, and pulls them there.

Even before she has a chance to pull in a breath, even before she can think to blink, the cold stings her eyelashes.

“Woah,” Gurlien mumbles, up into the open air around them. “What—”

It’s pitch black in the cavern, and his hand grasps hers right back, the only warmth in the entire place.

Her wards still seal the entrance, untouched by the ravages of time, and her circle of protection still glows against her mind, perfectly whole.

“Like I said, Alaska,” Ambra says, her words echoing back at her from the opposite wall, as if she has more power than she does.

She moves to brush off her hands, but he grips hers tight, almost desperate.

“Ambra,” he starts, and the faux bored tone is back, desperate. “Ambra, I can’t see in here.”

She can’t either, besides the oft familiar shine of her magic, not enough to light the physical, and he shifts closer to her, the edge of his sweater sleeve brushing up against the woolen coat.

So Ambra lets her eyes flutter shut, lets her magic expand, creak out towards the cavern walls, to where rushing water and metal tools carved into the very stone. Let’s her magic find the lantern sconces, where candles and torches once hung. A few rotting pieces of wood, almost dust in age, still sit in the sconces.

And, with a flick of her mind, she ignites them.

Light spills across the ground, rock smoothed by the hundreds of footsteps, illuminating the far reaches of the cavern. Flame licks along the wood, and with barely a thought she freezes it there, so it gives light but doesn’t consume the wood in its entirety.

The firelight flickers over Gurlien’s face, reflecting in his glasses, and his hand gentles in hers. Not letting go, just his fingers going slack against her palm, his thumb still curved along her knuckles.

“Is there an alternate source of oxygen?” he asks, almost dumbly, like it’s been struck from him.

“What?”

“There’s fire, it’ll…it’ll use up all the oxygen, we’ll suffocate, or…”

“Magic fire,” she reminds him. “But yeah, that pathway leads to a crack in the surface.” She points across the cavern, over to where the hall tapers off, tilts upwards. Where they stopped digging. “It drips in the summer.”

His breath puffs around his face, a wispy trace of the air showing where he is. Absolute truth that he’s there with her, that the very environment is changed by him standing there, in too many sweaters and his hair flopped on his forehead.

Ambra exhales, and the air clouds around her, too.

It never used to do that.

“Okay,” Gurlien says, and his voice echoes. “Yes, alright, this is impressive.” He drops her hand to rub his together, warming them. “It must be, I don’t know, eight degrees?”

“It’s warmer in here than on the surface,” she says, then bounces on her toes, the movement helping something, some unrest inside her, and grins at him.

Startled, his brows flash up.

“This existed before mankind, and it’ll exist after them,” Ambra says. “They hollowed it out, they smoothed out the walls and widened it until it creaks with the snow, and still couldn’t find anything of worth. It’s perfect.”

His eyes crinkle around the edges.

“Sure, there’s no gold or silver or whatever the fuck they were mining, but this—” She spreads her arms wide, as if she could take up the entire cavern, “—is worth more than any gold they could have mined.”

“And you have this entire place protected?” he asks, mouth sloping upwards.

“Both this floor,” she scuffs her shoe against the smoothed rock, “and the forest moss above.”

Slow, the smile spreads across his face, like even he doesn’t believe that he’s making that expression. That after the morning they’ve had, after the discussion and the sudden realization that he understands her, understands what frightens her and how everything is different than it once was, that this, this is what amazes him.

“Okay, alright,” he says, “and you just can casually come here. No problem.”

“No problem,” she echoes, then, impulsively, teleports across the giant room, between one blink and the next.

Over here, the roof slopes closer to the floor, and frost from the damp glitters in the light of her fire.

Even across the cavern, she can see him startle.

“Try to pull me,” she calls out to him, her own voice dwarfed by the room. The firelight casts steep shadows across the floor, against the hewn walls, catching in the natural quartz ingrained in the stone. Rusted metal tools, grating and pipes and rebar, lay bundled against one side, a rat’s nest of old industry.

And in the middle stands Gurlien, the air puffed around him.

Again, the straightening of his shoulders and the exaggeration of the motion in the shadows, and her heart jumps a beat.

At the anticipation of the compelling, at how painful that can be.

And at the competency of the man in front of her, at the care he takes in the soft touch to the leash around his wrist.

Even at this distance, the pads of his fingertips send a shiver of sensation around her neck.

This time, however, he doesn’t just yank. He lets his fingertips run across the leash, as if trying to memorize by touch what he cannot see.

Even at a distance, even though she can’t see his eyes, she can almost feel the calculations in his mind.

He mutters something, too quiet for anything but the softest of sounds to reach her, before he twists it between his fingers.

Immediately, all the hair on her arms raise, her scalp prickling, and her chin jerks up.

“Does that hurt you?” he calls out.

The answer is no, but it’s also incredibly strange.

“No,” she answers, and he hasn’t restricted her airflow, hasn’t done anything that could stop her from breathing.

So even with a firm grip on the leash, even with someone else undeniably there, she’s not in pain.

“Tell me if I do,” he commands, and a thrill slams into her, softer than a normal compulsion but still…

She would obey that. It would be pulled from her if she tried to stop it, even if she didn’t want to tell him.

And with equal certainty, she knows he has no clue that he could hold that power over her.

Dud or not, he must’ve been so fluent before.

“Were you a spell weaver?” she calls out, and he nods, the shadow dancing across the floor. “I can tell!”

Even being so far away, his smile lights up his face.

He clenches his hand around the leash again, drawing it tight, until all of her is at attention to him. All she can do is watch him, try to piece out the details dimmed by the firelight, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Still okay?”

“Yeah,” she manages out. He’s not restricting her airflow, he’s not making it impossible to breathe at all, but each rise and fall of the lungs is shallow.

Finally, his eyes glance up from whatever he could see in the leash, and even across the distance they glitter at her in the darkness.

And she doesn’t even see the motion, doesn’t even catch a glimpse of his hand working on the leash, until between one moment and the next she’s beside him, her feet catching on the uneven ground.

He catches her by the shoulders, bracing her upwards, his grip on the leash dropped, and just like that all compulsion to answer, all commands and all strange knots of confusion is gone.

“You good?” he asks, and she could swear his hands are burning hot, even through the wool coat and even though the skin on his knuckles is already chapping from the chill of the air.

“I’m good,” she manages out, blinking. She’s dazed, as she normally is when someone summons her, but she didn’t black out. She didn’t suddenly lose consciousness in the transition.

Whatever Gurlien can or cannot do, it’s kinder. And she’s not sure if that’s something innate to him, something to do with his abilities, or if it’s something he chose to do.

She straightens herself and his hands fall away from her shoulders. “Good,” she says simply. “That was good. Well done.”

He squints at her, like waiting for her to trick him.

“You do that with me, you can disrupt them easily,” she continues, and a bubble of hope wells up in her. Hope that this is possible. That she could be successful, that she could escape, actually escape, and be okay.

That one day, the hold the College wields against her, could be gone.

“And I didn’t hurt you?” he restates.

“Not at all,” she says, then grins at him, and his eyebrows flash up. “Do it again, take a few steps back, let’s dial down on your limits.”