Chapter 21 #2
“Tell me about the magic,” she said, not pausing what she was doing.
Reeve, too, continued reaching for new boxes, his tone unconcerned as he asked, “What do you want to know?”
“You know what I want to know.” Viri resisted the urge to turn and glare at him. “How did you do it? Destroying the nullicuffs, knocking me out, unlocking the door…none of those things should have been possible.”
“The ancient mages were able to use magic for everything,” Reeve said. “What I did was nothing compared to what they could do.”
“You’re not an ancient mage.”
“No, but I suppose I’m what you’d call a current one.”
Viri stilled in the process of opening a new box and whirled around in the narrow aisle to look at him. “That’s not possible. Mages don’t exist anymore. Not on Elverdine Isle.”
“The reason they don’t exist here is because children yield their ellixen to the obelisks, which stops them from being able to access and develop it,” Reeve said, taking the box from her hands, peering inside, then placing it back on the shelf.
“If they didn’t, then some of them would find themselves powerful enough to become mages—assuming, of course, that they could keep from burning out in the process. ”
Viri could only gawk at him as he nudged her around the corner into the next row.
“Are you—Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Her voice croaked with disbelief.
“I never Imparted,” Reeve confirmed. “And because of that, I found out I had enough ellixen to technically make me a mage.” At the look on her face, he added, “I was eleven when I left with Brae. When my fourteenth birthday arrived, I was already known to the Nox and hunters as the Reaper Priest’s right hand.
I couldn’t exactly stroll to the nearest obelisk and yield my ellixen, not without chancing capture. ”
“But the risk—”
“Was limited,” Reeve said with a dismissive wave.
“I had a teacher of sorts, someone who taught me how to control my ellixen, which protected me from burnout.” Despite his easy words, there was a darkness to his tone as he spoke of his teacher, a bitterness Viri couldn’t ask about because she was too distracted by the impossibility of everything he was claiming.
“The knowledge you’re speaking of doesn’t exist. If it did—”
“More people would defy the Impartation laws?” Reeve finished for her, brows raised. “Funny you should say that, given that your own best friend never went through with the ceremony.”
Viri froze in the act of reaching for a new box. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Wynter,” Reeve said. “She never Imparted—and like me, she ended up with the power level of a mage.” Seeing Viri’s shock, he chuckled. “Come now, Little Shadow, you’re smarter than that. How do you think she practices alchemy without using ellixen?”
“I know she uses bits of it in her more potent experiments.” Viri’s mind screamed that he was wrong, wrong, wrong. “But they don’t require much—just what she kept after she Imparted.”
Reeve cocked his head to the side. “Did she tell you that?”
Viri was about to say yes, but then she realized Wynter had never claimed anything of the sort. Viri had just assumed she was accessing the small amount that remained after she’d sacrificed the rest to the obelisks.
“I would know if Wyn never Imparted,” Viri said, wishing she sounded more confident. “And I’d definitely know if she was a mage. We tell each other everything.”
Reeve made a humming noise. “Like you told her about your brother being the Reaper Priest, you mean?”
Viri winced, but said, “I went to her ceremony, Reeve. I was there.”
He shrugged as he searched through another box.
“Ask her yourself the next time you see her. I don’t think she uses her ellixen for anything other than alchemy, but I’m guessing that’s because she doesn’t know how—which makes her no less a mage, just an untrained one.
She’s lucky that whoever left her that magic laboratory explained how to avoid burnout, even if they didn’t share anything else. ”
“Her dad left her the lab,” Viri said, “but he didn’t explain how to—”
She broke off as she remembered the letter Wynter’s mysterious father had sent—the one that had arrived on the morning of her Impartation, mere minutes before they’d left for the ceremony.
Viri had only seen one page, thinking that was the extent of it.
But…if there had been more…if it had included instructions…
“Everyone has secrets,” Wynter had said in the undercity tunnel just last night. “I know that better than anyone.”
Viri cursed and closed her eyes as she thought of her too-curious-for-her-own-good best friend.
If Wynter had known how to avoid the danger of burnout, then it wasn’t a stretch to believe she might have caved to the temptation of faking her Impartation to practice magic, even if it meant breaking the law.
Hell, especially if it meant breaking the law, given that she already did that every single day.
Groaning loudly, Viri said, “Her mother will die if she ever finds out the truth.”
A dark laugh left Reeve. “If only it were that easy.”
Viri’s eyes shot back open to narrow at him. “That’s my guardian you’re talking about.”
“I’m well aware,” Reeve said, his focus still on the shelves—as Viri’s should be. “Elders forbid anyone says anything against the great Magistratus.”
“What’s your problem with her?” Viri demanded. “Everyone loves Sarielle.”
Reeve snorted. “No one is loved by everyone. It’s a statistical impossibility.
” He closed a box harder than he needed to, crumpling the edges.
“And my grievances with the Magistratus are none of your concern, but let’s just say she hasn’t always been there for all of her beloved citizens, no matter what she might like you to think. ”
“You’re a reaper, Reeve,” Viri returned hotly. “She was a hunter before she became the Magistratus—it’s in her nature to despise you and your kind.” That was long ago, before Wynter was born. But still…“Can you blame her for drawing the line at helping murderers?”
“Maybe not, but I can blame her for—” Reeve stopped suddenly, his body tensing as he spun in the narrow aisle toward the entrance to the storeroom. It wasn’t visible from where they stood, but it might as well have been for how intensely he was focusing in that direction.
“What—”
With lightning-fast reflexes, Reeve pressed his hand over Viri’s mouth, muffling her question. Not a second later, a click sounded and the door to the storeroom opened, followed by heavy footsteps echoing unevenly throughout the space—clack-clunk…clack-clunk.
The blood drained from Viri’s face as she realized they were about to be discovered.
Not only had they failed to find the map and talisman, but they would be thrown into the Underlock for the effort, leaving Braedan free to find the Guardian and carry out the Aurora sacrifice. It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t—
Clack-clunk…clack-clunk.
The footsteps were coming closer, but something about the uneven gait niggled at Viri’s memory.
When recollection hit her, she shoved Reeve’s hand away and carefully peeked past him around the corner of the row where they were standing.
All she could see was a shadow of the person slowly hobbling their way, but their outline was enough to confirm their identity, allowing Viri to form a quick, desperate plan.
Facing Reeve again, she blurted, “Kiss me.”
For the first time since she’d known him—now or in the past—he gaped at her and stammered out, “Excuse me?”
There wasn’t time for her to explain, and she didn’t waste the few seconds they had by asking again. Instead, she fisted her hands in the material of his shirt and yanked him close, rising up on her tiptoes as she drew him down to her.
“Viri—what—”
She silenced him by slamming her lips into his, her heart pounding as she prayed her plan would work.
But then it began pounding for a different reason.
She’d intended the kiss to be brief, just long enough for them to be caught in their embrace. She’d also intended it to be dispassionate, little more than a closed-mouth peck. What she hadn’t factored in was how slowly the newcomer was hobbling—or just how good Reeve’s lips would feel against hers.
He was like a solid wall, frozen with shock—
Until, suddenly, he wasn’t.
From one second to the next, any control she’d had over the kiss fled as Reeve’s arm banded around her waist to haul her closer, his other hand cupping her cheek and tilting her face to the side, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips.
Her mouth opened in a gasp, and he instantly deepened the kiss, taking it beyond anything she’d intended, anything she’d imagined.
A moan left her against her will, echoed by his own, the sound rumbling in his chest beneath her now-trembling fingers.
There was nothing gentle about his touch—it was fierce and possessive, her legs turning to jelly as his tongue devoured her, giving, taking, demanding, yielding, each stroke fanning the flames simmering within her, making heat pool in her core and spread across her nerve endings like wildfire.
When she moaned again, his arm tightened until there was no space left between them, her hands shifting upward to tangle in his midnight hair, drawing him even closer.
More, she needed more—
“Good gracious!”
Viri jumped backward, hitting the shelf behind her with enough force that an entire box of unbound files tumbled to the ground in a shower of paper.
A quick, stolen glance at Reeve revealed his mussed hair and dazed features—no doubt identical to her own—before she spun on weak legs toward the hunched-over woman standing in the aisle before them.
“Viridia Solace, is that you?” the elderly lady asked, squinting through thick glasses that Viri knew did nothing to improve her vision. “I see that red cloak—don’t try to fool me.”