Chapter 21 #3
“Judge Muriel,” Viri panted, her words both hoarse and breathy, neither of which were feigned. She could barely string a thought together, her body still on fire, but she reclaimed her wits enough to say, “We, uh, thought we were alone.”
“You thought wrong, young lady,” Muriel said sternly, though there was a mischievous twinkle in her nearly blind eyes. “This is the second time I’ve caught you here in a compromising position. One might think you make a habit of it.”
“We were just…um…doing some filing,” Viri said, crouching down and deliberately fumbling for the fallen papers. Or not so deliberately, given her still-trembling fingers.
“Filing?” Muriel raised a bushy white eyebrow, the deep wrinkles in her dark-skinned forehead creasing further with the gesture. “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
Acting or not, Viri couldn’t keep her cheeks from heating as she rose again, papers in hand. She forced herself to sound anxious—which wasn’t difficult—as she begged, “Please don’t tell Sarielle that you found us here. She’d never let me live it down.”
Muriel sniffed loudly, offended. “I may be a judge, but I’m no snitch. And as I told you last time, I was young once, too. I enjoyed plenty of ‘filing’ myself, back in my day. We called it something else then, mind you.”
Elders kill me. Viri wanted the ground to swallow her whole—a feeling that only worsened when Muriel winked in Reeve’s general direction, her unfocused gaze fixed slightly past his ear as she said, “Good seeing you, Soren, dear. Nice to know you’re looking after our girl.”
Reeve made a choking sound, which turned into a muffled oath when Viri stomped on his foot, hard.
“What was that?” Muriel asked, cupping her ear.
“He said he definitely is,” Viri answered for him. The old woman’s sight might be failing her, but she was too familiar with Soren’s voice not to recognize it. The moment Reeve spoke, their ruse would be up.
“Good man,” Muriel said approvingly, then waved the papers in her age-spotted hand. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it and come back later to deal with these. Best finish up soon—the next person who catches you might not be so sympathetic to your lustful yearnings.”
Chuckling to herself, Muriel turned and hobbled away, the clack-clunk…clack-clunk of her limp fading as slowly as it had arrived, every uneven step making Viri’s heart rate speed up all over again as mortification set in.
Only when the sound of the closing door echoed around the room did she finally summon the courage to look at Reeve. His hair was still mussed from her wandering fingers, but his dazed expression was gone, replaced by guarded features, crossed arms, and eyebrows raised in question.
“Judge Muriel,” Viri said quickly, clearing her throat when her voice came out embarrassingly husky. “She was meant to retire a decade ago but keeps refusing to, claiming she’s still as smart as a fox, even if she can barely see more than two feet in front of her these days.”
Reeve’s features cleared with understanding. “That’s why she thought I was Archer.”
“She can see colors and shapes—my red cloak was enough for her to identify me, and your black clothes can easily be mistaken for a Nox uniform, which was all she needed to make an educated guess.”
“Educated, perhaps…but there was also her implication that she’s caught you in here with him before.”
It was a leading statement, but it gave Viri the reprieve she needed, her embarrassment shifting to nostalgic amusement as she explained, “Soren and I were doing some filing for Sarielle a few months ago—actual filing, not the euphemism kind.” She grimaced, realizing she would never be able to hear that word again without thinking of Reeve.
“I tripped over a stack of boxes, and he caught me just as Muriel walked in. With her poor eyesight, all it took was our arms around each other for her to think we were full-on making out.” Clearing her throat again, Viri shared, “That’s what gave me the idea today.
Once I realized she was the one walking toward us, I figured…
” She trailed off, not needing—or wanting—to put words to what they’d done.
A beat of silence passed before Reeve said, “It was a clever plan. But I have one question.” He moved a step closer, making the narrow aisle seem even smaller.
“If Muriel saw your innocent embrace with Archer as the two of you making out, why did you actually make out with me, when you could have just re-created what you did last time by putting your arms around me?”
Viri’s mouth turned dry, every defense eddying from her mind as she realized with painstaking clarity that Reeve was right. They hadn’t needed to actually kiss in order to sell the deception.
She cleared her throat—again—and bluffed her way through an answer.
“Wynter says medicine is improving every day, so I didn’t want to risk that Muriel might have sought a new treatment for her vision.
” Elders, that was pathetic. “Besides,” Viri hurried on, waving a flippant hand, “that was hardly what I would call making out. We did what we had to do, and we’ll never speak of it again, since we obviously both hated it. ”
“Obviously,” Reeve repeated, humor now lacing his tone. “Because I’m a reaper, and you’re a hunter, and the only thing that will ever be between us is hatred.”
Viri nodded stiffly. “Precisely.”
His humor grew, his silver eyes dancing as he moved another step forward, right into her space. He didn’t touch her, but his closeness was enough that she fought the urge to melt into the shelf pressing against her back.
“There’s just one problem,” Reeve purred as he dipped his face toward her, his mouth stopping a mere breath away.
“I didn’t hate it.” Viri stilled at the admission, but he wasn’t done, moving even closer, his lips whispering against hers and prompting a traitorous shiver to travel down her spine.
“You can lie to yourself all you want, Little Shadow, but the next time you ask me to kiss you, we both know it’ll be because you want it as much as I do. ”
Full-body tingles scrambled Viri’s mind, making it nearly impossible for her to scrounge up the self-control needed to keep from leaning forward and pressing her mouth to his again. Instead, she somehow managed to rasp out, “That will never happen.”
A huff of laughter against her lips. “We’ll see.”
His eyes held hers in challenge, a knowing smile curling the edges of his mouth—
But then he suddenly stepped back again, the unexpected loss of him making Viri feel unbalanced enough that she swayed forward before she could get a grip on herself.
“We’re nearly out of time,” Reeve said, straightening his sleeves, all business once more, as if their intimate exchange had never happened.
“We need to speed this search along before we get caught for real.” He glanced around, brow furrowed, then turned back to her with a thoughtful look.
“The magic you feel—your heightened sensitivity—how strong is it?”
Viri was still reeling, struggling to catch up—and to catch her breath—after what had just occurred between them, both physically and verbally, but she gave herself a mental shake and answered, “I have nothing to compare it to, but I know it’s not normal.”
“Is it specific only to wards?”
“No, it’s any ellixen, but wards affect me the most.”
Reeve’s thoughtful look deepened, even as he said, somewhat oddly, “That makes sense.” His face cleared as he focused on her again.
“I have an idea. If the map and the talisman are still inside the warded chest and they’re somewhere in this room, you should be able to feel them out and guide us straight to them. ”
“I can’t feel anything,” Viri objected.
“That’s because I haven’t told you how yet,” Reeve said. “Just close your eyes and trust me.”
“I don’t trust—”
“You do. Now shut up and close your eyes.”
Viri’s gaze slitted. “Don’t tell me to shut up.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t trust me when you just had your tongue in my mouth.”
Face instantly searing, Viri hissed, “I thought we agreed not to speak of that again.”
“We agreed to no such thing,” Reeve said. “Now close your eyes and concentrate, unless you want the Magistratus to find us—which could happen any second, given how long we’ve been in here.”
Viri wanted to argue more, if only on principle, but Reeve was right about them running out of time. Shooting him an annoyed look, she slammed her eyes shut and said, with clear skepticism, “What now?”
His next words were entirely unexpected.
“Remember when we were kids, how you, me, and Brae would go out to the surface on clear, warm days and dip our feet in the shallows of Lake Mirtis?”
Viri’s stomach clenched. “Reeve, what—”
“Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” she said tightly, her eyes still closed. “What does that have to do with—”
“In the springtime, there were those flowers that grew along the shore—the purple ones with the yellow centers.” He spoke over her.
“You were obsessed with them, picking bunches at a time and forcing Brae and me to wear crowns and necklaces and bracelets that left us covered in sticky sap that dried like snot on our clothes.”
A bittersweet smile tugged at Viri’s lips. “Mage blossoms. I still love them.”
“I want you to think of those, picturing them in your mind,” Reeve instructed, his voice quieting.
“Think of how they close up at night, their petals drawing in to shield themselves from the elements. Now think about your sensitivity to magic, how you keep it reined in to protect yourself from what it makes you feel. Can you see the similarities?”
Viri swallowed and nodded. She didn’t actively stifle it—mostly because she didn’t know how—but she did shove it down and ignore it as much as she could when she was around magical objects or in ellixen-saturated areas, like warded rooms and elevators.
“Good,” Reeve said. “Now think of the mage blossoms again, but this time, picture them at sunrise when they unfurl petal by petal, opening up to greet the day. That’s what I want you to do—I want you to imagine yourself unfurling like a mage blossom under the first rays of sunlight, expanding your senses outward, letting go of any fear you have and just feeling the space around you.
Don’t try to focus on anything in particular, just see if something calls to you. ”
His voice was so lulling, so hypnotic, that Viri followed his instructions without thinking, releasing whatever instinctive leash she kept on her heightened sensitivity, allowing it to flood outward unrestrained, like a river breaking through an embankment.
A startled breath left her at the freeing sensation, before anxiety took hold from how powerful, how uncontrollable it felt.
But she didn’t wrestle it back in just yet, searching, searching, until she felt it: the prickle of an ellixen ward nearby, faint but unmistakable.
Her eyes shot open. “The chest,” she gasped, smothering her flooded awareness until it was safely behind the embankment once more. “It’s two rows over, on the left.”
A proud smile stretched across Reeve’s lips. “I knew you could do it.”
Feeling embarrassed for no logical reason, Viri didn’t reply, just rushed over to where she was certain the chest was waiting, finding it where she’d said, hidden halfway up the shelf.
The bloodline magic warding the ancient wood prompted another tingle of ellixen that intensified when she pulled it closer, but then it eased again, almost as if it recognized her.
Sure enough, the moment her finger pressed against the lock, it opened effortlessly, revealing two items inside: a familiar-looking onyx ring and a blank piece of parchment that came to life at Viri’s touch, lines bleeding outward from the center to form a map showing the entirety of Elverdine Isle—with a dot labeled “Nevarnost Tower” right there in the upper left-hand corner.
“We found it,” Viri breathed, turning to Reeve, unable to keep the wide, disbelieving grin from her face.
“Told you it was real,” he said smugly, tapping a line that tracked out of Aravell—a line that moved before her very eyes but always began south of the city, where the necropolis bled into the Mistwood. Reeve tapped that spot, too. “There’s our starting point.”
Viri’s insides somersaulted at what they had to do next—venture through the deadly forest to reach the Guardian before her brother did—but she stomped down her trepidation and tucked the map into her cloak, watching as Reeve grabbed the ring and held it out to her.
“One blackmist talisman, as promised,” he said.
Seeing it in his open palm made her realize why it was familiar: because it was identical to the one he wore on his middle finger, right down to the silver runes etched into it.
Viri’s eyes narrowed as they bounced back and forth between the two black rings.
Before she could demand an explanation, Reeve said, “There was a set of talismans left by the ancient mages, remember? Emphasis on set.” He wiggled his middle finger, almost tauntingly.
“I told you Braedan had likely located one of the others—let’s just say my confidence wasn’t unfounded and leave it at that. ”
Viri’s gaze slitted further at the knowledge that Reeve had been wearing his own blackmist talisman all along, which meant he’d probably been with Braedan when the two of them had procured their rings.
“How—Where—”
“No time for questions,” Reeve said, sliding the second ring onto her finger. “There. Now you’ll be protected from the mist, too.”
“But—”
“Ticktock, we’re on the clock,” he interrupted in a singsong voice. “You can interrogate me later.”
Viri ground her teeth together to keep from arguing, telling herself she could ask how and where—and why—he got his ring once they were safely away from the Summit.
“Whatever,” she grumbled, striding forward and leading him out of the storeroom. “Let’s just get out of here.”
But they barely made it two steps into Sarielle’s office before Viri came to a stumbling halt.
Because standing in the middle of the room, dressed in a smart white pantsuit and gaping at them with shocked disbelief—
Was the Magistratus.