Chapter 22
It took nearly an hour for Chartis’s immobilization spell to wear off, and it was easily one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life.
I was forced to stand there with the hot sun beating down on my head, and the salty ocean breeze stripping the moisture from my lips and skin.
A crab crawled across my feet as it headed for the safety of the water.
Poop from a seabird landed on my hair as it flew past, mocking me with its shrill caw.
Paradise.
As I stood immobile in the sand, my thoughts immediately circled back to Iannis.
What was going on back in Solantha? Had Iannis apprehended Chartis and Yantz?
I wondered what his reaction had been to my disappearance.
He must have questioned Chartis and Yantz about it…
if he’d caught them. And his serapha charm would tell him that I was far away now.
Iannis wasn’t the only one I was worried about.
How were Comenius and Elania holding up under the rebellion?
Were they still safe behind the walls of Comenius’s shop and the barricaded Witches’ End?
And had Com gotten any word from Elnos as to how he and Annia were doing on their rescue mission?
I hadn’t been able to spare much thought for them in the past few days, but now that I was standing here with nothing else to do but think, I realized Comenius should have heard from them by now.
When the spell finally wore off, the first thing I did was strip down and dive into the water.
Yes, it was salt water and didn’t do a damn thing for my parched throat, but I was hot as hell and itching to wash the bird crap off me.
Unfortunately, the water was too warm to be called refreshing, but when I stalked out a few minutes later, the ocean breeze coupled with my soaked skin helped cool me off.
How the fuck did I get here?
I stared out at the gentle waves breaking against the shoreline, contemplating that question. Instinctively, I reached up to touch my serapha charm, and as I did, my fingers brushed against a second charm.
The gulaya.
I looked down to see the gulaya sitting innocuously atop my chest. Damn.
It must have activated in response to the mortal danger I’d been in, then transported me to this place.
On the one hand, that was great, because I was safe from torture and death by Yantz’s silver knife.
But on the other hand, I was in the middle of nowhere, too far away from the battle to be of any use.
I consulted my serapha charm, curious to know just how far Iannis was from me.
Unfortunately, it could only give me a general sense of direction and distance, and it told me that Iannis was much farther away than he’d been when I’d gone searching for him.
Needing to do something other than stand on a deserted beach and ask myself questions I had no answer to, I put my clothes back on, then changed into beast form.
White light engulfed my body as it stretched and changed shape, and a few moments later, I was a black panther standing on the sandy white beach.
My pitch-dark fur did absolutely nothing to keep the heat off my back, so I headed for the trees, seeking shade and water.
The small critters scurrying around in the undergrowth went quiet as I passed, remaining that way for a long time after I left – I might be a new species to this place, wherever it was, but I was still a predator.
I caught glimpses of snakes, weasels, and porcupines down on the ground, and above, orange-and-black primates with shaggy hair and thick, long tails clung to branches and watched me with fear and suspicion.
My nose and ears led me to a spring a good two miles into the dense vegetation, and I drank greedily, then rolled around in the cool water for a bit. Ahhh, bliss. In animal form, my human worries felt much less urgent – as a beast, all I cared about was slaking my immediate needs.
Once I was satisfied, however, I remembered that I needed to figure out where the hell I was.
A quick climb up a tall, long-limbed tree with thick, dark green leaves told me what I needed to know.
Clinging to the trunk, I swiveled my head, taking in the miles and miles of sparkling blue sea that stretched in all directions, broken only by a tiny land mass off in the distance.
I was on a fucking island. And unless I was very much mistaken, there was no sign of civilization here.
Climbing down the tree, I began to explore the forest, wondering if there might not be indigenous people living among them. I needed to get the lay of the land, find out exactly what I was up against. If there were people around, maybe they had some kind of boat or canoe that I could commandeer.
And then what? I scoffed at myself. You don’t know the first thing about sailing, and even if you did, you have no idea where to go.
Yeah, okay. Maybe that was true, but I’d cross that bridge if and when I came to it.
I padded back out to the beach again, still in panther form, and did a walk around the island. My little stroll turned up no boats, canoes, or fishing contraptions of any kind, and the only footprints I came across were my own, when after some two hours, I finally came back to where I started.
Upon re-entering the forest, I immediately forgot all about searching for human life when the appetizing scent of blood hit my nostrils.
Wild boar. I stalked the scent to a small clearing about a mile away, where I found the wounded boar drinking from a stream.
Quills sticking out from its right rear leg told me it had recently lost a tangle with a porcupine, but that wasn’t a deterrent – I simply attacked from the left instead.
The boar squealed when I pounced from the trees, gathering its legs beneath it and trying to make a run for the safety of the undergrowth, but it was in pain, and I was much faster. It didn’t take long to bring it down.
Two hours later, after my impromptu meal and a long nap, I resumed my search, heading deeper and deeper into the forest. Aside from a confrontation with a large snake, I ran across absolutely nothing of interest until the terrain suddenly grew steeper, and the scent of bat droppings thickened the air.
Following the pungent scent, I climbed what I rapidly realized was a hill, probably near the center of the island, and came to a cave hidden in the hillside by dense foliage.
I was deliberating whether or not the cave was worth exploring when the wind shifted, strengthening the scent of the bat poop.
But it also brought just the faintest whiff of magic.
Okay, now I have to go inside, I thought.
Magic was the absolute last thing I expected to encounter on a deserted island.
I crept into the darkness of the cave with caution, going slow so I could give my eyes time to adjust to the darkness.
About thirty yards in, the cave floor dropped off steeply, and my nose and ears told me the bats’ lair was down this way.
But to my left, there was a small tunnel, and as I drew closer to it, the scent of magic grew stronger.
I crept along the narrow shaft for a good hundred yards before it opened up again into a wider space. There was absolutely no light there, so I shifted back into human form, then conjured a ball of fire.
My jaw dropped as I held my impromptu flashlight aloft.
I’d just found somebody’s hidey-hole. There was an ancient-looking wooden desk and a chair in one corner, a small cot with bedding, a carved chest, and a shelf filled with old, leather-bound books.
The air was cool and dry, quite unlike the humid air outside, and surprisingly, there was no dust or bat guano at all.
Excitement filled me, temporarily banishing my worries as I wondered who had lived here on this island, and whether the contents of this strange chamber could help me find a way off it.
Carefully, I started pulling books off the shelf, taking care not to crack their leather bindings further or damage their fragile pages.
Janta would have been proud of me. Unfortunately, most of the books seemed to be advanced magical tomes written in Loranian, but a smaller book filled with cramped writing turned out to be a diary of the mage who’d called this place home.
The yellowed pages told me his name had been Messindor, and that he was a pirate hailing from the far southeast. This cave was one of several hiding places he kept across the world, mostly on islands close to or south of the equator.
Judging by the gaps in entry dates, he only updated the diary when he was in residence here every other year or so.
“Three hundred years,” I muttered, staring at the date of the final entry.
This pirate mage had last entered this cave close to three-hundred years ago.
That, or he’d gotten tired of journaling.
It was unlikely that he was still alive, but perhaps he had grown weary of piracy and retired to a more hospitable isle than this one before meeting his end.
With nothing more of relevance to learn from the diary, I searched the desk drawers.
I found some old coins, a congealed inkwell and a few quills, and a couple of pieces of parchment in one.
Another held several rolled-up maps, which I laid across the table, using the coins as paperweights.
One of the maps was of the Coracciao, a group of tropical islands south of the Northia Continent.
There was a group of dots on the map that were a little way off from the main cluster of islands, closer to the Southia Continent, and a red arrow was pointing to one of the islands, possibly indicating my location.
Okay, so I wasn’t so far from civilization that my location wasn’t on a map. But I was far enough away that most people looking at said map would have a hard time even finding the island I was standing on.
The second map was of the island itself, with exes marked in different spots.
I imagined these were the locations of various caches Messindor had scattered all over the island, in case he couldn’t get back to the main one he had here.
It would help pass the time to track them down.
I kept it on the desk while I rolled the other map up and put it away.
In the last drawer, I found various magical charms and amulets, including yet another gulaya, bigger than the one that had brought me here.
I picked up the star-shaped charm and sniffed it, but could only detect a hint of magic – it was no longer charged.
Oh well. I had no idea where this one would take me even if it did work, and I didn’t have the means to charge it myself.
The wooden chest was possibly the most perplexing thing in the room.
It was beautifully crafted, with a variety of runes carved into the dark wood, but there was no way to open it.
I could see the seam where the lid met the container, but it was impossible to fit even the tiniest sliver of fingernail beneath it, and there was no visible lock.
I considered smashing the chest, but I didn’t want to harm the contents, and besides, it smelled strongly enough of magic that I feared some kind of magical retaliation if I did so.
With nothing else to do, I curled up on the cot and tried to sleep.
The bedding was remarkably well preserved, as was everything else in this room aside from the dried ink.
The scent of magic clinging to the air made me wonder whether the mage had set some sort of preservation spell on this chamber to hold everything in a magical stasis, so that time or the elements could not harm his possessions.
That would be a useful spell, especially for a pirate who had to stash treasure and supplies in all manner of places.
I decided I would ask Iannis to teach it to me, if I saw him again.
When I saw him again, I reminded myself firmly. Iannis would come to rescue me. He had to.
My eyelids closed as sleep found me, but instead of dark, dreamless sleep, the heat assailed me, fire creeping in my veins, phantom caresses sliding across my skin.
Memories of Iannis swirled in my mind, of his hands on my naked skin, his deceptively wicked mouth on my lips, his seductive sandalwood scent invading my space.
His presence forced all thought out of my head, leaving only my desire for him.
“I want you to be mine, and only mine,” Iannis whispered darkly into my ear.
His tongue flicked out to caress my earlobe, and I shuddered as more intense heat lashed me.
But when I reached for him, my hands only met empty air, and I found myself back in the cot, my clothes on the floor and my limbs tangled in a sweaty blanket.
Frustrated, I ripped off the sheet and made my way out of the room and down the tunnel.
Standing at the cave entrance, I allowed the cooler night air to caress my naked skin.
The touch was both a curse and a blessing, as it took the edge off my overheated skin and reminded me of the real, physical touch I desperately craved.
The full moon was finally here, taunting me with its bright, shiny roundness as it hung over the sea.
For whatever reason, the light of the moon increased a shifter’s power; we were stronger and able to shift more quickly during the full moon.
But when a female shifter was in heat, the full moon only amplified her desperate need.
Remember your heritage, Resinah’s voice whispered as the breeze picked up, swirling around me. You are not merely the sum of your parts, Sunaya Baine. Whole, you have the potential to be stronger than both your shifter and mage ancestors.
I sighed in relief as Resinah’s cooling breeze drew the heat out of me, and with it, the fog of lust clouding my mind.
Whole, I thought, looking at the full moon.
I had the capability of being stronger than a mage or a shifter, if I could figure out how to combine my two halves into a whole.
That was something I could try to work on while I was stuck on this lonely island.
I only hoped that Iannis would come to find me, as I’d found him, and that when he arrived, my sanity wouldn’t be splintered into a thousand pieces.