Five
Calypso
Azulin’s sword glowed in the darkness. I twisted and strained to keep an eye on him as the pooka carried me back toward the wall we had entered through. The flame above my head dimmed as the magic in the air grew denser. The sensation of a coming storm tingled across my skin, and the vine tattoo winding up my left arm warmed and pulsed, causing my magic to hum in my veins.
“What did he do to you?” the pooka asked as he turned around so we could both watch Azulin.
“Nothing. Oh, you mean to my foot?”
“No.” He snorted. “I meant the clear connection between the two of you. It wasn’t there when I first met you, but now it’s as though your magic is entwined somehow.”
I fisted my left hand, closing my fingers over the vine crossing my palm. “I don’t know.” It was the truth.
Sitting straighter, I wrapped the tattered sleeve around my arm, further hiding the strange tattoo-like marking. I didn’t understand what it meant, but I trusted Azulin enough to take his warning about the pooka seriously.
Azulin yelled something in a language I didn’t understand. His sword flared brightly, casting light on a great creature rearing up from the middle of the deep end of the room. A great maw opened from the midst of a writhing mess of tentacles, displaying row upon row of glinting razor teeth.
The pooka yelped and danced backward.
I dug my fingers into his mane and squeezed his sides with my calves to keep myself upright. Pain lanced up my right leg, making my head swim, but I held on, craning my neck to see Azulin’s form outlined against the fierce glow of his sword.
Time appeared to slow. The creature’s tentacles moved sluggishly. It lashed out, missing Azulin by a ridiculously large distance. It roared in frustration.
The air thickened even further with the electrical sensation of gathering magic. Every hair on my body tingled in anticipation of the release of a spell. Yet, the magic continued to build. My jaw ached, my ears buzzed, and my skin crawled. My injured leg throbbed painfully. The creature or Azulin or both of them were gathering magic.
Then, as suddenly as time had slowed, it sped up. Azulin let out another shout. This time, a glowing circle of sparks surrounded him in light and what appeared like fire. Then suddenly he was gone, and all the light in the space disappeared with him.
I blinked in the sudden darkness, the afterglow of the brightness still creating phantom images in my vision.
The pooka stilled.
A great deal of splashing and thrashing came from the direction we had last seen Azulin. My stomach twisted. What if he died? Fae could die, right?
“Pooka?” I asked softly, almost afraid to voice my fears. “What happens if he dies?”
“I don’t wish to find out.”
The splashing stilled. We waited with bated breath as the lapping sounds slowed. The pain in my leg intensified, and I tried to convince myself that wasn’t an indication of Azulin’s demise. Would his magic continue to work on my injury after he was gone?
Then with a great heaving splash, something emerged from the depths. Both the pooka and I jumped. In the complete darkness, we could only guess the sound’s origin, but it didn’t sound as messy as I would expect from a tentacled creature.
Abruptly the flame that had gone out reappeared above us, revealing a drenched Azulin grimly regarding the two of us. “It is dead. Its offspring will discover the corpse soon and pursue us. We need to cross to the exit now.”
The pooka danced in place. “Do we need to swim?”
“No.” Azulin indicated that we should follow him. “Keep directly behind me. The way is narrow, but we should be able to get across without her needing to get off. Then I can deal with that bite, and we can rest before the moon gains strength again.”
He sounded so weary. For that matter, I felt a bit exhausted myself. Laying down along the pooka’s back, I closed my eyes.
“No sleeping.” I opened my eyes to find Azulin’s face inches from mine.
“But isn’t sleep good for healing?”
“Not when your body is pumped full of nathair poison.” He narrowed his gaze. “Fight it. I am deathly serious. Don’t sleep.” He nudged my shoulder. “Sit up.”
I groaned attempting to sit up, only to find my arms unwilling to obey my commands. “I can’t.”
“Try.”
I tried again but ended up flopping down on the pooka’s back once more.
“Pooka, move.” Despite his calm tone, Azulin’s voice was laced with forceful persuasion. “She is fading faster than I estimated. I need a dry place to work.”
The pooka increased his pace. As he trotted, splashing along, Azulin matched his pace and grabbed my hand. Magic flowed through me, forcing my head up and my eyes open. With his free hand, Azulin caught my leg above the enchanted bandage. The warm sensation of his magic prickled along my skin, sinking beneath the surface.
“More vines,” I said. Or at least I attempted to say, but my tongue grew thick and uncooperative. The words came out slurred.
“Stop.” Azulin didn’t wait for the pooka to comply before lifting me off his back. Or perhaps, my head never stopped moving. Either way, a wave of stomach-turning vertigo made me close my eyes as I was swung down to lie flat on my back on the cold, hard ground.
Azulin’s warm hands moved confidently over my injured leg.
“How can I help?” the pooka asked. I sensed him hovering over me.
“Keep her awake, warm, and breathing if you can. She’s going into shock.”
“Wish I still had the cloak,” I tried to say, but my teeth were chattering as shakes gripped my body.
“It wouldn’t do much good,” Azulin replied. “This is going to hurt.”
Pain sliced up my leg from toes to knee. I hissed through my teeth, trying not to cry out. Just as the pain seemed tolerable, it intensified as something was attempting to rip my veins from my body. I screamed.
The pooka protested, the sound very like a horse’s snort, but Azulin’s hands on my skin and the steady pull of his magic never wavered.
“Brace yourself,” Azulin cautioned. “I have to filter the poison out or you will die. The corruption spread farther than I had anticipated, so this is going to hurt.”
His hands tightened around my already aching leg as magic coursed through my veins. The searing pain intensified to the point stars erupted across my vision before, abruptly, everything turned black.
∞∞∞
Azulin
Calypso’s body went limp.
With my magic coursing through her, searching out the last remnants of the viper’s poison, I dared not pause to check her vitals. Her blood still circulated, so that meant her heart was yet beating.
“Check her breathing,” I ordered the pooka.
He bent over her in his human form, leaning far too close to her mouth for my comfort. I resisted the urge to snap at him. Mercifully, he didn’t linger.
“She breathes.”
I released some of my pent-up air.
“How much longer?” the pooka asked.
“Almost done.” The corruption hadn’t spread beyond her blood. There was tissue damage where the snake had initially bitten her. I had already done what I could with that. The bandage would draw out any lingering venom in the wound and promote healing, but that would take time. My magic only actively combated the magic-based venom that had been integrating itself into her body. I prayed that I had filtered it out before it caused any permanent damage. Only time would reveal if I had succeeded. Slowly, I began withdrawing my magic.
“Did you get it all?” the pooka demanded the moment I lifted my hands from Calypso’s leg.
Feeling bereft at the lack of connection between our magic, I suppressed the sudden urge to touch her again. Instead, I collapsed next to her on the hard ground. The pooka crouched on Calypso’s other side.
“I eliminated all the poison I could find.” My stomach twisted painfully as my body fought the venom I had filtered out of her body and into mine. “Only time will tell if I found it all.”
The pooka glared at me. “What did you do to her?”
I grimaced at the bitter taste that blossomed on my tongue. I knew from experience the taste wouldn’t dissipate for an hour or so. “I healed her?”
“No, I meant what did you do to her magic? When I met the two of you, you were not connected. Her magic was confused, and yours was chaotic. But now…”
I groaned. “I forgot pookas see magic. What do you see now?”
“So, you bound her to you on purpose. Does she know it is unbreakable?” He glared at me.
My gaze snapped to his. “What do you mean unbreakable?”
“You are magically compatible,” he pointed out.
“I figured that out. But that doesn’t make a temporary magical connection permanent.”
The pooka snorted. “Her repressed magic mixed with your chaotic magic and a burgeoning mating bond. Surely the king of the Seelies must’ve had some magic theory training at some point.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I did, but that was a century or so ago, and I’ve had other things on my mind.” Like managing this annoying curse, my father’s diminishing mental faculties, my brother’s political maneuvering, and the Unseelie king’s power grabbing. Not to mention the continuing investigation into who had betrayed me by giving the Unseelie king my true name.
“So, she doesn’t know?”
I shook my head. “How intertwined is the connection?”
The pooka tilted his head to the side in a very equine movement. “The connection is new and tentative, but it has already affected both of your magics, which I suspect will entangle it beyond recovery. Do you know of any fae and shifter mating in the past?”
“No.” I turned to study Calypso’s features. “She isn’t a typical shifter.”
“I am not surprised. Her magic was scrambled. I suspect she has never shifted.”
“Is it still scrambled?”
“Not anymore. Your magic opened hers up completely. She could probably shift easily if she attempted it. What kind of shifter is she?”
“I am not sure. If the creature is small, it might be worth attempting when she wakes. Her ankle will be very painful for a while, and I suspect the labyrinth is going to force us onward as soon as the moon rises again.”
The pooka eyed me. “What about your magic? It appears to have straightened out significantly. Could you portal us out of here?”
I shook my head. “It is improving, but I don’t trust it yet.” A transportation attempt could go horribly wrong so easily. There was a possibility my magic would become unstable, opening a portal into a wall, a furnace, a snowstorm, or worse, a volcano. All of them would hurt me and the pooka, possibly even kill us eventually, but they guaranteed instantaneous death for Calypso.
I rubbed my face. Exhaustion was beginning to cloud my mind. “I fear there are only two ways out of this mess. We can wait out this round of the curse, or I can attempt strengthening the magic entanglement to the point I have all my faculties back under my full control.”
“Deepening the magic entwining might bind the two of you together forever,” the pooka warned. “She needs to understand what’s at stake before you do that.”
I nodded. “And if we don’t deepen the connection, she might die. She needs to know how such a bond will possibly affect her.”
“How long do we have?”
I eyed the pooka. “Two more nights unless the Unseelie king has altered the curse in other ways than just changing the location and tests.” Resting my folded arms on my knees, I leaned my forehead against them briefly before resting his chin on them. “We should sleep while we have a chance.”
The pooka scanned the barren space. The bit of tunnel possessed the same walls and floors and hidden ceiling that Calypso and I had been seeing since first being trapped. His gaze fell back on me. “You’re still wet. You should probably do something about it.”
I reached for the familiar drying spell that I didn’t need a trigger item to initialize. Within a minute, I was dry and so was Calypso. I lifted my head to ask the pooka if he wished me to dry him as well, but stopped when I spotted him standing in horse form a few feet away. He was asleep.
Rising silently to my feet, I leaned down and picked up Calypso. I moved her closer to the center of the passage just in case the corridor started shrinking like it had previously. Then I set a basic protection alert spell to trigger the moment it sensed a major shift in magic. Stationing myself on the opposite side of her from the pooka, I settled with my back to her and closed my eyes.
Not long afterward, I woke to Calypso’s surprised gasp of pain and a sudden flash of magic.
“Merow!” A feline yowl of surprise erupted from behind me.
I rolled over in time to see a beautiful silvery gray cat take a step and then fall, very ungracefully, onto her side.
“Callie?” I asked, delighted at the sight of her. She was small enough to carry easily.
Calypso twisted around on the ground before awkwardly arching her back so she could study me without moving her injured back paw. Cat-Calypso had the loveliest silver-gray eyes I had ever seen on a cat. Not that I had ever spent a great deal of time noticing cats before—well, except the sithcat that terrorized my household. Wide with terror and a significant measure of pain, her remarkable eyes glowed slightly in the reflected light of the flame above her head.
“Merow?”
“She’s a cat,” the pooka declared abruptly.
Startling at the sudden voice, Calypso’s back arched, her tail puffed, and her ears pinned back into her thick fur so hard they almost disappeared. With a hiss at the pooka, who was still in his horse form, she crab-walked back toward me.
Instinctively, I reached for her.
“Good to know some animal self-preservation instincts are instilled in shifters despite their mostly human tendencies.” The pooka transformed back into a man, watching Calypso with interest.
Pulling Calypso into my arms, I isolated her back paw. Drawing the injured paw away so that it wouldn’t bump anything and hurt worse, I set to soothing her, smoothing down the ruffled fur along her back. To my surprise, she immediately started purring. It probably startled Calypso too because the noise immediately halted.
“You should try to transform back,” the pooka told her. “The more you practice, the smoother the transformations will become.”
Calypso closed her eyes and then suddenly my arms were filled with rumpled, human woman. Not that I minded. She was a delightful shape and weight.
She squeaked and immediately attempted to move off my lap, elbowing my chest in the process. Her mad scramble ended with a harsh yelp of pain when she tried to use her injured foot. She finally stilled, huddled on the floor between us. Her luxuriously chaotic hair cascaded down her back as she hunched over her injured foot.