Chapter 13
Altair
‘You’ll have to hold off on binding yourselves until we know for certain we can hide your new magic from the false leaders.’
What?!
“And when is that? In a day? A week? A month?” I asked, not at all okay with waiting for even a day longer.
“We simply do not know. But once we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll stand watch outside your cabin as you do the ritual and use our magic to shield yours as you gain it,” Willow explained casually.
“Come again?” Silver stuttered.
“We’ll protect their magic from being located,” she explained calmly.
“However romantic that sounds,” Tino began.
“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” I added.
“So, you’d rather they locate us and attack us here? Forcing us to lose mages in the meantime and without a safe location?” Nujik asked, raising a brow. Damn, he did have a point.
“It’s not like we’ll listen or watch,” Tane grumbled from his seat amongst the other mages, likely sensing we thought what they’d planned to be creepy.
“That makes it so much better,” Silver said sarcastically.
“What would you prefer we do instead?” Nujik asked, proving to be willing to compromise without us arguing over it.
“Maybe if we put a silencing ward around your cabin, then the mages outside won’t be able to hear anything,” Silver suggested.
“That could work, as long as you’re not fighting against our ward and it’s only being used to silence, then it shouldn’t be a problem at all,” Willow said, looking pleased that we’d come to a solution.
“Perfect, but you still don’t know when?” I asked, needing them to know how I felt about it, just not ready to go all angry and stomp my feet. I really wanted to, though.
“We don’t, but we can make a deal. Give us two weeks, and if we haven’t figured it out by then, you can bond and we’ll do our best to secure everything before then,” Willow offered.
Two weeks? Damn…
“Okay,” Tino said, and I nodded my agreement. I knew it was better to wait until we knew everyone would be safe, but fuck. I hated waiting. Before we came up here, we’d planned on doing it after lunch.
“What would you have done if they’d done it yesterday?” Xari asked. That had my attention.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” Nujik shrugged. “We hoped the last few days had taken its toll and you needed rest. If you did bond, we’d do our best to protect the area and then search for another location we could all stay at.”
“So, good thing you didn’t!” Willow grinned.
I grimaced; it seemed it would have caused them a lot of trouble if we had done it. It didn’t sit right with me somehow.
“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” Xari said with a warning note to his voice.
Willow sighed. “We had Grethe add to your exhaustion as she healed you, something she uses when she needs the patient to stay still or fall asleep as she works. We figured that would go over better than us telling you not to do something. If you did anything that caused your heart rate to spike too high, you’d feel more tired. ”
“Next time tell us instead of doing something when we’ve trusted you with one of our own,” Wilston said, his tone firm but not hostile.
“We promise,” Willow quickly replied. “We’re sorry.”
I waved it off, not wanting to spend more time discussing the fact I couldn’t claim Tino yet.
“Tell us more about what we’re doing here,” Silver said, effectively turning the conversation back to the questions we needed answered.
“Very well,” Nujik replied pleasantly. “We wanted a place on Sutiner where you could train and build your strength and control before you return to the Realm of Mages. Here you’re given food, shelter, and safety, so you can focus on training and bonding.
We know you work better the stronger your connections to each other are.
So, we encourage you to focus only on that.
We have many mages here that are highly trained in battle, glamour, wards, and other things we believe you didn’t learn as you grew up. ”
“We would all love that,” Xari replied with a charming smile.
“Do you have any other questions before we end the meeting?” Willow asked.
“I have one,” I said, needing to understand this one thing that was still bothering me. “Why didn’t they kill me?”
Tino grabbed my hand even tighter. I got why he hated hearing about how I’d almost died. But we needed to understand the false leaders better.
It was Nujik who answered. “The offer on your head states you must be returned to them alive. They wouldn’t trust the mages word that they’d killed you and once someone is dead, it’s easier to add glamour to their bodies to fake who the dead mage is.”
“It didn’t seem to be a problem before now, though,” Xari said. “We’ve been attacked for months and I doubt they wouldn’t have killed us, if they could.”
“I second that,” Niam said.
“We’re not sure but we believe they didn’t care back then, but now that only one pair is left… They wouldn’t risk trusting you’d died unless they saw and did it themselves,” Willow said with a grimace.
“Oh,” I said. “So, they were going to bring me to the false leaders?”
Nujik nodded. “We know that much for certain. They needed more of their mages to join them before they were strong enough to open the portal. We arrived as the last of them joined, some of us pretending to be on their side.”
“Fuck,” Tino swore. “It was that close of a call?”
They nodded; their expressions grim. “We acted as fast as we could, and luckily, we were successful. But now the false leaders will be much more brutal in their search for you. Which is why you must wait. We simply want you all to be in the best shape before you face the false leaders. They won’t play fair. Remember that.”