Chapter 15
Melodie had been left behind.And it was partly her own fault.
It had felt like she was in some kind of muddled nightmare as they’d approached the forest, and then the wind had changed, and she got a second wind, or at least, became more aware of her surroundings.
When she reached the tree line that had swallowed up the rest of the team earlier, she slowed the horse to a walk and let the cool green gloom of the forest soothe the headache she suddenly realized she’d had for hours as she took stock.
She slid out of the saddle and listened for the others, and when she heard nothing, she looked at the forest floor, and began following the hoof prints she found here and there.
The rest of the group had been going fast, and where the ground was damp, the horses’ hooves were clearly visible.
She felt a little frisson of relief at the sight of them, and with the relief came a spike of anger. If she had held them up, they would have to accept some of the blame for leaving her so far behind.
It was actually wonderful to be out of the saddle, stretching her legs in a gentle walk. The breeze lifted her hair off her face and she breathed in the spicy scent of pine. When she remembered she needed to be watching for hoof prints, she forced herself to look down and concentrate, and found there were none.
She had lost the path.
She stopped, closing her eyes again to listen carefully.
The leaves above her head rustled, and she could hear a bird calling the same two notes over and over, to her left. Behind her, something small scurried over dead leaves.
With a shiver of branches, the wind changed direction again, and as she opened her eyes, darkness seemed to fall all at once. She’d seen the hill rising above the forest as she’d approached, so it made sense that the sun had slipped behind it, and thrown the trees into shadow.
It was later than she’d thought. Surely the others would have realized by now that she was not behind them.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noticed tiny sparkles of light drifting all around her, dancing on the breeze likes sparks from a fire.
She frowned at the sight of them, trying to work out what they were.
The sun was gone, so this wasn’t light on dust.
She held out her hand and two sparkles landed on her palm.
Magic.
She ran a fingertip over the tiny lights, and was enveloped in confusion.
She gasped as the ring on her finger suddenly burned her, and she flicked the sparks away. She leaned against her horse until she felt less disoriented. The ring still itched, but it no longer hurt her.
A trap.
This was a trap, set to confuse.
She wondered where it originated, and then watched as a sparkle rode the air currents toward her, and landed on her sleeve. She hadn’t seen the sparkles before it got dark—the light through the trees had made it too difficult—but given the feeling of disorientation she’d felt when they’d touched her skin, she wondered what their effect was if they were breathed in.
Not good, was her guess.
She untied her pack and found the handkerchief with protection embroidered into it. It might not be made for her, but it would work to keep the sparkles out if she tied it over her mouth and nose. She pulled on some gloves.
Feeling less nervous, she walked forward, watching the sparkles and trying to discern a direction. They seemed to be floating from east to west, using the wind, and she took the next path eastward, until she heard the faint tinkle of a stream.
Her horse snorted, and she stroked its neck. “I know. I’m thirsty, too.”
She found the stream and filled her water bottle, letting her horse drink.
The sparkles were more obvious here, where the trees drew denser around the water source, and the shadows were darker.
There were also more of them in the air—they looked like clouds of midges—and she left the horse to graze and jumped the narrow stream, heading toward their source.
She wondered how affected the others had been by the magic, and whether the man they were after had already captured them.
She’d gotten lost. Maybe they had, too.
She pushed her way through two trees whose trunks crossed above her head, and found a small, open space, not even big enough to call a clearing, with an open box on the ground.
There were leaves and debris around it, piled up on all sides as if they weren’t able to fall into the box itself, and the tiny lights spiraled up from within like sparks from a fire, swirling in the breeze and dancing away in the darkness.
She circled the box, trying to find a way to look inside without standing directly over it. She was sure if sparkles landed in her eyes, she would forget why she was even here.
She crouched, waddling awkwardly closer and feeling the strain of muscles too long in the saddle.
The lid was almost hidden by leaves and twigs, and she reached out gingerly, got her fingers under the top of it, and flicked it with a hard, upward jerk.
It lifted, stopped halfway to closing, and then flipped back.
She chewed the inside of her cheek while she considered her next move.
The sparkles were still dancing away, flying westward, and she lay down on the east side and wriggled even closer. When she was almost close enough for her nose to touch the side, she began to blow gently, and the sparkles, instead of first rising up before being carried away, caught the breeze immediately.
She peered over the edge to look inside, and saw a glowing crystal. She backed away, keeping low to the ground, and found a rock.
While she was working her way back to the box, she heard someone blundering through the trees, and then heard them call her name.
Theo.
He was walking directly into the stream of sparkles, and the fact that she could hear him at all told her how disoriented he was—she had noticed last night when he was on guard duty just how quietly he could move.
She ignored his approach—the quicker she dealt with this, the better it would be for them both—and finally managed to reach the box.
She drew up slightly to give herself some height, blowing steadily again, but as if it felt her intent, the sparkles whisked upward and blew straight into her face. She could feel them as tiny, hot pricks of magic, and she fell back.
Theo emerged from between the trees, leaning against one of the trunks, and blinking at her in confusion.
“How are you at throwing accurately?” she asked him, and the words were hard to get out of her mouth.
“Pretty good,” he said, after a moment’s thought.
“Come round to my side then,” she said.
He blundered through the sparkles as if he couldn’t see them, and his foot caught the pile of leaves and debris on one side of the box and scattered them in an explosion of dust.
He must have breathed some in, because he started to cough, wheezing by the time he reached her.
“Been looking for you,” he said. He crouched beside her and ran a hand over her hair in a strange, intimate caress. “Been worried.”
She tried to remember something about him, about why she should be surprised by his touch, then let her head flop back to rest in his palm. “We have to throw a rock into that box.”
“All right.” He took the rock she handed him and stared at the box for a long moment. Then he threw, and it whipped through the air, reached the box and then seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier. It landed to the side and then rolled away.
She had forgotten that the leaves couldn’t land in there. Obviously a rock couldn’t, either.
She would have to crawl back and smash it herself.
Since Theo had thrown the rock, even more sparkles had risen up, and they blew toward them.
She felt lightheaded, and when her vision cleared a little she realized they were lying in each other’s arms, in the crook of a tree root.
The sparkles were less now, whisked away by a stiffening breeze, and she squinted a little at the box, content to lie in Theo’s embrace.
“I like it here,” he said.
She nuzzled the skin of his neck through the handkerchief that was still covering her mouth and nose, and sighed. She wanted to move the handkerchief away, feel his skin against her lips, but remembered she should keep her mouth covered. She tried to remember why. “I like it here, too, but I have to close the box. Or break what’s inside it.”
“I can help you.” He ran a hand down her arm, pulling her a little closer.
She closed her eyes, and slowly found herself less lethargic.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” she asked.
He patted his pockets absently, and then brought one out with a flourish.
It was bigger than her own, and she struggled up, pulling it over her head and then knotting two corners just below her eyes.
He was more confused than she was, but that’s because she still wore the mouth covering, and she could see the sparkles. She was aware of what was happening to her. And confused as he was, he was willing to help her, and listen to her.
As long as she understood what to do, they could get out of this.
“Pull me back if I fall,” she told him, and then she got on her hands and knees and crawled to where the rock had landed.
She moved back to him, and handed it over.
“Can you hit the side of the box?” If it couldn’t go in, it could hopefully knock the box over. “The side where you kicked the leaves away?”
Theo pushed up on an elbow, lifted the rock, and spun it like he was skipping stones on a lake.
It hit the box with a crack, and it flipped over.
The sparkles winked out, trapped beneath the overturned box.
She smiled and snuggled down in his arms. The air was clear now, and she pulled the handkerchief off her head and the one around her mouth down around her neck. Kissed his cheek.
“What was that for?” he murmured.
“For your great aim.”
Neither of them spoke for long minutes, and she gave a sigh and sat up. “That was so strange.”
He was watching her with eyes that were clear now, rather than dreamy. “Magic?” he asked.
“A confusion trap. It’s still going, inside that box, so we’ll have to find a way to stop it.” She looped her arms around her knees, in no hurry to stand, and looked at the box a little more.
“You got caught in it, too?” he asked.
“It was hard to see it until the sun went behind the hill, because the magic was tiny dust motes, riding the wind. I only noticed the sparkle of them when the light was gone.”
“Dust motes?” he asked.
“They worked by touching skin, or being breathed in.” She shuddered at the thought of how much she must have breathed in before she realized. “I followed them here, and found the source. It’s a crystal inside that box.”
“You tried to smash it?” He frowned, as if remembering her asking him to throw the rock into the box.
“Yes. But there was some magical barrier around it. And it came right at us when it realized we were trying to destroy it.”
She saw some sparkles edging out from the bottom of the box. Forced herself to stand. “Cover your mouth and nose,” she said, tossing him back his handkerchief and raising her own back over her mouth and nose.
She scooped up the rock again and crouched down beside the box. A moment later, Theo was beside her, thigh and shoulder touching, his lower face covered. With a deep breath, she flicked the box away and smashed the rock down.
She heard a crack.
She smashed the rock down again, and this time when she looked, she thought the glow was dimmer. When she lifted the rock and brought it down a third time, the light winked out.
The sparkles that had landed in thick layers on her gloves still shone, and she carefully reached out to grab the box and wiped them off into it.
The rest of the sparkles were black specks of soot, but there was at least a handful of active magic dust left.
She untied the handkerchief around her neck and laid it out, tipping the sparkles into the middle and then tying the four corners into a knot.
“Turnabout is fair play,” she said, as she caught Theo’s interested gaze. “We can use it on Marchant, if we get the chance.”
Theo rose to his feet and reached down to help her up. But the look in his eye was less focused again, and she guessed the sparkles that had swirled up right at the end had found their mark.
When they were standing side by side, far closer than was polite, his gaze fixed to hers. “I don’t remember much of the afternoon.”
“Me, either. The wind was blowing in our faces. We were breathing this in.” She raised the kerchief and gave it a little shake.
He shuddered. “I kept meaning to slow down and wait for you, but I kept forgetting.”
She acknowledged that with a nod. “Where are the others?”
He had to really think about it, spinning around as if to orientate himself. Finally he pointed upward. “On the hill above. Waiting for us.” He shook himself, lifting his shoulders as if to shrug off the confusion completely.
“Let’s go up the hill then.” She didn’t know why, but she held out her hand to him, and he took it immediately. She ducked beneath the crossed tree trunks and led the way back to her horse.
She could feel his hand get firmer in hers, less pliable, and eventually he tugged her to a stop, his grip tightening. “Where are we?”
She turned to face him. “We’re in the forest.”
He tilted his head. “It worries me that I can’t remember.”
“It’ll come back to you. There was a magical trap.” She held up the handkerchief. “What’s left of it is in here.”
“Magic trap.” He repeated the words slowly. Then sucked in a breath. “We left you behind. I even thought how stupid that was, when we knew there could be traps. And then we left you behind.”
He seemed so upset about it, she soothed him with a hand down his arm. “I think you did it because of the magic sparkles. They were blowing westward, and they probably reached us before we even got to the forest.”
“Did he know we were coming?” Theo suddenly looked more focused, more alert, and his hand went to his sword.
“Given the debris around the box, I think he set this trap a long time ago. It was dependent on wind direction, and my guess is that he wants most people who arrive in Warven to be slightly befuddled. And those who take the quicker path through the forest to be more than just a little befuddled.” There was some benefit to him, or he wouldn’t do it, but she struggled to imagine how confusing everyone who came to Warven made sense. Maybe he liked them slightly disengaged, because it lowered inhibitions, and people might be more forthcoming about what they had with them, and why they were on the road.
She blushed. It had certainly lowered her inhibitions.
Theo tilted his head, looking at her, and he released his sword. “Never again, Melodie. I will have you in sight the rest of our journey.”
He blinked suddenly, as if he had just remembered something. “Did I hold you? When I found you in the clearing?”
She blushed again. “We held each other,” she said.
He gave a slow nod, as if it was all coming back to him. “I know why I did it,” he said. “Why did you?”
She hesitated. “It felt good,” she said, and then, from behind her, she heard her horse whinny, and she turned toward it in relief, jumping over the little stream.
“I think this is the same stream where we’re camped above.” Theo jumped after her and looked up the hill. He shook his head as if clearing it. “I feel like I’m waking up from a dream,” he said. “Do I remember swirling embers and throwing a rock?”
“Yes,” she said. “We smashed it in the end. But it fought us. That’s why we lay down for a while, in a sort of dream. It was trying to stop us destroying it.”
“I remember.” He glanced at her, and suddenly grinned. “You are all pink-cheeked.”
She blushed even more. Shook her head, but as she reached for her horse, he gently grabbed her shoulder, forced her to face him.
“I’m sorry I left you behind.”
She made herself look in his eyes. “It wasn’t you, it was the magic.”
“It might have partly been the magic, but I was very focused on getting to Warven, and I should have been more careful with you.” He glanced at the little sack of magic she held. “After all, this is the second time you’ve saved me.”
“That’s why you brought me along.” She liked saying it.
“Yes. That is why I brought you along. This is just a very nice benefit.”
Before she could ask him what was a very nice benefit, he pulled her even closer and kissed her cheek.
“What was that for?” she whispered, just as he had asked her when she had kissed his.
“For your great magic detecting abilities.” He kissed her other cheek, in the Cervantes way, and then gently brushed his lips over her mouth.
She had been cloistered away, blocked from socializing, and given too much work. But she had seen the Cervantes and Kassian travelers as well as their military. They were respectful but confident with the people they were attracted to and had a healthy respect for boundaries.
Theo had the same feel about him. A deep sense of self, of his value.
She envied him.
She felt her cheeks heat until she wondered they didn’t light the air around them.
“What is it?” he asked her, not letting go, but easing back and loosening his hold, so she could pull away if she wanted to.
She did not.
She forced her gaze upward. “Nothing.”
“Good. Any time you want to stop, just say.” He kissed her again, and then she was pushed forward, as her horse butted her back with its forehead.
Theo caught her, swinging her to the side and holding her around her shoulders and waist.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed.
He held her as if she was light as air.
If he had dropped her at that moment, it would have been fitting, because she felt as if she fell.
Instead, he lifted her easily back on her feet. “I think your horse wants its dinner.”
She turned away. “So do I.”
He took the reins from her and ran a large, calloused hand down her back. “I haven’t looked after you very well. But I’ll make it up to you.”
She hoped he couldn’t see the flush on her cheeks as she strode ahead, because even cloistered, her mind had gone places when he said that.
She was looking forward to how he intended to fulfill his promise.