SIX
As the night settled, Amelia walked the boundary of the campsite, slotting crystals into the remaining lamps.
Somara had joined her, gushing praise about her brave display.
While she appreciated the gratitude, Amelia wasn’t certain of her worthiness for it. She had a horrible feeling that whatever Amelia and Silas triggered in the pair of blades had caused whatever magical disturbance had just occurred.
She felt even worse when Frank shook her hand in thanks and told her that the party owed her and Silas their lives.
Amelia slunk back to her tent without meeting anyone’s eye, wondering on the fate of Hank, who hadn’t been as lucky as the rest of them.
There was also the matter of what on earth had happened to her at midnight. She seemed to have teleported halfway across the camp, and if the shock in Silas’ voice was any indication, he had experienced something similar.
Amelia halted at the entrance to her tent, taking in the destruction.
Sharp holes pierced the canvas of the tents flooring, and in some places, deep slices tore them apart.
Her belongings were strewn about. Books lay splayed open, pages everywhere.
Her bedroll lay against the side wall, disturbed by the gust of wind that had nearly killed them both.
She’d needed to replace the arcane crystal of her lamp, the shattered shards now useless.
Worse still, was that each of her Waystone chips had cracked into pieces, making them just as useless as the crystals.
She no longer had means of travelling between cities when she exited the Rift, meaning she would have to travel by horse to the nearest outpost that might sell them to get back home.
She took in a deep, unsteady breath, trying to erase the images of Rift Crawlers that kept being thrust into her mind.
“Wild night, yeah?”
Amelia started at the sound of the voice from behind but didn’t need to turn to know who stood there.
She let out a slow breath. “Yeah. Wild day all around.”
Amelia turned then, her eyes falling to the bloody strip torn into his leg. Silas held onto the side of her tent, favouring the leg that had not been injured.
She met his eyes, and he looked back at her with a muted expression, though in the way he cast his gaze over her, Amelia had the sense he was checking she was okay.
Wild day, indeed.
“Your leg—”
“I’ll live,” he interrupted with a quirk of lips. “Halpert applied some healing balm, and the wound is already coming together.” He nodded to her. “What about yours?”
“Just a scratch,” she said dismissively. The wound to her calf had already clotted, nothing compared to Silas’. She caught his eye. “What on earth happened today? What have we done, Finley? What happened to us at midnight…did we actually spontaneously teleport? How do we—”
“Woah,” Silas said, eyes widening as he raised a hand at her in a bid to stop her, “slow down.”
He sighed quietly and then limped slowly into the tent. He fetched her bedroll, depositing it back to the centre of the floor and then he sat down neatly beside it. Even injured, he had more grace than she could ever hope for. He patted the bedroll and looked to her expectantly.
She grumbled slightly at the invitation to sit in her own tent, on her own bedroll, but Amelia walked over and took a seat beside him.
This close, her eyes snagged on the wound cutting through his right eyebrow, and she marvelled with disquiet about all they had been through in such a short space of time.
“What happened today? On the whole, beats me,” Silas said contemplatively. “Your other question…yes, we did spontaneously teleport to one another. Because of that, I have a theory on what the cuts could mean.”
His eyes fell to her hands, and it was only then that she realised she was rubbing the thin slice on her palm with the thumb of her other hand. Amelia stilled her fidgeting and placed them both into her lap.
“What’s your theory, then?”
“Have you read much on the history of pair bonding?”
She blinked stupidly at him, the words sinking into her fatigued brain, one sluggish word at a time. “Pair…bonding?”
Silas gave her a nod. “I’ve learnt some things in dribs and drabs from my mother and father, who studied the phenomenon, which has happened sporadically throughout history to two individuals, bonded by magic.”
He shifted his hand, laying it palm upwards across his knee. Amelia’s eyes landed on the matching cut in his skin.
Bonded.
By magic.
Pair bonded.
To Silas bloody Finley.
Amelia looked back up to him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He laughed softly then, a small puff of air as though he had seen that reaction coming.
Silas looked away from her and shook his head, the barely-there smile still on his face.
“Unfortunately not,” he said in a flat tone.
“The way we were brought to each other at midnight leads me to believe that we’ve been magically bonded and forced us to come together at the crux of power. ”
“Is there a way to break the bond?”
Silas met her gaze again. “I don’t know, I never spoke much with my parents about it. It wasn’t a topic that interested me or pertained to my research. But if anyone knows, my mother will. I suggest we travel to see her.”
Yet again, Amelia felt flabbergasted by his words. “We? You want me to travel to your home?”
He raised a brow at her. “Unless you’d like to leave it to me to figure this out, though something tells me that’s not in your nature.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I just think perhaps the library in the Lux Spire would have everything we need. We should travel north.”
Silas leaned back with his hands stretched out behind him and let out a deep sigh.
“You would actually want us to scour a library for the potential to find something useful, rather than travel to my ancestral home to ask someone who’s spent years researching the exact topic?
Is your ability to trust so compromised? ”
Something shot across her midriff, a slashing of pain that had her flinching. Amelia stood abruptly and turned away from him, stalking over to her small table. She picked up an upended book on the way and made a show of slowly smoothing out the pages before she responded.
Trust was not something that came easily to her, especially not with someone who has historically proven so untrustworthy over the years.
“I don’t trust you ,” she said unkindly but not untruthfully, keeping her back to him. “The last few days notwithstanding, you have made a great show in the past of making my life difficult at every turn.”
Another deep sigh was heard.
She flipped the book closed and finally turned back to him, leaning back against the table with both hands. Silas watched her with a wary expression on his face.
“Fine,” he relented. “We have an uneasy history, but you give it right back, so don’t pretend it’s one-sided.” Silas made a face at her, daring her to negate him. She didn’t. “But this impacts us both,” he said in a reasoning tone, “so I wouldn’t sabotage this.”
Her tense shoulders deflated just a little. He had made his point, and it was a reasonable one. She thought about her response, but it seemed she took too long to answer him.
He rolled his eyes and looked away again, speaking before she could. “If it really bothers you, I can travel south to see my mother, and you can go north to your precious library. Then we can compare notes on what we each find via Wayglass.”
She stared incredulously. “Are you serious?”
He nodded and shrugged in unison, still not looking at her.
“Finley,” she said slowly as though explaining something to a five-year-old, “you realise that before midnight I was by my tent, and you were by yours.” The tone of her voice brought his gaze back to her, eyes narrowing.
“When midnight struck, we were brought directly halfway to each other, meeting in the centre near the fire.” She saw the comprehension dawning on his face, but she still had to make her final point.
“If I travel north, and you travel south…we’d be pulled halfway across the land, and we’d end up in the middle of the Rift with no lights, no protection. We’d be ripped to shreds.”
“Yes, yes,” he said with a sigh, “a terrible suggestion. Then you’ll have to suck it up and travel south with me.”
She fell quiet again before agreeing. It felt so utterly wrong to be tying herself to someone like Silas.
If it were a few days ago, she would declare herself insane for contemplating the notion.
She supposed there was little choice in the matter.
Amelia was tied to him whether she wanted to be or not. Magic didn’t lie.
“Alright,” Amelia finally said, “we’ll travel to the Shadowlands in the morning. This expedition is over.” She set her face into a hard expression, expecting him to argue with her but he merely nodded in agreement, surprising her yet again.
He needed to stop doing that.
“Agreed. The Rift is too dangerous not only for us, with whatever we’ve unleashed, but for the others. Midnight tonight was a lot more unstable than last night,” Silas said. “I don’t want to be here for the next one.”
Amelia shivered at the thought of being in the Rift when another midnight struck. She wandered over to the corner where her sleeping bag had ended up and fetched it, shaking it out. “We pack up at first light.”
Silas got himself to his feet, wincing slightly as he did and leaning heavily onto his other leg. “If anyone is still awake, I’ll let them know. Though I can’t imagine sleeping after that.”
Amelia just nodded.
He limped over to the tents entrance, before turning back to her once more. His blue eyes tracked over her in the same way they did when he had first entered. When he met her gaze, Silas said in a low voice, “you were really brave tonight.”
Amelia’s lips parted.
Stop surprising me, you jerk .
She shifted awkwardly on her feet. Amelia had long since been incapable of accepting any form of praise, but coming from him was entirely unexpected. The way words stuck in her throat told her it was also unwelcome, purely because she didn’t know how to respond, and it irked her.
“Uh, thanks,” Amelia said before clearing her throat and turning away, hoping he would leave so that he wouldn’t be able to see the warmth staining her cheeks pink.
She shifted a few books around on her table, and when she heard the slight swish of the tent flaps closing, she glanced over her shoulder. A small sigh of relief left her at finding herself alone in the tent once more.
Yet the longer she stood there, the more a slight ache started to throb in her chest that hadn’t been there while Silas sat next to her bedroll.
Her eyes fell to the bundle of his shirt that covered the blade, and unease slid through her, wondering just how much it was about to derail her entire life.