TEN #2
Amelia held up the bar and frowned before she looked at Silas, hands dropping to her sides, feeling oddly fed up. “Why are you being so nice?”
He sent her an amused look. “Sorry?”
She cocked her head. “Nice! You’ve never been nice to me.”
Silas shrugged a shoulder. “I thought we’d come to some sort of truce.”
“In a sort,” Amelia agreed with narrowed eyes, “but I didn’t expect your entire personality to change. It’s vexing and confusing.”
Silas sighed deeply and folded his arms. “You want me to stop being nice?”
“Yes! I mean…no, but—” She broke off, flustered. Amelia had already been thrown by the realisation that she found him attractive, even in some small way. Now he was being kind, leaving her oddly vulnerable and irritated.
He walked closer, his blue eyes focused on her.
Silas stopped in front of Amelia and took the granola bar from her hand.
She sucked in a tiny breath as his fingers brushed against hers, and Amelia wondered if he was going to take her outburst seriously and throw it away before her eyes, all false niceties gone.
He lifted the bar between them and started to peel open the wrapper. “You know,” Silas said softly, “you might consider that over the past nine years of rivalry, that perhaps I was following your lead.”
“My lead?” she breathed, watching his fingers moving between them.
“Mm-hm,” Silas said with a small nod as he handed the open bar back to her.
She took it automatically before tilting her head back to meet his eyes.
“You were so…delightfully combative when we first met,” he said with a quiet laugh.
“Because of who your parents are, no one else seemed to want to stand with you and give it right back.” He shrugged a shoulder and smiled.
“I had no qualms matching your energy. Now, eat.”
He nodded to the food and then he started to step away from her.
She frowned as he retreated. “Are you saying I’ve always been the problem in the way we’ve treated each other, because you were…copying me?”
Silas laughed properly this time, his hands grasping at the reins and placing his foot into the stirrup. He hoisted himself up on top of Ember and turned his horse to face her.
“You weren’t always the problem,” he remarked with a sly grin. “I’m a self-proclaimed asshole. But you certainly made it easy to be one.”
They pushed their horses into the mountain ranges, following a path that climbed steadily in altitude, bringing with it a frigid wind that had Amelia curling in on herself.
Nestled between two jagged peaks, an outpost clung stubbornly to the mountainside, her eyes widening at the way it sagged away as though it would fall into the ravine below at any moment.
It was a series of weather-worn structures built into the cliffside, roofs falling apart and wooden signs swinging lazily in the high-altitude wind.
The sign told Amelia they had arrived at the Wayfarer’s Vault.
Silas had described the outpost as part trading post, part tavern and part general meeting place for traders and travellers moving throughout the Shadowlands. It was the closest outpost to the Rift selling Waystone chips.
They hitched their horses and moved towards the Wayfarer’s Vault. Amelia hesitated at the first icy-looking step, wondering at its sturdiness.
Silas looked back from the top step, smirking at her. “Come on, Winslow. This place has stood for hundreds of years.”
Amelia gave the steps a final questioning look before she stepped up and followed Silas inside.
As the door opened, the thick scent of burning sage hit her.
The walls were lined with glass vials and enchanted trinkets, each twinkling with their own magic.
The merchant, a wizened man with a tangle of silver-streaked hair, sat behind a counter cluttered with magical oddities, but most importantly Waystone chips.
They moved towards the counter, Amelia spying the faded map pinned to the wall, showing jump points for Waystone travel.
Travel by Waystone was expensive, but it had also become increasingly unpredictable over the years with the unravelling magic.
You could be accidentally transported anywhere or lose your belongings which the magic refused to pull along with you.
But Amelia and Silas had both agreed, it was a risk worth taking to reduce their journey that they could not afford to lose.
Silas picked up a Waystone chip, rolling it between his fingers as he examined the thin veins of the glowing rune set into the stone. “How much?”
The merchant peered at him, then at Amelia. “Where you travelling to?”
“Lunarian,” Silas answered.
“Fifty,” the merchant said.
Amelia choked on her surprise. “Fifty? For a sliver of rock?”
Silas scoffed. She scowled at him as he raised a brow at her. “Don’t do your own shopping, do you?”
“Do you mean to say they’re that expensive all the time?”
Silas looked back to the merchant. “Not always, this is a tad inflated.”
The merchant just shrugged. “Mountain ranges can offset Waystone calibrations. Takes a stronger enchantment to compensate. Costs extra.”
Amelia narrowed her eyes. “I’ve spent twenty on Waystone chips. That’s a lot extra. You’ll accept twenty.”
The merchant gave her an assessing look, before saying, “no.”
Amelia turned to Silas. “Go on Mr. Wealthy. Surely you can afford it.”
Silas smirked, slipping a coin purse from his belt and jingling it, clearly laden with money. “I could, but watching you negotiate is far more entertaining.”
“Fine.” She turned back. “Thirty.”
The merchant laughed throatily. “Forty-five.”
Amelia sighed dramatically. “Thirty-five…and I’ll leave you be,” she added, trying for the kind of smile that always seemed to work for Silas.
“That’s worth at least ten,” Silas muttered under his breath.
She elbowed him sharply, and he grunted, rubbing his ribs. The merchant, clearly enjoying the show, leaned forwards. “Forty, and the stone is yours. And I’ll offer a free bit of advice.”
Amelia plucked the purse from Silas’ fingers before he could protest, pulling out coins for the merchant. “What advice is that?”
The merchant’s voice dropped lower, eyes darkening.
“Don’t use the Waystone chips near midnight,” he said.
“There’re stories of people disappearing into nothing, not reappearing again…
just gone . The magic is becoming worse quicker than people realise.
” The merchant then pointed over to the wall near them, and Amelia’s gaze found a series of browned papers, depicting several faces, the word ‘ Missing ’ adorning the tops.
Amelia felt chilled by the haunting stares of the lost.
They moved away, Silas giving her a sidelong look as she stared down at the glowing rune on the purchased chip.
“Scared, Winslow?”
Amelia dropped the stone into her pocket. “Of faulty magic? No. I am afraid of being stuck travelling with you, so the risk is worth it.”
Silas opened the door for her with a half-grin, a blast of cold wind hitting her. She brushed past him to step into the chill.
He fell into pace beside her to descend the steps towards their horses. “We’ll need to be touching each other and both horses if we don’t want to leave anything behind.”
Silas’ breath misted as he chuckled. “You know, for someone who claims to hate my company, you sure seem to find plenty of reasons to get close to me.”
She didn’t dignify that with a response.
Mostly because she had no clever retort to throw back at him.
Amelia had travelled by Waystone many times, mostly to avoid the Rift. While bartering for a chip had been a new experience, her university providing them in the past, she wasn’t afraid of what it would feel like.
It had never been painful like the midnight pull.
She was calm as they readied and stood, Amelia clutching on to Silas’ elbow while they both held onto their respective horses.
“Ready?” he asked, the chip held between his thumb and forefinger.
Amelia nodded.
Silas’ gaze lingered on her before he pressed his thumb firmly into the glowing rune.
The moment he activated it, the magic flared to life with a low hum, the blue veins of the rune glowing. The air shimmered like a heatwave, distorting the edges of the world around her.
Amelia’s breath hitched as the jump took hold. It was not a physical tug like the midnight pull, but a shifting of her very existence, like her body suddenly remembered it was nothing but a collection of fragile cells waiting to be scattered and put back together.
In an instant, the world around them folded.
Colours blurred and inverted, the sky and ground flipped upside down, shifting over themselves like the reflection in a glassy pond.
Her stomach plummeted as space and gravity became meaningless, falling with no sense of direction.
The sound and the bite of wind vanished, replaced by an eerie, pressing silence.
She landed.
The chilly mountainside had vanished, replaced by grassy fields, trees rising into the distance next to a large, sprawling stone city.
She stumbled, hand still clenched around Silas’ elbow, into the centre of the Waystone portal for the City of Lunarian, the runes carved into the stone matching the chip Silas had activated.
Her boots found solid ground that hadn’t been there moments ago.
Silas stepped away from her and adjusted his cloak as if nothing unusual had happened, like he’d simply stepped over a threshold. Both horses shook their heads and stomped uneasily, but they appeared unharmed, all their belongings still strapped to their sides.
Silas brushed at his chest before looking at her. “You did well,” he remarked. “You didn’t even fall this time.”
Amelia glared, recalling the single time that they had travelled by Waystone together, and she had landed in slushy mud, causing her to fall embarrassingly to the ground. That incident was almost five years ago, and Silas had never let her forget it.
She shook her head, tugging on Tempest’s reins, moving her from the centre of the Waystone.
Amelia felt the aftereffects of the jump, a faint buzzing in her bones, a distant echo of the mountains they had left behind like a shadow clinging to the edges of her mind. A ripple of nausea flowed through her.
Shaking it off, Amelia looked over to the city before them, shrouded in a thick mist clinging to the ground. She had never been inside the City of Lunarian before, a place that housed the wealthiest people in the Shadowlands.
The air felt somewhat warmer, the heat of the sun welcome. There was the scent of fresh grass and recent rainfall.
Silas pulled Ember up beside her, following her gaze to the city that he had grown up in.
Amelia shook out her fingers, praying the contents of her stomach stayed put. “That’s a million times less painful than midnight,” she said, “but I still don’t like it.”
Silas laughed softly. “You do get used to it the more you do it. Point being, you managed to stay upright this time.”
She threw him a sharp look. “Careful, Finley, or I’ll aim my vomit to meet your boots.”
Silas smirked and looked away. “Please don’t, they’re expensive leather.
” Then he moved forwards, but not before he flicked something in her direction.
Amelia caught it easily and looked down to the small rock on her palm.
The Waystone chip had dimmed, the magic spent, leaving behind a faint, ever-dimming glow.
All evidence of power that had rewritten the fabric of time and space, gone.
She pocketed the useless chip and tugged on Tempest’s reins, following Silas towards the city ahead.