Chapter 34
“MAGDA!” DAMION SHOOK HER. “Can you hear me?”
She groaned, blinking through the ghosts of bluish mist haunting her vision and clouding her mind.
Where was she? What had happened—?
She bolted upright. Damion jerked back.
“Kaelan?” she asked.
“Here,” he said from behind her.
She twisted, rising with Damion’s help. Hero perched on Kaelan’s shoulder, munching on a hunk of bread.
They were back on the hillside overlooking Eris’s compound. The burning belly of the sun lolled against the treetops.
Her head continued to swirl, as though she’d had too much to drink. Damion’s grip tightened on her arm, keeping her steady.
“The Prince tells me you gave up everything we had,” Damion grumbled.
“I carried you up here,” Kaelan said to her. “You fell unconscious.”
She touched her head, trying to stop the spinning. “And?”
“And you’re a fool,” Damion said. “We have nothing. And for what? He looks just the same.”
“Do you?” she asked Kaelan.
He closed his eyes. After a moment, his body rippled, as if he were a reflection cast on crystal clear water. When the undulation ceased, he had changed.
Her heart tightened and, though she meant to step back, she stepped sideways into Damion, who caught her supportively.
“Oh . . . shit,” Damion breathed.
Kaelan’s eyes opened again, but they weren’t green.
They were black, though they remained the same shape.
His hair had lightened from gold to platinum and grown long, braided back from his temples.
The cheekbones were the same, but the lips were different—the Cupid’s bow replaced by a fuller set, the nose straighter and more pointed, the brow lower, the jaw squarer.
And since he was in Endreas’s coat, he looked all the more the part.
Hero was the only sign of the truth. The rat sat on Kaelan’s shoulder, nibbling his bread, dropping crumbs on the coat, and apparently undisturbed by the transformation.
“I don’t believe it,” Damion said. “That’s incredible.”
“Change back,” Magda said through the tight clench of her throat.
After a long moment, the ripple returned. When it resolved, he was Kaelan again.
“I take it back,” Damion said to her. “You’re not a fool. We can use this.” He turned to Kaelan. “Does it hurt?”
Kaelan shook his head.
“Does it make you tired?”
Kaelan sighed. “Not as much as traveling the Shadow Realms, or healing.”
“Amazing,” Damion said. “Think of the possibilities.”
She fought the urge to drop back to the ground. Whatever Eris had done to Kaelan may not have been draining him, but it had sapped her.
“There won’t be any possibilities if we don’t leave here now,” she said. “How is Honey?”
“Strangely tolerable. She’s not prancing about anymore,” Damion said. “She’s more alert. Her wounds are healing.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here. Damion, you’re with—”
“Honey,” Kaelan finished, swooping in and hooking Magda’s waist. “I’ll fly back with Magda and Gur.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t think that’s—” But when she opened her eyes, Damion was already tromping back up the hill to where they’d left Anqa and Honey.
Kaelan guided her through the grasses behind Damion.
“The magic did something to me—” she started.
“You and me both.”
Nothing of his emotions came through his touch. She didn’t know if she was simply too tired or if something else was hindering their connection—Eris’s magic?
“Why did you do it, Magda?”
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I mean—”
“I feel the same,” he said, “but different. It’s hard to explain. But I told you not to—”
“And I told you,” she cut in, “you’ll be safer this way. That’s more important than the money, besides . . . there are other ways to find cash.”
They crested the hill. Honey hung by Anqa, wearing a dreamy, far-off expression.
Gur stretched his front legs and his wings, yawning.
“About what happened,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry about that,” she murmured. “I should’ve guessed—”
“No, I’m sorry. You warned me not to take my eyes off of Eris. It was my fault.”
“I should’ve given you better warning,” she said.
The sudden memory of his touch sent a pulse of aching urgency through her. She drew back from him, though her legs wobbled without his support. Hero finished his bread and scrambled down from Kaelan, up onto Gur’s head.
Kaelan closed the distance between them, hands on her hips. Her eyes threatened to close as though she’d been drugged.
“The thing is Magda . . . I wanted to,” he said in a barely audible voice.
“Of course you did,” she said wearily. “It’s only natural. It’s our instinct. That’s why Eris chose that temptation.” She let out a heavy breath. “Did Eris drug me or something?”
“Eris said that witnesses to the spells sometimes are . . . incidentally affected, but it will wear off.”
“Oh.” She rubbed her eyes. “Well, the fog won’t hinder us from leaving. All we have to do is fly towards the sun. But we need to leave before its light is gone.”
Gur sauntered up next to them. With Kaelan’s help, she mounted. He slid up behind her, arm around her waist, face turned towards her cheek. “About what I said at Eris’s . . .”
She peeled her eyes open, straining to keep from settling back against him.
“It was just Eris’s insidious magic,” she said, losing her battle and resting her shoulders against his chest. Her forehead cradled against his neck, his sweet warm and smoky musk lulling her. “We all know you love Honey.”
“About that—”
Gur galloped into flight, Anqa already up in the air. Her eyes drifted shut as Gur gained height and then settled into his flying rhythm.
“Let’s just forget it, all right?” she said.
His fingers dug into her side. Another wave of esurient heat flowed through her as if defying her suggestion that they forget. But whether it was her heat or his, she couldn’t tell and didn’t dwell, because she was sinking away into the dreamless depths of sleep.
Sunlight flooded across her face, rousing her. A chilly breeze sent a shiver down her neck and she burrowed under the blanket. A soft susurration nearby called her back to sleep, until a crack, followed by a thud and a groan, brought her back to herself.
She pushed the blanket—no, Endreas’s coat—away, blinking against the slicing gold beams of dawn cresting over the grass-covered berm. Her skin broke out in goose bumps as the cool air wrapped around her. Hero stirred from under the coat and darted off into the grasses.
“Up,” Damion barked, backing away, lifting his sticks. “Again.”
Kaelan pushed himself off the ground, holding two sticks of his own, and took guard.
In a shallow hole at the bottom of the dune, a fire ebbed, hissing as it licked through blackened curls of grasses, biting at a large log of driftwood.
On the other side of the fire pit, Honey lay on her side, eyes open, face covered in scabbed slashes, staring into the fire.
Damion stuck out his leg and delivered a blow to his chest, knocking Kaelan onto the ground again.
“This is hopeless,” Kaelan said as Damion reached down to help him up.
“Practice every day,” Damion said. “Fighting is as much habit as skill. You are training your body, like a dog. You hear the whistle and you react, no thinking. When you think, you slow down. Your opponent will not be thinking. Train every day for the next year, and you will be better. For two years, and you might even be good.”
Kaelan grinned. “Good enough to beat you?”
“No,” Damion said, stepping back. “That will never happen.”
He and Kaelan chuckled.
“We will repeat . . .” Damion noticed Magda watching and lowered his makeshift wasters. “Oh, you’re finally awake.”
Magda ground the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Where are we?”
Damion pointed to the west with his sticks. “Spire that way.” He pointed towards the sunrise. “Water that way.”
“I’m cursing the day your mother took pity on your father and invited him into her bed,” she said, pushing up to her feet.
Kaelan’s gaze made the stiffness in her neck worse.
“What?” she asked. But before he could answer, she said, “You still look like you.”
“Yes,” Damion said, leaning lazily upon one of the sticks. “Have you decided what your new appearance should be?”
Kaelan dug one of his own wasters into the sand. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, now is the time,” she said, wiping the sand from her arm and the back of her pants. “And I have an idea.”
“Of course you do,” Damion said.
She stepped forward, catching sight of Honey again. “Is she—?”
“I can hear you,” the nymph said in a strangely melancholy voice.
“Good . . . I guess,” Magda said, frowning.
Honey certainly wasn’t the ebullient nymph she had been before they’d flown to the island. But Magda would worry about it later. First, she had to deal with Kaelan.
“You need to look like a Prince and you’ll need a convincing backstory to explain where you’ve come from.”
“You do seem to have a bit of a propensity for finding lost Princes, Mistress,” Damion remarked, flinging some sand over at Kaelan with the end of his stick. Kaelan swiped some back.
Magda ground her teeth. “Are you two done?”
They both straightened up, suppressing grins.
“Go on, Mistress,” Damion said, waving one of his sticks at her.
She marched over and grabbed it from him, breaking it in two.
“Someone woke up in a bad mood,” he said as she pitched the sticks away. “Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”
Actually, early mornings always left her grumpy, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
“Your aunt Flor, does she still live at the meadow by the gulch?” Magda asked him.
He lifted a shoulder. “Last I heard, but what do you want from that mad old lady? She has no pull in the family anymore. Ever since . . .” His eyes widened. “Oh.”
“That’s right,” she said, backing up and giving Kaelan a once over. “He’d be about the right age, wouldn’t he?”
“He’s a few years too young.” Damion cocked his head at Kaelan, swinging his stick up onto his shoulder.
Kaelan looked from her to Damion and back again. “What are you two talking about?”