TWENTY-SEVEN
Magic testing had been an experience Angela would never forget.
Each day she’d go to Magick School, where a new ancient practitioner in long robes shuffled into the empty classroom clutching various instruments of supposed mystical importance.
At first, it reminded her of all the mediums, tarot readers, and aura cleansers who’d beg Aunt Claudine to run a class in the bookshop after hours. It was good for business, but it bored Angela to tears.
What they did to test out her powers in Paradox was so much weirder.
The first wizard waved his hands over her, as Zarek, and his bulky mass of leather and lethal weapons, leaned against the door watching the proceedings bluntly warned: No touching.
And then there was the warning of heat that rippled through the air anytime someone got close to breaking that rule.
One wizard held up oversized cards and asked, “What do you see?”
“The backs of your cards,” she’d answered flatly. “Sorry, am I meant to say cardboard, or a patten?”
The wizard huffed at her with his bushy gray eyebrows that were so thick they blended into his hair. “Tell me the shapes of the symbols on these cards”
“They’re all rectangle to me.” She shrugged. Zarek snorted to hide his laugh, and the wizard shuffled out the door.
The next one had rung bells around her head until she’d gotten a headache.
And the list went on for two days: smoke, powders, chimes, humming, and a particularly enthusiastic reader who’d tried to divine her aura by staring at her forehead for fifteen unbearably long minutes.
“Move this object,” a mage said, pointing to the sphere made of some crystal-like stone.
She picked it up with her hands. “What stone is this?”
His sighs of disappointment were barely louder than the snores from the other elderly wizard waiting his turn to test her.
While she fiddled with the medallion at her neck, waiting for the next magical wonder to begin his test, Zarek sat by the door, chair tilted back on two legs, radiating the energy of a man stuck at a particularly dull council meeting. But he’d insisted she get tested to know what she could do.
Which was…
Nothing.
Angela couldn’t predict the future, tell time by shadows, move things with her mind, or summon a spark to light a candle. Even the testers had all agreed she held no magick, and that she was just an ordinary woman who’d survived a Black Cloak attack.
Angela was so exceedingly ordinary that, at the end of the day, she’d been trying to light the fire in her chambers for twenty minutes now.
The fire-starting tools she had to use were two curved sticks, a flat board with a shallow hollow carved into it, and what appeared to be a small nest of dried moss that she couldn’t decide was tinder or decoration for her sparsely furnished chambers.
But she wanted a fire to watch between turning pages of her latest book on magic, as she wasn’t ready to sleep. Because when she slept, the nightmares came.
The silly thing was that she’d watched Tamarr do it a few times now. And it took less than fourteen seconds to light a fire, in between setting down the breakfast tray, fluffing pillows, and bringing in fresh towels.
For Angela, it was now bordering on twenty minutes of spinning a stupid stick on a board.
But she wasn’t giving up or going to annoy anyone for help at this time of night.
When those lucky, lucky people could slide between their sheets and sleep easily, maybe dream, and not wake up with a scream trapped in their throat that made Zarek rush into her room, ready to attack whatever brought on her fear.
Reading was so much better. And she’d scored a stack of books from Magick School to play catch-up.
Determined, Angela crouched on the slate floor in her storm-plum gown, with her hair pushed behind her ears.
She pressed the curved stick into the hollow of the board and spun it between her palms, the way she’d seen in a documentary once by some bushcraft specialist, or more likely an episode of Survivor when she’d scrolled through channels late at night.
But this weird gadget was becoming her biggest challenge yet.
Because nothing happened—very much like her magick testing.
But this, starting a fire, she was not going to fail. Right? All she had to do was spin the stick like a spindle on the small wooden plank that already had the groove. It was so simple.
Determined, she pushed up her sleeves, adjusted her grip, and rubbed the spindle for the tip to spin and spark and do what it was supposed to do.
But it did nothing.
So she tried faster.
Only the stick slipped, the board flipped, and the little moss nest launched off the hearthstone and landed directly on top of her head.
Angela slowly reached up and removed it.
“The technique,” said that rich, deep male voice from the doorway, “is in the downward pressure, not the speed.”
She peered at him over her shoulder.
Zarek was still in his armor, leaning against the open doorframe between their chambers, arms and ankles crossed in a relaxed pose that clearly shouted he’d been there a while.
What’s worse, those teal eyes were glistening with amusement while trying hard not to react.
“Why is there no flint…” Her eyes moved to the scored staves carved into the walls, the slate floor, they were even scratched into the back walls of the fireplace to disappear inside the soot-stained chimney.
The same wards she’d been walking past for days without really reading them, because they had sigils and runes and patterns on almost everything, like the sleeves on her dress, and the blackened ones that covered Zarek’s armor.
“Oh. There are no matches or flint in your wing, are there?” Because of what he was.
“No.”
“And you’ve been standing there how long?”
He shrugged. “You seemed to be doing well.”
“I had moss on my head.” She sniffed, trying to muster some sort of dignity, while dumping the moss nest back on the hearthstone. “I was about to apply more downward pressure.”
“Of course.”
She stood, shaking out the hem of her gown. “You watched the whole thing, didn’t you.”
His lips curved. “Long enough to see the moss become a new hat.”
Angela pressed her lips together, then looked at the ceiling, then back at him. Until the laugh spluttered free, and her snort at trying to stop it only made it worse.
But then his warm, low laugh made it seem okay.
It lasted only a moment before that stern expression reassembled itself into the composure of a captain, though his stunning eyes were brighter than they’d been a second ago.
“In my defense, every fire I’ve ever started involved a lighter or a gas knob.”
“Hmph.”
She tilted her head, watching him cross the room with that unhurried strength in his stride.
He crouched beside the hearth, reset the board and the tinder, and positioned the curved stick with strong and sure hands. She couldn’t help but notice those powerful hands, without their gloves.
“Wait,” Angela said.
He glanced at her sideways.
“You could just—” She snapped her fingers. “Couldn’t you?”
He looked back at the unlit fire. “Yes.”
“You’re made of fire.”
“I’m aware of what my magick can do.”
“But you’re down here. On a stone floor. Holding a stick.” She looked at the stick as the smile she was trying to suppress grew. “Is this—are you doing this on purpose?”
“I prefer to do some things by hand.” His tone had that flatness she was learning was not coldness. “When I can.”
Angela opened her mouth. Closed it. The obvious joke was right there, but she let it hang in the air for exactly one beat. “I won’t say it.”
“Good.”
“I thought about it.”
“I know.”
“It was a very good one.”
“I don’t doubt it. But I have yet to understand your otherworld humor.”
“Right, I’m an alien, now. Graduated from prisoner, have I?”
“You are neither of those things. Now watch and learn.”
She pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and watched him work. And him. There was so much of him that, honestly, he was the only thing worth watching.
In seconds, he spun the stick. The moss caught with a thread of smoke first. He blew at it to create a curl of amber flame that he transferred to the firewood to let it catch. She expected him to stand then, to step back to the doorway, keeping that composed distance he wore like a second armor.
Surprisingly, he didn’t.
Instead, he settled back on one heel, his forearm resting on his bent knee, and watched the fire find its form.
The flickering firelight did wondrous things to his face at that angle: the line of his jaw and the slope of his cheekbones, along with the way the amber flames moved in his eyes, she couldn’t look away.
“I hate fire,” he said softly.
“Sorry?” Tucking her gown close, she crouched down to listen.
“I always have.” His gaze remained on the dancing flames. But the stance and tone weren’t bitter, giving an honest glimpse of the man beneath the armor.
“I came to respect it. Knowing it can destroy everything if you lose focus for even a second.” His jaw shifted, but his gaze remained on the flame. “But there are times I don’t want to summon it and feel it move through me. I’d rather just…” He stopped.
“Do it with your hands,” she finished for him.
“Yes.”
The fire crackled as she stole another peek at his profile in the firelight. She felt a shift in her chest that she hadn’t felt before. But was that his emotion? Or hers?
The man made of fire, choosing to use wooden sticks and crouch by a hearthstone, was more powerful than if he’d clicked his fingers to light it.
She then understood that this was his small token of attempting to be normal.
“For what it’s worth, you’re much better at it than me.”
There were moments when he’d look at her when she wasn’t looking at him. She could feel his gaze, but then he’d turn away whenever she raised her eyes to meet his.
Only this time, he let the full weight of those sea-glass eyes lock with hers.
“You would have gotten there.”
“It’s been twenty minutes, Zarek.”
“Hmph.” But it was a warm sound as the corner of his mouth moved, but she caught it—now she knew what to watch for—it was small, like a secret smile just for her.
“Sleep,” he said after a moment. “The readers come again at first light.”
“Sleep would be nice.” She closed her heavy lids. “I’m sorry for waking you with my…” She licked her lips, his eyes tracking the movement.
“Nightmares?”
She nodded.
“Still don’t remember them?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry I’m disturbing your sleep.”
“Don’t be. I said I’d protect you, and if I could destroy the demon that invades your sleep, I would.”
The last time she’d slept a night free from nightmares was when she’d held his hand when he’d been injured. But she wasn’t going to ask because when she’d done that, he’d left her, only to bring her to this realm.
So, distance was good.
She gripped her medallion and stepped back, neatly boxing away her pesky emotions, not even bothering to dissect whether they were his or hers.
Zarek abruptly rose; the leather armor slightly creaked, the buckles clinked, and with heavy boots he crossed back to the doorway between their chambers. “At least try to get some sleep.”
The door closed whisper-quiet, but the room felt empty without him.
Angela slid into the nearby chair and watched the flames dance, as if trying to read him. The man hated the very thing he was made of, yet still showed patience to coax it to life rather than summon it. And that secret smile he gave her. Well…
Careful.
After all, she wasn’t here by choice.