Chapter 16 #3
“No. No Allwitch has ever done this. Only the Goddess, and we only know about it from the old stories of the last time she was seen on land. I don’t know what people would believe if they saw you like this.
But there are enough people dissatisfied with Her right now that, if they saw you do it, they might take it as a sign of hope, a possibility there could be another deity. ”
I looked up at the onyx slate of ceiling and took a deep breath. “I take it that’s bad?”
Leland nodded. “The more witches stop believing in Her, the more it dilutes the magic in the Circle of Seven. The Echelons put down every threat to Her.” His gaze turned pained.
“This — in addition to you being my Counterpart — they can’t know about.
I’m not letting you out of here until you look like you again. ”
“Is that why you used so many spells to make the alley nice? To convey you don’t care about helping me? Nope. No blood attachment to the half witch at all. Just a penchant for mood lighting and a couch optimized for cuddling.”
“I’m a Creator. I can’t Create anything without the intention to make things better. That’s how creation magic works. This couch? It’s not for cuddling. It’s a place to sit that isn’t shitty.”
“Okay, Leland.” I didn’t point out we were cuddling, even if he couldn’t feel me. My shoulders slumped as I sank into more of a lounging position. “I’m sorry it’s taking so long. You hate this. Clearly.”
“Yes.” He dropped his head back dramatically to face me, his lips a breath away from where mine should be. “I hate being around you. Particularly when you refuse to do anything to help yourself.”
Only the second half of what he’d said was true.
I took a centering breath to keep my thoughts from running away from me.
I would not read anything into the fact that he’d more or less just told me he enjoyed my company.
Leland, I was realizing, was a flirt. One who took a sick kind of pleasure in sustaining eye contact past the point of politeness, saying he was full, and in the next breath saying something entirely different, something that might lead one’s blood to believe —
No. He wasn’t interested. Neither of us was interested.
That line of thinking lasted all of a millisecond before I said something stupid.
“Is there really no way to speed this up? If holding hands is working, then what if we try — I don’t know — increasing physical contact?” I stopped. Immediate regret. If we increase physical contact? Why? Why did I just ask that?
“Possibly,” Leland said in the measured voice of a doctor who had in mind a long list of sensible solutions before it was time to try the extreme ones.
“But I don’t want you like that. There’s no rush.
We can sit here. And if you still look this way in a few hours, I’ll throw some moonale on you and see what happens.
” His expression softened somewhat. “I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable.
But you’re in withdrawal. Tomorrow you won’t want me like that. So I can’t.”
But otherwise . . . ?
No, Ember. No.
He looked at me so intently, I was grateful for no blood in this form, so he couldn’t see me flushing with warmth.
The truth was I did — most of the time — want him like that.
Magic drove it. I knew that because I hadn’t given a second thought to the way his jeans bunched around his groin before we went to the Circle of Seven.
When his scent was a mere observation, when I hadn’t been so responsive and hyper-aware of him.
“Tomorrow?” I asked, remembering what he’d said.
“The solution I’ve been working on. Magic suppressants. They’re iron cuffs that go around your wrists to block your blood from searching the ether. They’re rare, so it took a minute.”
“Expensive?” I raised my eyebrows. Always giving me things, Leland.
“Not to me.”
“Because you have a rich godfather?”
“Yes, I do, but . . .” Leland laughed bitterly.
“Jaxan’s never given me anything. I build.
I make five hundred gold a house. I used to fight in magicless combat, and people paid a lot to watch me get hit.
I Created an imitation leather and patented it.
I work for the Echelons. Starvos pays me to teach.
So I’ve got about” — his eyes crinkled in thought — “half a million?”
“Gold?”
He nodded, modestly, given the situation. If a gold was five hundred dollars, what Leland had was — two hundred and fifty million? That explained why he gave things away like he couldn’t take them with him when he was dead — it meant nothing to him.
That was the last thing we talked about for a while, until he asked, “What about you? Were you dating someone?”
“Not really.” I shook my head and laughed because there was Gray, but I knew he wouldn’t have used the term dated. “There was someone. Gray Fallsdown. But it wasn’t serious. It couldn’t be, because he was busy a lot. He was a friend, maybe. But . . . he’s the only person I’ve ever liked like that.”
Leland gave me a look.
“What?”
He shook his head. Saying nothing.
“Leland, what?”
He changed the subject to the flask. I told him about the Dark Deal Jaxan asked me to make with him, and Leland’s muscles tensed, then untensed with relief when I said I didn’t.
“He cut the flask open with the Everblade after I wouldn’t say if I preferred to pledge you, Ash, or — ” I swallowed the tightness in my throat. “He said all Aspirants burn from withdrawals and it was time I got used to it.”
Leland’s jaw ticked. And just as he caught me noticing it, a white gift bag from Foxcross’s Aspiring Artifacts materialized on the edge of the armrest.
“Keep holding on to me,” he directed, needing to move his hand out from under mine to retrieve it.
I had no idea what I was supposed to hold. A leg felt too intimate, so I touched the tip of my pointer finger to his rib cage as he picked up the bag and removed a new flask from it.
“From the girl who asked to increase physical contact,” he mused at the barely there contact of my hand. Then he took a long drink, throat bobbing, eyes closed with his head tilted back.
“We get it,” I sighed, tired of watching him look this good drinking. “You got a new flask.”
He pulled it from his mouth with a grin and rolled his head toward me. “You got a new flask. It’s why I was in town. Vyra was unplanned. And what you saw was me, in the nicest way possible, saying goodbye to her.”
“And you said you weren’t nice.”
“I’m not.”
Not a lie. Not a joke. I still didn’t want to believe it.
“You’re really not together?” I asked, if only to hear him say it again.
“No.” He drank from the flask while taking my hand.
“But it’s a story people are interested in, and I don’t mind letting Farrah Prolix believe it.
Everden wants us to be together. They think she’s my Counterpart.
Which I currently like.” He took another drink.
“Because I’d like to keep my real one a secret. ”
Butterflies took over my stomach, pleasant, warm, and fluttering as the vaguely possessive tone of his voice burrowed deep under my skin.
“But,” Leland added, catching me off guard, “even if I’m not in a relationship with Vyra, I still see her. I see other people. I go to a lot of brothels.”
I wanted the dumpster back so I could throw myself in it. The butterflies I’d felt were gone in an instant, leaving something worse twisting in my gut instead.
“That’s . . .” I lowered my gaze, a little shaken, conflicted because my blood didn’t want him with anyone else, even as my mind did. “Great. Good for you. I hope you get the chance to try a mermaid. I hear they’re majestic.”
He gave me a strange look. I didn’t bother explaining.
“What I would like,” he said slowly, “is to get to a place where I can live my life without having you disappear. Magic suppressants aren’t perfect. It’s possible you’ll still burn through them.”
“If I could control it — ”
“I think” — he pressed his lips together — “what might help” — he waited, assessing his words before he said them, watching torch flames cast a warm glow over the red brick building — “is if you find a way to believe I’m not leaving you. And that needs to come from within.”
Perhaps I should’ve questioned why he couldn’t say it in plainer language, so I would believe him. But his eyes were distant, the way they were when he was tired of talking. Hot and cold Leland. He could only say nice things to me for so long before he shut off again.
He opened Forcing the Bond on his lap, and we read.
The pages turned at Leland’s pace, giving me ample time to read them.
A few chapters in, I forgot he was there.
I was too busy learning about the way our magic changed in a bond, how our spell counts — the same, apparently — would double.
His fifty-a-day becoming a hundred spells we’d share.
He’d get access to Blackburn wards too. Bonded, Leland and I could communicate telepathically, constantly, in any realm.
And magical side effects would affect us simultaneously.
If he exerted, I exerted. If a Death Bond killed him, it also killed me.
That’s what would happen if we sealed our Counterpart bond.
A finger stroked my shoulder, and I erupted in shivers.
I glanced up at him, confused by the soft, lingering light in his eyes, so inconsistent with full, not available, and I don’t want you like that.
The part of me that refused to accept we weren’t experiencing the bond the same way considered he’d been slow to turn the pages because . . .
No. I shook the thought away. That wasn’t it.
“Ember.” His voice was gentle. “You’re back.”
I slid a few inches to the side so we weren’t touching. “How long?” I asked. “How long have I been like this?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Can we go?” I asked.