Chapter 14 Vaxan
~Vaxan~
Adrenaline thrummed through me as I stared down at my phone and the many text messages that had come in from Zayn and Evira both.
It would have made better sense to open a group discussion. However, they were clearly worked up, so they hadn’t had the forethought for that, needing to get the details of what had transpired earlier across to me as soon as possible instead.
Vaxan: I will see to him.
My response had been met positively with a great deal of relief on their part.
According to the details they’d shared, the chaotic nature of earlier events outside one of the Vantiqe locations had unfolded less than an hour ago.
They’d expected Winter to come straight to me, but he hadn’t.
I strode to my dresser and hurriedly opened the bottom drawer and took out a black muscle tee. I pulled it on, having been studying shirtless. It was something I did, finding it helped me to reach a more relaxing and open state. Strange, perhaps. A fact, however.
I was about to head out to scent-track Winter—with his magic unstable it would be much harder to track him via his magical signature—but then his sandalwood scent caught my attention.
Down the hall.
I frowned when it didn’t grow stronger.
He was pacing up and down nearby, then. Hesitating.
I waited patiently.
Several moments passed before it finally intensified.
And then an urgent knock sounded on my door.
I unlocked it and threw it open with a spark of my magic.
Winter strode on in, eyes wild, in a true state.
“Vax, I’m… barging in is… I’m sorry, I just—” He shoved his hand through his hair. “I needed… I need your help. And I shouldn’t—I mean—putting it off for this long… fuck, it was stupid. No, it was dangerous and selfish.” He tugged at his soft brown strands. “And now… now people are—”
“I know, Winter. I know what has happened.”
He jolted. “You… what?”
I went to him quickly and grasped his upper arms, holding him to me. “I was informed shortly before your arrival.”
“Evira and Zayn,” he murmured, nodding to himself.
“They were concerned. They are concerned.”
He screwed up his face. “She’s gonna be exposed because of me.”
“She mentioned in her messages that she’d made the decision to do that.”
“I know, but—” He stilled, frowning in thought. “I mean, I know. And I’m glad that it was her decision to make. And that she’s no longer allowing outside pressure to govern who she is, or what and who she wants. But with it being my magical mishap that pushed it along—”
“It was the catalyst. Things were already moving toward this as it was. She was drawing closer to Zayn, even to me recently. You’ve drawn close to me.
Zayn has. You’re seeing a way through with Zayn and wanting to drop the barrier you’ve erected.
It was all coming to a head. Focus on the fact that she’s made the stand, not how it came about.
Because, regardless, a definitive choice was still made.
And now, Winter, we move forward.” I eyed him pointedly.
“And that’s why you’ve come to me, isn’t it? ”
He nodded. “I’m ready. To do this, to delve into the research you compiled. To see to this infuriating glitching.”
“Tonight was the catalyst for you too, you see?”
“Yeah, I do. And I’m sorry, Vax.”
“Sorry?”
“I slowed things down between us because of issues that were mine, that didn’t belong to you, issues that I guess I… projected onto you.”
“You mean you projected Zayn onto me.”
He grimaced. “Yes. And now I’ve left you hanging for days on end after awakening your long-buried sexual… appetite. I apologize.”
I shook my head. “You’ve now just apologized twice to me in the space of seconds for setting a reasonable boundary.
” I winked. “Besides, you didn’t leave me hanging.
After I was set upon that day, you were there for me, we’ve spent time together.
And thank you. I’ve never had anyone be there for me before in my…
weaker moments. They only gather in my strength. ”
“Even your parents.”
“Yes. However, that is what it is. What matters is that there is now also this.”
“Always looking toward what could be, rather than what is, huh?”
“We must. Without that, there would be no progress, only stagnation. Or worse—retreat and regression.”
He beamed out at me.
The intensity skyrocketed, and I had to pull away while I still had the wherewithal to do so.
I cleared my throat and said, “Now, then, let’s attend to your chief purpose for coming here.”
He gave a nod, then grasped my hand firmly. “Yeah. Let’s.”
In the next moment, he enveloped us in a cloud of his teleportation.
I spun around, rapidly cataloguing my surroundings.
I had never been to this venue in person, but I had read about it during my studies as a young boy.
We stood upon one of the heavily misted, snowy mountaintops of Mordrek Mountains.
A rush of amber magic swept over me, and I looked to see I was now clad in a heavy black furry coat over my tee and pants.
“Sorry,” Winter told me, blinking rapidly, as the use of that aspect of his magic had clearly had a negative effect upon him.
“I should’ve thought of the cold and given you time to change first before coming here.
I guess I’m just used to it myself whenever I’ve come here—not feeling the cold, I mean. Because of what I am.”
“Thank you,” I told him, running my hands over the warm coat.
It was soft and absolutely luxurious. “You brought us here because of the fail-safe employed by Ryker Morgan, the Head of the Guardian Movement. Any mammoth expulsions of magic are absorbed by his power and turned into ambient mist, meaning losses of magical control are contained and will not harm the surrounding environment?”
“And this area is full of the expulsion of so much magic from over the years that it dulls anyone’s ability to discern a single magical signature through all the rest.”
“You are referring to it being impossible for Sylas to register a mass expulsion of necromantic power from you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Until we figure this out, bringing him in will only—”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I understand. You do not need to continue to justify it to me.”
“But you think it’s dangerous?”
“I think you have the right to find answers to what is happening within your own body and your own magical energy before having to concern yourself with interference or external factors.” I smiled and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek before stepping back. “Now, then, in service of that…”
I snapped my fingers and materialized the parchment papers that I’d acquired from my research for him, levitating them before me.
Winter drew up close, reaching out. However, he pulled himself up short and looked to me.
He was truly precious. Even in his desperation to determine answers to this magical issue—what he’d termed his glitching—here he was being so polite and careful before taking to examining the parchment.
“Please go ahead, Winter.”
He obliged and began flipping through the pages.
“This is from a grimoire.” He swung his head toward me. “A necromancer’s grimoire, right?”
“Correct.”
“Those couple who took refuge with your people during Morien’s reign of terror.”
“This was their gift to us.”
“Why just one?”
“The other was inexperienced. This belonged to a necromancer who believed he possessed the potential to become the next Sylas Morgrave.”
A great deal of intrigue shone in his eyes. “Did he? Did he have that potential?”
I shook my head. “His arrogance certainly rivaled his, though.”
“My dad isn’t arrogant.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s not arrogance if you can back it up.”
Hmm. That was a dangerous line of thinking. “He taught you from a place of fierce protectiveness, I see. Survival-mode strategy.”
“What does that mean?”
Now wasn’t the time. He was already on edge.
“Nothing. Please continue your examination. Those are pages from the grimoire that I deemed most relevant to your current situation. However, if you believe you need to review the entire thing, I can see to it. It was just more… convenient and less time-consuming for me to retrieve only these select pages for now.”
He eyed me worriedly. “You stole these? From your own kingdom?”
“I replicated them. The original grimoire remains there untouched.”
“I don’t… why didn’t you just ask?”
“I couldn’t allow my presence to be known. Especially not the fact that I was there to obtain closely-guarded necromantic spellwork.”
“Jeez, you took a risk doing that for me—a big risk.”
“I told you I’d help you. When I offered that, the risk was already well known to me. Focus on the information, not the cost. That isn’t yours to bear.”
He stared at me for a few moments, before managing to focus.
Then I watched patiently as he flipped through the pages, reading and absorbing carefully, even flipping back a page or two every now and then, being impressively thorough about it. I certainly enjoyed that about him.
“This is a re-engineered version of Death Sense spellwork,” he murmured to himself.
“Death Sense itself is using the magical signature of death-touched beings—death essence—to track said beings and their every movement over hours or even days. This, though, it’s suggesting there’s a way to do this with whatever external interference is messing with my magic—using the point of contact with my necromantic power to establish an anchoring point to then trace it back. ”
“We believed your father had first developed this, and the necromancer who recorded this spell had observed him performing it, then cited it as his own creation. There is a lot of spellwork that Sylas Morgrave doesn’t record, doesn’t allow to be known, because of the dangers pertaining to advances in Necromancy being known by the wider world. ”