Chapter 24 Izzy
IZZY
I looked at Safir and Zora, they’d always been the connected ones, the most informed. “What do you know?”
“We’re still trying to find out where they’ve taken Myel, but I have all my resources focused on that,” Safir said.
“We’ll find him.” And I silently thanked the tiger shifter for not bringing up the issue of my bond with Myel.
We’d all known it would cause trouble eventually, for both of us, but pondering that now wouldn’t help anything.
“I did manage to find out who Myel will be fighting for the punitive deathmatch,” Zora added. “A troll, condemned for a killing spree in the east, nasty.”
“Will they still go through with that? If they know Myel and I are bonded, won’t they…” I couldn’t say it.
“No,” Vyns said, voice hard. “Saldrea loves to torture people. She’ll draw it out, make it as painful as possible.
If she knows anything about bonds, she’ll know killing him will potentially kill you, and she will do it, but she’ll do it at the deathmatch.
She wants you to suffer for days, then die horribly. ”
Koar nodded slowly, face twitching from a jaw clenched too tight.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” I said sarcastically, but actually it was a relief. I let out a sliver of tension in a heavy sigh. “But that means we have two and a half days to figure out a way to save Myel. I’m open to ideas.”
No one said anything right away and I couldn’t stand the silence, so I kept talking. “My plan had been to work on my ability to enhance others so I could make Myel stronger, tougher, ready for the fight. But—” I looked at Lhorine, “—I can’t do that from a distance, can I?”
She shook her head. “If you were well trained and among the strongest of elves, you could do it from a short distance away, maybe a dozen feet, but no farther.”
I nodded.
“What if… we could get you in to see Myel… in disguise?” Olinara piped up. “I’ve never paid much attention to deathmatches, but I seem to recall hearing something about the shifter having some last hurrah the night before, a special meal and a conjugal visit?”
Of course she remembered the part about sex. That’s my grandmother for you. I’d only known her a few days, but I already knew she put the nymph in nymphomaniac.
Still… if this was true, it wasn’t a bad idea.
Safir nodded. “That is usually the case, yes. The question will be will they allow it in Myel’s instance?”
A grim, mirthless smile spread on Vyns’ face. “Oh… they will. Think about it. Saldrea knows Myel is bonded. The only woman he’d wish to be with is Izzy… so of course she’s going to send some woman up there to taunt him. We need to find out who and stop her, send Izzy in her place.”
“On it,” Zora said. The hobgoblin stood. “Do you need anything else from me?”
I looked to Safir. I did need the man, even if I sometimes hated to admit it. He gave a nearly imperceptible smile as he realized the same thing.
“No,” he said. “Go.”
Zora left and the rest of us got down to planning, though our plan was fairly simple. It had a lot of holes, unknowns.
We needed to find out where they were keeping Myel. Then we needed to find out who they’d send to be with him the night before. In the meantime, I’d work my ass off to learn transmutation magic and elven enhancements so when I went in, I could make Myel into an unstoppable force.
“No, that won’t work,” Vyns grumbled.
We all looked at him.
“Why?” I asked.
“They’d have put a binding collar on him.”
“Fuck!” Safir hissed. “He’s right.”
“Pretend I know nothing about this world,” I said, frustrated. “What’s a binding collar?”
Lhorine answered. “Think of it like a slave collar, which also blocks a person’s magic.”
“Let me guess,” I grumbled. “An elven invention?”
Everyone nodded.
Of course.
“So, even if you get in to see Myel, the collar will keep any magic from working on him,” Olinara finished.
“Unless,” Lhorine inserted, and we all listened. “Elves can break the bindings on those collars too.” She gave me a pointed look.
Fuck, so I had two days to learn not only how to enhance and transmute Myel, but also to learn about bindings.
Yeah, sure, I can do that, I thought sarcastically. It’s not like I’ve only been in this world for a little more than a week.
Yet, I had to… for Myel… and because if he died, I’d soon follow.
Nothing like the fear of death to motivate you.
Time to get to work.
To hopefully lift my spirits and help me feel like I was making progress, we worked on something I was already good at for the rest of the morning.
I’d have to be able to take the shape of the woman going to see Myel with little time to study her, so Olinara ran me through my paces with nymph transformations.
We started with pictures from her vast library of forms. She’d flash them, and I’d mimic them as fast as I could.
Once I got better at that, the others then called out minor adjustments, facial features or details, which I had to alter in an instant.
Finally, Grandma Oli taught me how to lock my form, like she had with Tala, so if anything happened, I wouldn’t change back to myself.
It was more a meditation and metaphysical process than anything else, an inward seeking of permanence.
That took me longer to master, but I forced myself to keep at it, forgoing lunch till it was done.
That meant I did eventually master it, but also that lunch wasn’t until midafternoon.
I ate lunch quickly then was back at it, training with Lhorine.
I didn’t know which I dreaded more, transmutation or bindings.
I’d had one class on transmutation and it had hurt my brain so much I’d ended up snapping at Rook and Myel that night.
That felt like a month ago, but it was only a couple days.
Wow.
Lhorine decided that we should focus on bindings first, for two reasons: it should come more naturally to me as an elf, and because if I couldn’t undo the binding on Myel’s collar, then everything else wouldn’t matter.
But I was distracted. There’d been a lot of talk — mostly from Safir — about breaking my mate bond with Myel and I couldn’t help but think that after I’d mastered this, that option would always be on the table, a looming threat to our relationship.
Finally, as afternoon turned to evening, then the edge of night — not that we could see any of that down here in this underground compound — Lhorine stopped, frustrated, and asked, “What’s wrong? You’re resisting this.”
So I told her.
She cocked her head and sighed. Leading me to a bench at the side of the room, we sat.
“Do love him, the shifter?” she asked.
I shrugged. “How would I know? The bond says I do, but without it…”
She nodded. “Better question: do you want to love him? Do you want this bond?”
I leaned forward, elbows on knees, head in hands and sighed as I considered that. No one had put it like that before. Up till now, I’d assumed the bond would always be there, so I’d accepted that. But if I had a choice…
A smile crept onto my lips slowly as I remembered all the times Myel and I had spent together.
Yes, most of it had been steamy and sexually satisfying, but I’d also found a hell of a lot of comforting serenity in his arms. And even beyond that, he was a good man, strong and dedicated.
Not just dedicated to me, but to his friends and his mission.
It also helped that he was my vision of a beautiful Goth hero.
“I don’t want to lose him,” I whispered. “The bond is… infuriating at times, throwing us together when we may not always want it, but… I do want Myel in my life. I don’t know if I love him, but I know I… I need him.”
“Then what’s the worry?” Lhorine asked. “Once you learn this, you’ll have all the control. If you don’t want to break the bond, you can keep it.”
Yet I couldn’t help but voice my doubts. “What if… I… get angry at Myel though… or the bond? What if I break it without thinking or something like that?”
Lhorine laughed. “If you do that, you’ll be stronger than any elf I’ve ever heard of. Bindings aren’t easy for anyone. Breaking one without thinking is pretty damned hard.”
I grimaced. “You know what I mean. What if I… want to break the bond because I’m in a mood or something?”
Lhorine placed a hand on my back. “All couples have trouble from time to time.” She sighed.
“I’m certainly no expert, despite my many years.
I’ve not had a relationship which lasted more than sixty years.
” She made that sound like a short time, and for an elf, I supposed it was.
“But I’ve never been so angry with someone I considered putting a binding on them.
Something tells me you’re more levelheaded than you think and wouldn’t rush into something so damning. ”
Was I though?
I sighed.
I did have a temper and a rather overinflated sense of justice, but I’d never completely gone off on anyone, at least, not someone I cared about. Saldrea made me want to punch her in the face constantly, but even with her, I’d resisted that urge for a while now.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“Are you ready to do this now?” she asked.
I nodded and got up. “Let’s do this!”
“I have an idea,” Lhorine said. “Something which might help.”
“Whatever it is, I’m game,” I said.
“Good.” Lhorine rose and turned to Koar. “Can you join us?”
The dragon nodded and came over.
Lhorine pointed out the nasty wound on Koar’s cheek. “Saldrea’s work?” she asked.
He nodded.
That made sense.
“It’s not easy to see,” Lhorine said, “but it looks faintly like her house crest. And she put a binding on it so it wouldn’t heal?”
Another nod from Koar.
Wow… that was cruel and vicious and… exactly something Saldrea would do.
Lhorine turned to me. “How better to learn than something practical? You’re going to remove the binding on this.”
I nodded, though I had no clue if I could do it, at least not yet.
But Lhorine truly was an amazing teacher.
She had Koar kneel while the two of us stood over him, hands on his face near the nasty injury.
She guided me through how to feel the binding, how the anima around it felt, the strength and solidity.
“Yet, as permanent as it feels, all bindings can be undone if you’re powerful enough.” She looked me in the eye. “And I know you’re powerful enough. From what Olinara told me, you wore down your own mother’s binding, and she was one of the strongest elves of the age.”
“I didn’t fully break it,” I said, feeling like I needed to stipulate that.
“You would have, given time.”
That… was probably true.
Lhorine focused back on Koar’s cheek. “Saldrea is strong, and most elves, myself included, could not break one of her bindings… but you can.”
As the night progressed, she helped me work through it.
How to feel the boundaries of the binding, feel its shape and gauge its power.
Then how to use my own anima to overwhelm it, break it down.
She described the usual process of breaking someone else’s binding — or even one you placed yourself — as wearing it down, like a river slowly carving a gorge, since most of the time you were working with bindings of roughly equal power to your own.
Yet once I fully understood what to do and how to do it, my breaking of Saldrea’s binding felt more like a tidal wave washing away what should have been a sturdy, unmovable building.
“Wow,” Lhorine breathed as she stepped back.
I pumped a little extra anima — not that I had much left — into Koar to heal the wound, now that the binding was gone. Then I too stepped back, a little unsteady on my feet.
“That was… impressive,” Lhorine whispered. Then she seemed to recover. “You used more power than you needed to, but… yes… that’s how it’s done.”
Koar stood and helped steady me, perhaps seeing I was about to faint. Yeah… I’d used up way too much of my anima… but I’d done it.
I smiled weakly.
“You should rest now,” Lhorine suggested.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. We couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest. Too much was at stake. I’d broken a binding, but like she’d said, I’d used too much power. I needed to refine the process, master it. We needed to push on.
I looked up at Koar, who had me wrapped so gently in his massive arms. Huh… this felt… really nice. I could go with more of this. But that wasn’t what I needed from the big man right now.
“Care to give me some energy?” I was fairly certain I could duplicate what my grandmother had done, transferring his essence to me, before the dominion match.
Something in those golden eyes of his softened.
“Of course. Take what you need from me,” he breathed, gravelly voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against my side.
“I’m here for you. I’ll give you anything you desire, whatever you need, always.
” The softness in his eyes became something else, something far more intent.
His gaze cut through my weary mind and spoke to something deep inside me, the part of me which couldn’t get enough of being in this massive man’s arms. Suddenly I was too warm, a deep heat throbbing in my chest and lady lava bubbling in my core.
I’ll give you anything you desire… he’d said. Whatever you need.
Did he mean what I thought he meant?
This unflinching look of his made me think so.
And… did I want him like that? A big, sexy dragon, who would literally rip the world apart to protect me… Hell yeah, I did.
But that would have to wait. I had work to do.