Not Just Any Magic
SERAPHAE
Maelor had cleared the training yard at the back of the estate. He said he didn't want me accidentally annihilating his soldiers. Which I thought was a reasonable concern and also a little flattering.
The yard smelled of wet soil from recent rain, layered with metallic notes of steel.
I stood at the center with my orb in my palm. Not the sun. The candle. The same small, unremarkable thing it had always been.
Two hours.
Nothing had changed.
My patience had been gone for the better part of an hour, but I was stubborn, and Maelor was stubborn, so neither of us wanted to be the one to call it.
We had tried channeling from the tree and then the earth.
I was on my knees, hand planted on the ground, before a soldier walked by and immediately pretended that he hadn’t seen me.
I had pressed my hand to Maelor's chest for nearly thirty minutes, which had produced nothing except mild awkwardness.
After that, a passing guard offered to volunteer and blushed when I touched him.
Then he asked me to dinner and promptly got removed from the yard by Maelor like a piece of misplaced furniture.
“Maybe you're not focusing hard enough,” Maelor offered unhelpfully when we tried his chest again.
“I am focusing fine.”
He threw his arms up. “I give up.”
I exhaled a breath I had been holding and closed my fist. The light disappeared along with whatever remained of my confidence.
We moved to the low wall at the edge of the yard and sat. The charm that brightened the kingdom faded as the fifth bell approached. Smoke from nearby chimneys hung in the air, thick with steel underneath it. My cloak was draped over the wall beside me.
Maelor glanced at it and made a sound in his throat that wasn't quite a laugh.
“He let you keep it.”
“It's mine.”
He grinned, tucking a strand of blond behind his ear. “You going to say it, or am I?”
“Be careful.” I smiled sweetly. “I have a weapon.”
“I know,” he said. “I gave it to you.”
The dagger on my thigh, the one he had handed me and that had tasted blood within an hour of receiving it. It had been a kind of trust between us, nameless and never spoken out loud. The way most things between us worked.
There was something soft in the way he was looking at me.
Maelor and Riven had become like constants somewhere along the way without either of us announcing it. The way Xander had been. I hated to admit things like that.
I was admitting it anyway.
“You did well,” he said.
He didn't need to explain what he meant.
We looked up at the sky instead.
“So,” he said, still not looking at me. “You going to tell me what's going on between you and Caelan?”
“Are you going to tell me about Brie?”
His head snapped around. His expression gave me everything I needed.
I grinned.
“There is nothing—“ he spluttered. Looked away, crossed his arms, uncrossed them. “Nothing going on.”
“Of course not,” I said.
As if summoned, Brie and Caelan appeared at the far end of the yard and walked toward us. Maelor muttered something about timing and pushed off the wall to meet them halfway. I stayed where I was.
Caelan kept his eyes on me the entire way across the yard.
He reached the wall and leaned against it, arms crossed, entirely at ease. The wall ran the length of the yard. Yet he chose to stand beside me, close enough that his hip touched my knee.
I did not move an inch.
He looked at me with that touch of a smile he always wore. Then looked back at Maelor and Brie.
“How's training?” Brie asked, throwing her braid over her shoulder.
“Terrible,” Maelor said. “She downgraded back to a light source.”
Brie's eyes moved between Caelan and me. Mischief lit up in them. “Perhaps Sera needs a little help.”
“We've been at it for two hours,” I groaned, glancing at Maelor.
She was still smiling when she turned to Caelan.
“You should spar with her.”
We both stared.
“She used her power in the middle of a fight,” Brie continued, with a reasonable tone while her face was suggesting something else entirely. “Maybe we’ll recreate the conditions.”
Caelan shrugged. “Worth trying.”
“I don't think it'll work,” I said.
Sparring involved proximity, and proximity in front of two witnesses who had already decided that we were the evening's entertainment was a terrible idea.
“What's the point?” Maelor started. “Caelan would just take her out in—“
Brie elbowed him hard.
Maelor stopped talking.
Caelan cocked his head at me and pushed off the wall.
“Unless you're scared.”
I smiled sweetly. “Absolutely not.”
He threw a smug grin over his shoulder and moved to the center of the yard.
I rolled my neck once and followed.
We circled each other.
His stance was perfect. Feet planted, weight balanced, arms lifted. His sleeves were pushed up to reveal the serpent wrapped around hard muscles. He had excellent arms. He also had an excellent jawline.
His eyes moved over me in a way that was less like assessing an opponent and more like something meant for behind closed doors.
“You look spectacular today,” he said casually, as if we weren’t circling each other like predators.
“Thank you,” I replied with the same tone. My eyes went to those arms again. “You’re not terrible either.”
“Are you guys sparring?” Maelor said from the wall, “or are you just going to look at each other until someone gives up?”
I speared him with a glare while Brie giggled.
“Ready?” Caelan asked.
No. “Yes.”
He moved first. Fast, the way I remembered from the masquerade.
I pivoted just enough to avoid the direct hit and drove my elbow back in the same motion. His hand caught my wrist before it landed, fingers closing around it, using the momentum to pull me forward.
I twisted with it, dropped low, swept for his leg.
He veered left, and his fist came toward my ribs. I barely deflected it before he followed with the other.
I slipped inside the second strike and drove my shoulder into his chest.
He staggered half a step.
Progress.
I aimed for his throat.
He caught my wrist again. I twisted sharply and used the grip to pull myself in, knee driving toward his abdomen.
He blocked with his thigh and shoved me back.
I shifted my weight and came straight back in.
We went faster now.
Strike. Block. Turn. Strike.
I deflected a strike too late, and he stepped into my guard. Then his arm was around my waist and the world went sideways. My back hit the dirt. That hurt more than I liked, but at least he’d feel it through the bond too.
I rolled immediately.
His palm hit the ground beside my head. His knee pinned my hip.
I grabbed his shoulder and dragged him down to roll myself on top of him.
He leaned into it but didn’t let me.
Now he was braced over me. His hand still on my wrist against the ground. Close enough that I felt the heat of him through the space between us, which had become laughable.
Of course being pinned underneath him was where I ended up.
The yard had gone suspiciously quiet.
I shifted my hips sharply, bucking up to throw him off balance.
He groaned, and his grip tightened around my wrist. His other hand splayed on my hip to keep them from moving. His fingers pressed into the curve of it. The heat of them leaching through the thin fabric.
“Careful,” he said, voice low. “You don't want to do that with an audience.”
I stopped moving.
Not because I couldn't.
Because I had just become very aware of his body, and the quality of his voice when he said it. I could feel exactly how much he appreciated this position, and we were both breathing harder than the fight entirely accounted for.
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
Mine went to his.
“Uh, Caelan?”
Maelor's voice cut through the yard like a bucket of ice water.
“If this is what your sparring looks like now, I am deeply concerned for the kingdom.”
Brie burst out laughing.
Caelan didn't move.
Neither did I.
“Take your time,” Brie added. “We're very invested.”
I collected myself with great difficulty and cleared my throat. “Get off.”
“I'm comfortable,” Caelan said immediately.
I considered blinding him. My magic was already at my palm, warmth gathering there in preparation for petty revenge.
Then I felt it.
The same hum from the Hollow, that deeper current, moving under everything else like a river below the ground.
I had felt it then without knowing what it was.
I knew now. It felt familiar because it had always been there.
Since the day I had tried to kill him in his study.
Almost every time I had touched his skin.
I went still as the realization took hold.
“I feel something.” I flexed the hand where my magic was gathering. Cold. Not the warmth I was used to.
Caelan's smirk arrived slowly.
Heat bloomed in my cheeks despite it all.
“The magic,” I said. “Not… whatever you're thinking.”
His smirk faltered, and his brow pinched together. He released my wrist and shifted his weight to get up.
My hand caught his shirt and pulled him back.
“Wait.” I placed my hand low on his neck against his skin. “Don't move.”
His eyebrows rose, but he stayed.
“This is getting very good,” Brie said from somewhere.
I ignored her.
There. Under my palm, moving through the contact like current through water, flowing from him into my hand, up my arm, pooling where my magic gathered.
“Don't move,” I said again, and opened my other hand to summon. The orb was small and ordinary. Then it grew, and kept growing.
“Oh,” Maelor said.
“That is not a lantern,” Brie observed.
Caelan and I both stared at it. The surrounding air had gone dense, that same pressure as the Hollow, the sense of something with mass and intention.
I stopped expanding it. Not because I couldn't, but because I could, and I had no idea what would happen if I kept going or how large it could become.
Caelan and I looked at each other.
The realization arrived in both of us at the same moment. I could see it happening in his face.
I closed my fist. Spots danced at the edges of my vision.
“It doesn't work on just any magic,” Caelan said.
“No.” I swallowed. “It doesn't.”
I was a conduit, but only for the untamed.
I looked at my hand.
The orb was gone, but I could still feel the echo of it in my palm. The cold of his magic moving through mine as if it had always known the way.
Like it had been looking for it this whole time.