“Who do you think helped him get into the Court of Peace and Pride?” she asked. “My name still carries some weight in the royal circles, you know.”
At my confused glance, Lark explained.
“Aunt Gem told Ariadne she was coming for a visit. Your mother likes to fancy herself friends with my aunt but the feelings are not mutual. So she packed us all in her trunks and set off. The Court of Peace and Pride doesn’t allow shadow stepping in their lands, probably out of jealousy that they can’t do it themselves, so we had to travel the old-fashioned way. Three days locked in a trunk with Rook, avoiding using any magic so that they wouldn’t know we were within their borders. Once she was settled in her room, we set off on our mission and all hell broke loose.”
“We didn’t stay much longer after that,” Gemini recalled, still sipping my tea.
“You helped?” I asked, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You helped save me all those years ago and you didn’t tell me?”
“I couldn’t,” she replied with a shrug as though it was obvious. “Ursa never left us alone once throughout the duration of our one and only meeting and my dear brother never knew I was involved. He exiled and then executed his own son for the crimes he committed that day. What do you think he might do to his sister?”
She raised a brow and I fell silent in realization.
“Thank you,” I told her because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Babies don’t thank people for saving them,” she snapped, waving a hand as she set down my tea. “They’re defenseless. But you’re grown up now and you’re not. So thank me by learning how to properly save yourself so that I don’t have to come running to rescue your ass again.”
At that, a form, like liquid night, shot from her palm and slapped me across the back of my hand.
“Ow,” I hissed, rubbing the offended hand with the other.
Lark chuckled, shaking his head.
“I want absolutely no part of this,” he said, raising his hands in surrender as a broad grin split his face. “Call me when one of you is still standing.”
With that, he disappeared into the bedroom.
Gemini waved a hand and all the furniture vanished so that it was just the two of us standing in an empty room, facing each other.
“The absence of that hideous orange really helps to clear the mind, doesn’t it?” she said, lowering herself into a fighting stance. “Now, hit me.”
We trained for four hours. We spent the first two on physical strikes. Punches, kicks, dodges, and attacks. Gemini was fast for her age, though I imagined Fae stamina never quite decreased at the same rate a mortal’s did. She blocked every one of my attacks and dealt a few bruising blows of her own just to teach me a lesson.
The second two hours were a mental drain as she walked me through exercise after exercise, trying to get me to summon even an ounce of physical magic, but it was no use. And when I was exhausted, so tired that I couldn’t even hold an arm up to attempt a magical gesture, Gemini waved her hands again and the furniture reappeared just in time for me to collapse onto the couch.
“I did it once,” I told her as she took both mugs into the kitchen to fetch more tea. Then I corrected myself. “Twice, actually.”
“Physical magic,” she said to verify and I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “When?”
“Once when I found out that Lark was— when the King sentenced him to death,” I confessed, throat burning at the admission. “And again when he captured me. When I thought he was my kidnapper, when I hated him for what he had done to me and lied about.”
Gemini stilled where she stood over the sink. It was quiet for a moment before she spoke.
“Do you feel as though your magic is stronger whenever you are around my nephew?” she asked carefully and I considered the question.
“I suppose,” I answered with a shrug. “He was the first one to make me think that my ability to read emotions might be more than basic human empathy and now that… connection is so strong that I can hardly read anyone else when he’s around. I don’t even have to try to read him anymore. I just know without focus. And those few times I’ve practiced physical magic were because I was grieving him, a loss of him, of who I thought he was.”
“You’re soul bonded, aren’t you?”
There it was. The matter that I hadn’t even been able to admit to myself yet. My breath hitched as all the air was sucked out of the room. Gemini was leaning against the counter, facing away from me.
“I—I don’t—” I started.
“Don’t lie to me, girl,” she interrupted but it wasn’t angry, it wasn’t snippy. She simply wanted the truth and, after what I’d learned about what she had done for me so long ago, how could I deny it to her?
“He seems to think we are, yes,” I answered.
“And you?”
