“No. The timing wasn’t wrong. And now she doesn’t want to talk to me at all.”
Rafael studied him for a moment. “You know I fucked up badly with Gwen at first.”
Joshua snorted. “That’s true.”
“She and Kira are going to train at one of the beaches. They’ve put up special protections,” he added as Joshua tensed. “I asked Kira about it, and she says she’ll be okay with you coming to watch so long as you don’t intervene or try to convince her to go back to your place.”
Hope blossomed in his chest. “I thought she needed me to keep my distance.”
“She needs you to listen. To prove yourself.”
“How?” Joshua asked, hating the desperation in his own voice.
Rafael shook his head. “You’re the kind of guy that likes to plan for all variables, but that doesn’t leave a lot of flexibility. You can’t control this situation, Josh. You have to be okay with standing back and letting her take the lead. Look at what she wants. And let her take the steps she needs to.”
So, basically, just let her put herself in danger. Joshua gripped his hair, groaning. No, not let her put herself in danger. Stand with her so that if she ended up in danger, he could be there to help her.
He could do that.
Right?
***
Joshua stood in his wolf form, his back toward the beach as he faced the sea. He had thought he’d seen a flicker of shadow in the water, but there didn’t seem to be anything now. There was no sense of dark energy, though the sensations of magic behind him might be blocking out everything else.
Up on the beach, within a protective dome of magic, Kira and Gwen were practicing magic. Gwen was trying to teach Kira how to weave the protections. Kira was having difficulty maintaining the webs of magic long enough to form anything in them. She had told Joshua he could stay to keep an eye out for demons, so long as he didn’t try to convince her to stop or return to his house. They’d been doing this for several days now.
He hated her being away from the protections of the town, but this was the best place for it. Gwen had trained her magic in the town hall, but with all the peering faces pressed to the windows these days, Kira would quickly get overwhelmed.
“I can’t do it,” Kira erupted from the beach. “I’m not strong enough.”
Joshua turned from the ocean. She had thrown herself into the sand, her hands over her face.
“You’re doing so well. You can hold it a lot longer than you did yesterday,” Gwen soothed.
“Two minutes isn’t a lot longer.”
Gwen sighed. “Yesterday, you could only hold it for one minute. You’ve doubled your time. That’s impressive.”
Kira made a noise that said, “Don’t patronize me.”
Joshua shifted back to human form and put on a pair of boxers before approaching. He stopped just outside the barrier. “It makes sense.”
“Hmm?” Kira lifted her head. Sand clung to her hair.
“You’ve been treated as an outcast your whole life because of your magic. It makes sense that you’d have a mental block against it now,” Joshua explained, feeling uneasy. Was this too much interference? “You deserve gentleness and patience, even from yourself.”
Kira opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She got to her feet, brushing herself off. “Okay. Okay. I’ll try again. And this time, I’m going to aim to hold it for two minutes. I can do that.”
She took a deep breath and held her hands out a few inches apart. Furrowing her brow, she mumbled something, and strands of a purple-hued light built between her fingertips. She moved carefully, weaving them together into a loose net and then grew still, focused on the light. A minute passed, then two. Joshua watched in silence. Three minutes. Four. Five. Then one of the strands snapped, and the whole thing disappeared.
“How long was that?” Kira asked anxiously.
Gwen grinned as she showed Kira the stopwatch.
“Holy shit!” Kira clapped her hands and laughed. “That’s the best yet!”
Her eyes glowed with delight, and Joshua’s stomach fluttered. The joy on her face was better than anything he’d ever seen before. He wished he knew how to help her look that happy all the time.
