“Card,” I said, pressing my fingers on the infinity sign tattoo over my heart that was so minty cold, it burned. “I give you my protection.”
Stel chuckled. “You don’t have anything to offer him, Vargas. The Crossroads is helpless under my spell. You have no magic to give.”
But that wasn’t exactly true. I had Card’s magic. Magic he’d given me as a gift.
Magic that was a beginning. Flexible magic I’d taken and made my own, molding it into something different, something more.
I’d never had formal training with magic. Sometimes that was a hindrance in the things I attempted. But I’d studied the many books and scrolls in the house that dealt with the art. I’d learned enough to know that heavier, more powerful magics carried heavier prices. Smaller magics cost less.
Like a home cook who wasn’t a formally trained chef, I could rustle up a good meal with the tools and ingredients I had, even if I was never going to earn that Michelin Star.
I pinched the tattoo over my heart, not looking away from Stel. I could feel the magic lift, feel it stretch like a minty ribbon of light rising from my skin.
It was a small magic.
It wasn’t strong or great.
But it was mine.
I reached down for Card’s hand. He didn’t hesitate to give it to me. I gripped his hand, and that small magic burned minty between our palms.
Card hissed as the magic branded him. Then the magic unfurled like a leaf soaked in moonlight reaching for the rain.
Card was familiar to my magic, yet different. But the magic accepted him instantly, holding him, offering him exactly what it had offered me all those years ago.
Choose what magic you will follow. Choose your path. Choosewhere you belong, where your heart most wants to be.
His heartbeat echoed back through the small magic, and it was racing.
“This little game is over now,” Stel said. “Come to me Oak. Kneel.”
Her words carried power. Big magic.
That magic hit like a hot wind filled with nails.
I grunted, then pressed my left hand against the shield tattoo on the back of my right. I reached out to the Crossroads. But the spell Stel had cast still bound it, muffled it.
I reached deeper, into my own soul, into my own strength, and poured that into the shield magic.
“Yes,” Card said, squeezing my hand. “Here.”
Those two words resonated through the magic we shared, sending a bolt of return magic back to me.
My tattoos flared hot, questioning if Card was now a part of it, of us, of me, and my answer was easy and unavoidable.
“Yes.”
I pinched the shield and threw it out in front of me like throwing a Frisbee. I pushed my will behind it:Hold. Guard. Block.
Behind my will, I felt Card’s focus, his whispered words that were old, dryad, andgreen, green, green.
The magic soaked up my will, soaked up Card’s focus, and became something new again. Something not bigger and stronger, but deeper, more flexible, a riff of music, a harmony playing against the steady beat of a song.
“Enough!” Stel yelled, her voice cracking thunder and causing the ground to shake.
But the ink magic shield didn’t falter, it unfurled, the single shield becoming dozens, hundreds, all of them strong as steel, stronger, but transparent as smoked glass.
The shields locked together, becoming a wall that built and built, up and up, surrounding the house with a magic-fueled dome.
