I considered this. There was a lot to consider, really. “What was the spell we did?”
His steady gaze held mine. “What do you think?”
I gnawed at my lower lip. I knew it even if I didn’t want to say it. His abilities were so different from the way humans handled magic. We couldn’t affect things on such a large scale. We couldn’t affect elements. And we needed to write our spells and use neshem.
I forced the words out. “Was it a binding? The blood magic? Is that why—we didn’t need a proper spell, or neshem?”
He didn’t look away.
My stomach hollowed out. It had been. “Is it—still—?”
“No,” he said flatly. “I broke it.”
The X he’d carved. I absorbed this, remembering the way the magic had flowed through me, how there had been so much of it, how it had needed so much less direction than a spell written and cast by humans. “That’s why people used to bind shedim,” I said in a low voice, feeling sick. I’d always heard how powerful spellcastershad been when they bound shedim; I didn’t like having personal experience. “You’re an inexhaustible source of magic.”
“Not inexhaustible,” he said. “Eventually, we die.”
My gut clenched at the truth of that. “It didn’t feel great to me, either. Heady and addictive—but I couldn’t let go. It felt like it might drain me.”
He winced. “I hadn’t realized it’d hit you like that.”
I started pacing, thinking hard, while Daziel leaned against the counter, watching. “The old stories say only the most powerful spellcasters bound shedim. I’d thought they became powerful from stealing your magic, but maybe they already needed to be strong to funnel it.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Why did we need the binding, though? Why couldn’t you have done it on your own?”
“Shedim don’t have the precise control humans have. If I’d told the water to calm, I have no idea what would have happened—like I didn’t know what form your cushions would take when I encouraged them to be their best selves. The river could have iced over or drowned the people who jumped in. The wind could have been calmed by being depleted of oxygen. I can be specific on a small scale—like drying clothes—but not on a large one.”
I shuddered. No wonder shedim had a reputation for thriving on pandemonium—not being able to predict their magic’s behavior probably bred comfort with chaos. “But I wasn’t precise, either.”
“You didn’t need to be. In a binding, the force of shedim magic can be funneled into human precision and cast using more words than shedim but fewer than humans would. It’s why bindings are so powerful.”
“And you bound me,” I said slowly. “I didn’t know it could go in either direction. Though I guess there’s not much motivation for shedim to bind humans, unless they could control what humans said.”
Daziel held himself very still.
Realization seeped through me. I recalled all the people happy to let Daziel have pastries for free or attend the opera or have a new outfit. When he suggested things, humans listened. “Canshedim control what humans say?”
He lifted his shoulders in the smallest shrug. “We can sometimes…influence humans.” He seemed to debate whether or not to say the next part. “In a binding—control can be wrested by the more powerful of the pair.”
So binding could go either way. I hadn’t been taught that in school, and I wondered if it was because humans didn’t want to look weak or because shedim didn’t want to reveal their ability.
His gaze finally fell. “I’m sorry I didn’t discuss it with you first.”
“I’m not.” My voice became a bare whisper, mixing with the moonlight and the breeze. I stepped toward him. He’d done something illegal and dangerous, and he’d done it because I begged him to save the students on the platform. “You did it because I asked you to.”
His gaze flickered back up. We stood very close, a scant foot apart, and his intense expression sparked an answering fire in me. “I would do anything you asked.”
I bit my lip, a frisson of anticipation dancing through me. “Anything?”
His eyes, always so dark, sparked with iridescent light. He knew what I was asking, or what I would ask. He gave a minuscule tilt of his head. “Anything.”
My whole body had been taken over by the beating of my heart. My pulse pounded in my neck, and each separate breath felt heavy. Heat coursed beneath my skin. “You asked if I wanted you to kiss me.” My tongue darted out to lick my dry lips, and I swallowed, hard. “Yes. I do.”
“Is that so,” he said softly. He brushed his fingertips against my cheek, curved them over the shell of my ear. “Why?”
A burst of heat and shivers and something I didn’t recognize radiated from his touch. Like I’d had a taste of a new flavor I’d never tried, and I wanted more of it almost desperately.
