Luce met my gaze steadily, unfazed by my hostility. "Halo, I want out of this cage every bit as much as you do. But raw power won’t cut it. I know because I already tried throwing everything I had at the wall to break out. We need to be smart about this."
I pushed myself up on my elbows, suddenly energized by a flash of inspiration. "What if we combined our powers and tried it together? Synchronized our efforts, focused everything we have on one point?"
Luce's brow furrowed as he considered the idea. I could practically see the gears turning behind those dark, calculating eyes. "A longer, concentrated blast might work."
"Great, let's do it." I started to rise, eager to put the plan into action, but Luce's hand on my arm stopped me.
"Hold on, kitten. We can't just go off half-cocked. This will take careful timing and coordination." His grip tightened fractionally. "And trust. Do you trust me in this?"
For a long moment, I just stared at him. I extended a clawed fingertip and tapped his lower lip, just shy of breaking skin. “First, don’t call me kitten.”
Luce wasn't even slightly a person that I wanted to rely on. But what choice did I have?
"Second, I trust you about as far as I can throw you. But that's actually a fair distance. So it'll have to be enough.”
Luce shifted my claw off his lip before he spoke. Smart man, he’d have been bleeding otherwise. My claws were sharper than razors. "Fair enough. I've got more experience and training when it comes to magic, so I'll take the lead on this. You focus on channeling your power into me, and I'll handle the nitty-gritty of directing it."
I nodded, trying to ignore the flicker of unease in my gut at the thought of opening myself up to him like that. "Tell me what you need."
He positioned himself cross-legged on the bed, hands resting palm-up on his knees. "Sit facing me and take my hands. Then visualize your magic. Imagine it flowing through you, from your seat of power to your fingertips."
I mirrored his posture, reaching out to clasp his hands in mine. His skin was warm, almost feverish, and his pulse thrummed beneath my fingers. Taking a deep breath, I turned my attention inward, directing my magic down my arms.
It came eagerly to my call, a flood of energy that raced along my veins like a gulp of espresso. I relaxed into the flow. "Okay," I said softly, "I've got it. Now what?"
"Now," Luce said, his low voice intense, "push that power, slowly and steadily, into me through our joined hands. Ready?"
"Ready," I said, though instinct said to keep my magic to myself, since trusting a daemon with power was stupidity of the highest order. Ignoring it, I channeled the raging torrent into a smooth flow, directing it across the fragile bridge of our clasped hands.
The moment my power made contact with Luce's, I inhaled and almost broke my grip. The shock raced up my arms and set every nerve alight in a very pleasant way. I could feel him drawing my magic in, shaping it, a sensation that was both alien and strangely intimate.
The power flowed between us, a pulsing, living thing. With each passing second, the connection deepened, until I could no longer tell where my magic ended and his began.
Exhilarating. Terrifying. A moment like standing on the edge of a cliff, poised to jump.
Every point of contact between us—the press of his fingers against mine, the heat of his skin, the steady thrum of his heartbeat–was like fire. Too much, too close, too real, and I wanted to pull away. The overwhelming rush of sensation swept over me, but I kept my hands linked with his.
Over the drum of my heartbeat, Luce inhaled sharply and shuddered. "Halo…this is... I've never..."
"Me neither," I said, my words coming out ragged and strained. "Is this normal for sharing power?"
"No," he breathed. "I've shared power before, but never anything like this."
This. This addictive consuming pull drawing us together. I should worry about it, be wary of the way it tempted me to lose control. But beneath the sensible caution something else flickered, an unknown sparking and smoldering with heat.
I tried to focus on the task at hand, but it was impossible. Every fiber of my being reached out to Luce, to the dark allure of his power as it twined with mine. The attraction was wrong, dangerous, a bad line to cross, but just for this moment, I wanted to.
Most of me wanted to dive headlong into strange and rapturous oblivion, consequences be damned. It had been far too long since I felt anything like this.
From the way Luce's breath caught, the way his grip tightened almost painfully on my hands, he felt it too.
We balanced on a knife's edge for a long moment, then Luce's jaw clenched as he directed our combined power at the unyielding walls of our glass prison. He channeled the maelstrom of energy with intense focus, his essence interwoven with mine as he sought to unravel the complex containment spell thread by meticulous thread.
The air crackled and thrummed. Sweat rolled down his face from the strain, but he pushed on relentlessly, hurling the force of our joined abilities against the invisible barrier again and again.
I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to wrench away as the power sharing grew even more raw and primal, revealing parts of myself I'd suppressed long ago. As much as it unnerved me, some part of me reveled in the freedom it offered.
Time crawled by, but the spell remained stubbornly intact no matter how Luce threw his considerable skill and strength against it. Finally, with a frustrated growl, he severed the flow of energy and caught the rebound expertly, feeding that power into us as well.
