“What, Nev? I’m trying to think here,” she muttered back. Her jaw tensed as she struggled to channel more of her light.
“Let me help.” Timidly, Ollas placed his free hand on top of hers just enough for the tips of their fingers to overlap. “I can try to guide you…”
Ollas reached for his light, managing to draw up a few flickering dots. He felt Eunny’s magic respond, a line rising to wrap around his little sparks. It drew more, created a strange binding as Eunny’s magic sank back into his flesh.
The wound on his arm went numb. Then cold, so cold it throbbed. His arm lay folded over his chest, and beneath it, dozens of spots of heat lit up. They seared through the fabric of his shirt and cloak, enveloping his skin. Fire spread across his wound, turning the icy pain to a burn. It felt like a hundred tiny brands against his skin, concentrated around one spot on his chest?—
The seed packet he’d been examining in the tent. The one he’d carelessly stuck in his pocket before racing out to answer the horn calls.
It made no sense; they hadn’t registered as anything magical when he’d reached out. But now, something had woken. Was wrapping like a fist around his magic, dragging erratic, weak sparks from his inner sphere that tangled with the lines of Eunny’s magic.
She fought back. Ollas couldn’t explain it, but he felt her resist the invisible hand pulling the snarl of their magic out.
She lost the battle. Her mental grip weakened, and a blaze of arcane heat flashed across Ollas’s body. Every muscle seized, a scream lodging in his throat. When darkness finally claimed him, it was a blessing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Coming back to Sylveren had been a mistake. Eunny had known it would be, but she’d done it anyway. Gave in for the creature comforts of a short walk and a chance to live in the Grove. To feel like she belonged. She’d escaped the everyday drudgery of slogging through her café full of junk, but in doing so had let herself forget that she’d surrounded herself with the mundane for a reason. She had thrown caution aside despite her better judgment. Been tempted by Ollas with his shy, earnest awkwardness. Let herself be charmed. She’d chased after the notion of some spark they might have together and convinced herself it would be okay if it wasn’t meant to last.
Eunny blew past the university’s outer gate and stomped toward town. It was raining again, harder this time than the mist that had pervaded the Valley the last few days. The rain had been the start of all of this. If the weather had been fairer, Song’s Scrap wouldn’t have collapsed. Ollas wouldn’t have been hurt. She wouldn’t have gone begging him to let her help, and she’d never have fallen in that godsdamned patch of grass, would never have accidentally fed it some of her magic and triggered the fucking imprinting spell and gotten sucked into this. Fucking. Mess.
Still, the rain gave her an excuse to huddle in the depths of her cloak and refuse eye contact with the few travelers she passed, and she welcomed it.
A part of her knew that she was being irrational. That she was scared, and had been for a long time. It’d been nice to let some of that fear go, if only for a little while. But she couldn’t afford such lapses. Fear was like pain, meant to be felt for a reason. Ignoring put not only her at peril but Ollas, too. Maybe the burn on his hand had come from the dirt, as he’d said. Or maybe it was because of her. Because she’d lost control, or because she’d panicked. Either way, Eunny was the cause. His denial was nothing more than another kind-hearted attempt to protect her.
It was my fault, he’d said. I touched your magic.
Because he’d wanted to feel it, that part of her. He thought that featherlight pluck of his magic had been the catalyst for her disastrous meltdown. His earnest shame was almost cute, except Eunny couldn’t feel further from laughing. He of such little magic, not realizing how collaboration and joining like that was fairly standard. When she finally let herself think back on that awful day, to remember his part in it as he’d begged her to do, she picked up on those minute flutters. Recognized the signature of his magic and how it felt, realized how many times she’d been experiencing flickers of it throughout their fling. Oh, Ollas, thinking he’d been to blame all these years, too. No, that was all hers.
He deserved better. Someone whose first response wasn’t flight at his declaration of… love. Could he really? Her? How could he even know?
It didn’t matter. Ollas might think he was in for whatever mess she entailed, but Eunny was not. Ollas—sweet, caring Nev—he deserved someone who gave him honesty back. Eunny ran. He’d chosen her and all his confession did was fill her with an unnamable fear. It was just…wrong. He couldn’t, shouldn’t, feel like that about her. The Homegrown Hero couldn’t be in love with the Healer Who Hurts. The woman who would rather hide than have anything to do with magic, even if it meant keeping herself from the work that was her calling.
Mending wasn’t absolute, wasn’t perfect or without risks; Eunny knew that. It couldn’t fix all ills. Magic worked until it didn’t, as the saying went. She wasn’t the first to have an accident. Wouldn’t be the last, either. Eunny understood the logic, the reality, but she couldn’t find comfort in it. Ollas’s forgiveness should’ve been freeing, yet she couldn’t convince herself to believe. Whenever a shred of hope, of longing for the kind of life she might have if she put faith in him, rose, guilt was never far away.
This thing with Ollas had been a mistake. He had weakened her resolve, left her vulnerable to the myriad temptations of magic and belonging that were everywhere in the Valley. She’d cut herself off from the magic community before. She could do it again.
Eunny stopped outside the damaged building. Her repair café. Gransen had worked faster than she’d imagined; it looked under construction rather than coming back from collapse. She moved to unlock the front door, then shook her head, ambling around the side to peer in at the darkened main room. Still a mess inside, but an organized one. Ready for her to start again. Go back to the way things were, with her in town and only indirect contact with the school. With Ollas. She could go back to a few words of small talk.
She could move on and forget. She knew such apathy was in her; she’d done it before. Could pare every tender piece away until she was stone again. Nothing but superficial pleasantries on the outside, allowing no one in. But it would be harder this time.
Movement, a reflection in the glass of the café’s rear window, caught Eunny’s eye. A temporary ladder had replaced the broken stairway outside of the living quarters over the tearoom. Eunny turned in time to see a black cloak disappear inside the loft.
Eunny scampered after as quietly as she could, mouthing a prayer to the Goddess that the ladder wouldn’t creak. Or break beneath her. Peering over the top rung, Eunny watched as her mother prowled around the small loft. She held a small light globe in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other, consulting it on occasion while picking through Eunny’s old stash of tea and other blending ingredients.
“What are you doing?” Eunny snapped, pulling herself up the rest of the way so she could follow her mother into the loft.
Bioon startled, hand dropping to her cloak’s pocket as she doused the light globe. Her arm tensed, and Eunny had a brief, intense moment of awe as the prospect of her mother pulling a weapon on her flitted through her mind. But then Bioon’s stance eased as recognition crossed her face. “Eunji.”
“Mother.” Eunny stalked forward. “Why are you sneaking around my house? Does Auntie Yerina?—”
“Your house? Don’t be ridiculous. This hovel is hardly livable.” Bioon gave the torn-up floor and gaping hole near the front a disdainful look. “You clearly haven’t been staying here.”
“I’ve been at the school. Again, what are you—” Eunny darted forward and snatched at the paper in her mother’s hand, managing to tear half free. She stared at the hastily sketched lines depicting the delegation plant. “What the fuck is this?”
“Keep your voice down,” Bioon said mildly. “You don’t want to attract attention.”
“I think I do.” Eunny brandished the scrap of paper. “It was you! The fucking Coalition, I should’ve guessed. I can’t believe you broke into a Sylveren building. The Sentinels?—”
