Before I break into interrogation, I decide to relax for a change. To feel something normal with Alexus. No surviving. No learning magick. No arguing with the others. Just us and this ordinary moment in the wood. I felt that way when we were near the ravine in the construct, the ache to be with this man outside of all that we’ve been through. All we’re still going through. The notion of a peaceful life feels like an impossible dream when you live in chaos. But these glimpses remind me why peace is something worth fighting for.
We walk for several minutes in tender silence, enjoying each other’s company and the rosy light trickling through the wood. Alexus’s cheeks are tinged pink from the cold, his long hair loose, green eyes bright in this light. He looks content. Sometimes I can’t imagine how he stays so calm, knowing that his life is tied to Colden’s. He never seems worried to know that he could cease to exist any moment, while that knowledge eats at my nerves. If I couldn’t see Colden in the waters and know that he’s safe, I would be a disaster.
When we come across a bend in the road, Alexus pauses and glances around, getting his bearings. “My hunting shelter isn’t far from here,” he says, as though he’d been so absorbed in the peacefulness a moment before that he only now grasps where we are. “Maybe a day’s ride. And, if we keep walking, there’s a clearing just ahead. I bet we can see the stars soon.”
“You know this wood so well,” I sign, a woman who hadn’t stepped foot within its shade until the last full moon.
“I do. Care to know why?”
When I nod—because of course, I’m nodding—he continues.
“As a boy, my father took me across the Northlands to the Iceland Plains to see an old water witch in hopes that my lack of skill could be corrected.” He smiles at the memory and glances at me from the corner of his eyes. “It couldn’t. But I liked the valley even then. Later, when I fled the East, I felt the Northlands was where I needed to be, especially near this wood. I’ve learned every inch of it, which would make my father proud. We spent a lot of time here on that trip. Some of the last days I had with him. It was good for us.”
My fingers tense around a reply. I want to know more, but I hear the ache in his words, and I don’t want to pry into painful parts of his life. So instead, I say, “I miss my father too. Sometimes I imagine seeing him again. What conversations we would have. I was too self-absorbed to realize what a gift he was. I realize now, though.”
“Youth makes fools of us all,” Alexus says as we veer around a puddle before coming back together. “I wish time was kinder. Even when you have eternity, there aren’t enough second chances.”
“Did your father teach you magick?” I sign. “Is he why you are so good at everything? Including using the bond?”
He tilts a look at me, eyes narrowed. “That’s what’s bothering you? I sensed something wrong.”
I hate to spoil the easiness of our time together, but I answer honestly. “The bond is such a simple thing for you and so impossible for me. How? If I am the only person you have marked?”
Alexus pauses, and we face one another. “I’ve never claimed anyone but you. But someone once claimed me. My first love. First loves are powerful. And painful.”
Don’t I know. Each time I see Finn in the waters, I feel sick thinking about the moment we’ll come face to face. I still don’t know how I’ll lie to the man I once believed I’d grow old with. How I’ll convince him that I’m only staying with Alexus and his band out of some newly risen need for revenge on the Prince of the East. My only other choice is to tell Finn the truth, that the girl he used to love is now the woman who lies with the Witch Collector.
Every chance she can get.
Though I sense his reluctance, Alexus lifts his wrist and rolls back the cuff of his shirt. The runes that link him to the God Knife cover his strong forearm. But it isn’t the runes he points to. It’s a scar the size of a coin that lies over his pulse. A scar I’ve noticed but haven’t asked about. When someone bears as many scars as Alexus, it feels wrong to make them remember their creation.
“We were sixteen,” he says. “We kept it secret, for reasons. But her father found out.”
Gods. I take his wrist and study the rough scar, its jagged edges. I let go and look up at him. “Did you reverse the rune?”
“No. Her father did, though. He wanted us to focus on developing our talents, not each other. He had us delivered to the temple where he cut the runes from our flesh and burned the skin in a holy fire. His sorcerer chanted the necessary song as we kneeled there, crying. Bleeding. Feeling every connection between us snap like ropes under too much weight. Until we both passed out on the floor.”
I press his wrist to my mouth for a soft kiss, my heart breaking for a young man I didn’t get to know. “I am so sorry,” I sign. “That sounds unbearable.”
Alexus offered me the chance to reverse the rune at Winterhold. He’s reminded me that it’s an option twice since, when I tried to reach out for him and found myself facing a darkness that feels like it might swallow me whole. Losing this connection with him would be worse than facing my fear. I just need to learn to navigate the bond. To conquer the abyss that lies between us when I close my eyes.
He gestures for us to keep walking. “Unbearable is how it felt,” he says. “Like my heart was being ripped from my chest. Her father was a master at cruelty. Even when it came to his daughter.”
I can’t imagine that kind of hurt. What fear the girl must’ve felt for a man who should’ve been a protector.
“Afterward,” Alexus continues, “we became distant for a few years. We remembered our time together, and even the reversal ritual. But any emotion that connected us to those memories was gone. It was like a fever dream. Like none of that time had been real. Her father acted as though it hadn’t. He kept us apart regardless, but sometimes we would see one another in passing—at the temple or at the school or even sometimes in training—and wonder.”
“I’m sure that was uncomfortable,” I sign. Two teenagers who’d been in love? Remembering things about one another? Probably quite physical things? Believing it was their imagination?
He shrugs. “It was. A simple locked gaze held so much curiosity, but we’d just keep moving. However…” He holds up a finger, a gentle smile on his face. “Curiosity eventually got the better of us, and we became best of friends. We pieced together our memories and realized what her father had done. What he’d stolen. But we were older. The fire of first love had faded. Loyalties had certainly changed. I’d become quite the dark soul, and she’d become quite the vengeful woman. Friends felt like a better route.”
Unexpectedly, he takes my hand and stops us before turning me to face him. I revel in his nearness, suddenly enveloped in his heat. Because of his re-forged connection to energy, his magick warms every inch of his body, which makes cold nights a comfort.
He taps the tip of my nose. “Look up.”
I do, and finally, after so many evenings sequestered in our tents or huddled beneath the forest’s dense canopy, I stare up at a darkening twilight sky, still lit at the edges with the sun’s glow, filled with the night’s first stars. I study them all, watching as a few more twinkle into existence, remembering all the nights Nephele and I lay in the grass and traced constellations.
When I meet Alexus’s stare again, my eyes wide, my lips curved into a smile, he takes my chin in his hand and steps closer. Where before the night was filled with shimmering stars and falling darkness, it’s now filled with him.
