The need to soothe her again is strong enough that I run my hand over the curve of her back. “It’s all right. I imagine we’ll have plenty of cold to practice in these next few nights.”
I go back to the kindling and tinder box, my hands shaking harder now. It takes at least a dozen tries or more, but the flint finally strikes and a tiny flame catches the wool and holds. That’s only half the job, though. I keep working, building the flames higher, until a true blaze warms and lights our shelter.
Relieved that we most likely won’t die tonight, I blow out the lamplight to save the oil, toss the blanket over my shoulders, and sit close to the fire. Raina nods at me in thanks, her own relief visible in the softening lines of her face, before getting up to check on her friend. When she returns, she sits beside me, sinking into my cloak and holding her hands near the heat.
“Sorry,”she signs after a while.“I tried.”
I nudge her with my shoulder, proud of her regardless. “I told you. It’s all right. We’re going to live. Besides, you came so close. It isn’t easy, fire magick. You made it look that way, though.”
“Until I lost it.”
I shrug. “Again, at least we’ll live to try another day.”
After a time, she says,“Fire magick would have been useful in the vale. All those winters.”
“I’m sure. But magick like that has a tendency to spread, taught from parent to child, friend to friend, mentor to student.” I pause, unsure about my next words, but it’s a lesson I feel needs reiterated. “Fire in a village can be dangerous.”
I don’t mean to bring up terrible memories, but our paths will part after this, and I’ve just begun the teaching of fire magick. She has to understand how dangerous that sort of power can be, even when it feels like it’s no more than a party trick to light a bonfire. It can have devastating consequences. Moreover, the conjuring of a flame is only the beginning of fire magick’s potential.
When sadness flashes across her face, I change the subject, hoping my point has been made well enough. “Your ability. You’re a Seer, a Healer,anda Resurrectionist? What is that like?”
“Seer, yes,” she signs. “Healer, yes. But Resurrectionist? No. Is there such a thing?”
I can’t help but laugh at the face she makes, but any humor dies fairly quickly. Surely I wasn’t mistaken when I saw her chanting her mother back to life. “But on the green, I saw you…”
“I heal,”she says.“But I have never brought anything or anyone back from the dead. I have saved animals from dying, and you, but that is the extent. I am not very skilled. I thought my magick was secret. I taught myself.”
“You’ve done well to make it this far with such complex abilities without a teacher,” I say, wondering why her mother did what she did. “And yes, being a Resurrectionist is a thing. It’s usually a darker type of magick and a form of necromancy. I wasn’t sure about you. The line between healing and resurrecting is often thin. It seemed that was what you were doing—or trying to do—with your mother.”
There’s a certain pain in her eyes, the same pain I saw when we stopped in the wood to camp that first night. I mentally scold myself for not being more careful with my words, constantly reminding her of her mother. Sometimes, grief feels strange for me, even grief in others. It’s like an old friend to me. Something I don’t fear but accept. I’ve lived with grief for so long, grief for a life I can’t even remember anymore.
Before I can ease the discussion in a different direction yet again, she does it for me.“What happened to your magick?”she signs.“Why can you no longer use it?”
Ah. The question I dread most. Time for this conversation to end. “It died. A long time ago.”
“When you were a child?”she presses.
The wolf inside me laughs, his spirit roiling under my skin, all that godly darkness mocking me. From the way Raina looks at me, I fear she can see him in my eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time someone noticed his presence.
“Something like that,” is the only answer I offer before I lean back and lay flat on the cold ground, staring at the stone ledge above. “Enough questions for tonight. You must be tired. Get some rest while you can.”
Thankfully, she doesn’t push for more information as I close my eyes and pray for sleep. I know she’s curious about me, and she has every right to be. And gods, a part of me believes I could talk to her all night if we were in any other situation. But there are some things I just cannot share, and those seem to be the things she’s most curious about. I am not a puzzle to be figured out. More a tomb to be left undisturbed.
I have a feeling, however, that Raina Bloodgood isn’t the kind of woman to leave well enough alone.
2
ALEXUS
Ilean against the doorframe of her room, watching quietly as she stands before her floor-length mirror, dragging a bristled brush through her long, dark locks. I’ve missed her more than I ever imagined I could miss someone, and now she’s here, within reach, dressed in nothing but a white silken gown, stark against her suntanned skin.
“Beautiful as ever,” I finally say, announcing my presence.
The stunned and elated expression on her face when she spins around is everything I’d hoped for, proving these last months have not been a dream. That smile reminds me of the moment I saw the sun break through the clouds after twenty days of rain at sea, the moment I knew I was close to home.
After a toss of her brush onto her dressing table, Raina launches across the room. I smile and pick her up as she crashes into me, throwing her arms around my neck and squeezing tight.
“You act like you missed me.”
