“Then I promise I will do my utmost to stay out of your way,” Nathaniel says smoothly.
I narrow my eyes. “Which means?”
“If I believe you’re trying to kill me, I won’t simply allow it,” he says dryly.
I snort. That’s as good as I can expect, under the circumstances. It doesn’t feel like enough, but it will have to be, unless I want to bind him with magic. I don’t have time, and I don’t want to waste the magic, but it would be safer.
The plain fact is, though, that I don’t want to. It’s what Evram would do. I am selfish and ruthless, but I also don’t want to become him. I hope this isn’t the wrong call.
It’s not my feelings during a death match that worry me. It’s these.
“Fair enough,” I manage, as if this is in any way adequate or something I can count on. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” A thread of amusement in his voice; he knows, too. “But if I may, you seem very sure,” Nathaniel says, “that you won’t need help to do this. A thing that no one has attempted in centuries, let alone managed.”
Put that way, it’s easy enough to imagine what I must look like to this man, whoever he really is: arrogant, untested, an easily vanquishable outlier, caught up in bitterness and vengeance. I wouldn’t agree to help someone in this situation either, given what he knows of me.
But it’s not arrogance if you can back it up, and I intend to.
“I have not counted on anyone’s help in ten years,” I say. “I understand you don’t know what I’m capable of. Neither do they, really.
“But they’re going to.”
Chapter 3
It sometimes feels like everywhere in Washington is named Bear Creek, especially on the eastside. So I can tell you that I went to a Bear Creek grove and that will not in any way help you find it on a map, because there’s forest all over the place. It’s also not right on a trail, because I’m not stupid.
Basically, this particular grove is easy for me to get to, and not so easy for any random passerby to find, and that’s by design.
For years I’ve been infusing the tiny amount of magic it’s possible to accrue in Low Earth into it rather than using the spell High Earth taught us to send magic to them. It’s about the only thing we’re able to do in this world without wands to access and direct power. I may have dropped the ball with people preparations for this vanishingly unlikely possibility, but never let it be said I don’t have my magical preparations well in hand.
(Very on brand, to be honest—bad at people but stellar at magic.)
That thought is enough to convince me to cast a very light shield around me as Nathaniel and I speedily hike through the pine trees. Since he doesn’t know where we’re going, I have tolead, and I’m not going to risk him stabbing me in the back. But I’m also trying to reserve as much magic as possible, so this will just serve as a warning to me if he closes in so I can cast something more serious.
But he notices.
“I gave you my word,” he says in a low, dangerous voice.
Soft, but it drops like a blot of ink into the quiet of the forest. We’re surrounded by pine trees particularly, and there’s moss on the ground, and it all feels very hushed.
And alive, and waiting.
The kind of peaceful right before an enemy jumps out from behind a tree at you.
I am extremely not used to walking this path with anyone at my side.
I answer, “And I appreciate that and hope I can trust it, but I also don’t know what your word is worth. I’m not going to risk blowing my only chance at this because precautions offend you.”
He sighs. “I suppose counseling you against expending magic needlessly will only heighten your paranoia.”
“Sterling effort to sneak that in anyway, I do applaud you.”
Nathaniel snorts. “And you won’t explain to me why you’re worried about giving me information, but not about me being present when you fight the grand magus?”
I consider. “No.”
He snorts again. “Am I to be seen and not heard, then?”
