Sitting on my knees, I leaned over the pit I’d dug out, and piece by piece I piled tiny pieces of wood, smiling as they started to form a little log cabin. Feeling confident in the structure, I readied my flint.
“Stop,” Artton ordered.
I froze, looking for Tarrin to see what he’d done, only to find him as confused as I was. It took me a second to realize Artton had directed the command at me.
“What?” I asked, eyes wide.
“Absolutely no magic, Spark. We went over this. Using it in the human realm depletes us faster.”
I blinked up at him, still confused.
“Ny, did you just try to light the fire with magic?” Tarrin asked.
“No. I went to use a flint,” I said and lifted my hand up to show them, only it was empty. Knowing I must have dropped it when Artton yelled, I stood looking for it.
The summer fae came to my side. “There was no flint. Your bag is over there, unopened.”
“Oh,” I said breathlessly. “I…”Had I really just done that?
“It’s a good thing, Spark,” he said with a softness he seemed to reserve for me. “It means that you’re… well… becoming fae.”
“I really did think I had a flint, Artton. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. As a safety precaution while we’re here, if you’re thirsty, ask someone for a canteen. If you’re making a fire”—he winked—"ask one of us for a flint. That way you’re never lost in the task, which means you can’t just run on instinct."
Stars, when had elemental magic become instinct? I’d made progress over the past few days… but instinct?
“It’s a good thing,” Artton repeated. “You should be proud.”
I nodded, not really sure what I felt.
“Here,” Tarrin said from my other side, holding out a flint.
I took it from him with a small smile. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, then went back to finish his own task.
The raging fire had simmered to cooking coals just as the brothers returned with big smiles. Sidrick mussed Kaelun’s hair as they approached, which spurred him to push his elder sibling away with the hand that wasn’t carrying three healthy-sized rabbits already skinned, cleaned, and ready to cook.
“I’ll take those,” Tarrin said, reaching for the rabbits, and it took me back to how he’d found a way to make a gourmet meal at the lake. Stars that felt like a lifetime ago.
Within minutes the rabbits were ready on a makeshift spit someone had fashioned, and each of us found our seats around the fire. Tarrin dusted the snow off of a rock that tilted sideways as he sat down, leveling out when the unstable side caught on mine, and Ididn’t have to glance at Artton to know the exact look he silently threw Tarrin. It wasn’t lost on me that he tracked thehuman’severy movement.
Tarrin leaned toward me close enough that I could feel his warmth. Then in a whisper intended only for me, he said, “You can conjure fire?”
If I hadn’t known just how honed in our fae senses could be first-hand, I would’ve thought he’d said it quiet enough to be private, too.
“I can,” I whispered back, not wanting him to feel foolish.
“And it doesn’t. I mean. It doesn’t hurt you at all?”
“No. It doesn’t.”
Tarrin eyes traced my features as if it were the first time he’d seen me—and perhaps it was. Perhaps this was the first time he stopped looking for the Nyleeria he used to know.
“You look… older.”
“A fae matures physically until about the age of a hundred, which is when they look like humans in their late twenties or early thirties. Then their aging is almost non-existent. So, I guess in order to become fae, my body had to mature.”
