“You landed a few good hits. You should be proud.” My thumb stroked along the soft skin of her inner wrist. Her chest rose against mine. “But it will take much more than that to bring me down.”
“I’m sure I’ll find a way.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.” I rose, helping Seren to her feet. I studied her, searching for the ache of wounds in her gait and the flash of anxiety in her eyes. They were present but muted, driven out by the small pleasures of progress.
“Let’s dry off, you menace.” The venom that had once filled her voice had been replaced with a fondness I had not expected. Her gaze softened as she recognized the concern in my own.
I wished to show her that my feelings had changed too. I no longer saw her as the insufferable inconvenience that I once had. She had become a person I could rely on in the weeks we had spent together, only strengthened by the days we had spent fighting side by side.
After supper, before the blazing warmth of the fire, I poured over my maps. There was an old story about a mágikal spring buried deep within the Varázis Erva, where the water glowed silver blue, and the vestiges of spent mágik drifted through the boughs like autumn leaves on a swift breeze.
The first map—one that depicted the whole of Szrestia—had proven useless. The one I studied now mapped only the stretch of the Varázis Erva between Ordelés and Acsilla. The parchment was smooth and worn through with age, nearly indecipherable as the firelight cut through its thin surface.
I discounted the Sárkhona Draum—the mountain range far to the north—as well as the many rivers which wended through the trees on their journey to the ocean. When I finally spotted it, I almost whooped with delight. Hardly more than a smudge of faded ink, was the small body of water, no more than a few hours' ride from our cottage.
The hour was late, and Seren had long since retired to the bedroom, but I had a bone deep feeling that we needed to go that night.
The handle of her door turned easily beneath my excited fingers, and I crept inside the darkened room. The steady sound of Seren’s breath in sleep was a whisper in the silence. Crouching by her bedside, I brushed my hand along her shoulder. It was warm and bare where the blankets had fallen back. “Ren.”
Her nose scrunched, but she did not wake.
“Seren.” I squeezed my fingers gently into her.
The cold bite of steel was at my throat in an instant, a dagger clutched in her fist.
I froze.
Seren’s eyes snapped open, alarm disguised as anger. Her gray eye was bright against the dark, the other hidden in shadow.
I could see it, the moment the haze of sleep dissolved from her mind, and she yanked the blade away. My fingers found the hollow of my throat, the thin skin she had claimed with her steel. They came away clean—bloodless.
“You absolute fool.” She pushed herself up, blankets falling around her waist. “I could have slit your throat. Why are you sneaking around my room in the middle of the night?”
“I wasn’t sneaking. I was trying to wake you. I didn’t expect you to get stabby—although I suppose I should have. No matter. Getdressed. I have something I want to show you.” I could not help the excitement which crept into my voice.
“In the middle of the night?”
“It’s not yet midnight, but yes, it must be tonight.”
Seren glared down at me. “Must you always contradict me?”
“Of course. Now, hurry and get dressed. I promise it will be worth it.”
Chapter twenty-five
Seren
My breath was a plume of mist in the biting cold of the midnight sky. Footprints pressed into glistening snow, now ankle deep. I followed them, the toes of my boots not quite filling the imprints that had been left behind.
I thought of the way my blade had pressed against the soft skin of his throat. I still had half a mind to finish the job. To sink the steel into blood and bone. I could still run. Let Harkin’s life blood spill upon my hands and flee to some faraway place I had only ever read about, like Daikés or Kiaszta Naván. Places where Rázuri and humans lived in harmony.
Harkin was the only obstacle still in my way, and what was the stain of one more Rázuri life upon my soul?
But I had another voice within me. A newer, quieter, softer voice that told me to stay. As it whispered through the back of my mind, it sounded a lot like Harkin—wounded and half asleep that night in front of the fire.
I had made an agreement, though it had not been without its difficulties.
I’d put on a brave face, not wanting Harkin to see my weakness, but those first few nights I had struggled to breathe, sobbing into my pillow until sleep overtook me. I had been unable to look at myown hands, alive with the memory of the mágik that flowed through them.
