I shook my head. “You’ve now just apologized twice to me in the space of seconds for setting a reasonable boundary.” I winked. “Besides, you didn’tleave me hanging. After I was set upon that day, you were there for me, we’ve spent time together. And thank you.I’ve never had anyone be there for me before in my… weaker moments. They only gather in my strength.”
“Even your parents.”
“Yes. However, that is what it is. What matters is that there is now alsothis.”
“Always looking toward what could be, rather than what is, huh?”
“We must. Without that, there would be no progress, only stagnation. Or worse—retreat and regression.”
He beamed out at me.
The intensity skyrocketed, and I had to pull away while I still had the wherewithal to do so.
I cleared my throat and said, “Now, then, let’s attend to your chief purpose for coming here.”
He gave a nod, then grasped my hand firmly. “Yeah. Let’s.”
In the next moment, he enveloped us in a cloud of his teleportation.
I spun around,rapidly cataloguing my surroundings.
I had never been to this venue in person, but I had read about it during my studies as a young boy.
We stood upon one of the heavily misted, snowy mountaintops ofMordrek Mountains.
A rush of amber magic swept over me, and I looked to see I was now clad in a heavy black furry coat over my tee and pants.
“Sorry,” Winter told me, blinking rapidly, as the use of that aspect of his magic had clearly had a negative effect upon him. “I should’ve thought of the cold and given you time to change first before coming here. I guess I’m just used to it myself whenever I’ve come here—not feeling the cold, I mean. Because of what I am.”
“Thank you,” I told him, running my hands over the warm coat. It was soft and absolutely luxurious. “You brought us here because of the fail-safe employed by Ryker Morgan, the Head of the Guardian Movement. Any mammoth expulsions of magic are absorbed by his power and turned into ambient mist, meaning losses of magical control are contained and will not harm the surrounding environment?”
“And this area is full of the expulsion of so much magic from over the years that it dulls anyone’s ability to discern a single magical signature through all the rest.”
“You are referring to it being impossible for Sylas to register a mass expulsion of necromantic power from you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Until we figure this out, bringing him in will only—”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I understand. You do not need to continue to justify it to me.”
“But you think it’s dangerous?”
“I think you have the right to find answers to what is happening within your own body and your own magical energy before having to concern yourself with interference or external factors.” I smiled and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek before stepping back. “Now, then, in service of that…”
I snapped my fingers and materialized the parchment papers that I’d acquired from my research for him, levitating them before me.
Winter drew up close, reaching out. However, he pulled himself up short and looked to me.
He was truly precious. Even in his desperation to determine answers to this magical issue—what he’d termed hisglitching—here he was being so polite and careful before taking to examining the parchment.
“Please go ahead, Winter.”
He obliged and began flipping through the pages.
“This is from a grimoire.” He swung his head toward me. “A necromancer’s grimoire, right?”
“Correct.”
“Those couple who took refuge with your people during Morien’s reign of terror.”
