I always had.
He would say it was the mission that focused him this way. The rebellion demanded it. His entire childhood was shaped bytradition and duty, raised as the heir to his fae noble house. He accepted that role, carrying it on broad shoulders that would have dwarfed a lesser man. Yet, this tower of stone made him pause.
I wished I could do more for him, that he would allow me to carry some of the burden. But that wasn’t Malric. He sheltered and protected others. He didn’t allow them to protect him.
I suspect he still saw me as the broken male he first encountered on that muddy, bloody battlefield so many years ago when I had shattered. I was stronger now, but he had put me in a box, and I remained there.
When my magic first surfaced, it did so without warning. Glass shattered through the main dining hall of our keep, broken by lightning zigzagging from the clear sky. Rain fell where no clouds had gathered. I was terrified of the power surging inside of me, as was my family. They knew what it meant, what unwanted attention it brought to them.
But they still sold me. They sent me to the king, as per the law, in exchange for a paltry sum. Recompense for my family’s “loss” of their son. I was struck from the family lineage and became one of the king’s magic-users. I was supposed to be trained to control my magic and use it responsibly. Instead, I became a monster on a leash, controlled by the tyrant who preferred me as a wildling. He turned my magic onto the battlefield as needed, to destroy everyone and everything in my path.
Until the day I snapped the leash. My control was gone, burned through like wildfire. Lightning rained down with torrential rain. I killed all in my path—friend and foe—and the king called for my death. One man fought through the torrent to soothe the storm.
Malric. The moment he touched me, peace flooded through me. The storm calmed, and the magic left me. I sagged againsthim, and he carried me from the field over his back. The rebellion wanted to execute me. I was the enemy, but Malric intervened again, vouching for me. He earned my loyalty.
The bond formed later. Not before witnesses. Not in ceremony. It grew in shared silence after battle and knowing that neither of us would leave the other behind.
My magic was muted now, not uncontrolled, but I feared it and rarely used it, much to the rebellion’s dismay. They had hoped for a weapon. And they got…me.
We stared at the tower, at the vines wrapped around its surface in structured patterns that reinforced rather than strangled. All of it protected what was inside and to keep what was inside there.
My breath slowed without conscious intent.
The air around the structure was heavy with magic. My magic shifted, leaning into what was already woven around the structure as if trying to become a part of it. And the magic recognized it.
Recognition is too simple a word for it—something in the air aligned with my magic. Fine threads of power extended from me without conscious release, testing the boundary. Something answered. Something beyond the protective runes. Something inside.
Someone.
Someone lived there. Not an inert object but a living, breathing person with magic of their own. The realization settled into me with quiet certainty. I scanned the windows carved high along the tower’s length, the reinforced lower stones, the sightlines positioned for observation rather than defense.
This was not an abandoned outpost to guard something.
It was what we sought.
Movement flickered at one of the upper windows. Not wind. Not a shifting vine.
A figure stood within the shadowed frame.
Pale against the dim interior light. Still. Watching. A woman.
She was not armored. No blade glinted at her side. There was no posture of readiness in her stance. Only stillness. Deliberate and aware.
For a suspended heartbeat, neither of us moved.
Then she stepped back from the window.
The air tightened around me. My magic surged before I restrained it, lightning coiling along nerve and bone. Branches at the clearing’s edge groaned in response. Leaves shuddered.
I drew the storm down with steady breath, forcing it into discipline.
“Malric,” I said.
He turned at once, already calculating lines of approach and potential threats.
“There’s someone in that tower.”
He followed my gaze upward. The mark on his wrist burned brightly.
