Rowan looked fondly at him as he scooped Briar up, whisking him off up the road.
The familiarity of the frost pattern curling up the cane’s surface only struck me as I turned back to Kessian. In our shared vision, he’d beenusing a cane. This cane. I carried it back to him, but he looked at it like it might bite.
I know someone who can make you one, too. There’s no shame in it, Briar had said.
I thought Kessian had injured himself last night, but there’d been other instances of Kessian moving stiffly, looking as though he was in pain and dismissing it. He folded his arms across Lunaris’s window frame, casting me a wary look. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“Are you ill?”
“No. Yes. It’s complicated. I didn’t want to bother you with it.”
“It can’t be any more complicated than the mess I’ve dragged you into. I’d be thrilled if you evened the playing field a bit.”
His mouth twitched but didn’t quite smile. I waited patiently, twirling the cane between my palms. It was pretty, sturdy yet delicately painted.
“I was cursed with Bowen’s Wane. That’s how I know Briar. He had it, too, and he developed the cure.”
I stopped twirling the cane. I’d heard a bit about Bowen’s Wane, a curse that had cropped up sporadically a decade ago, draining a witch’s magic. It was fatal. Or it had been.
I could only imagine how it might have wreaked havoc on Kessian’s life. “I didn’t know non-witches could get it.”
“Briar thinks I may have been a witch, but I got Bowen’s Wane young enough it stunted my magical growth. No magic pool to draw from, no familiar, but no way to know for sure. It would have killed me if not for Briar. It left me with a few souvenirs. Tin-man hips and knees, chronic pain, fatigue. Some days, I feel fine. Other times, if you put a backpack on me I’d probably fall over backwards. Lately …”
“I’ve put you through the ringer,” I realized.
He cringed. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I’m not very good at knowing my limits, but I don’t like having to sit something out. Don’t like being treated like I’m fragile, either.”
“I’ve been told I’m subtle as a sledgehammer.” I met his eyes and looked pointedly up at his fringe. “You’ve had leaves stuck in your hair all morning.”
He sat straighter to look in the wing mirror, plucking at the offending memento courtesy of the forest. I leaned in and helped, picking theleaves out and smoothing a few wispy strands. He froze, gaze locking with mine, trepidation in his eyes.
I swallowed, aware of his breath fanning the heavy pulse in my wrist. Seized by the memory of winding his hair around my palm, I had to forcibly shove my hands in my pockets.
“The whole reason I’m doing all this—going back, figuring out how to fix things in Shearwater—is because I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” I said. “If you can’t do something, I’d rather you tell me.”
I held out the cane to him. He looked disappointed, and I didn’t know if it was because of what I’d said or because I’d taken a step away rather than leaning in, but he took the cane.
He said, “I’m not good at asking for help.”
“Then I’ll offer more. If there’s something I can do. I don’t know what, to tell the truth. A glass of water, a piggyback ride, rub your shoulders.”
“You can rubsomething.”
“I didn’t mean—” At the sight of his teasing smile, my protests died. If he found it easier to deflect from uncomfortable topics with humor and flirting … I wouldn’t complain, even if it was becoming increasingly difficult not to steal that kiss I’d forgone last night. As he traced the frost pattern with a finger, I said, “Think of it this way: It will be fun to whack people with it if they annoy you.”
Kessian smiled appreciatively. “Now you understand me. Enough about the cane, though. Tell me about this necromancer.”
I’d first crossed paths with Emery Vale when I’d traveled to Belgrave for a day.
Lunaris and I had set up shop near the university, fully aware it would be the most caffeinated populace, and thus the most likely to buy my hand-thrown mugs. I’d glazed them with colors like the milky way and enchanted the stars to glimmer. Most people liked my staple enchantment, which kept hot drinks at perfect temperature, but one man had an odd request.
“Can you enchant it to make all coffee mocha flavored?”
“I … could? But why not just make a mocha?”
“I’ve discovered I’m lactose intolerant, and I refuse to entertain the soy- and nut-milk varieties.”
He’d looked world-weary, and in spite of his tithe belt and other indications of magical aptitude, his familiar was conspicuously absent. I wondered if his had, like Lunaris, given up its form for some alternate purpose, though I’d never met one who had. It was hard not to see myself in the rings of insomnia under his eyes, or the premature graying of his hair.
