“Hehasdetailed records. I file them myself.”
Sylas let out a low growl of frustration. “I mean records with soul, kitten. Not just names and dates. The story. The how. Do you think a mating bond is a transaction to be logged? It’s a song to be remembered.”
I stared at him, utterly lost. “A… what?”
“Writing isn’t your medium. Fine. It’s not mine either.” He swept an arm over the overflowing cart. “But this is. So, we’ll stock what you need to record the things that actually matter.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, but he was already moving, adding a dozen more items to the cart, and paid with Xavier’s black card without a second glance.
As we stepped back into the crowded market, laden with bags, the unasked question burned on my tongue. “Sylas… why?”
He didn’t break stride. “I think watching you draw might be the only thing that actually soothes Xavier.”
“But I’m not very good.”
Sylas shot me a sidelong glance that was equal parts amusement and impatience. “By whose standards? And since when has that ever mattered to magic?” He offered no other comments, but as I clutched the bag holding the paints, I knew. They weren’t just giving me hints anymore. They were equipping me for a war only I could fight. Perhaps telling me directly would hinder my ability to break the curse, but either way, I let out a long breath and decided I’d find a way to paint Skye free.
11
The mountainof art supplies sat in the middle of my apartment like a silent monument to my inadequacy. I tried to prove myself worthy and set up the new easel, stretched a fresh canvas, and poured my entire soul into painting Skye from memory.
The result made me want to hurl myself off one of the cove’s cliffs. The colors were muddy at best, and the proportions a laughable disgrace. The man who was a sea god in my heart looked like a lopsided, waterlogged ghoul on the canvas. I cast the atrocity aside, soon followed by two other equally pathetic attempts.
I desperately dug through my old art books, searching for the talent Xavier and Sylas saw. Sure, I could render a decent landscape or a photorealistic bowl of fruit. But none of it held a candle to the masterpiece of the storm-tossed cove. I could study the life and movement in its brushstrokes for a century and never hope to replicate its magic.
Though the cake turned out okay, a small, stubborn voice reminded me. Skye and I spent many nights enjoying the cake together, with a thousand kisses shared between us. But cake couldn’t change his world, even if it had brought light back to his eyes.
I had added other small things, like another palm frond to shade us on the bench, and a handful of seashells to decorate the sand. Maybe that was it. Maybe I was thinking too big. The cove wasn’t a blank slate; it was a living, breathing world, and I was merely its… caretaker.
I didn’t need to master the entire painting to change it. I just needed to add to it. To offer a gift. A gift that could break a curse.
The question remained, humming with potential: where to even begin?
The answer came easily with the memory of the cool weight of the amulet in my palm, the gleam of the cursed blade in the vault’s light. I couldn’t bring the objects themselves, but I could bring the idea of them. Was that what Xavier meant about being magic?
With a deep, steadying breath, I uncapped a fresh tube. I leaned close to the canvas, my nose almost touching the painted sand near the waterline where Skye and I always cuddled.
My hand trembled. This wasn't like the cake; this required clear intent. I painted a tiny shape in the sand of the seashell of the water-breathing amulet. It was no larger than my pinky nail, a mere speck in the vastness of the cove. But I’d traced the lines with gel pen into the record book, and knew the detail well.
Next to it, with a drop of metallic silver, a hilt jutted from the sand, its handle decorated with the rune sigils inlaid, meant to be the Curse Cleaver. The movement of the waves might be beyond my skill, but the details of a blade stuck in a distant shore, that I could do.
I sat back, my heart thumping. It looked… silly. Two tiny, poorly defined marks on a massive canvas. Would he even see them? Would the magic transfer?
Exhaustion hit me hard. The first faint hints of dawn lit the edges of my blinds. I’d wasted the entire night ontwo insignificant specks while the real world slept, and Skye remained trapped.
Panic seized me. If I didn’t sleep now, I’d miss my window to return to him at all that night. I collapsed onto the bed, my eyes closing as I desperately chased the fading sensation of salt and sun, fearing insomnia but rewarded almost instantly with cold rain splattering my face. The storm roared around me, rain lashing my skin, the beach empty, and overflowing with waves.
“Skye!” I screamed, but my voice was lost among the wailing of the wind. He wasn’t on the beach, and in my heart, I knew the chains had already dragged him below.
The rising tide slid further up the isle, threatening to yank me into the waves, while I searched for the amulet and the dagger. The shell glowed, untouched by the churning water. And beside it, the dagger stood driven into the sand, its runes blazing with a fierce white fire that cut through the storm’s gloom.
I lunged for them, heart in my throat, and ripped them from the sand, almost losing my balance at the same time. The shell amulet rested in my palm the size of an acorn, its chain little more than a bracelet length, too small to wear. I could barely lift the dagger, now the size of a broadsword, the hilt larger than I remembered, and glowing hot enough to turn the sand into glass despite the chill of the wind.
No. No! Despair threatened to swallow me whole. How had I messed this up so badly? And was there a way to fix it? The cake floated on a small plate, as if tethered to the rock it originally began its life, untouched. Skye hadn’t eaten it today. Perhaps because I hadn’t come?
But I remembered how it made me realize I could make changes to this world at all. Skye trusted me to save him, or at least hold him. Why?
Because I wasn’t just Luca anymore, mediocre artist and office assistant. My variance gave me more than the ability tochange shape. It gave me strength and an innate magic that had brought me into the world of the paranormal to save a man who’d captured my heart with the sadness in his eyes.
