But right now, Newt is going to hold onto this moment with both hands for as long as it lets him.
Chapter 9
Asession goes wrong. Very wrong.
It starts the way most of their sessions start now: Newt standing in the center of the cleared living room floor, shoulders squared with a determination that is almost painful to watch, hair pulled back at the nape of his neck with a leather cord Malik has now twice untied in the privacy of his own imagination.
"A ward," Malik says, circling behind him. He keeps his voice level. Instructive. The voice of a familiar and nothing more. "Full perimeter. Every door, every window, the hearth, the threshold. It's a protective construct—the magic has to know what it's keeping out, and it has to know what it's keeping in. Do you understand?"
"Yes." Newt's voice is more confident than it was two weeks ago.
Malik closes the last of the distance between them. It is a thing he has been doing slowly, by degrees, over the past several weeks, like a man wading into cold water who has finally decided to commit. He fits his chest against Newt's back. He slides one arm around Newt's waist, flat-palmed, splayedacross his stomach. The other arm crosses higher, a bar across his collarbones. He settles his chin against Newt's temple, and Newt's breath catches, audibly, and then releases in a long shaky exhale that Malik feels move through the whole of his body.
"Ready?" Malik asks, low against his ear.
"Mm-hm," Newt manages.
The magic builds slowly at first, the way Malik has taught him. A thread of it pulling from Newt's center, through his chest, down his arms, pooling in his palms, which he has raised to hover at his sides. Malik can feel it through the bond—a low warm thrum that climbs in pitch as Newt gathers it. The ward takes its initial shape: a faint shimmer along the floorboards, tracing the perimeter of the room, finding the weaknesses and sealing them.
"Good," Malik murmurs. "That's good. Keep pulling. It wants more than you're giving it."
Newt inhales. The thrum climbs. The shimmer on the floor brightens, rises, begins to sketch itself up the walls in pale concentric rings.
"More," Malik says.
Newt pulls more.
The ward is beautiful. Malik has seen a great many wards in a great many centuries and this one is pristine. It's the kind of work a master witch might produce after decades of study, rolling out from Newt's small, tense body in clean waves, finding every angle of the room and claiming it. The rings reach the ceiling. They close. A dome.
And then they keep building.
Malik feels it through the bond first. A shift, subtle. The thrum becoming a hum becoming a pressure. Newt's magic is not settling into the ward the way it should. It is continuing to rise, pushing past the structure, looking for somewhere else to go.
"Newt," he says. "Ease back. You've got it. Just hold it, don't go further—"
"I can't," Newt gasps. "I can't stop it, it's not—"
The windows rattle.
The floorboards groan—a long deep noise like something settling its weight against the house—and the books on the shelf to Malik's left shudder, and then three of them launch themselves across the room and strike the opposite wall with enough force to leave a dent in the plaster. A fourth follows. A fifth. Newt flinches and Malik tightens his arms around him.
"Breathe," Malik says. "Newt, breathe—"
"I'm trying, I'm trying, it won't—"
A crack opens in the ceiling. It starts at the light fixture and walks outward, a spidering line of white that Malik tracks with his eyes while his mind tracks the pressure building in Newt's chest beneath his arm. The bond is taut. It is singing. Newt is rigid against him, shaking, eyes squeezed shut, and Malik can feel the magic building and building and building and the thing he has been avoiding knowing is suddenly, horribly, the only thing he knows.
Oh, he thinks.
He has been circling the knowledge for weeks without letting it land. The physical contact that stabilizes the surface. The scent that intensifies when Newt's body responds. The way every escalation of touch has been met with a corresponding refinement of Newt's control, as though something in him is being unlocked, piece by piece, by the specific language of another body against his own.
Twenty years. Twenty years of power accumulating in a vessel that has never been opened. Never been touched. Sealed tight as a wine bottle, and Malik has been adjusting the label while the pressure climbed.
Contact is not enough. Has never been going to be enough. The physical contact is an analgesic on a wound that requires surgery, and the seal is going to break, and if it breaks on its own it is going to take the house with it and possibly a block in every direction.
The window over the windowseat shatters. Glass sprays inward. Newt cries out—a small, frustrated, terrified sound—and Malik feels him trying to pull it back, trying to gather the magic and shove it down, and that is worse, that is the worst thing he could possibly do, Malik can feel it in the bond like someone trying to cram a lit match back into the matchbook—
"Newt," Malik says, sharp.
