He nodded, “I know—”
I gave my head a vehement shake. “It’s not a small worry, Theo. It’s a gaping hole of terror that I feel rising up to swallow me.” I tightened my legs around his. “I want you. In every sense, in every way. But no matter how I look at… us, I cannot see how to make it work.”
“Imogen—”
“Please listen. You are a king. And now I am a queen, my Gods, and when all this is through—if I survive it—I have to go off and care for a kingdom of people who will hate me. It is my duty to commit my life to them, far on the other side of the sea.”
The wind gusted around us. He drew his fingers through my hair, his thumb brushing my temple. “We’ll join the kingdoms.”
I felt perilously close to saying yes to anything he suggested, but I maintained my resolve. “Simple as that?”
He nodded, but there was something in his look… he understood the impossibility of it all. The reality of the years and hurdles that stood between us being together was becoming clear. Ending Eusia did not mean that we’d get the small, sweet pleasure of waking up together every morning and falling asleep next to each other every night. It would not give us the time or the quiet that we yearned for.
We sat in the aching quiet of our circumstances, close together and warm against the cold. I tried to burrow nearer, to press my cheek to his neck, but his fingers in my hair firmed. Stopping me. Then his lips met mine.
They were searing, soft, desperate. He kissed me with the bold, desirous need of a man who did not care about impossibility or danger or any other monstrous thing that might try to force its way between us. He’d slay them one by one. His tongue swiped across mine, his breaths rolling over my cheek. I kissed him back with the same desperation, with the same fervor.
He cupped my bare breast, caressing it until I moaned.
“Shhh,” he chided with his lips still against mine. He pulled away from our kiss reluctantly, an aching look on his face. “I brought you here to read.”
A too-loud laugh bubbled up, and he covered my mouth with hishand. “Quiet,” he said into my ear, but I could feel his smile. “Godsdamnit. Focus, Imogen.” His teeth pinched the lobe of my ear. “Are you focused?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Good.” He dragged his nose along my cheek. “We’ve found the spell that can, in theory, end Eusia, correct?”
I nodded, even as his lips at my jaw sent a swarm of tingles across my entire body. Even as I felt my heart buckling from that kiss and everything that was still unresolved.
“But I’ve been thinking about our bond,” he whispered. “It wasn’t a spell that undid it. It was a Mage’s draught.”
I frowned and adjusted so I could meet his gaze. “A Siren’s bond is made with Gods’ power. A draught is magic undoing it. A bit like the way your power undid the spell.”
He dipped his chin. “‘Two edges of the same sword’ as Jesop put it once. You’ve suspected that your bond with Eusia is a spelled version of the Siren’s bond—that she used your blood and sullied the bond somehow with a spell—so…”
“Perhaps we need both to undo it.”
He smiled and lowered his mouth to my neck, where he spoke over my pulse between nipping kisses. “My magic undid the spell in your stomach, and it stunned me, but it shouldn’t have. Mage Seers have used draughts to undo Gods’ power—like our bond—for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
A draughtanda spell. My thoughts whirled but I couldn’t grasp a single one with the way Theodore’s lips were roving lower and lower down my neck, my chest. His tongue drew across my nipple, dreamily and searing. “Theo.”
“Fine. All right.” He sat up quickly like I’d chided him. “I’ll read to you.” He snatched up a book quickly, flipped through the pages with mock fury, but I simply lay there glaring.
The maddening bastard laughed. A decadent, rumbling sound that affected me almost as much as his lips and tongue did. When he finally found the page, he settled himself back down beside me and placed an apologetic kiss to the center of my chest. “More soon,” he whispered.
He held the book so I could see it. The writing within wasn’t the dark, neat ticking that I’d come to recognize as the Great God Jesop’s. Whoever had written this passage had a distinct flair to their hand, the letters scrolling, the ink pooling in places where they’d pressed with zeal. I could nearly feel the author’s exuberance through the first line alone.
Spell work is an art, and as such, it will change, morph, and grow with its user. It does not have the rigid boundaries and unending quality of Gods’ power, but where some see this as magic’s weakness, a true Mage Seer will see it as its strength.
When crafting—whether it be a spell or a draught—intention cannot be stressed enough. Of course, a Mage Seer needs her flesh, her blood—the words are of great import too—but they are ineffective without the caster’s heart, mind, and soul. Powerful is the Mage who feels deeply.
The wind kicked up, and Theo paused to cover me with the cloak. “I’ve read further,” he said with a grim note. “We have none of the ingredients needed for a draught on the ship. And if we can find them on Della, we won’t have time to brew them.”
“You just swung me from hope to hopeless in a matter of moments, Theo.”
He closed the book and gripped my chin in his hand, so my lips pouted. He kissed them squarely and sweetly. “Imogen,” hesaid, drawing my name out like nectar. “There’s a Mage Seer in Della.”
“Are you suggesting that we rob her?”
