Page 12 of Ties of Death

I gather up my magic, as much of it as I can hold, and I direct it toward his, covering it until I can’t even see it through mine. Then I push it into his, smothering the black strands. A tingling pain builds through every nerve of my body as I work, but I ignore it; it feels much like it did when we bonded. Perhaps this is just what wielding magic is always like.

His magic resists, but I keep pushing until, with a snap, my magic floods through his. I have a single instant of triumph before pain resounds through me like a boom, and the magic, now a murky, incandescent grey, swallows me whole.

8

A Silvery Tattoo

Iwake to pain. My arm is hot, a spiral of scorching heat that drowns out my thoughts for a moment. Accompanying it is a knot of crippling worry in my lungs that makes it difficult to breathe.

I force my eyes open. The ceiling is the familiar, warm brownish-grey of the clan caverns’ stone.

I ease up to sitting with a small gasp of pain. I lift my arm to study it, to find the source of the strange hot pain. Distantly, an intense relief washes over me, but it’s almost lost in the cloud of confusion as I stare at my arm. My sleeve has been cut away, slit up to my elbow. Where before the metal wedding band was a spiral snug against my skin, I now have a silvery tattoo, as if the band sank under my skin and then… grew.

I touch it with my other hand. While it shines like polished silver, the skin is still supple, feeling no different, if somewhat warmer to the touch than usual.

The end of it, though, twists up my arm past where the original wedding band rested, and it disappears under my sleeve. I mentally trace its path where the heat ends, and I straighten further, pulling my tunic down from the top, over my shoulder, just enough to reveal the edges of a silver rune right over my heart—

Dizzying shock plunges through me, and a throat clears from the opposite side of the bed. I jump, jerking my bodice back into place.

Daenn leans against the wall, arms crossed, fists clenched, and gaze pinned steadily to the floor.

Horror suffuses me. Merciful winds, did he see... but of course he did. Why else would he have chosen that exact moment to make his presence known? Why else would he be staring at the floor as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the room?

“What are you doing in...” My hand comes up to gesture to my room, which of course is when my mind chooses to point out the details from the corner of my eye that I haven’t registered yet. Unlike the room I was assigned, this room is far larger. And it has… personalizations. The shelves are filled with clothing and weapons, far more weapons than any one person needs. There are books, too, and one particular cover catches my eye. I can’t read it from here, but it’s red with gold stitching for the title, and I would know it anywhere; I gave it to Daenn for his fourteenth birthday. “...your room?” My voice goes high at the end. Why, in all the winds and mountains, am I in—

“Our room,” Daenn corrects grimly.

I’m going to be sick.

“And I’m here,” he adds, pausing briefly, “to check on you.”

To check on me?

My memories snap into place in bits and pieces. Right.

I was in the nest with Zephyr and I... my memory’s hazy, but I did something with my magic. I mentally reach for it now on instinct, but where the white, sparkling luminescence was with the black strands twined around it, now there’s nothing but a solid mass of mottled grey, like storm clouds.

I tentatively brush my mind against it, unsure what I’m seeing. As soon as I touch it, Daenn sucks in a breath.

“Emana, what did you do?”

I snap my attention back to Daenn and bristle. “Why do you assume I did anything? Maybe one of your guards knocked me out.”

The suggestion is ridiculous, especially of Eskil or Kettil doing such a thing, and I know it, but Daenn breezes right past that.

“Because I certainly didn’t turn our magic into this.” He waves a hand as if it’s between us, visible in the air.

I blink. He can see it too?

Of course he can. It’s a bond, after all. It connects us, whether or not I want it to.

“All right, fine. Yes, I did it,” I snap. “I tried to stamp out your magic, but obviously it didn’t work.” At least, I don’t think it did. But maybe… maybe the new color is simply what mine looks like after destroying his? Maybe it tainted mine somehow as his died? “…Did it?”

“No. Our weddings bands are seared into our very skin by the magic, and…” There’s something about the way he trails off that pulls me up short, even with the revelation that he has a matching tattoo to mine floating in the air. Worry flickers through me.

“What happened?”

Worry I can see reflected in his eyes, which only serves to intensify mine.

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