Page 35 of This Midsummer Heart
She turns to face me, her eyes flashing with anger.
Oh. She isn’t speaking to me. She’s performing an incantation. Either Titaineislosing a bit of her magic, or she’s performing some kind of major working.
The noisy stream suddenly grows quiet.
Heat rushes to my face, flooding the tips of my ears. In the name of the elder forests, how does she still have this much magic? I feel somortal.
My body agrees, for as the stream somehow diverts to one side, the water slows to a trickle nearer to us, and I swear I hear my joints creaking.
I hang back a moment, watching a mist rise from the now shallow stream. She hasn’t diverted the water at all, but used her sun magic to burn through the water around us. Ahead, the stream slows, but behind us it still runs knee deep on an elf, and swift.
And I can’t help but watch Titaine as she enters the altered stream, following it towards the town. If she’s feeling the loss of magic in our world, it hasn’t hurt her in the least.
Which begs the question.
What does she need me on this journey for anyway? And how in the boughs of Dauron do I stop her from leaving without me once she realizes I’ll only slow her down?
Chapter seventeen
Fata di Morgana
Titaine
I’msuretowalkwell ahead of Auberon so he does not see the sheen of sweat glistening on my face. Not that it’s difficult. Without magic providing him his usual fluid grace and long, easy steps, he’s getting slow.
Any slower and I’ll have to leave him behind.
For while my reserves of magic are deep, they once felt endless. Now I feel the strain of this working, the steam from the sun-dried stream weighing down my wings. They feel oddly…cumbersome on my back.
I shouldn’t have even needed an incantation to bend this little stream to my will. But here we are, in this world the scholars now call Duskhold. This is what life is to be like.
I can only hope the City of Nox will be different. For I do not feel like myself at all. Instead, it’s like a piece of me is missing.
I think of the fetes I left behind in Avalonne, forced to fend for themselves while the magic leeches from their bodies. They do not have the same depths of magic that I do. If this is a taste of what is to come, I’m not even sure how I will send for them.
Which means I’ve all but abandoned them, for a journey that may not even change what has already begun. The power of the fetes is waning. What will we be when it’s gone? Will fetes and wild fae even still exist? Or will we be like Auberon, dragging his weary body along somewhere behind me, becoming unremarkable?
Well. He needs to be knocked down a peg or twenty.
I may as well keep up this ruse that the end of magic isn’t affecting me for as long as possible. After all, itishis turn to learn a little humility.
After thirty minutes of walking, the stream deposits me beside a small mill with a water wheel, which now creaks to life after being forced to halt by my magic. I haven’t entered the normal way by any stretch of the imagination, which means I’m somewhere in the middle of this village.
And while I doubt that a place surrounded by rose briars that areclearlyenchanted enjoys many visitors, here we are. Both exhausted and in need of supplies. At least the briars will likely keep the bandits away.
I can only hope the inn here is decent and cheap.
I leave Auberon to struggle out of the stream and knock on the door of what must be the miller’s house. It’s built with gray and pink stones, different from the brown rocks and septarian vein visible in the stream. Which means this village wasn’t always surrounded by this briar. Interesting.
I wipe my brow as discretely as I can while I wait for someone to answer.
The door swings open. Whomever the human woman—presumably the miller’s wife—is expecting, I am not her. In fact, as her eyes shoot toward the pointed tips of my ears and wings on my back, I instantly regret not thinking of a glamour. I’m so weary, I never even considered it.
Her eyes are still fixed on my ears and wings, bouncing between the two. I don’t think she’s ever seen a fete.
“Good afternoon,” I greet her, hoping the language makes sense to her, “or is it evening?”
I did not think it possible, but her eyes widen further, as if she didn’t expect I could talk.
