Page 18 of The Mage on the Hill
WARMTH AShe woke. A soft heater wrapped up in his right arm, snugged against his chest. Darius nuzzled closer, unwilling to commit to waking yet. Where had he been last night? A bar? A concert? A lecture? And who had he brought—
No. He didn’t live in the house near campus anymore, the old two-story in the neighborhood nearest Old College. Aunt Eva had left her huge, rambling house on the hill to him. He’d moved there when he couldn’t face the world anymore. But he didn’t go to bars anymore, or concerts, or anywhere else… and this wasn’t Aunt Eva’s house.
He didn’t….
Gasping for air, he shot up in bed in a room he didn’t recognize beside a tousled head of dark hair with a white stripe on a person he couldn’t immediately place. A collection of metal boxes rattled on a nearby bureau, responding to his distress. He had to stop, but he couldn’t find a solid anchor.
“Hey.” The person beside him turned, the face suddenly rooting Darius to earth and magic and his own protesting lungs.Toby. “What’s wrong? Nightmare. Hey, you’re okay.”
Something that tried to be a reassuring sound stuck in his chest.
“Dammit. You were having a really good sleep.” Toby rubbed his shoulder, somehow comforting even though Darius wanted to twitch away. “Stupid nightmares. Hey. Look at me. Take a breath.”
Darius put a hand over the one on his shoulder to hold it still and stared at the comforter in…. Arden’s guest room. There. He had place and person. The angle of sunlight through the room’s single window suggested late afternoon. Time. “Startled. Sorry.”
The hand in his had an odd texture, human skin but with an overlay. Darius gripped that hand tighter and fumbled for Toby’s free hand. “Leaking.”
“Am I? That’s good, right? I’m supposed to be leaking so I don’t go all explody?”
Itwasgood and probably meant they’d bought Toby some time. “Webs?”
“Did them. Three of them like a good student, but that was hours ago. Does the magic leak for hours? Not that I mind being a dripping faucet if it helps.”
Darius ran his thumbs over the backs of Toby’s hands, head cocked to one side as he tried to glean some hint from the slow trickle from Toby’s fingertips. Like a fleeting scent half remembered, he couldn’t grasp enough to identify the channels or even if Toby was manifesting channels yet. He shook his head, biting back frustration. “No.”
“No, what? No, it’s not usually hours? No, it’s not helping?”
For a moment, Darius could only stare until he realized he’d failed to put two pieces of a conversation together. “Your channels. Can’t tell.”
“Oh.” Toby’s forehead creased in confusion, and Darius had to fight the urge to smooth the lines away with his thumb. “Wouldn’t I figure it out first? Where it’s supposed to be going?”
“Not always.” Darius patted one of the hands he still held and released both. “Been doing this longer.”
That swift Toby smile blossomed suddenly, erasing both creases and the shadows from his eyes. “Early days, right? I mean, if it was easy, I wouldn’t have been kicked out of every guild in the country. And at least we got to sleep together and hold hands.”
Part of him wanted to return that smile, though he didn’t want to send the wrong signals. His social skills might have atrophied nearly to the point of being snuffed out, but even he knew better than that. He managed a soft snort and slid around Toby to get out of the bed. No slippers, no cardigan—the habits that had developed in his cocoon of solitude had no place here. He’d known after that first day with Toby that they might need to travel. It had seemed so distant, and even on the road, it hadn’t felt real.
Now, after seeing Arden again, who wanted things from him, wanted him tobeProfessor Dar Valstad again? Now he just wanted to go home.
“Darius? You okay?”
He pulled in a long breath and shook out his sweater. Promises. They tangled around a man’s feet and pulled him into the dark. But there was Toby, regarding him with earnest concern, and he knew he would let them. One more time. “M’fine. Sleep?”
“I had a decent nap, even though you snore.”
There it was again—clear illustration why Toby wasn’t Kara and why he hoped the outcome might be different. She had been a disturbingly immense dam of power, just like Toby, but Kara hadn’t been able to fight her way free of despair. Toby carried his sense of humor like a second set of clothes, always right there when he needed it, and his desire to live burned fierce and bright. They werenotthe same.
Darius scooped up his shoes as he left the room and pointed Toby, hard on his heels, to the back door. “Outside.”
Toby’s eyes widened. “I’m not… am I? It doesn’t… my hands….”
“No.” Darius shook his head, irritated with himself. “Go feel things.”
“Ummm….”
He waved a hand to indicate the surrounding area. “Magical confluence.”
“Magical… so it’s more concentrated here and I might get a jumpstart or something if I touch the right things?”
