Page 21 of Silver
Love
Mother
“How does the locket look?” Silver asked Niam, letting Xarius work through his emotions in peace. I knew from what Silver had told me, that Xarius’ mothers loved him, even Leah who I’d thought had eagerly shunned her own son. I was actually relieved to hear that hadn’t been the case. So far Niam’s parents had been the worst if we were to compare. Silver had a loving grandmother, so he felt like he had it better compared to me and Niam. When I heard about how Niam had been treated, I immediately felt like my own situation wasn’t as bad, knowing I could’ve had it worse, but then I remembered how much trauma I still carried and thought that maybe you couldn’t really compare childhood trauma.
Thankfully, we all had a family now. Each other. And as soon as Altair and Tino joined us, we would be complete. Forever helping one another and caring, trulycaringabout each other.
“It glows,” Niam whispered. “Which date did she put on the letter? She said two days, maybe that’s today or yesterday? Fuck, weneed to move! Altair is fair game for the mages now! What if they sent someone to kill him right away?!”
I couldn’t sense or feel emotions like Xarius could, but I swore I felt Niam’s anxiety rising.
Xarius rushed over to him, and Niam’s face slackened with relief, likely from his bonded taking the edge off of his emotions. “They won’t track him when he’s without magic, and if my mother’s letter is anything to go by, they won’t be worried since the last mage won’t be sent here. No need to panic. We all need a good night’s rest, then tomorrow we’ll eat a good hearty breakfast. Then we’ll head out to look for Altair. We’ll let the locket guide us and move as fast as we can.”
I nodded, adding, “We should find a place that sells RVs. It’s better we all live together comfortably until we figure out how to make a portal.”
“The only thing that sucks about an RV is that we won’t be able to easily find shelter in the forest anymore,” Niam reminded me.
“Well, we have earth magic times two,” I shrugged. “Maybe it won’t be a problem, and besides we might not need to move around so much now that we know how to keep our wards up,” I remindedthem. “We just need to get a good distance away from Altair’s last known location if they did track him, and then ward him with us as soon as we find him.”
Silver nodded. “That actually sounds like a good idea. All of it.”
It seemed we were all in agreement.
“And we need to find time to talk about your powers, Wilston,” Niam said with a big smile. “It was so cool! But we need to know more so we can plan strategies around it. It won’t just be these mages that are coming for us. Soon we need to face the leaders and they’re mad powerful.”
I nodded. “Let’s work on strategies when we drive. We can open the window in the van that separates the back from the front. It’ll give us more time to talk and plan things while we’re stuck on the road.”
Xarius sighed. “I hate removing the window, but I think you’re right. Besides, we’ll get an RV soon. I should probably prepare myself to say goodbye to van.” Just then his phone rang. He pulled it out and winced audibly. “It’s Julie,” he told Niam, and Niam waved at him to go on and answer it. I think she was his former boss and friend, if I remembered correctly.
As soon as he’d clicked accept, a slew of curses came through the phone. It wasn’t even on speaker phone but we all heard her easily. Then he clicked the speaker phone on, likely thinking whatever they shared shouldn’t be private from us.
“Xar! Do you mind explaining to me why a group of ten men came into the coffeeshop and threatened me to tell them where the fuck you are?! You promised me you weren’t in danger!”
Xarius grimaced before replying, “Well, I wasn’t in danger then.”
There was a beat of silence. “Imma whoop your ass, Xar! Start talking!”
I liked her.
“So, I told you I found my friend Niam. We’re actually together now so, yay surprise! Anyway, we started helping people out and some people didn’t like that and they’ve decided to stop us.” Xarius seemed almost proud of himself once he was done telling her all that. Then he quickly seemed to remember she’d been threatened. “Wait, are you okay? What did they do?!”
She sighed, “Nothing much. I told them the truth that you quit and were looking for someone, but that I had no idea where you were. They seemed to trust that, though. But one of them decided tosmash the new coffee machine before they headed out, stating they were watching me.”
“Watching you how?” I asked, knowing she could be in danger.
Another beat of silence. “Is that your new boyfriend? Or old boyfriend considering you fell in love online? Hi! I’m Julie, the amazing best friend I know he talks about all the time.”
Ireallyliked her.
“Hi, Julie,” I said with a warm tone to my voice. “I’m not Xarius’s boyfriend, but a friend of theirs. There are four of us who work together, so Xarius isn’t alone in this. But please answer the question.”
“I think they were pretty clear on the watching part,” she answered after a moment of silence. “Like they camp outside the shop and watch me. Trail me home. I don’t know if they’ve bugged my phone but like I told them it’s not like you tell me where you are so how would I know.”
I was glad we’d put wards on us, too, making it impossible to track Xarius’s phone and location. But it didn’t seem fair to Julie that she was alone right now. I quickly said, “Mute the phone for a second, Xarius.” He did without question and waited for me tospeak. “I think we need to do a ward over this phone call and have her find us. We need to protect her and we can’t come to her location and risk her home and shop getting ruined, besides they might expect that. Otherwise, they wouldn’t hang around at Julie’s.”
Silver leaned into me, his lovely body warm against mine. “But how do we ward a phone call?”
I shrugged. “I think we treat it like a normal ward, ensuring that only we and Julie can overhear the conversation. We visualize us and Julie being protected, so, it’s not the line that’s secure, but only the people, aka us and Julie, who can understand and hear what is being said.”
