Page 46 of Familiar of the Witch

I felt a wave of emotion from Bastion and it took me a moment to decipher it. Faith. He believed in me. It steadied me.

‘Hold on,’ I cautioned Oscar and Bastion, then drew my magic forward through the large runes. They lit up, the ground trembled again and we braced ourselves. For a moment I thought the rift was getting worse but then it slowly started to close. I leaned into thesowiloa little more, making sure the uprooted grasses found their way to the earth again unharmed by their jaunt.

‘I think you’ve been selling yourself short,’ I commented to Bastion. ‘Those ogres had to weigh more than six hundred kilograms.’

‘I thinkyou’vebeen selling yourself short,’ he countered. ‘You’re a specialist in runes, potionsandmayhem.’

‘That was rather impressive, wasn’t it?’ I allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction.

‘Very impressive. In fact, it was very sexy,’ he murmured. I felt his blood heat.

A kraa interrupted our moment and Fehu plunged towards us. ‘You’re late,’ Bastion grunted. ‘You missed the party.’

The raven landed on Bastion’s shoulder and hung his head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I reassured him. ‘I used magic to end things rather quickly, otherwise you’d have been perfectly on time.’

He brightened, gave me a happy kraa, flew to my shoulder and hopped from one foot to another. If he’d had a tongue, he’d have been sticking it out at Bastion.

I felt Bastion’s amusement – and that was when I realised that was all I felt. The all-pervading agony he’d been experiencing had disappeared. ‘Hang on a minute! Your pain has gone!’ I pointedout brightly.

He blinked. ‘It has.’ He had a light-bulb moment. ‘The shift healed the headache.’ He groaned aloud. ‘I’m an idiot. I’ve never shifted to heal something like a headache before. Open the bond, give me the rest of the pain and I can shift again and get rid of it.’

Bastion pulled at the bond and this time I let him take all the pain. In seconds he shifted and the hurt vanished between us, like ballast being thrown from a hot-air balloon. In that moment, we were blissfully free of pain.

I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would last.

Chapter 37

Bastion and I were having a cup of tea, snuggling on the sofa with my legs strewn across his lap.The calm before the storm,I thought cynically.

I had rung Krieg and told him about the attack. I didn’t hold him responsible but he deserved to know what had happened to the bodies of his people. He had stayed on the line whilst one of his men checked the ogres’ gravesite and his fury had crackled down the phone when they discovered mounds of earth and empty graves.

‘This will not be borne,’ he spat. ‘I will destroy the necromancer that dares animate our people.’

‘There’s the small matter of finding them first,’ I pointed out.

‘I will find them and I will destroy them,’ he growled. He hung up without so much as a ta-ta.

I was pleased I wasn’t on his hitlist any longer – I don’t like having powerful enemies – but he hung up before I could suggest we work together to find the necromancer. I’d let him stew in his rage a bit then contact him another day.

My brain felt clear and focused. I gave a happy hum. ‘It’s so nice being pain free,’ I said.

A surge of guilt and embarrassment hit me. ‘I’m sorry,’ Bastion said quietly. ‘I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner to shift. I’ve never used the shift to heal something other than a gaping stab wound.’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I’m pretty embarrassed.’ He was downplaying it; he was completely mortified.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said lightly. ‘We’ll know for next time.’

He raised my socked foot and kissed it, making me laugh. ‘Thank you for your forgiveness, Bambi.’

‘You don’t need it.’ I brushed it away. ‘You did nothing wrong.’

‘I left you in agony!’ The words burst from him in self-directed fury.

‘You took half of it! Enough, Bastion, I have no interest in seeing you self-flagellate.’ I paused. ‘Unless that’s something that gets your rocks off. I’ll never yuck your yum,’ I promised.

Bastion grinned. ‘No, that’s not one of my kinks.’

‘Good to know.’ I realised that might sound judgemental, as if I were glad that wasn’t one of his kinks, and that was not what I had intended. I forced myself to continue instead, ‘But I’m really up for trying anything at least once if you like it.’ My cheeks reddened. ‘I don’t want our sex life to be focused solely onmyfantasies.’

Before Bastion, it had been years since I’d had sex. I was well aware, even in the few orgasmic days that we’d spent together, that I was still pretty inexperienced compared to him. I was keen to remedy that. More importantly, this chat about kinks had thoroughly distracted him from feeling bad about the whole headache debacle.

---