Page 42 of War Mage

“I did it!” she exclaims quietly, but with clear triumph.

“Good,” I praise. “Now, again.”

Chapter 18

Adara

Urim is a taskmaster. That comes as no surprise, as uptight and rigid as he is. He makes me pick the lock again and again until it practically becomes muscle memory. The sun is high in the sky, the camp quiet as I practice, when I finally pick the lock fast enough for the orc’s liking.

He nods. “Good. You should take a rest, but you’ll need to practice again while we travel. You need to be fast enough that you can take the shackle off as quickly and quietly as possible once we’re at the palace at Evernight. The faster you can remove the cuff, the better chance that you’ll take Grazrath unawares when you strike.”

I nod grimly, reminded of what our goal is. To take an immortal being by surprise and hit him with soulfire, which I’m not even sure I can conjure and what it’ll do to me when I do. What it’ll do to Urim. Using core soul to cast is tricky business and I’ve spent much of my life training how to avoid doing so, since the consequences are said to be dire. But at least I have the soultie to the orc, which should at least mitigate the costs to myself. Not that I’m even very sure of that. This whole mission is an exercise in the unknown and working against my self-preservation.

Putting the ankle cuff back on, so that if any guards come by they won’t be suspicious, I immediately miss my fires. The air is nippy, even during the day. The first frost is probably close. I braid the bits of wire back into my hair, careful to cover the shiny metal with my thick locks. When I’m done, I yawn, even though the back of the wagon is bright with late autumn sunlight. I go to lay down on the wagon bed, but the ankle cuff pulls on me and I’m not able to stretch out my leg entirely.

“You need to lay down as well,” I tell Urim, “to give the chain as much slack as possible.”

The orc merely grunts, stretching out his legs and leaning back, though the wagon is not quite big enough for him to spread out entirely. Urim’s body invades my personal space as he tries to lay down, but I don’t mind. He’s so warm, even with his shirt gone. Orcs must run hotter than humans.

“Is it alright if I lay on you?” I ask, eyeing the space at the bottom of the wagon. If I’m to lay down with Urim there, I’ll have to at least lay on his shoulder, if not partially on his torso.

“That’s fine,” he says. “It’s just sharing space and body warmth.”

His need to make excuses for what we are doing amuses me. Like he has to have a logical reason to get back into physical contact with me. But I say nothing, even though the need to needle and tease him is strong. I merely lay down, and hum in pleasure as his body warmth seeps into my cold skin. His arm comes around my shoulders in a gesture that feels intimate, but is probably just so that he is comfortable and I’m not laying on his arm, putting it to sleep.

“I’ll never get used to being cold,” I comment, pulling our threadbare blankets the guards gave us over my body.

“You are used to your fires,” Urim says. “It is understandable.”

“Not only that,” I tell him, “the robes of the Mage’s Tower are spelled to regulate body temperature. So you aren’t too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. I’ve worn those clothes for most of my life, so I’m just not used to being uncomfortable, temperature-wise.”

“Tell me about the Tower,” Urim asks. “Your life there. Why is it worth risking your life for?”

“I doubt my daily life at the Tower would be of much interest to you,” I say. “It was very humdrum, most of the time. Breakfast at morning bell, followed by research in the Archives. Then I would teach a training course for the other fire mages. I was the oldest and there weren’t very many of us . . .” I trail off, my heart squeezing in pain at the thought of the other fire mages. They were young, so fucking young, and yet fire is the most dangerous of the elements, the easiest to turn into a weapon, so we were all conscripted into the army when Yorian’s war started going poorly. I watched all of them suffer and die. Jamys, Garet, Yvette, and Osanne. I practically raised them all, having known them from children when they first came to the Tower. They were my family, like younger siblings. Osanne was only fifteen summers old, godsdamnit. She shouldn’t have been there. None of us should have been. But mages are rarely seen as people. We are useful tools, assets, and weapons. Even the youngest of us.

I haven’t thought of them in a while, the thought of their loss too painful to dwell on. Cara was hard enough, but the other fire mages, my unit, are an even more bitter medicine to swallow.

Urim’s arm tightens around my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding genuine. “I should not have brought up the Tower. You lost much in Yorian’s War.”

I’m startled that he’s apologizing, but then I realize that he must feel my sorrow and loss through the mate bond. It’s easy to forget sometimes that we are connected so intimately, especially when his side of the bond is always so calm and without large spikes of emotion. What must it be like, I wonder, for someone as cold and logical as him to have to deal with controlling his own emotions, but also feel mine? I’m not as good as he is at masking everything.

“It’s alright,” I tell him. “I should talk about them. They’ll be forgotten if I don’t and I wouldn’t want that. They deserve to be remembered.”

“Maybe you can write about them when you return to the Mage’s Tower,” he suggests, a surprisingly sentimental recommendation from one as emotionless and logical as him.

“If I make it back, that is a good idea,” I say softly, my heart still aching at the thought of my lost chosen family.

“Tell me about them,” Urim says, surprising me again. “If you should fall during this mission and I survive, I will record your thoughts for you and make sure they are archived at your Tower.”

It’s a generous offer, even though, at this moment, it’s looking more like Urim will be the one to not survive our quest. Still, on the off chance that it plays out the way he says, I should tell him. And maybe talking about them will ease this aching in my chest, the hollow feeling where my heart used to be.

“There were only five of us,” I begin. “Like I said, I was the oldest of us. Fire mages tend to get used up and burnt out by the time they are thirty, so all the mages that trained me were already gone.”

“You are twenty-eight summers,” Urim remarks. “Were you close to the age of burning out?”

“I suppose so,” I say. “But I have never felt the same strain on using my powers that other fire mages reported by my age. My mana is . . . substantial. ‘A once-in-a-generation talent,’ the High Master called me. He even said that I might have been the first fire mage to ever be old enough to be considered for High Master . . .”

I trail off again. The young, hopeful, ambitious mage of my past who dreamed of being High Master of the Mage’s Tower seems so far away from me now, even though it was only maybe a year ago that I thought such things. But going through a war and losing my entire unit that I was supposed to be leading has a way of changing a person. I don’t feel worthy to lead the Tower now, even if I do end up surviving this mission.

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