Page 127 of Mantle

“You’d be willing to do this?”

“Willing?”

“Of course.”

“Now I told you this, won’t they make me do it anyway?”

“No. I won’t let it happen that. Neither will Ariana.”

He frowned. “My… choice?”

“I swear it to you. As proof of that, Ariana has erected a shield around you back in the real world that prevents any being from harming you or getting near you.”

“I can feel her magic… I didn’t know how it was manifested. She’s protecting me.”

“Yes. She really is. The four of us will.”

“Four… her loves… she’s yours…” He looked out at me. “I thought… she’s mine, isn’t she? We’re the same. She cares. I imprinted on her.”

“All very true. But the love between you and Ariana isn’t romantic in nature. It’s a deep bond, undeniably, yes. You care about each other. Much like friends, maybe even a brother-sister type dynamic. Does that ring true to you?”

“You won’t take her away from me?”

“No. There’s space for you. Just in a different way.”

A smile spread over his face. “Yes. That sounds nice. I like it. Very much.”

He startled me as he was suddenly right in my space in a blink.

Was he… influencing my dreamwalking?

“How did you—”

“I am many things.” He grasped my arm, making physical contact that I hadn’t expected him to be able to endure at all, let alone initiate in any way. “I cannot come with you yet. I can’t leave this place.”

“Why not?”

“You said you’d stop him from leashing me again. But if you fail, Ariana will die trying the severance spell without me being there. I can’t risk that. You need to find Corvin… take his magic away.”

“If we find him, we can imprison him in The Void.”

“Yes, I know of it. No magic works there.”

“There’s something else we can do… people are working on a spell to infuse you that would nullify your magic even with its hybrid nature.”

“Because I am a threat to them.”

“That’s why the research was commissioned, yes. But it could be employed to activate only if Corvin’s magic tries to touch you. That way there’d be no connection on your end for him to latch onto. So he could never actually leash you again.”

“My magic… so many parts of different magic… it’s part of me. These people making this… they could lie. They could make it permanent and take away what I am. A lot of what I am.”

“Kai would ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Kai… the sorcerer who used Ancient magic against me… a violation of Celestial Law.”

I tensed, thinking he was taking that a bad way.

But then he nodded. “Yes. He can be trusted. He thinks differently. He would care for Ariana’s wishes for me.”

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