Page 19 of A Heart of Winter
Kai didn’t even pause while I was having an existential crisis. He just patted me on the back as he dropped his bags in the entryway and headed for the back door, returning with an armful of firewood a moment later and setting to work.
“Something wrong?” he asked me as he was setting the logs into a triangle, crushed newspaper beneath them. He seemed concerned about me, but not the sub-freezing temperature of the cabin.
“I can’t—I can’t fix it. My magic isn’t working. I can only make things colder.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. I’d never felt so betrayed by my own powers before, not even before I’d first learned to truly control them.
He struck one of the extra long fireplace matches and set the newspaper burning, then looked back at me. “I don’t want to minimize this, since it’s clearly important, but it is okay. We’ve got it handled. It’s not that hard to start the fire ourselves.”
“But you could freeze to death in this,” I insisted, waving my arms around as though I needed to show him how cold the room was.
“Sure. If we didn’t start a fire. But that’s easy, and almost done.” Checking to make sure the logs were catching, he shut theenormous grate in the front of the stove and dusted his hands off, standing and turning to me. “See? It’ll be toasty warm in a few minutes. So unless this is a serious problem for you, it’s not a problem at all for me. I grew up like this. We’ve got one of these in the house, I’m not sure if you noticed.”
“Your house also has a furnace,” I muttered, half under my breath. Really, it was the twenty-first century. Why would anyone choose to survive on a wood-burning stove alone?
He chuckled, coming over to wrap his arms around me. “How about we grab those blankets you bought, and maybe some cocoa? It’s the perfect day for it.”
I still wanted my magic to work how it was supposed to, but he made a good point. There was just one major problem. Why were my powers still out of control, when my mind was settling and I wasn’t depressed? The more time passed, the more I realized I didn’t miss Michael at all. I was better off, happier, with this new relationship forming between Kai and me than I’d ever been with Michael.
Michael and I had been together in the end simply because we hadn’t been apart. We hadn’t enjoyed each other’s company or hobbies or interests. We’d rarely had a rewarding conversation that left me feeling understood and seen.
Meanwhile, Kai wanted to hear about magic, as a discipline.
Adiscipline.
The mere word had been enough to send Michael running for the nearest dance club.
“I’m just saying, it sounds a lot like criminal law. You don’t just have to have the skills and know the law. You also have to be able to work on the fly in a way that a lot of people aren’t capable of doing.” He made a wide motion with his hands, as though encompassing something enormous. “The amount of knowledge alone is more than a lot of people can handle. The reading and memorization and constant keeping up to date with change.”
“To be fair, magic doesn’t change as much as laws,” I pointed out, motioning to a shelf of books Morwenna had on one side of the room. “We’re still using books written two thousand years ago. My mentor was born in Ancient Greece, and most of her collection was in Greek, and still relevant.”
His grin was even wider at that. “Would you believe I took a class on Ancient Greek law? Sometimes the theory and history is just as important as the current rules.” When I paused in surprise, he waggled his eyebrows. “Understanding underlying concepts is just as important as knowing detailed facts. Maybe more so.”
I dropped my head onto his shoulder. “This is ridiculous. A witch could fall in love with you, Kai Mori.”
He pulled me in and snuggled up tighter. “Good. It’ll make it easier to convince you to come to San Diego.”
It really would.
It was too damnedcold in the morning, so I wrapped a blanket around myself as I went to nudge the fire back to life, adding fresh logs and watching till they caught.
I continued to wear the blanket into the kitchen, staring blankly into the refrigerator for a moment thinking about food. Was pudding for breakfast out of line? I didn’t feel like eggs, and we didn’t have a lot of options. Still, stuffing my face with sugar first thing seemed like it might be a bad idea.
A knock came on the back door, and I froze.
That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be. I turned and looked out the window over the sink—better put, the half of the window I could still see out of, because part of it had been covered in a snowdrift. We had literal feet of snow out there.
Why—better yet,how—would anyone be knocking on the back door?
I shuffled over to it and pulled it open to find the back stoop perfectly cleared, as though someone quite thorough had shoveled away all the snow from just that one square of concrete.
Standing on the square was Morwenna, her raven familiar Edwin perched on her shoulder, a dagger clutched in her right hand—underhand, like she was planning on using it in a knife fight, not as a tool.
And then she was stepping into my space, dagger raised.
Brutus
“—don’t recall inviting you in,” Kai’s voice came from somewhere behind me.
I wanted to assure him that it was just Morwenna, that she could be trusted, but there she was, wielding a dagger, anger writ across her face and threat in her eyes.
