Page 13 of Bound Paths
“I know you’ll come for me.”
Her breath caught. Her head swung around, searching for the voice she would know anywhere.
She pushed the water from her face with her magic so she could speak. “Luc?” She ran a hand through her hair as it fanned behind her in the water. Maybe she was losing it. Was Luc talking to her? She needed more rest.
Wasn’t she asleep now?
Nothing made sense.
“You’ll come for me.”The voice echoed again, shortening its refrain.
“You’re right. I’ll come for you, Luc. And we will have words when I get there,” she couldn’t help but reply.
His soft chuckle was a physical sensation as it ran along her skin. Gooseflesh pebbled where the words caressed her. Even under the water, she felt it—felt him. She loved and loathed the sound all at once.
How dare he laugh at her—if it was even him. Was it perhaps her mind’s conjuring of him?
The fact remained that no matter how much she claimed to understand his decision, his choice still gnawed at her. Why hadn’t he said something about his plan? Did he know he could cut a hole through realms? Or had it all been a guess?
Luc didn’t do much without careful consideration. He might not have known he could do it, but he must have suspected. And he hadn’t told her.
She shook her head again.
“It had to be done, but I’ll spend the rest of our existence making it up to you.”As her finger caressed the smooth black stone again, a tendril ofsomethingwrapped around it.
“That’s a start,” she said for the first time, not feeling foolish. The tendril of magic worked its way up her hand, her arm. She would know this feeling anywhere. She’d become so familiar with it before Luc had thrown himself and his magic into another realm.
His confidence in her might be so absolute as to know she could cross realms to bring him back, but if she had a chance to evaluate the risk, to know what he was thinking… She might not have bet on it as he did—not when the cost could be his life.
“I’ll always bet on you,”the voice said as if reading her very thoughts.
“You left me,” she whispered.
The tendril inching its way up her arm halted. She had its attention. She’d come to rely on his power’s presence like she did her own magic. Then, he’d unceremoniously severed what they’d built when he went beyond the veil.
“Our connection spans realms. You know that.”
Did she? The tendril retreated. The black stone—the rock floor itself—seemed to stretch upward—elongating in impossibleways. A shape pushed up from the lakebed like a hand desperately reaching for her but unable to break through.
“Acknowledge it, Rose. Let me make it up to you.”
Her finger itched to touch the material as it moved. The shape stretched like a finger pointing, a mirror of her own action. Its cool, smooth surface connected with her flesh. That presence—that heavy, insistent magic—wrapped around her skin, her hand, her arm. It moved much quicker this time, as if afraid she’d stop it.
She wouldn’t.
Its caress was more a presence than the chuckle that had danced across her skin. His magic had a weight all its own, one she was intimately familiar with. She needed to smell it—to prove to her mind what her body already knew. A deep inhale in the space she’d created with her magic brought the familiar pine and cinnamon to her nose, the strongest she had scented since the cavern. Her nostrils flared at the smell she thought she’d lost. She choked back a sob as a tendril of magic—his magic—circled her body.
“But…the end of the battle… You’re gone… The connection was gone.” She couldn’t string a complete sentence together with his magic on her skin.
“Let me in.”His magic teased every one of her senses, alighting her power in a way she hadn’t felt since they fought side by side under Mount Bury.
“How is this possible?” Whatever this was, she would wring it for every moment of Luc she could.
“You know how. You need only to accept what you’ve already worked out.”
His magic—and it washismagic. She couldn’t mistake it as it wrapped tighter around her, cocooning her in its presence. It held her steady and kept her safe as she let herself fall apart and pulled herself back together.
Time passed, but she knew she needed to return to reality. Their journey so far had only been their beginning. She knew that. They would have an entire existence together. She just needed to bring him back.
