Page 162 of The Sea Witch
Slowly, he began to walk. He didn’t think, didn’t try to use rationality. This was about what his heart demanded.
His steps lengthened and grew more confident. He didn’t fear running into anything, or falling into an abyss. He feared nothing, not with her burning invisibly, bathing him with unseen heat. Without her sun, his world was barren and colorless.
Nothing stood between them.
All at once, his arms wrapped around her. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled, catching the scent of sea and sweat and sweetness that was all Alys.
The threads of her unfurled inside him. She was there again. The faint gleam of her essence grew more vivid, rising higher within him. His spirit shone into hers. They illuminated all the darkest corners of each other, glimmering brighter and brighter.
She was everywhere in him, as he was in her.
The world filled with light again. The darkness disappeared. They were once again in the forest on the island.
She drew in a breath. “Welcome home, Sailing Master.”
“Safe harbor, Captain.”
It happened quickly, two vines twining together. They rested their foreheads against each other. More radiance swirled around them, filling his veins with magic.
“I sense it out there.” Her eyes glittered with energy. “The fail-safe’s in this forest.”
They ran deeper into the woods. Thick-trunked trees with twisting roots made the going slow. As they attempted to hurry,the sounds of combat grew fainter, yet did not disappear. They could still hear the wind conjured by Stasia, and pops of gunfire.
They continued, with Alys leading them as she followed the call of magic.
She drew up short when they reached a gap in the trees and bracken. Standing in the middle of the clearing was an unadorned small stone hut. It had four walls and a pitched roof made of rushes, a single window, and only an open space for the doorway. Plants climbed up the rocky walls on thick woody vines. There was no smoke coming from the miniscule brick chimney.
“This is it,” Alys whispered. “We’ll find what we’re searching for here. So our magic says.”
Cautiously, Ben and Alys approached the hut, weapons drawn. Every snapped twig beneath his boot made Ben sharply glance around in case they’d alerted some sentry, mortal or otherwise, of their presence. Yet nothing moved. Not even a startled bird took to the sky.
He stepped through the doorway first. Alys peered around him as they both examined the interior of the cottage. The floor was bare dirt, and once, long ago, someone had placed leaves and soft grasses on a section of it to make up a rudimentary bed, and the remains of a very old fire stained the brick-lined hearth. A piece of metal was bolted to the back of the hearth. There was a single battered cooking pot and a dented mug.
The only other object in the hut was a strongbox. It was made of metal that had darkened with the passage of time, with leather strapping and a thick steel lock.
If the fail-safe was going to be anywhere, surely it rested within the strongbox.
He approached the metal box, then went down on one knee. Taking a breath, he attempted to open it.
“Locked,” he announced. He used the butt of his cutlass to slam against the latch, but it remained fastened.
Alys made a swirling gesture with her hands. “I’ll summon the cunning of a rat to open it.”
Golden light surrounded her fingers before shooting toward the strongbox. But the light ricocheted off the lock. They both crouched as it flew toward them, and then out the window.
“Well, hell,” Alys muttered. “Another safeguard against magic.”
She pulled the golden carving knife from a pouch. Yet when she inserted its point into the lock, nothing happened.
He cursed. “It would be too fortuitous to suppose a key was nearby.”
She kicked through the bedding and lifted up the cooking pot, before running her fingers in the spaces between the stones in the walls. For good measure, they both searched the hut from the roof to the floor.
“Nothing, of course.” Alys’s jaw clenched. “The longer we’re on this quest, the more I’m both respecting and hating Little George.”
“I never supposed him capable of such guile,” Ben admitted.
She knelt in front of the strongbox and pulled two daggers from her boot. Both of the knives she inserted into the lock. Frowning in concentration, she worked the two thin blades carefully.
