Page 21 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Somara had joined her, gushing praise about her brave display.
While she appreciated the gratitude, Amelia wasn’t certain of her worthiness for it. She had a horrible feeling that whatever Amelia and Silas triggered in the pair of blades had caused whatever magical disturbance had just occurred.
She felt even worse when Frank shook her hand in thanks and told her that the party owed her and Silas their lives.
Amelia slunk back to her tent without meeting anyone’s eye, wondering on the fate of Hank, who hadn’t been as lucky as the rest of them.
There was also the matter of what on earth had happened to her at midnight. She seemed to have teleported halfway across the camp, and if the shock in Silas’ voice was any indication, he had experienced something similar.
Amelia halted at the entrance to her tent, taking in the destruction. Sharp holes pierced the canvas of the tents flooring, and in some places, deep slices tore them apart. Her belongings were strewn about. Books lay splayed open, pages everywhere. Her bedroll lay against the side wall, disturbed by the gust of wind that had nearly killed them both.
She’d needed to replace the arcane crystal of her lamp, the shattered shards now useless. Worse still, was that each of her Waystone chips had cracked into pieces, making them just as useless as the crystals. She no longer had means of travelling between cities when she exited the Rift, meaning she would have to travel by horse to the nearest outpost that might sell them to get back home.
She took in a deep, unsteady breath, trying to erase the images of Rift Crawlers that kept being thrust into her mind.
“Wild night, yeah?”
Amelia started at the sound of the voice from behind but didn’t need to turn to know who stood there.
She let out a slow breath. “Yeah. Wild day all around.”
Amelia turned then, her eyes falling to the bloody strip torn into his leg. Silas held onto the side of her tent, favouring the leg that had not been injured.
She met his eyes, and he looked back at her with a muted expression, though in the way he cast his gaze over her, Amelia had the sense he was checking she was okay.
Wild day, indeed.
“Your leg—”
“I’ll live,” he interrupted with a quirk of lips. “Halpert applied some healing balm, and the wound is already coming together.” He nodded to her. “What about yours?”
“Just a scratch,” she said dismissively. The wound to her calf had already clotted, nothing compared to Silas’. She caught his eye. “What on earth happened today? What have we done, Finley? What happened to us at midnight…did we actually spontaneously teleport? How do we—”
“Woah,” Silas said, eyes widening as he raised a hand at her in a bid to stop her, “slow down.”
He sighed quietly and then limped slowly into the tent. He fetched her bedroll, depositing it back to the centre of the floor and then he sat down neatly beside it. Even injured, he had more grace than she could ever hope for. He patted the bedroll and looked to her expectantly.
She grumbled slightly at the invitation to sit in her own tent, on her own bedroll, but Amelia walked over and took a seat beside him. This close, her eyes snagged on the wound cutting through his right eyebrow, and she marvelled with disquiet about all they had been through in such a short space of time.
“What happened today? On the whole, beats me,” Silas said contemplatively. “Your other question…yes, wedidspontaneously teleport to one another. Because of that, I have a theory on what the cuts could mean.”
His eyes fell to her hands, and it was only then that she realised she was rubbing the thin slice on her palm with the thumb of her other hand. Amelia stilled her fidgeting and placed them both into her lap.
“What’s your theory, then?”
“Have you read much on the history of pair bonding?”
She blinked stupidly at him, the words sinking into her fatigued brain, one sluggish word at a time. “Pair…bonding?”
Silas gave her a nod. “I’ve learnt some things in dribs and drabs from my mother and father, who studied the phenomenon, which has happened sporadically throughout history to two individuals, bonded by magic.”
He shifted his hand, laying it palm upwards across his knee. Amelia’s eyes landed on the matching cut in his skin.
Bonded.
By magic.
Pair bonded.
