Page 35 of A Light So Blinding
She released his hand, feeling the slickness of their blood sliding across each other as she did so. She needed to wrap her hand. The blood was surprisingly already slowing, but she didn’t want to take a chance at infection. Especially considering it was clearly a spell that she’d read off the raptor claw.
Silly girl. She shouldn’t touch things in a witch’s hut without knowing what they were. Now she had likely cursed the both of them.
Oh, no. Was she going to lose her hand? Was that what terrified him?
The lights still glowed in front of them, so it was hard for her to see his expression as he turned away from her. The brightness turned the entire room into a rather comical hue of purple. Every blanket, every rug, every piece of furniture.
“No, what?” she asked, her stern tone hopefully snapping him out of whatever strange mood he was now in.
“No, this was not meant to happen,” he snarled. A clawed hand slashed through the colored lights, revealing the anger on his expression that chilled her to the bone.
She really had done something irreparable, hadn’t she? That was the only reason he’d be looking at her like that. With rage simmering underneath the surface, so powerful that she was certain he would kill her now.
“What did I do?” she whispered.
“That is...” He huffed out an angry breath, and she couldn’t stop focusing on his tusks.
She’d seen trolls with much larger ones, but they were still deadly weapons. There was a time in the arena when she’d watched one of his kind rip through a man’s belly with his tusks. The sharp tips had parted the soft flesh there all too easily. And then there were his claws, of course. Dagger tips that she would prefer he use if he was going to kill her.
Shaking, she took a step back from him. “I don’t know what is going on, but I need you to take two steps back.”
Astrid had used that tone with men many times. Humans were quick to anger as well. All it took was an order like that, snapping them a bit out of whatever had angered them, and the men usually would do one of two things. They would fly at her in anger, in which she would use her power to control them, or they would do as she told them to do and then seem a little confused about why they had.
Bjorn was the latter. He took two massive steps back, making sure to keep his eyes on her as he did so.
“Blood witches...” He exhaled again, the sound nearly like the snort an animal would make. “We bring our children to them to see their magic. That was what the lights were.”
“The red was yours,” she said. “And the blue was mine.”
Hers. She had never thought to see her magic outside of her body, and now she wished she could see it again. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it before they had merged.
Blue like the sea, she remembered. Blue like the sky on the clearest of days and it had been stunning. How did she get it back? Could she converse with it? Could she ask the magic questions? How to strengthen it would be her first, of course. There had to be a way to encourage power like that to grow naturally without having to cajole it out of her body. Perhaps they could work together, rather than be so separate from one another.
He shook his head as though trying to clear it of dark thoughts. “Listen to me. We also bring our chosen partners to a blood witch. She measures the weight of our magic, looks at them together, melds the powers before we are... mated.”
She blinked at him.
“Mated?” she repeated. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him correctly. “That sounds rather animalistic.”
He looked at her with so much despair in his expression that she realized where she had gone wrong in saying that. Of course it sounded animalistic. His people had been created by using pieces of animals to make them who they were.
“Our powers combined together. It has meaning for my people. It binds two people together because it means they are...” Again, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. We are bound.”
“Bound?”
“Bound,” he said again. “Do you not understand what I mean by that?”
Some part of her maybe did. That was the screaming voice in her head arguing that she needed to get control over this situation, and fast, or her entire life trajectory was going to change. But she didn’t know how to say that to him without looking weak.
Groping for the back of the sofa, she held on to it so he wouldn’t notice how shaky her knees were. “Please explain it to me, Bjorn. I would like to make sure that I understand what you’re saying correctly.”
He seemed to struggle a bit with how to say the words before clearing his throat and replying, “It is similar to a marriage for my people. But more binding than that because our magic will seek out the other. We should be able to use each other’s powers, sharing our magic until it changes the fundamental basis of what we can and cannot do. It is more than just a marriage. It is a melding of souls.”
Fuck.
Fuck, no, she didn’t want that. Astrid had been very glad that he had saved her life. That much was certain. She owed him for taking care of her in the labyrinth, but she didn’t want to pay for that with hersoul.
She had to sit down. Perched on the back of the sofa, she curled her arms around herself and shook her head. “I don’t even know what magic you have. And I don’t want to be bound to you, no offense.”
