by Eden Butler
Dear God, but this wizard was an infant. “You are, in fact.”
“I can heal it myself.” That promise came with a clip, annoyed growl that I’d heard Bane use anytime he wanted to scare away whoever was presently annoying him. At the moment, that was me. Me and my feeble, subpar spell work that couldn’t heal his busted ankle.
“You can’t heal it.” The jerk of his head and those slowly narrowing eyelids were almost comical, edging toward the pathetic side, but he would not keep me from my fussing. “Not with the pain distracting you. You’ll mess up the spell.”
Bane made several low, pointless sounds that I took as irritation when I pulled his foot closer on my lap but the noises from his throat did not distract me from the feel of his skin or how I picked up the sense that his stare went on too long, that he watched me too closely.
He didn’t seem able to do anything other than watch and silently complain. It was a gift I’d rarely seen—someone who needs your help yet refuses to ask for it; someone mightily powerful but incapable of healing themselves.
Still, the watching, the grumbling, continued and it was that attention and the worry that I’d somehow damage him worse that had my fingers shaking as I tried mending the broken skin with a spell Mai could fashion while asleep.
But my invocations for healing spells were abysmal and that particular craft took skill and patience I had yet to acquire, so when my inflection went wrong and Bane’s skin splintered further, I winced, reacting to his loud grumble of “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” I said, covering the gash with the meager bandages from the kit Mai had stuffed into my bag. “So sorry.”
“Incompetent, stubborn… Shit.” He made a grab for his foot, twisting it from my lap before I could stop him. “How is it Mai does such good healing charms and you are…” But Bane ended his question when my eyes flashed and the glare I gave him made him silent.
“Because there isn’t a nurturing bone in my body.” Not thinking about the injury much, I pulled on his toe, jerking that foot right back into my lap. “And because my patient is an uncooperative baby.”
The awkward tension leveled thick and weighty around us just then. We were both soaking wet and tired. Both annoyed by the disaster that the search had been and the ridiculous amount of pressure that continued to build between us. Maybe the silence that quickly descended in that small cabin had little to do with the storm and being attacked or my inability to drum up even the smallest amount of a bedside manner. Maybe it was Bane’s lack of effort at being an accommodating patient. I tried very hard not to think it had anything to do with events that had happened so long ago but which still seemed to shape the present: the kiss and the melding and all those things I kept hidden from him.
He grunted when I called him a baby, jaw moving as though he’d decided to chew on his insults rather than spit them out at me. Still, my patience, my discomfort and the wreck just being near him did to me as I attempted to heal him again, would not keep my temper from surfacing. “Big, powerful wizard covered in scary runes and you can’t even sit still for me to help you.”
Bane seemed to give up the fight then and leaned back on his elbows, watching my fingers as I attempted the charm again, then at my face when I managed the right invocation. “Who says you’re not nurturing?”
I waved a hand over his leg. “Hello?”
His slow smile smothered some of my anger and I shook my head as he laughed. “Who the hell cares anyway?” He nodded at his ankle as though it were nothing. “It’s a scratch.”
“It’s not a scratch and if we don’t heal it, it’ll get infected.”
Bane pressed his hand over my fingers when I started fussing with the bandage. “I’ve had worse injuries. It’s fine.” After a few moments of holding my breath, completely stimulated when he touched the top of my hand, I exhaled, ignoring the small, barely-felt zip of energy from his fingertips. If Bane had noticed it at all, he didn’t say and let me get on with cleaning the wound and freeing it from the dirt and grime left there from our awkward hike over the ridge.
It was slow work that took my concentration and it helped me to ignore how closely he regarded me, how I could sense the feel of his stare on my features, eating up every expression I made. “So why did you take off?”
My eyebrows dipped together at his question—he just wasn’t going to give up, was he? But instead of giving him a straight answer, I tilted my head as if I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Did I?”
Bane laughed, sounding like something deep and warm. It reminded me of pecan groves and honeysuckle and all the things in the Cove meant for someone else. “You’re always taking off, Jani.” He leaned back further, adjusting on his side. “The Runaway Witch. That’s what Sam and I called you, remember?”
“No,” I told him, not liking how those memories collected, like a patchwork doll hurriedly sewn together again without regard for scale or structure. “I don’t remember.”
“Well I do.” Bane pulled two bottles of water from my bag, tossing me one. “You ran from Eldridge Romney in term seven. We were thirteen. He tried kissing you at Joanie Wilkins’ first girl/boy party.”
“Because you glared at him every time he stepped my way.” That night I remembered. But then it’s hard to forget when a small boy like Eldridge with big doe eyes the color of a magnolia leaf nearly faints anytime Bane let that stoic, mean glare land his way. “I didn’t want the poor boy to be bloodied.”
Something quick and distant flashed behind Bane’s eyes then, as though the recall of that night didn’t quite fit with what he remembered but then he adjusted his body, sitting up and glancing at me as though he’d remembered something else. “You ran from the coven games that Midsummer when my uncle hosted the solstice. We didn’t find you for five hours.”
What a retched memory to mention. I’d hated those games and the stupid primal alpha way the men carried on when the solstice arrived. The Grants had hosted, true enough and all the covens worked themselves into a tizzy over the preparations. There’d been bonfires stacked and set all over the groves, smartly organized with gold and yellow candles, flowers and leaves. Flower wreaths were corded together and given to every girl of the Cove old enough to marry. Even my mother, for all her modern-loving proclamations about logic and bucking the traditions, still laced our pillow cases with herbs and charms to summon prophetic dreams. Crimson Cove on Midsummer was a ridiculous play on sense and reason and that year had been no different.
“I ran because Mai told me I’d have to float my flower wreath down the river. I didn’t know whose bank it would land on and didn’t want to be stuck with some strange wizard for the rest of the day.”
“Why not?” Bane leaned forward, elbows on his knees looking too amused by the memory.
“I was fifteen, Bane. I had no intention of letting some wizard I didn’t know claim me as a bride.”
His frown was forced, as was that small eye roll but I let it pass, ignoring him when he knocked his bum foot against my hand. “It was just a game. Besides, they’d have only asked for a kiss.”
“Which they wouldn’t have gotten, hence me leaving.”
“Maybe that kiss would have come from me.” That I doubted. Bane had spent most of the day hidden away in the tree house near the edge of the grove, taking everything in, looking bored and out of place. I’d remembered that’s where he stayed because I’d wanted to follow him just to be rid of all the overcharged Midsummer energy.
“You weren’t playing.”
“No,” he said, taking a slow swing from his water bottle, “but I’d have won you. Trust that.”
The little cheater would have done his best to move my wreath toward his bank. Maybe I’d known that even back then. Maybe that’s why I’d left. I couldn’t be sure. Those memories, of course, were painted with a gloss I had little hope of ever sharpening. That Bane admitted he’d have cheated to get me that day should have made me feel awkward, perhaps a little shy. But what I felt just then as he lowered
the bottle of water from his mouth, leaving a small droplet on that fat bottom lip, was hot and heated and things that should have made me embarrassed.
I wasn’t. In fact, with the way he kept watching me, his gaze too focused on my messy tidying of the bandages and rubbish from the cleaning, heightened the edge of tension that we’d managed to push back while we argued over his busted ankle.
Still, no matter what that look did to me, I could no more go to him, touch him, take what I wanted now than I’d been able to back then. Back any time. Save that one day in the classroom.
“You always did that,” I said dismissively. He frowned and I shrugged off his confusion. “Chased anyone away who got a little too close. Sabotaged when things weren’t going the way you wanted. You were like this giant shadowing me and I was the only one unable to see you. Big damn warning to anyone I might want to get close to.” The wadded bandages and rubbish fit neatly back into the bag and I took to rearranging all the accoutrements my twin had provided just to keep from looking at Bane. “Maybe that’s why I always ran. I knew you wouldn’t be far behind.” I glanced up at him, not liking it when muscles around his mouth tightened. “Maybe just once I wanted to do something without that shadow, just to see if I could.”
It was several seconds before Bane spoke. When he did there was a softness in his voice that came out as mildly annoyed. “You did a hell of a job running that last time.”
“What was here for me, Bane?” A small twist of his bottom lip and my heart sputtered twice. “My twin had her own life, my brother and folks, they all had living to do on their own. Hell, Mai was the only person I was close to thanks to that scary shadow of yours.” He opened his mouth to speak but I waved him off. “I wanted to see outside of the Cove. I wanted to see what else was out there. There wasn’t…” I swallowed, holding my breath for a second before I finished, “anything keeping me here.”
What I would have given then to know his thoughts. He could still sense mine, I knew he could. His spell had guaranteed he would, but I had minded what I thought, how intimately I remembered and misremembered things as they had been. Since that test in the forest the night he worked the spell, I’d determined not to let my thoughts seep too freely. He might know my mood, but I worked hard to keep him from my feelings.
Still, his was easy enough to tell. There was that jaw clenching again—the tale tell mark of Bane trying like hell to not blurt out whatever irrational thing was in his head. But if my confession had annoyed him, he wouldn’t let me know it. “And tonight? With Hamill?”
“I caught a vibe from him.” My flippant shrug did nothing to make that worried frown soften and so I continued, moving my knees up to hold myself together as he watched me. “I thought maybe the Judas spell had shown on his skin.”
“Did it?”
“Not sure. I’ve never seen him in full light. Does he have a scar?” Bane shook his head, shoulders lowering as he relaxed. “Well he’s definitely hiding something, but I don’t think he’s responsible for the Elam.”
Outside the cabin, an honest storm raged on. It was a bitter, windy fight with water drenching and thudding on the tiny cabin roof. Only the dim light of a kerosene lamp and the fire illuminated the small room and I was grateful I could not make out more of Bane’s features. They were too striking, too honest when I looked closely enough.
Bane’s cynical snort told me he didn’t buy that either. “He doesn’t have enough magic to subdue me or to take it.”
He hadn’t told me much about the attack. There’d been no full disclosures that might have helped me piece together who the guilty party could be. But that was Bane. That was the nature of a powerful wizard from the Cove. Utter bullshit, but that was how they’d lived for generations. Still, this theft and Bane’s attack went beyond his wounded pride. He’d have to loosen it and answer me.
“You don’t remember anything about the attack?”
“Some jackass got the upper hand. That’s all that matters.” He turned his head, profile against the flickering fire light and I looked away, still not comfortable seeing him this close, this apart from the world. “It set in my bones that they pulled that off and my memory went a little fuzzy then.”
“It’s odd,” I offered, fiddling with my damp shirt sleeve to avoid looking at him again. “Whoever took the Elam obviously can’t control it, otherwise it wouldn’t call to me.”
“Can you feel it now?”
I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensory detail around me—the way the fire popped and crackled against the whoosh of wind blowing inside the chimney; the warmth of Bane’s large foot in my lap, the texture of his coarse leg hair under my fingertips; and outside, the smell of rain, bitter and thick, the taste of honeysuckle and ozone on the wind. But no Elam, no quiet purr of its signature humming to me. There wasn’t even the faintest hint of the ley lines against the storm.
“Storm is messing with the lines.” I frowned, focusing on the silence.
“No, it’s not.”
When I looked up, Bane was watching me. His throat worked, voice low, guarded and I swear I thought I saw a spark of red light pulsing from his fingertips. “I’m blocking it from you.”
“Why?”
“To help you concentrate, listen for the Elam.” He stretched out his hand and didn’t seem to notice the small flicker of reddish light glowing from his palm. “Come here. I’ll help you focus.”
My memory was frayed, but I did remember that spark. There was no way I’d invite it back. It had taken a wickedly strong memory charm to keep Bane’s mind clear of the last time that flicker had appeared. I was in no rush to work that kind of spell again.
Instead, I pulled my legs close, looping my arms to mimic having a chill. “No. That’s alright. I can’t hear it.”
“I know. I’ll help you.” When I didn’t look at him, Bane nudged my foot. “What’s the problem?” He looked down at his hand when I glanced at it. “What…”
“It’s probably the storm. I told you. It interferes with the lines.”
There was something in the stare he gave me that felt like an accusation. And then he truly noticed the small spark of light working over his fingertips, sparking out toward me as he reached in my direction. It caught him off guard. Curiously, he stretched his long fingers, moved them in succession like a piano player working through scales, and each fragment of movement ushered up that same red spark—a tingling streak of energy that felt damn familiar. He moved faster, fingers becoming a line of movement until that spark crackled, shot out and zapped me right as he waved his fingers at my hand.
“Ow.”
Scrambling back, my hand on the floor, I managed to get far enough away from him to catch a breath. But the cabin was tiny and the air so thick that my head swam from the heat and the recoil from my thoughts and the magical energy pulsing around the room.
There came a swift flash of memory, a slice of images that I’d tried to forget but could not completely erase from my mind—that light pulsing, circling. Our small, childish fingers touching and connecting, our twelve-year-old limbs brushing together and then jerking apart as that light tried to consume us, and oh, the classroom and Bane’s hands all over me, touching, feeling, gripping and that constant red light clouding around the room, inside our heads, surrounding us, joining us together.
This meant finality. It meant completion and Bane did not remember. The flashes came to me disjointed, but still they came and the one I clearly remembered—our melding in that classroom—was the one that hung in my mind. It was the one that made the most sense.
“Jani…” he started, following me, coming to his knees despite his bad ankle, crawling so close that I had nowhere to go. “You’ve been keeping something from me. I see it. Even in the damn dark I can see it. It’s everywhere.” Bane moved his warm fingers to my bottom lip and let his thumb glide across my cheekbone. “You refuse to meet my eyes. You avoid me when I stare too long.”
“You always stare too long.”
/> “I can’t help that.”
He was massive, a sweltering cloud that collected energy, that absorbed emotion so that it became consuming—a vacuous funnel that craved the things it did not need but took what it wanted. That was Bane. He took control but for the life of me I could not see past letting him take what had always been his.
“Tell me my daydream was invented. That dream of being in the classroom with you.” There was a challenge in his voice that reminded me of us as children huddled and scared, taunting and fearless. But I wouldn’t answer, couldn’t tell him something that would hurry along his anger. It would be heavy enough when it came.
“Jani,” he said, coming so close that I could smell the sweat from his skin and hear the tiny rasp that caught in his throat.
“You’ll hate me.” It was as close to an explanation as I could offer.
Bane pressed his hand against my cheek, the touch warm and soft but with that small red current still working behind his skin, still flirted with me to cry out that he was mine. “Never, little witch.”
Give and take. He wanted, needed, but didn’t understand why. He didn’t remember and at that moment, I could not bring myself to remind him. It would hurt too much. But the warmth in his hand, the sweet, honeysuckle scent from his skin weaving like a spell of its own making, intoxicating me, lulling me closer and closer until only Bane—the sound, feel and smell of him took up all the space in my head. There was only this man. There was only this moment.
Both belonged to me.
Our mouths came close together, our breaths heated and dampened our faces, our lips—bringing us to the blistering, bated breath before the race begins. A small incline, the minutest stretch of my neck and that mouth, that tongue would belong to me. It was different from the night he spelled me. There was no primeval encouragement from the lines egging us on, inching us closer and closer toward our most basic urges. This was more and somehow with Bane’s face so close to mine, with his fingers tugging on the back of my hair, I knew that one kiss would unhinge me. It would change everything and there would be no stopping us.