I had to pull myself together. I just couldn’t seem to find the heart or the strength to do it right this minute.
Morose, I called for another glass.
Somewhere around the bottom of the third glass, Chi meandered back to the table. He’d changed out of the yuta, which didn’t surprise me, as he hadn’t really looked all that comfortable in it before. Now he wore a loose shirt and pants that had seen better days. Sleepwear, likely, although modest enough for this public setting. It took more focus than it should’ve to stare directly at Chi. “You need to stop swaying,” I said finally.
“Riiiight,” he drawled, amused for some reason. “Bannen? How much of that lovely apple-flavored drink have you had?”
I stared at the glass, a charming shade of pale yellow, and although I sensed there was a reason he’d asked the question, I couldn’t quite connect why. “Three?”
“You realize that it’s this town’s specialty, and the alcohol content is enough to fell an elephant?”
I took another sip, trying to analyze it this time. “Does have a kick to it,” I decided eventually. Some part of my brain, small though it was, piped up. “I’m not supposed to drink.”
“In a foreign country while on a mission, yeah, probably not. Oops.” Chi didn’t look at all worried. “Well, only one thing to do now. You worried about Rena?”
I nodded because of course, that was obvious, she was the main reason I didn’t drink. Even while drunk I remembered that. Not that I was drunk yet. It would take at least another two, three glasses for that to happen.
He hopped over the bench, toward the stairs, and I could hear him call up, “Vee! You girls watch each other’s backs!”
Twin laughter answered him, which meant both women found even his worry about their safety to be amusing. Maybe cute. You never knew with women. Then Chi called for a glass, collected it, and wandered back over to sit with me. He loosened his belt, unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt, generally getting comfortable before he took a large swallow and smacked his lips. “Ahh, good stuff.”
I stared at the glass, then at him. “You getting drunk with me?”
“Only thing to do in this circumstance is to keep a friend company,” he responded brightly.
“I thought you were going to be good today?”
“I’m taking a break.”
I nodded seriously. “Being good is exhausting.”
“Truly.” He held his glass up, wiggling it enticingly.
I knocked mine against his and we both drained them in one long pull. I’d long since passed mellow, and now the floor had an interesting slant to it. I kept an elbow planted on the table, a subtle way to make sure I didn’t fall off the bench. I still wasn’t drunk, mind you, just a little impaired when it came to balance.
Even with a full glass in him, Chi wasn’t even buzzed, I could tell from that calculating way he looked at me. “I think you’re drunk enough for me to ask. You and Rena…you’re really not?”
I knew what he meant and laughed. Or tried to. It came out a little broken. “No.” That single word broke the floodgates. “No, we’re not, we’re exactly what we appear.” Without meaning to, my mouth kept going. “Did you know that in Turransky, we’re engaged?”
Chi’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “You’re kidding.”
“’s an automatic thing,” I tried to explain, although my tongue felt a little thick and my head had the stuffiness of wool. “When a Void Mage calls her human familiar, bam! Engaged. Sometimes they take a year or two, get to know each other, but they always marry. Always.” Irrational anger flooded me and I slammed a fist at the table, cracking the wood. “Sards, she should have been trained in Turransky from the beginning!”
Chi eyed the cracked tabletop, lips pursed in a soundless whistle. “I’m sensing a little anger over this issue. Why do you say that? You feel like you’d have her if she wasn’t originally trained in Corcoran?”
“I would have,” I maintained, stubborn and hurt. “Corcoran, you know, they brainwash their mages. They can’t touch their familiars, they can’t have a relationship with their familiars, their familiars are little better than smart, trainable pets but I’m not an animal. Sard them all!”
At that point, Chi had the sense to gesture for a refill. I decided at that point I loved this man and would send him flowers and maybe give him a kitten. I downed half of my glass, waiting for the alcohol to dull the pain of this. Then I realized there wasn’t an enough alcohol in the world to do that and pushed the glass aside.
“I’d wondered,” Chi said into the strained silence. “I had a sense something was a little off. You gravitate around her like she’s your entire world. Rena clearly adores you, will do anything for you, but it’s not the same. I can tell by the way you look at each other, it’s not the same.”
Two could play this game. “Like the way you and Vee look at each other?”
“Ouch. You’re one of those drunks that says anything and everything, aren’t you?” Chi smiled to show he hadn’t taken offense and shrugged. “Yes, rather like me and Vee. I think I have you beat, though. I’ve wanted Vee for four years. Can’t get her to take me seriously. Not willing to push it because I’ll lose her entirely. It’s a very strange tightrope that I’ve found myself walking.”
“I understand,” and I did, I understood that tightrope all too well. I slapped a comradely hand on his arm. “Sorry, man, it’s terrible. Don’t wish it on anyone but my worst enemies. Wait, do you want to win that competition? ’Cause I have to tell you it sucks.”
“No, no, who would want to?” Chi denied, drinking some more. “All I’m saying is that I’m your senior in this absolutely terrible situation and if you ever need to get drunk again, I’ll drink with you.”
I reached over and grabbed him in a hug. “You’re a true friend and I love you.”
Chi laughed. “So you’re a talkative and affectionate drunk. Noted. Okay, put me back on the bench now, Bannen, that’s a nice fellow.”
Oops, had I picked him up? I had. I gently put him back down, because I didn’t want to break him, that would be bad.
“Why are you so freakishly strong?” Chi asked, almost rhetorically. “You’re not that large of a man, you barely hit my nose, and yet you toss people around like it’s nothing.”
“Worked shrimp boats as a kid,” I informed him, contemplating my glass. Should I finish that or not? “Takes a lot of strength.”
“Now this makes more sense. Every man I ever met that worked on shrimp boats could lift a horse.” Chi nodded to himself, satisfied with the answer.
If we were asking each other random questions, then… “Why do you have Vee throw you?”
“Because I like a high vantage point, helps me see the full situation, gives me good lines of sight on targets.”
I flapped a hand at him. “No, no, I know that, I’m asking why do you have Vee throw you? Can’t you climb?”
He looked affronted. “Of course I can, but that takes time, you know. It’s faster for her to throw me.”
Scoffing, I shook my head. “Don’t believe you. I bet you have no climbing skills.” Chi downed another glass and slammed it onto the table. I frowned down at the surface. “You shouldn’t do that, there’s a big crack in the table.”
“I know, you put it there.”
“Did I?” I asked fuzzily. “Oh. Maybe I did. I vaguely remember that. I feel like the room is spinning. Why did you make the room spin?”
Chi stared at me hard, thinking. “Am I making the room spin? I thought it was you.”
“Totally not me,” I protested indignantly. I felt like I’d had an original train of thought, but it took me longer than it should’ve to remember it. Until I didn’t remember it. “What was I saying?”
“You were saying I can’t climb and you’re wrong, I do climb things, often. Often often. And I can climb anything.”
“Anything?” I challenged, because I was a truly terrible person that way and I goad people i
nto doing stupid things. “I bet you can’t climb the wall.”
“Are you kidding? It’s wood, that’s one of the easiest things ever to climb. And there’s rafters up there, that’s the perfect thing to grab.”
I could admit to myself that I felt a little drunk, just a little, enough to throw my balance off. But even still I could tell that Chi swayed in his seat. I had a feeling my tolerance was better than his. “Even though you made the room spin like this? I bet you lunch tomorrow you can’t.”
“Sucker. I’d have done it for a donut.” Chi stumbled to his feet, eyes narrowed in determination, and headed for the nearest wall.
I sat there and watched, a smile of anticipation on my face, because this? This would be gold.
Vee knocked on the door before poking her head in. “You alright up here?”
I appreciated that she wanted to check in with me. Bannen had likely told her to give me some space. He knew my moods well enough after two years to sense when I needed to just sit by myself for a while. But after a few hours on my own, a good soak in some blissfully hot water, and a marvelously delicious dinner, I felt better. I wouldn’t mind the company now. “I’m fine, thanks. Where’s Bannen?”
“Downstairs, finishing dinner.” Vee worried at her bottom lip before admitting, “I do have one question, if you don’t mind?”
We’d been asking each other questions nonstop for days now. If she felt the need to ask permission, then it could only be THAT question. Feeling a certain sense of inevitability, I waved her inside. She did so, ducking through the doorway, and duck she did, as the doorway was about six inches too short to accommodate her. “Out of curiosity, how many times have you brained yourself going through a door?”
“Too many times to count,” she grumbled, but with a smile on her face, and settled comfortably next to me on the bed. “Your explanation of why you have a human as a familiar makes sense, but,” Vee gauged my reaction as she spoke the words, her fingers fidgeting against each other, “I feel like there’s something you haven’t said.”
Blowing out a breath, I stared blankly at the far wall. I knew this question would come eventually. As a fellow mage, of course Vee would realize that something was missing. At this point, I felt like I could trust her enough with the truth, but I still prefaced it with a warning. “What I’m about to tell you, I don’t want it spread abroad. It’s…a sensitive topic.”
Vee drew an x over her heart with a fingertip. “Cross my heart.”
Accepting this with a nod, I paused, struggling on how to explain, what to say. Catching her worried look, I splayed my hands helplessly. “I’m not good at explaining things and honestly, it’s complicated. I’m not sure where to start. Maybe the very beginning would be best.”
“Then start there,” she encouraged.
The beginning. Right. “My magic is constantly working. Even without my conscious direction, it’s always working. Its very nature is destructive, inherently so, and so strongly that just by hosting it, it slowly destroys me.”
Her brown eyes flared wide, mouth dropping, although she couldn’t manage to push any words out.
“Yeah.” I grimaced a smile. “We didn’t know what was going on at first, not until after Bannen bonded to me. Then a magical expert by the name of Trammel came by to study me and he figured it out. Basically, my magic is slowly killing me every day. But of course it doesn’t want to, it’s in our mutual best interests if I’m alive, so it pours every creative ability it has in reshaping what it accidentally destroyed. I’m in a constant flux of destruction and creation at every moment of the day.”
“Hence why you can’t use creative spells,” Vee breathed, voice choked. “That makes so much sense.”
“The reason why I have to have a human familiar, why every Void Mage does, is because our magic needs one. Eventually our body breaks down so badly that it loses the pattern, it doesn’t remember exactly how a human body is shaped anymore, and it needs something to compare us with. My bond with Bannen is for that reason. My magic is using him as a template to remember how to fix me.”
Vee held up a hand, stopping me. “Wait. Wait. You’re saying that if you hadn’t bonded with Bannen, you’d be, what? An invalid by now?”
“Invalid or dead,” I confirmed bleakly. “You should have seen me when he first arrived. I was literally falling apart. Medicine and magic had no effect. My lungs were going first, so that having three breathing attacks a day wasn’t uncommon. Eventually they would have stopped functioning altogether.”
For a moment, Vee just stared at me, incredulous but also sharply, as if her mind already had leaped ahead, forming its own conclusions. “If Bannen is hurt, what happens to you?”
“Fortunately nothing.”
“And if you lose him? If the bond is ever broken, or if he dies?”
“Then I’m in a world of trouble.” Seeing her alarm, I hastened to assure her, “I won’t die immediately. But my body will start breaking down steadily. I would literally have a few years before I’d be in a grave.” Maybe less as my magic was stronger now than it had been as a young teen. I tried very hard not to think about that.
“I now understand why you didn’t want to talk about this.” Vee reached over and gave me a one-armed hug. It felt ridiculously nice. “You poor girl, and to think those fools in Corcoran actually forced you to break your bond with Bannen at one point. It must have been horribly painful.”
“Felt like I was dying by inches,” I admitted softly and leaned further into her. She smelled nice—citrusy, probably from the soaps in the baths. “I was ever so relieved when Bannen came back to me the second time.”
A brief silence fell before Vee whispered, “Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
“Thanks, Vee.”
After two years of being with Bannen, I’d developed a sixth sense for when he’d done something I was either going to regret or have to pay for. No matter how many times he’d charmed someone into thinking he was the responsible one, I was not fooled. The man found trouble at the drop of a hat, and the only thing that saved him was that he felt very duty bound to protect me. If not for that, he’d go around stirring up trouble 24/7.
When it went on an hour and I hadn’t seen him, I felt a little twinge. When it went on two hours it became full out panic because Bannen didn’t do quiet—it was a genetic impossibility. If he wasn’t with me chattering, then he’d found trouble outside of my hearing.
Vee had already left my room, intending to turn in. It was late enough that I wanted to do the same, but Bannen normally checked in with me before sleeping, so I should have seen him before now.
Worried, I rushed into the hallway, only just catching myself before plowing right into Vee. “Have you seen Bannen?”
She asked me almost in the same breath, “Have you seen Chi—oh. Oh no, they’re together? Unsupervised?”
That couldn’t be good. I rushed down the stairs as fast as I could manage, but they weren’t in the main room. Odd. Could they possibly have gotten back upstairs and into their own beds without me hearing either of them? I retraced my steps back upstairs and gave a perfunctory knock on Bannen’s door. When I didn’t get an answer, I stuck my head in. Bannen laid passed out on the bed, a quilt thrown haphazardly on top of him, still in clothes although his boots were off. His hair was loose, one of those rare moments I saw it completely unbraided, still damp and strewn over his pillow in a black wave. I had the strongest urge to touch it, just sit on the bed and cuddle with him for a moment. Bad Rena, stop that. He was dead to the world, I should not be thinking of how to take advantage of that. Firmly pulling my mind out of that train of thought, I shook my head in fond amusement and leaned back out of the doorway.
“Bannen’s in his bed at least.”
Vee stuck her head inside Chi’s bedroom, only one down from hers, and reported, “So is Chinny. He reeks of alcohol. Did these two get drunk?”
Even from the doorway, Bannen smelled the same way and I fou
nd that very strange. He had never drunk more than a glass of alcohol in one sitting as long as I’d known him. “They got drunk and still managed to get into their own beds?”
“That doesn’t sound like our two troublemakers,” Vee said doubtfully, but the proof snored right in front of her eyes. Shrugging, she said, “I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Well, if they’re set, let’s go to bed.”
I went back into my room, crawled into more comfortable sleepwear clothes, and snuggled in. It felt odd to me that Bannen hadn’t said anything before going to bed, as he always checked in before we sleep, but maybe he didn’t want me to know he’d been drinking? Shrugging the thought off, I closed my eyes and tried to settle.
Sleep came easily and the next thing I knew, morning light filtered hazily through the window, waking me up slowly. I could hear steady cursing from next door. Ah, Bannen apparently had the hangover to end all hangovers. I felt no pity for him. I performed a quick wash up, dressed, and then knocked cheerfully on his door. “Morning, sunshine!”
“Rena, have mercy,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t be so loud.”
“That bad, huh? Why did you drink anyway?” I lowered my voice to more hung-over appropriate levels as I opened the door and stuck my head inside, finding him slumped over into his hands and avoiding the window like it would kill him.
“Didn’t mean to,” he answered pitifully. “I didn’t know it was alcoholic until I’d already had three glasses.”
And by that point it was too late. Well, in that case, I might dredge up some pity. “And Chi?”
The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2) Page 10