This thing is fighting back against being drawn out. Even now, amidst the pain and the burning and the screaming of my lungs—I have a moment of clarity. At what point does it become too entwined inside me to be drawn out?
As if in response, the thing tightens its grip once more. I do not have to raise my head to see how much of my body it has enveloped now, I can see it creeping up beneath my eyes and underneath my lids when I blink.
The worst we feared is happening. I am losing to it.
I knew the risks when I became a mage. I knew the risks when Octavia brought me back to the school. I had hoped my own resistance would be enough to save me. I always knew Jessica would be the end of me, I just never thought she’d be the actual death of me.
First, the light begins to fade. The colors around me drain into something sad and muted until a dark vignette begins to draw in from the outer corners of what’s left of my vision.
And then, just on the brink of what I am sure is death, something new swells around me. It washes over me in a cold wave that settles over my body, thick and heavy. It presses down over me, smothering me further.
A single voice breaks through the haze in my mind.
“Don’t fight it.”
And with Octavia’s voice ringing inside my head, I find the strength.
This time, when I breathe in, air and magic rush inside me. It pushes back at the blackness inside, flushing it from my body like black steam evaporating at the convergence of hot and cold.
But it does not stop there.
The magic pouring inside finds all the places in the innermost parts of me, the fabric of my makeup, my very DNA from which my magic stems—and it stops them up. In one fell swoop, the pain and the burning and the grip of death is pushed out of me, and the very magic that makes me the man I’ve become is stemmed.
It slips away, bottled up, out of my reach.
I am not dying any longer, but I am not whole either.
29
Octavia
At some point in the ritual the last of the potion runs out. I feel it like the great exhaustion that comes after a sudden rush of adrenaline. It takes everything in me just to hold onto Kendall to my left and Draven to my right. By the time Flynn’s chest finally heaves with his first breath of air in what feels like hours, not minutes, I am an empty conduit for the last of Kendall and Cedric’s magic flowing into Draven to perform the ritual.
I know they feel it too.
The moment the ritual ends, my hands fall slack to my sides.
I stayed in my time-stopped world too long. In order to switch rituals, I’d had to scrub everything and start from the beginning. I’m lucky the second spell was in the book at all, but that, I think, is where my luck ran out.
By the time we got Flynn and wheeled him back to the locker room, I hadn’t even been sure I could be the link I needed to be. There was certainly nothing left inside me to do it. I did my best not to draw too much from the powers of the others for my Time Magic, but I know it still takes a toll on each one of them.
There is no magic left between the five of us.
But that fact only concerns me when it comes to just one.
After a brief hesitation, Flynn’s eyes finally seem to focus, and he sits up. His arms stretch out to either side, the palms opening and closing as they test out the feel of the concrete floor. I know, in a small capacity, what he is looking for. If all went well, his skin no longer burns, the spell lifted.
And he’ll also have no magic. Or, at least, no access to it.
His eyes raise to meet mine, and I know immediately that both are true. The ritual worked. He’ll live…but at what cost?
I want to tell him I’m sorry, that we had no other choice, that we didn’t have a skilled enough mage here to tell us how to just break the one bond…but I can’t. I don’t have the words. I don’t even have the strength to offer him a hand up.
Kendall offers it instead.
Both Cedric and Draven have to step in to help him to his feet. His knees buckle at the first try, leaving him heaving in a kneeling position until the others have managed to hoist him the rest of the way up.
“That was quite the close call there,” Draven says, clapping him on the back. His voice has a false lightheartedness to it that isn’t fooling anyone.
“Was it?” Flynn’s voice comes out small and dry.
Flynn just looks at me, color slowly returning to his pale face. I must look as bad as I feel, because though it’s he who just barely cheated death by having his powers taken from him, he’s the one reaching for me and not the other way around.
He grabs my upper arms in his surprisingly strong grip and looks me over, but he says nothing. The others hover close by, their postures telling me that they’re unsure of what to expect. More than just Flynn’s physical weakness is something idling under the surface.
He squeezes my arms gently, but he doesn’t look me right in the eyes. Not so close.
Instead, his eyes fall to his own arms painted in a sheen of sweat. “I think I could use a shower.”
Kendall steps forward, arm outstretched, but I find myself shaking my head. When Flynn’s hands drop from my shoulders, I take them in my own. He still doesn’t look at me, but he allows me to lead him out.
I instruct the others to stay and clean up. I leave my watch with Cedric for the time being. Until I’ve had time to rest, it’s useless to me anyway.
Flynn and I do not speak on the way down the hall. It isn’t until I feel the cold of the air on my own skin that I realize I too am drenched in sweat. I haven’t showered in several days, and the vile evil we encountered in that house there with Bram…it clings to me.
The communal showers here are, fortunately, empty. The concrete floors slant gently towards drains against the far wall. A dozen showerheads are all lined up in a row without curtains for modesty. The striking resemblance to what I imagine prison showers look like isn’t lost to me. Even my low-budget high school didn’t subject us to public nudity in this way.
Its bare nature is amplified by the steady, echoing, drip of a leaky faucet.
Flynn allows himself to be led to the showerhead at the very end, and just stands there as I turn it on. It squeals and shudders a moment while water rushes up through the pipes.
Steam and hot water pour out in a burst that sounds like shattering glass.
When I turn around, Flynn is finally looking at me.
He’s also stark naked.
No words leave his mouth, but he reaches across for the spout behind me and turns it on as well.
The water hits me, clothes and all, pouring across the top of my head in steaming streams. It runs in rivers across my face, mixing with old dried tears and fresh shock. But rather than crying out or drawing back, I pause.
Flynn reaches for me again, and this time, I reach back.
I can’t remember the last time I was touched the way he touches me. He pulls me to him in the steam and the hot water, my hands cradled together in his at the middle of his chest. His other hand pulls my head to his until our foreheads are pressed together, his eyes boring into mine.
He does not kiss me right away.
For a long minute we stand here, close, steam rising up to cloak us from the dark, dripping walls.
The hot water running over me begins to melt away the fear from my flesh. It pounds into the roots of my scalp, dragging the sharp edges of the past days, weeks, months from my body and down to spiral into the drain.
Flynn’s touch is steady, his gaze searching in me for…something.
Then, when his lips part again, he finally speaks. His words are soft and raw in the mix of streaming water and rising steam.
“I do not know who I am without magic.”
I try to stiffen, but his hands do not let me. His fingers dig into the hair at the base of my neck, massaging the tensing muscles.
I wondered if he would know right away.
I have to look away from the emotion swirling i
n his eyes, but when, instead, I see the Time brand on my arm, I let out a strangled, gurgled, gasp.
For the first time since meeting Flynn, it does not glow.
He is no longer one of my paired mages.
I knew this would happen. I knew what I was doing. Or, at least I thought I did.
But here in the cascade of steaming water and fresh hot tears, I know now that there are some things that I could never have prepared for. This feeling, this…emptiness and loss…is one of them.
When I look up into Flynn’s eyes, I know even though I cannot make out the tears in the water pouring down his face, that he is crying too. Our clutched hands quiver as his shoulders begin to shake—and mine with it. It is exhaustion and relief and disappointment and something more I cannot put words to.
And then Flynn’s full, soft lips are pressing into mine. His hands find my waist and the hem below it. My skin tingles at the touch of his finger running along the line of bare skin just beneath. The fabric protests and clings to my skin as I let go of him and reach down to peel it off. I let it fall to the sopping floor, where it makes the water drum a little quieter.
The water smells of rust and iron, and so do I.
Flynn’s skin glows against the dark concrete, no longer stained with dangerous magic.
But he doesn’t leave the space between us for long. I’ve never felt the press of naked flesh against my own before. It’s not the first time I’ve kissed him, but it feels like it is. For the first time since we’ve met, Flynn has fully bared himself to me. He stands here, pressed to me, more than just naked. He has trusted me. He has given himself to me without any reservations.
He’s given everything for me.
So I give everything in return.
30
Octavia
I led Flynn here with the intention of trying to explain myself, but I discover, there are some things for which there are no words.
I never meant to take Flynn into my bed tonight. But in this moment, with the heat and water around us—it is more than the sensation of skin against my skin. It is shared loss, the void created in the breaking of our bond, and the drive to fill it.
I expected pain, but I couldn’t know the way pleasure follows. Flynn moves his body against, into, mine in a way that leaves me lost for breath and then suddenly gasping as it rushes back in. There are only three words needed in the moments that follow.
For the last few days I’ve been trying to stifle them. I told myself that this is not the place for it. That this is not the time.
But some things, they are not bound to places or times. I know that now.
“I love you, Flynn.”
Hot water runs over our bodies from where we lean against the back walls of the showers. My skin tingles with feeling and my heart, in turn, is fit to burst.
Flynn cups my face with his hand and kisses me softly. He doesn’t have to repeat the words back to me for me to know he feels them, but he does anyway.
“I love you.”
We may not have a magical bond any longer, but the bond we share now is arguably greater.
I’ve no magic left in me to dry our clothes, and Flynn has no magic at all, so we have no choice but to join the others at dinner completely, and utterly, sopping wet.
To be quite honest, I thought I’d feel guilty. I have three other boyfriends, after all—all of which I’ve come close to consummating with at some point or another, yet never quite.
As soon as I spot them waiting for us at dinner as promised, I know that both nothing and everything has changed.
Not one of them looks away as we pick our away between the curious faces that happen to look up from the long communal table as we pass by.
I’m fortunate some of the water still drips from my hair, because the sweetness with which Cedric stands and helps me into my seat may or may not bring a tear to my eyes. When Kendall stands quickly, his chair scraping out behind him, I think for a moment that it’s his turn to flee. Instead, he steps up behind me and presses his lips to top of my head.
I know that they know.
He must have a last bit of Earth Magic in him after all, because as he does so, all the water begins to roll from my body. If Cedric, Kendall, and Flynn standing beside me wasn’t so imposing—I’d probably get even more sideways glances than I already do.
By the time Kendall is finished, I am completely dry. He glances at Flynn and just raises his eyebrows. I guess the same courtesy isn’t going to be extended to him. Supposed that would be a bit of a stretch, even for Kendall.
I look up sheepishly to the last of them. Draven tosses a basket of rolls my way.
“Eat up, princess, I think you’ve earned it.” His eyes cut up to Flynn, and for a moment, I do see a hint of jealousy there. But then he adds, with a cheeky smile I know he cannot help, “Or he did. Not sure who did all the work, really.”
I kick him under the table, hard. Or at least I try, but I miss quite epically and end up nursing a stubbed big toe instead.
I’ve just started pulling apart the bread with the intention of stuffing as much as I can in my mouth all at once as is humanly possible, when shouting breaks the dull thrum of conversation around us.
If just once I could get though an entire meal without being interrupted, I would be eternally grateful.
Flynn pauses where he was about to slip into the seat at my side, and everyone turns to look at the doorway into the hall.
Acacia skids into focus, a wild look on her face.
Something has gone terribly wrong.
Her eyes scan the table, unfocused and frantic. Even from all the way down the table, I know it’s me she’s looking for. Then she finds me and she stops.
“This is all your fault,” she says, her voice cutting and deep. “All he did was look up to you.” Her voice breaks, and she’s unable to finish what she came here to say.
Horatio, who I hadn’t realized until now was eating without her, gets to his feet. He pushes past the others to get to her side. Even as he does, all Acacia can do is continue to stare at me.
Once her boyfriend gets to her side, she manages to choke out the next few words. As soon as she does, I am unable to think of anything else.
“It’s Michael,” she finally manages. “He’s gone and gotten himself killed.”
I don’t actually know how I get to his side. I remember Acacia telling me, I know I required help getting up from the table, and that all around me was a hushed, fearful whisper. Death is always a spectacle. Not a single chair is left occupied in the dining hall behind us.
I know instinctively where we’ll find him, even if Acacia, who has since collapsed in sobs against the hallway wall, didn’t announce where that is.
The problem with death by magic, I find, is that sometimes there is absolutely nothing outwardly wrong with the mage. So, when I do push myself to the front of the crowd gathering inside the training room, despite their harsh, vengeful whispers directed towards me, I am not immediately convinced that he isn’t just sleeping.
He lays amidst a ritual circle I’ve never seen before. The line work is sloppy, the candles he picked out are all different size, even the droplets of what I can only assume is animal’s blood on the floor, are scattered unevenly across the surface.
It isn’t until I shake the grip of whatever one of my paired mages managed to get ahold of me and move closer to crouch beside him that his stillness strikes me. No breath. No heartbeat. No frustration, no embarrassment, not even any anger.
There is a syringe on the floor beside him. I recognize it at once, and so does, I know, Draven. He must have forgotten it in the training room in the frenzy of discovering Flynn’s growing black mark.
Of course, Michael would use it and try to do a complex ritual just to spite me for not letting him participate in ours.
And now…now this.
His face is frozen slack, not even peaceful. He is just…a body.
When I look up, it is not Michael that the faces
stare at—but me.
The crowd stirs and begins to part. The few whispers and whimpers that broke out silence until the faces turn from me to whoever has just appeared over my shoulder at the front of the gathered crowd.
“It’s a shame,” Bram’s voice says. “He was such a talented mage.”
I have to fight back my own tears. My legs wobble under me. I’ve already gathered myself up from the brink once today, I don’t know if I can do it again.
And then Flynn is at my side. He may not have magic, but he does finally seem to understand me. Between him and Kendall, they get me back on my feet again.
Acacia has appeared beside Bram. Her face is reddened, and tears have made shiny troughs down the sides of her face. She points at me, and in front of all the mages gathered here, she throws her accusation at me once more. “He looked up to you. He just wanted to be like you. If you’d just…”
Bram puts up an arm, and even Acacia’s anger and grief cannot compel her disobey him.
My own can. “It’s true,” I finally manage, looking not at Acacia, but at Bram. I turned him away. I wouldn’t let him participate. I should have done…something else. I don’t know what. But…something.
“This is the risk that we run here, as mages of The Underground,” Bram says. He does not just look at me, but at all the mages gathered around us. Most of their faces I have begun to recognize over the last couple days, but there are still some I swear I’ve never seen before. Where all of them are hiding in this complex, I’ve no idea. The goings on here are something I’ll never understand.
Bram continues. “And that is something we’ve all accepted. Let this serve as a reminder. Mage society wants to scare us with stories like Michael here in order to control us. But binding to the affinities is not the only option. Getting stronger is an option. More control is an option. Remember that.”
Abandon: Book Three of the Forgotten Affinities Series Page 15