Provoked (Space Mage Book 1)

by Izzy Shows

  We turned down several different corridors, and at last he stopped in front of a door. He pressed a hand to a panel beside the door, and it slid into the wall at the left, revealing a small resting chamber inside.

  It had a bed, a desk, and a set of drawers. It was very simple, but I wasn't surprised by that. The entire base was fairly simple. Clearly, these aliens had brought few comforts to my planet.

  Hopefully, that will change soon. I want them to settle Eyrus, to bring light and life back to it.

  Without meeting my eyes, he gestured for me to enter the room.

  I frowned. Why would I go into a resting chamber now? The day was still young enough. Only half of it had passed.

  "No, I want to do something. I want to see Walter again. I want to go back outside and enjoy the wind in my hair. I've been locked under the ground for ages. I don't want to stay inside any more than I absolutely have to," I said, pleading with him, though I knew he couldn't understand me.

  He grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

  "Xiva…" he said, my name but a whisper on his lips, though it tore at my soul.

  It sounded like an apology.

  "No," I said sharply, using the word Walter had taught me.

  As if he couldn't help it, he laughed, looking up at me at last, but there was sadness in his eyes.

  "Yes, Xiva," he said.

  "No." I took a step back, away from him.

  With another sigh, he took a step toward me, then another, until he had closed the distance between us.

  His eyes held my own, and he said something I couldn't understand, much to my frustration. All I caught was my name on his lips again.

  But I didn't need to understand his words to understand their meaning. I was being jailed.

  Anger rushed through me at last. Indignation that they would treat me this way, when all I wanted to do was keep them safe, protect them from my brother who wanted to hurt them, to kill them.

  I was concerned for their safety. I wanted them to live on my home world.

  How could they treat me this way?

  Much to my horror, I felt my eyes brim with tears. Hastily, I looked away from him so he wouldn't see and blinked rapidly to clear my eyes. I took in several deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth, focusing on calming down.

  You have to be balanced, Xiva. You have to take care not to lose control. You're better than this.

  Yes, I would have control.

  It took a moment, but I reined myself in.

  They wanted to cage me? Fine. It might rip at my soul to be jailed so soon after having been set free, but I would stand it. I would work around this. I still had the sacred text, clutched against my body with one hand, and I would be able to study it with the time I had bought myself. Perhaps there would be something in it that I could use.

  Holding my head up high, I moved around him and into the room, immediately looking for whatever mechanism would shut the door. There was a button alongside it, and I reached for it—but his hand caught my wrist, stopping me.

  I looked up at him, eyebrows stitched together. He said something in that harsh, guttural language I couldn't understand.

  What is he trying to say? I have to learn this language. This is going to drive me crazy.

  Perhaps if I met his eyes, I would be able to figure out his intent as I had in the past, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't make that eye contact, couldn't risk the connection.

  He had almost taken me in his arms at the temple—I was sure of it—and I couldn't encourage that kind of behavior.

  It was forbidden, and even if it wasn't, this man didn't believe in me or what I did. It was ridiculous.

  It's only because I've been underground for so long, deprived of basic contact. It's a natural reaction to being around a male again.

  Why wasn't I reacting to Walter that way, then?

  Because the warrior was the first male you saw when you came out of the ground. That has to be it.

  Yes, of course. That made sense, and I instantly felt better.

  He said something again, and before I could stop myself, my eyes leapt up to his. I frowned and shook my head.

  "I can't understand you," I said.

  He waved a hand at the sacred text I cradled, then at himself.

  Then he took my hand in his, his warmth spreading through me and taking my breath away, and gestured between the two of us.

  What? What does that mean?

  I started to panic, but then he pointed at the text again and gestured between the two of us once more.

  Oh, of course!

  He wanted to talk about the spell we'd worked together.

  "Do you want to learn?" I asked, laughing. "You want to learn the magic that you denounced so profusely back at the temple?"

  My smile was impish, but his was sheepish.

  It was very interesting to me that he would show such an interest in this field of study, but I had never been one to deny the curious. Information was made to be shared; it was the only way for society to move forward, and if he wanted to learn, then I would teach him.

  I turned and put the book on the chest of drawers, then walked to the bed and took a seat. I patted the spot beside me, feeling somewhat hesitant about the idea of being close to him but not knowing where else he could sit.

  He shook his head as he stepped into the room, then pressed a hand against a panel I hadn't seen near the door. The door shut itself with a whoosh.

  Ah, well, at least now I knew how to get out of here.

  He took a few steps forward until he was in front of me, and then took a seat on the floor.

  My heart constricted. I knew he was allowing me the distance I had created between us on the trip back. He was trying to ensure that I felt comfortable.

  No doubt, he didn't want to risk that his proximity would inspire me to end our lessons.

  How thoughtful of him.

  I looked down at my lap, aware of the way my skin was flaring to betray my emotion, until I was calm enough to progress.

  "I will teach you," I said. "But I want to learn too. I want you to teach me your language."

  He laughed and shook his head, then said something.

  Somehow, I knew what he meant.

  "Yes, this will be difficult with the language barrier. Indeed…"

  I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my knees. There was one place I knew we could start.

  I pressed a hand to my chest. "Xiva. Xiva, name."

  He smiled at me, the kind of soft smile that sneaks up on you before you know your lips are even moving. "Xiva."

  The way he said my name was dangerous, but I was powerless to walk away.

  "Name?" I asked, gesturing to him.

  "Kaidan," he said, pressing a hand to his own chest.

  Kaidan. I held the syllables close to my soul, whispering them over and over in my mind before I dared to speak them aloud. He had gotten my name right the first time he'd said it, and I wanted to do the same.

  He was watching me all the while, his amber eyes trained on mine, and I couldn't bring myself to look away, didn’t dare break the moment. The tension was palpable.

  All over a name.

  "Kaidan," I whispered at last.

  The smile I had earned grew slowly on his face, but it was brilliant when it reached its peak.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Xiva, teach," I said, and then reached inside me and pulled my magic into my hands, setting them aglow. "Magic. Xiva teach magic."

  His eyes widened, and his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but no words came out. The look in his eyes was awestruck and reverent, locked entirely on my hands.

  It's really not a part of his world. He really hasn't seen magic before me. How astonishing.

  "Xiva…" he whispered, shaking his head. "Yes."

  "Kaidan teach," I said, letting the magic fall from my hands.

  He frowned. He repeated the words, going slowly over
the syllables to get them right, but it was clear he didn't know what he was saying.

  "Kaidan teach," I said again. "Please."

  "Common," he said. "Kaidan teach Common."

  "Kau-mann," I said, frowning. Was this the name of his language?

  He grinned at me. "Yes. Xiva teach Kaidan. Kaidan teach Xiva."

  I smiled back at him, laughter escaping me. "Yes, yes, yes!"

  Finally. We were communicating.

  Xiva

  The suns had risen and set many times since we had returned from the temple—Kaidan called the time a month. Every day that passed made me feel a little more uneasy, a little more worried that the spell we'd conducted would wear off, but there was nothing to be done there. All I could do was focus on how to take advantage of the time I had.

  And I'd done everything to take advantage of that in the past month.

  I had learned many words—so many words—but stringing them together was much harder than learning what a word meant. My phrases were halting, my sentences confusing, but slowly Kaidan and I had developed something of our own language.

  It was a natural development of spending so much time together. Whole days had passed when all we'd done was sit and talk to one another, me teaching him how to pull his magic from within himself, and him teaching me new words.

  And with that time, though he was teaching me his language—Common—we had learned an entirely new one together. Simple movements, like the gesture of one hand passing through the air, had somehow become endowed with a meaning all their own. We could read each other like open books. I had no trouble knowing what he was feeling, though I was always careful to keep my mental shields in place so as not to invade his privacy.

  Especially now that I was learning Common. It had been forgivable, I felt, to trespass when I was desperate and didn't know the language and hadn't even been able to understand the thoughts I had felt in the humans’ minds, but now that I was beginning to understand, that kind of trespass was unforgivable. I knew that if I ever did such a thing and Kaidan learned of it, he would never speak to me again.

  I didn't want that. As dangerous as it was, I had come to truly enjoy the time we spent together—and he had gone out of his way to ensure that I was comfortable with the process every step of the way. No matter what, he sat on the floor of my room while I sat on the bed, several feet away from me. He never touched me—not with his hands, anyway.

  His eyes lingered on my skin in a way that made me warm all over, a way that I did not understand and yet somehow knew exactly how dangerous it was.

  But for all that, he was a good student.

  He had actually managed to conduct a simple spell all on his own a few days ago. The pride I'd felt when he did it had been immeasurable—more so than anything I'd felt when I'd trained an initiate in the past.

  It was one thing to teach advanced work to one born with an innate sense of the skill, and it was another entirely to start from scratch with a person who had denied the very existence of the spell all his life.

  And the idea that I was showing him something new, something he had never conceived of—that sat well with me.

  If only our good fortune had been shared with the rest of the humans. I sighed just thinking of it. Things had been going wrong around the base; something wasn't going to plan. I didn't know what their plan was, entirely, not yet, but I knew they were doing something to the planet. I believed they were attempting to make it livable for them, which was fine by me, but it seemed that it was a difficult thing to do. Their technology—nowhere near up to par with the technology I had enjoyed in the time before I was buried—continued to malfunction all the time. It was impossible not to notice this, though no one said a word about it to me.

  It was also impossible not to notice the suspicion in their eyes when they looked at me. It had crossed my mind a time or two that they might blame me for these mishaps—it was a natural reaction. They feared me. I knew they did.

  Well, Walter and Kaidan didn't. I didn't know what Mersssssee felt about me, not anymore. I had scarcely seen her since the trip to the temple, as she was always busy with one thing or another; she worked on the machines, so it made sense that her life would be hectic while they were constantly malfunctioning.

  But there was nothing I could do to assuage their fears at the moment. Kaidan had taught me a word I had heard them use for me—witch. It was not a kind word, he had implied, but it meant one who used magic. I didn't quite understand at first how that could be a bad word, or how it could be bad that it was applied to me, because at its core, it was the truth. I used magic.

  But after much consternation, he had communicated to me that it was a word for a bad person who used magic.

  They thought I was using my magic against them, somehow, or at least those who believed in my abilities thought that. The others must think I was simply sneaking out to sabotage their machines.

  But how could I possibly be doing that? I was granted leave from my room only for meal times. It was impossible for me to get out to do anything to their machines. I couldn't even leave my room if I had wanted to—I had learned quickly that the door was keyed to Kaidan's biorhythm, not mine. He could open and close the door, not me.

  With all of that in mind, I would have thought I was imagining things, that they really weren't regarding me with such suspicion, that they didn't really think these things.

  I had not trespassed in their minds, but some of them thought so loudly that it spilled over my mental barriers. And although I didn't understand all the words, I knew they associated me with danger, that they thought poorly of me.

  It weighed on me with a constant heaviness I was powerless to do anything about but bear it and soldier on, though I wished desperately that there was something I could do about it.

  Even now, as I sat in the room with the long tables that they ate their meals in, I felt their eyes on me. A few times, I had asked Kaidan if I could eat alone in my room, as it was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable for me to sit in silence and feel the way they looked at me, but he had said that was a bad idea.

  He wasn't able to elaborate why, as our communication hadn't progressed to such a degree yet, but I accepted his assessment of the situation. He knew the practices of the humans far better than I ever would. I needed to keep that in mind.

  I toyed with my food—some kind of meat that did not look appetizing—and sighed.

  Just then, seat across from me was filled. The leader—Anders was his name—had taken the seat. I looked at him with great surprise, doing my best not to let it show.

  "Hello, Xiva," he said, smiling at me, though I could see it was strained.

  "Hello…Anders," I said slowly. I had to pay attention to every word I used, to be careful I got the syllables right.

  "Err…" He looked down at his plate, frowning. "Day is good?"

  I laughed. "Yes. Good enough."

  I appreciated that he was making an effort to speak in simple sentences so that I had a better chance of grasping what he was saying.

  "How is you?" I asked, smiling.

  "Good, good." But he didn't look like he was doing very well. I suspected that he was being polite, because the expression on his face said he was under quite a bit of stress.

  The humans were so strange, wearing their emotions on their faces in such a fashion that they were entirely too easy to read. My people—not just the Stryx, but all of those native to Eyrus—had skin that pulsed with the range of our emotions, but we had cultivated a culture around the idea of balance, of not displaying your emotions openly. In a way, having emotions had become something of a shameful thing.

  I had never agreed with the idea—I had always thought that balance meant embracing all of your emotions, not hiding them away—but it had never been my place to challenge that status quo.

  But the humans didn't seem to care how their emotions were displayed. They let everyone know how they were feeling with the twitch of a facial muscle—no co
ncern whatsoever.

  Anders and I ate our lunch together, talking to one another in awkward, stilted phrases, but I was touched by his effort. No one aside from Walter and Kaidan had tried to talk to me yet. They all kept their distance, as if they were afraid the 'witch' would cast a spell on them.

  "Finished?" I asked, eyeing his empty plate. I didn't want to keep him if he had something important he needed to do. I didn't want to give the other humans any more reasons to be upset with me.

  "Yes, but…" He frowned, looking down at his plate again. "I want to say something."

  "Then say," I said, leaning forward a bit.

  I should have known he had a motive for sitting with me, but I had allowed myself to enjoy the simple pleasure of speaking with a new person.

  "This…mission? Do you know mission?"

  "Missssssion…" I frowned. "Hm. Is mean what you doing?"

  "Yes," he said, grinning. "We have a mission, what we are doing here in your home."

  I nodded. "Yes. You is doing a lot."

  "Yes. We want to make it our home, too."

  My smile was radiant. "Yes, yes! Is good. I want that too. I want you here. My home is empty now. There is no one here. I want my home to have life. I want people."

  He relaxed visibly. "Oh, good. Good. It's important to me. I have a child, a little girl, and I need this. I need to make this home for her. Our home is sick. It's dying, and I need to make a home for her so she can live."

  My heart clenched. I didn't understand every word he had said, but what came through made enough sense that I could gather the rest of it.

  Their home was dying?

  Oh, how awful, to have your home withering away around you. It was painful enough for me to wake up and find that the beautiful world I'd lived in was now a desert, but at least it can still support me. At least it isn't too far gone to save.

  But it sounded like his home was too far gone to save, otherwise he wouldn't have come to my home to live. I could understand with my whole heart the need to ensure that his loved one had a beautiful world to live in, without the fear of it dying around her.

  "Yes. Important. So important," I said, nodding slowly. "You need. Eyrus will provide."