She rather liked how he openly admitted his jealousy instead of hiding it. She liked the way his green eyes flashed when he thought of her with another man. But she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t also intrigued by the idea. “So, you only get one wife, but I get multiple husbands?”
“Right. A warlock never marries more than one witch. But if she’d like to share one of her husbands with another witch, usually because they are friends or because they would make a child of stronger magic, then yes, you may share him. Usually, she waits until they’re no longer enjoying each other’s company, and they part ways amicably. Everything is done very respectfully and consensually.”
“Sounds peaceful enough.”
“Usually it is,” he said. “Our practice is to marry as long as it makes both people happy and makes sense for the couple. We try to maintain peaceful unions and breakups. There’s no shame about dissolving a marriage that doesn’t work. That doesn’t make sense. Why stay when you’re miserable? Our vows are to love each other fully and respect each other’s dignity. We live long lives. People change. Forever doesn’t make sense for us.”
“And you don’t belong to anyone’s collective yet?”
He grinned, obviously pleased that she was scoping his eligibility. After a long, torturous minute, he shook his head. “No.”
She thought this over, not sure how it was possible. But then she remembered he’d said witches had to finish their training first. Maybe that explained Raina’s ill temper towards her.
“Let’s swim,” he said, stripping his shirt off over his head.
Sagely tried not to ogle his bare chest, sculpted muscles that made her want to run her fingers over his shoulders and pecs, over his tight abs to the tiny trail of hair that led from his bellybutton to the waistband of his shorts.
Tried, and failed.
She tore her eyes away from him and peeled off her own shirt. Her magic increased tempo as their clothes disappeared, bringing them closer and closer, layer by layer. When she was at last undressed, she glanced up, expecting Quill to be doing a cannonball into the water. Instead, he was watching her, his eyes tortured as he drank in every inch of her skin.
Her magic leapt to the surface, tingling over her skin as if she could feel the weight of his eyes moving over her body. In that moment, she knew that what he said was true. It was going to be as difficult for her to take this slow as it was for him. All she wanted to do was to fling herself on him, rejoin her magic to his and let it fit where it belonged. She’d never felt anything close to this before, as if he were her home. As if she was a missing part of him, as if she belonged to him. The feeling was so intense that she could hardly stand to look at him.
At last she tore her eyes away. “Last one in owes another rain check.”
With that, she sprinted for the pool and dove in, realizing as she plunged beneath the cool, clear surface that she hadn’t asked if any deadly familiars might be lurking in the serene, emerald water. She surfaced with a quickness. By the grin on Quill’s face, she could tell that she was safe. A moment later, he ran and dove in, too. He swam closer, the water buzzing with electricity. Sagely’s skin prickled with chill bumps, her nipples contracting under the frigid water’s surface.
Quill stopped a few feet away and treaded water. The waterfall cascaded beside them, roaring into the water and sending sheets of spray across the surface every time a breeze blew. She’d woken from a nightmare into a paradise. Already, she was growing a new appreciation for the world around her, for the nature and beauty of this place that she’d known most of her life without really noticing.
Maybe it was all the hippie magic, or maybe it was the fact that for the first time in fifteen years, she was not driving herself relentlessly. She allowed herself to relax as she lay back and floated on the surface of the water. The white torrent rushed down the falls, green leaves waved in the wind above them, and above that, the crystal blue of the summer sky stretched out lazily towards evening. Despite all the craziness around her, she felt comfortable. Almost safe. Like she could let her guard down at last.
Thirteen
After a time, Quill swam closer. She could feel the energy conducted through the water, so even as she floated with her eyes closed, she knew exactly where he was. When he drew near, her blood began to sing at the same frequency as his, drawing her closer and closer, until his shoulder brushed hers.
“We’re naked,” she pointed out.
“I know.”
“Should we really be this close?”
“It’s your call, remember?”
A battle began to rage inside Sagely. Her mind, her heart, her body, her magic, all of it was in chaos. Her mind said she didn’t even know this guy’s birthday, or where he was from, or if he liked chocolate gravy or regular. She didn’t know how he treated his mother, if he preferred Led Zeppelin or Debbie Gibson, or if he chewed with his mouth closed. They’d never gone on a date or met each other’s friends.
But the rest of her said, so what? She’d done all that with other boyfriends, and they were history now. They hadn’t lasted. So why not wrap her legs around Quill and pull him close, right there in the water? She wanted him, he wanted her, and she sure as hell had never felt this way before. As if she’d known him all her life, and yet, everything about him was new and fascinating and irresistible. So why not?
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, rolling over in the water and smiling at him. “What are you thinking?”
“That we should test your magic while you’re out here where you can’t accidentally light innocent bystanders on fire.”
“That’s totally what I was thinking!”
“Really?” he asked, his head popping up from the water. He swam upright, grinning at her with his gorgeous smile, his hair plastered down against his tan skin, and his eyes squinting against the bright sun. Her stomach did a lazy flip when his toes brushed her shin beneath the water’s surface.
“No, not really,” she said. “But let’s do it. Does everyone have a special gift, or do we all do the same things in the same order, like school?”
He began to do a lazy crawl towards the shore, and after one last look at the rushing waterfall, she turned to follow. They clambered out of the water, and she tried not to completely ogle his muscular body as he stood, water streaming from his skin, his nipples hard from the chill of the pool. Again, try was the operative word.
But he didn’t seem to be having much more success than she was. She caught him gazing at her tan skin with a warm and possessive hunger that made her want to preen in front of him. Instead, she picked up her clothes, forcing herself not to respond to the weight of his gaze.
“So,” she said, pulling on her shorts and stepping into her red cowboy boots. “What are you going to teach me first?”
He tore his eyes away from the water droplets clinging to her wet body. “Technically, I’m not supposed to teach anyone until my training is over and I’ve mastered all four types of elemental magic. I can’t give you a proper lesson like a Majori could. We’ll just see what you can do. I’ll guide you a little as you test it, play around with it. Experiment.”
He smiled at her, this one different from his carefree, playful grin. This one was slow and languorous, appreciative. She didn’t shy away from his hungry eyes this time. She stood facing him, letting him take her in. She could tell he liked what he saw, that he was admiring her. She let herself enjoy it. As his eyes worked her over, something deep within her warmed like she was a creature emerging into the sun after a long winter of cold hibernation. Something sparkled inside her that had nothing to do with magic. Her blood felt carbonated, fizzy as the first drink from a freshly opened bottle of Sprite.
She swallowed hard and, when she could trust her voice, asked, “What’s all this about elemental magic? And I thought you didn’t have any rules.”
“Once you complete your training, you are an adult witch or warlock, wi
th full mastery of your own element and a good mastery of the remaining three elements. You can continue learning the others all your life, and other spells and binds, things like that. But you’ll never master another element like your own.” As he spoke, they finished dressing without looking at each other.
Okay, maybe she peeked a few times.
“What exactly are the rules of magic?” she asked. “Like, why can’t you master other elements?”
Quill sat on a boulder and let his feet dangle into the stream that emptied out of the pool. Patting the seat beside him, he went on. “That’s one of the rules. It’s like a law of nature, though, not something some old witch decided a century ago. It’s more like…gravity. Magic is energy. It attracts like magic. It can be blocked, like all energies. It can be mastered, but you’ve never learned all there is to learn. You can’t change the essential makeup of an object or creature, can’t change its element. For instance, you couldn’t change stone to water, but you can change stone to iron.”
“Could you turn stone to diamond?”
Can’t blame a girl for asking.
“Sure,” he said. “How do you think we get money?”
“So, you could make a million diamonds right now? You could make the entire shore of this pool into diamond?”
“What would I do with them?” he asked with a smug smile. “You can’t go to a store with a handful of diamonds, unless you want to be arrested.”
“Huh. Then it’s not as cool.” She took a seat beside him and tossed a tiny pebble from a crevice in the lichen-covered boulder into the water. The sun warmed her back after the cold water, and she closed her eyes.
After a second, he nudged her, and she opened her eyes. He held out a fist towards her, a blue swirl of magic drifting off his ring like mist. When she didn’t respond, he grinned, his green eyes sparkling like the water behind him. He opened his hand, palm up. There, in the center, was a diamond the size of a marble.
“Oh my God,” Sagely said, covering her mouth. “Is that real?”
“Of course it’s real,” he said, looking slightly offended. “Would I give you a fake diamond?”
“You’re not giving that thing to me,” she said, shrinking away as if he’d made it by dark magic.
“I thought you wanted a diamond.”
“Yeah, like a…I don’t know. I’m not taking a diamond from you, Quill. We just met. Diamonds are forever.”
“Oh, I forgot they symbolize that for commoners.”
“Commoners? That’s what you call nonmagical people?”
He smirked. “What did you want me to call them?”
“I don’t know, not that.” She closed his fingers over the diamond and pushed it away. “I can’t take that, Quill. It’s too much. That’s probably worth a million dollars.”
His smile vanished, and he took her hand. For a second, she thought he was going to propose. She couldn’t breathe. “It feels like I’ve known you my whole life,” he said. “You’re a part of me now, Sagely. You always will be. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give you. Nothing is too much.”
She swallowed hard. “That is.”
“You’re worth a hell of a lot more than a million dollars to me.”
“Well, thanks. But I’m still not taking a diamond from you.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, and slipped it into his pocket.
Fourteen
“You saw what I can do,” Quill said a few minutes later. “What can you do?”
Sagely laughed, glad the tension stemming from his inappropriate gift has eased. “I have no idea. Let’s see if I can make diamonds from pebbles, too. I’ll be set for life.”
“You are set for life,” he said with a smile. He placed a tiny pebble on her open palm.
“How do you actually do magic?” she asked, staring at the pebble, wondering if it would explode like that warlock’s head. A wave of nausea passed over her when she thought of him again. She wondered if that would ever go away. Probably not. She’d killed a man. That was a human being, no matter how evil. She’d taken his life in a bloody and gruesome way. Using freaking dark magic she didn’t even know she had. She couldn’t just turn him into a frog like a normal witch.
“I usually squeeze it, since a diamond is created under pres—.” Quill broke off and stared.
Sagely looked down at her palm. Great. Now she turned something into a frog, when it was just a stupid, unfeeling rock. As a frog, it was the cutest thing ever, though. She leaned closer to peer at the tiny thing, no bigger than the pebble it came from, about the size of a dime in her palm. Its skin was cool and soft against hers.
“That’s not possible,” Quill said, taking her hand and pulling it closer. He leaned down, studying the frog for a long moment. When he poked it gently, it sprang away in one giant hop, onto the boulder near their feet. With another leap, it was gone forever, lost in the leaves and rocks and water of the forest.
“Okay, it wasn’t a diamond, but that was pretty cool,” Sagely admitted, grinning at Quill. She felt as proud as if she had made a diamond.
But a frown creased his forehead. He was still staring into her palm like he expected another frog to materialize there. She concentrated as hard as she could, straining to remember every detail of the little critter—its bumpy grey skin that matched the tree bark of the trees around them, the tiny round eye, the blunted snout with nostrils no bigger than pinpricks. The damp, cool of its belly, the movement in its delicate sides when it breathed.
Nothing happened.
Of course not. When she wanted the magic, it wasn’t there. When she didn’t want it, she made frogs where she wanted diamonds and blew up people’s heads when she wanted…what? She’d just wanted a fair fight. She was not a killer. But try telling that to the coven, who stared at her like she was some kind of black magic woman. How was she supposed to know she had black magic? She thought she had the same kind as they did. And then that witch, Raina, saying it was her fault. She’d like to turn Raina into a frog—an especially warty one.
A slight, cool pressure on her palm drew her attention. She’d done it! She’d made another adorable baby frog. Ha. That figured. The key to her magic was getting pissed.
“It’s not possible,” Quill whispered to the frog sitting right in front of his face, just inches away.
“Now you know how I felt when you made a big-ass diamond,” she said. “Except, you know, this frog isn’t worth a cool mil.”
“No, it’s not possible to make something out of nothing,” he said, straightening and releasing her hand. “That’s not how magic works. You can’t make a frog out of a rock. You can make a frog out of a person, or change the shape and mineral makeup of a rock. But you can’t make something living out of something non-living. That’s…”
He broke off and, though he tried to hide it, drew away from her a little.
“That’s what?”
After a pause, he shook his head and took her hand, seeming to relax again. Her pulse sped then slowed to sync with his. “Necromancy. That’s bringing the dead back to life. That’s the darkest magic. But you didn’t do that. You made a frog out of thin air.” His voice filled with wonder, and a wave of pride went through her. Apparently, she had some awesome power that no one else had—and it was not dark magic.
“What’s that called?” she asked.
He shook his head again. “Unbelievably amazing?” He laughed and squeezed her hand, and her heart skipped a beat. “But seriously, Sagely. I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s not called anything—that I know of. It shouldn’t be possible.”
“Obviously if I can do it, it is.”
“Let’s go back,” he said, pulling his hand from hers and hopping off the rock. It was weird, because she’d never been a hand-holder or overly affectionate with guys. But now her hand felt cold without his, as if something was missing. He held out a hand to help her down, and her pulse settled when his warm hand closed around hers again.
“Are you scared of me
?” she asked in a teasing voice, but a little part of her was afraid he actually was.
“In awe,” he corrected. “We’ll have to go consult the Wise One.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s this ancient tree,” he said. “The oldest in the forest.”
“Great. I’m some kind of freak witch, and now I have to go talk to a tree? Am I going to have to pass a test before it speaks to me?”
“I was kidding,” he said. “The Wise One is our oldest witch.”
“You jerk,” she said, pulling her hand away and punching him in the shoulder.
“You pack a punch,” he said, looking impressed as he rubbed his shoulder.
“You’re lucky I didn’t do Tae Kwon Do on you. Speaking of which…” She trailed off as they reached the head of the trail and he reached up for a grapevine. He wound his arm around it but didn’t take off yet.
“What?” he asked.
“I need to go home,” she said, scuffing the toe of her boot in the leaves. She might as well get this over with now, before things went any further. “I have a job. I have to at least put in my notice if I’m taking off a few months. I don’t want to quit and sit around making diamonds when I need money. It feels like cheating.”
“We do plenty of work,” he said.
“I need to teach,” she said, willing him to understand. “There are kids there counting on me. I can’t just abandon them.”
He searched her eyes, and after a moment, he grasped the importance to her, if not the reason. “Okay. I’ll talk to the coven.” He held out an arm to her, but she shook her head.
“I want to try it myself this time.”
“Are you sure? What if you fall? I can’t let you get hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt.” She reached for a vine, but he held out a hand to stop her.
Magic of the Void: A Reverse Harem Witch Series (Winslow Witch Chronicles Book 1) Page 7