He nodded just once, crisply.

“Ready?” she whispered, her eyes locked with his gray-green.

“Thank you, Mara.” His fingers grazed the back of her neck softly.

She did not respond. Words would have stumbled out of her mouth if she’d let them as she felt a flush of warmth.

She tightened her grip on the boy’s arm and began. She pulled slowly at first, feeling herself fill up, trying to give him a chance to catch on. Damn his insensitivity—it would only make this harder. He wasn’t made for this.

But to her surprise, she felt his energies replenish immediately, then a little more. She pulled more. “Faster now,” she whispered to him. “Ready? Going faster.”

Now there was enough to feed a little into the boy. Tiny streaks of energy went zipping from her through his veins, seeking the tears, the blood, the holes.

“More,” she demanded. She pulled more. He found more, somehow.

Now she could feel the boy’s bones, feel the blood coursing through him, the brokenness, the sick blackness that was not the Way. Healing required little thought, just great energy. The body already knew what it should do, how it should be. She simply helped it do what it was already attempting. The boy coughed, then sputtered out the blood from his lungs.

His veins pulsed with magic, his bones shook with energy. The magic coursing through them both was intoxicating. Euphoric. The body longed to heal itself—but it needed more. She was possessed by the magic now, the spell, the process. Her body and the boy’s were one system, magic flowing between them in a vortex. She lost all restraint. She lost all control. It needed more.

She drained energy as quickly as she could. The magic was in control of her now. She was a conduit, Aven was the source—and the boy would be healed.

The bones snapped and crackled in his chest. The blood fizzled. The boy screamed as his body violently and gracelessly rearranged itself. Nerves crackled with snaps and sizzles, alive again, desperately sucking every ounce of energy she had to once again—feel—alive—

She heard herself choke for breath. She saw herself, as if from just above and behind her, fall away from the boy. His eyes were wide and blue, looking around frantically, charged with the energy they’d stolen from the sun. She saw her body fall away from Aven, too, and crumple to the ground.

10

Old Secrets

A dull, piercing pain. Darkness. Heat.

Aven’s consciousness returned slowly, orbiting around a dull knife of pain in his temple. Then he could feel his whole head ache, then the dryness of his mouth.

He lay for some time without thinking. Every part of him ached.

Slowly, thought returned. His current situation flooded back to him. He was not in his room in Estun. He was not a naïve prince holed up in a mountain anymore. He was— Mara. Where was Mara?

Nearby, he could hear children laughing, pots clanging, women talking quietly. It sounded like the kitchen in Estun. The smell of morning apple dumplings would be just wafting into the halls. He would have liked to curl up on a library window seat with his mother nearby and had a dumpling with tea. His heart twisted a little, aching at the thought.

Would he ever see her again? Did she know where he was now? Did she know about the Devoted? He had to assume she had been the sparrow watching.

Could the Devoted still be on their trail? At those thoughts, the air around him twitched unnaturally, and to his delight, he could feel that slight cold in his chest easily, right away, without trying. But with that cold feeling, the throbbing pain in his skull also intensified to the point that he had to cradle his head. Yellow splotches like stars flashed against his eyelids and faded again.

The pain stilled his thoughts and, therefore, his magic. Then the pain eased slightly.

He wiggled his toes and feet tentatively; he only felt stiffness. He clenched his fingers into fists and then stretched them back out again; they, too, seemed perfectly normal. He didn’t seem to be bound at all, except by Mara’s invisible chains. The pain in his extremities lessened as he began to move and stretch. Only the pain in his head stayed constant.

He opened his eyes just a crack. He was in some kind of small, dark tent. The only light came from the tent flap that led to the outside.

Wind ruffled the tent flap, sending his head splitting but also his stomach roiling. Apparently, he was hungry. Starving, actually.

Of course. The memory of harnessing the energy so Mara could heal the boy came back to him now. The feeling of the energy coursing through him, the vibrating bliss of the hot sun’s light, the violent cold as the energy left him again. He had been standing between a blazing fire and an open window on a snowy day—but only within his mind.

But where was Mara?

Now he snapped his eyes fully open. The tent was small and barely had room for one person to sleep; no one else was inside. There was no sign of her.

Impulsively, he pushed himself up to sitting and regretted it immediately. His head spun, and the stars in front of his eyes returned. But he wouldn’t let himself fall back down. He was determined to make sure Mara was okay.

“Ho, he wakens!” a woman’s voice called. “Get Regin.” The sound of little feet scurried and pitter-pattered away out of earshot. They must have heard me cursing, he thought.

A figure suddenly filled the slit in the tent where the light came in. He struggled to turn his head and focus, and a bowl was extended toward him. Hoping his strength would not give out, he took it. The visitor was gone.

The smell was heavenly. His stomach demanded he eat.

Could this be poisoned? He had no idea who had even handed him this. What if they’d turned him and Mara over to the Devoted? What if they were the very ones handing him this bowl?

Still, if they really wanted to hurt him, wouldn’t it have been far easier to do so while he was incapacitated and unconscious? Hadn’t they already had their best chance?

His stomach roiled again. There was no guarantee the food was safe. There was only one thing he could do. Eat. And perhaps pray.

Ancestors, he whispered in his mind. He lifted up the bowl on a whim, thinking of his great-grandmother Tena. Let this food be safe, and let us be safe with these people, at least for a short while, and I will do what I must to put an end to these Devoted that roam our lands. If I’m ever free again, I’ll do what I can to end all this injustice.