Tatterdemalion

herself out, Izia gave them both a look that said, louder than words, not to fool around.

Lindsay flinched. “Looking forward to it?” He didn’t like the idea of anyone looking forward to

fucking around with his magic. He’d had enough of that already.

“He doesn’t see things like we do.” Dane nuzzled Lindsay’s temple, but didn’t kiss him. “It’ll be fine.

He’s also looking forward to finally getting me to give in to him. We should just go get it done, so we can get back to living.”

Dane offered to shower first so Lindsay could stay in the warm bed a little longer, but Lindsay didn’t

want to wait. “But I wouldn’t get to watch you shower.”

“I’m just eye-candy to you, aren’t I?” Dane pulled a robe on and held another out for Lindsay. “Come

on, you can appreciate my male beauty a little longer before Ezqel has his way with me.”

Lindsay slid his arms into the robe. “As long as you’re you, I don’t care what you look like.”

“I hope I’m still me, then. I haven’t been that other person in a long time.”

Lindsay didn’t know what that meant, so he kept quiet as they walked to the bathroom to shower.

When they finished cleaning up, Taniel was waiting for them in the sitting room. “Ezqel will see you

outside. This is not a magic to be done indoors. I will take you to him.”

Naked and outdoors. In winter. Lindsay sighed quietly and pulled the robe tighter around himself.

“Does the magic cure frostbite too?”

Tatterdemalion

“It will be warm enough.” Taniel led them out through the back of the house, but this time he took

another path, one that led toward a tall, gray mountain.

It was, shockingly, warm enough, and the path under their feet was dry. Tiny green spikes of new

flowers poked out from under black, rotting leaves. The air smelled like snow with a hint of spring when

the wind blew.

“This is a safer place to break magics,” Taniel explained, growing breathless. “The stone is very

stable, it goes deep, and it draws in power. The water that runs through is clean and carries away excess

power, the fragments of spells.”

“I’m starting to feel like I grew up with blinders on,” Lindsay murmured. “I never would’ve guessed

there was so much magic in the world, or so much…infrastructure for it.”

“The human race drifts on the surface of great depths, in every way,” Dane said, as though he were

quoting something. “You’ll learn.” He offered Lindsay a hand as the path grew steep. He seemed to know

the way as well as Taniel, his feet finding the path without hesitation.

Dane was right, Lindsay thought. When the spring-laden breeze pulled at his damp hair, he

remembered all the times he’d felt the wind before and had never known it could have a voice. He’d never

known that people like Dane and Vivian and Kristan existed. Lindsay had assumed that Taniel was a

human student and now he wondered at Taniel’s magic. What was it?

And how did Izia’s magic work? She’d saved Dane from death, with help, but she looked like some

graduate student playing monk at a party. The kuni that had tested his magic, it had seemed like a normal

stone, but someone had made it and polished it. The box that held the guul heart, had Ezqel made it? And

what about the ring that Dane had worn to kill the guul? It had shimmered with a red light that reminded

Lindsay of the glow in an animal’s eyes.

Lindsay was used to living on the surface. At home, he had lived on the surface of all his mother’s

secrets and wealth and all his father’s power. He’d always known, even though it was never talked about,

that his father had seen combat and had ordered the deaths of soldiers and had even killed men himself.

There were medals to prove it. Lindsay had floated above those depths, but this was different.

Now the depths below him meant safety.

There was awareness in Dane’s expression and Lindsay realized that Dane could see into the depths,

not just into the mundane dark. Dane had come up from those depths for Lindsay. It was time for Lindsay

to leave the surface behind and dive, to swim deep and to learn. He didn’t want to be ignorant anymore.

After a while, the trail leveled out to wind along the side of the mountain where it jutted out of the

earth, a ragged, weathered face rising to Lindsay’s left. Dane moved to walk on the raw outer edge, his bare feet sure over even the sharpest stones. The forest rolled away below them and Lindsay thought he could

see, in the distance, the other rise where they’d been when they’d eaten breakfast before Jonas had come.

Maybe he was just making it up. Who was he to know where they were in Ezqel’s forest?

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Anah Crow and Dia