My heart pattered in my chest as I snuck around the building and pressed myself against the wooden wall. According to Henry, bribery hadn’t worked. But Callan had found where those permits were being kept and he was going to distract the person in the room so that I could steal one. We had to hurry, though, before the guards inside could figure out that Callan hadn’t left the building.
Staying close to the wall, I leaned forward and peered in through the open window. Callan was standing a couple of steps from the door, talking to a woman with brown hair. She had her back towards the window while Callan faced it, and his gaze shot straight to me as soon as I peeked inside.
He flicked a quick glance towards a desk by the window before he returned his attention to the woman. I swept my gaze over the desk. Just like he had indicated, there were two permits waiting there on the smooth wood. However, I would need to climb inside to reach them.
“What’s it like living all the way out here compared to the busy life in Castlebourne?” Callan asked the woman while throwing me an impatient look.
I shot a death glare back at him, but placed my palms on the windowsill and started heaving myself up on it. While the woman talked about how she missed her friends, I tried to climb up into the window as silently as possible. It was thankfully quite low, and I was wearing my riding outfit rather than a dress, but it still wasn’t as easy as I would have hoped.
When I had finally managed to get my legs up and over the windowsill so that I was sitting on it, I looked up to find Callan trying to suppress a smile while pretending to listen intently to the woman’s story. I shot him another death glare that I knew he could feel even though he wasn’t looking at me.
“But why did you move out here if you miss your life in the city so much?” he asked while I lowered myself down onto the floor.
Desperately hoping that the floorboards wouldn’t creak, I snuck over to the neatly organized desk.
There were stacks of unused paper at one end while different kinds of forms had been separated into several piles, but there were only two documents that had the words ‘Bridge Permit’ written on them in swirling black ink. I flicked my gaze up and down the pages.
My heart sank. The first permit was for two people, and the other was only for one. There were five of us, so we wouldn’t be able to just steal these and use them straight away. Paige would need to forge a new one for us. And for that, she would need supplies.
While carefully picking up the permit for two, I flicked my gaze around the room. There was paper I could grab right here on the desk, but I would still need the right kinds of pens.
From across the floor, Callan shot me another impatient look right as I spotted several pen holders. I pointed towards them while picking up a few blank papers with my other hand. Callan only slid his gaze back to the woman.
The pens were located dangerously close to her side, which meant that she might see me from the corner of her eye if I moved that far in. I rolled up the stolen permit and the blank papers, and secured them inside my shirt, while I watched Callan casually brush his palms together. While still listening to her talk, he flicked his wrist.
What looked like a tiny force blast hit the stack of documents on the woman’s other side. Paper rustled as it toppled over the edge of the table and fluttered down to the floor.
“Oh by the Current,” she exclaimed as she spun towards it.
I sprinted towards the pens by the other wall.
“Oh no,” Callan echoed. “Let me help you with that.”
Since I didn’t know exactly which pens Paige would need, I just grabbed one of each. There was some kind of stamp there too, so I snatched that up as well before I hurried back towards the window.
The wooden floorboard underneath me let out an alarmed squeak.
My blood froze.
Across the room, the woman who was now crouching by the scattered papers lifted her head and started to turn around. Callan’s hand shot out.
“I lied earlier,” he said as he brushed his hand over her cheek and then hooked her long brown hair back behind her ear. “I didn’t come in here because I was curious about your job. I saw you through the doorway when I was leaving after a meeting with your father, and my heart just stopped. You’re beautiful, and I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”
“Oh, I…” She stammered while raising her own hand and placing it over Callan’s where he rested it against her cheek. “You’re too kind.”
Wildfire fury roared through my soul. Standing there rooted on the floor, I momentarily forgot about the mission as the overwhelming urge to poison every single person in this building, and her in particular, crashed over me like a tidal wave. Rage flickered inside me as I watched her reach out and take Callan’s other hand while she gazed into his eyes.
I was going to kill her. I was going to kill her in such a painful way that even her already dead ancestors would feel it.
What made her think that she could just reach out and touch him that casually? Touch him at all? Hell, as I watched her draw her fingers down Callan’s arm, I realized that I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands on him like that.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the corridor.
The sudden sound snapped me out of my anger and stupidity, and I whipped my head towards the doorway. A shadow fell across the floor, but I was already moving. Sprinting back through the room, I leaped straight out the window. I might not be very good at climbing into them, but diving out was something that I had done several times at this point so I managed to roll to my feet on the grass outside without injuring myself.
“Hey!” a voice snapped from inside the room. “What do you think you’re doing, flirting with the Commander’s daughter?”
I knew that Callan could take care of himself, so I just sprinted across the grass with my stolen loot.
Annoyance rippled through me as I snuck back to the small grove where the others were hiding. What was I doing? I had almost screwed up our mission because, what? I had gotten jealous? The thought was absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t get jealous. I was a powerful dark mage who didn’t need anyone else. And I most certainly didn’t need Callan Blackwell.
My mind drifted back to last night. At the inn. When I had gone to his room to… do what? I hadn’t even known what I was doing, but then I had suddenly found myself standing outside his door. I had at least gotten my senses back before I could do something as pathetic as to knock, but then he had opened it himself instead. Where had he been going at that time of night? I had forgotten to ask about that.
But then I had kissed him. Again. I really had to stop doing that. But the way he had looked at me had made my whole soul soar.
The agreement we had made back in Eldar was just pure sex because we found each other a bit attractive. And he wanted nothing else from me, I knew that. But the way he had looked at me last night in his room…
Pushing the thought aside, I shook my head. Our arrangement was starting to get far too dangerous. I had slipped up last night. Really slipped up. When he demanded to know what I wanted after he had given me that mind-shattering orgasm, I was supposed to have answered that I wanted him to fuck me. But that wasn’t at all what I had ended up saying, was it? No. I had said: You. I want you, Callan.
Panic seized my heart like a cold fist at the mere thought of it.
I didn’t think that he had understood what I truly meant, but hell, that had been close. He could never find out that I had fallen for him, so I knew that I should be staying far away from him. But there was something about that damn bastard that just made me come back over and over again. Something that made me want to let him in. Want to trust him.
“Where’s Callan?”
The sound of someone’s voice jarred me enough that I actually started in surprise. Then my gaze found Henry’s scowling face, and I drew my eyebrows down too. “On his way out.”
“It worked?”
“Of course it did.” Before he could say anything else, I strode right past him and Lance and towards where Paige was hovering awkwardly a short distance away.
“Did you get the permit?” she asked as I came to a halt in front of her.
“Yes, and no. We have one, but it’s only for two people.” I searched her face. “So do you think you’d be able to use that one to forge a new one for us? I understand if you would need your own things for it, but I stole some pens and—”
“Of course I can,” she interrupted, and her whole face seemed to light up.
It confused me a little. She had already gotten into so much trouble the last time she had helped me, and now here I was, selfishly asking for her help again. But I was also relieved, because we really needed to get across that bridge, so I just held out the stash of papers and pens and stamps to her.
Faint clanking filled the small grove as she took the items and then began pulling other supplies out of our packs until she could create a makeshift table. After tying up her wavy blond hair in a bun, she sat down cross-legged on the grass and picked up the stolen permit. Afternoon sunlight fell across her face from the side as she studied every inch of the document.
I suddenly felt a bit awkward just standing there. Back at the academy, I had loved watching Paige work. It was like watching a painter create a masterpiece. Except much quicker. We had spent many nights talking about anything and everything while she worked on the forgeries she had been paid to do. But now, I wasn’t sure if she still wanted me here. Indecision flickered through me, but then I started to turn away.
“Those pens you brought,” Paige said before I could finish turning. She was still scrutinizing the document in her hands, so I didn’t think that she had seen that I had been about to leave. “Can you organize them according to color?”
A smile blew across my lips. “Of course. Same way as usual?”
“Yeah.”
After brushing my hands down my pants, I sat down on the grass opposite the makeshift table. A faint clattering sound drifted through the warm summer air as I picked up the pens and began sorting them into the order that Paige preferred.
An unexpected jab of pain struck me in the chest. Hell, I had missed this. I had missed having someone who knew me. Someone I could always count on. That failed escape attempt at my mansion with Callan had shown me just how fickle the dark mage world could be. And I really missed the sense of comfort the came from knowing that there was someone who would always have my back.
“They talked about it too, you know,” Paige said, startling me out of my thoughts.
“Who talked about what?” I asked.
While setting the permit down, she picked up a blank paper and then selected a pen from the left side of the organized row I had created. Her eyes briefly met mine before she looked down and began drawing lines on the paper.
“The constables who took me,” she said while she continued to work. “When they were holding me at The First and Last Stop, they talked about the Enhancer too.”
With her face angled like that, the bruises on her jaw and cheekbone were clearly visible in the bright light. It made another wave of rage rise inside me, but I managed to suppress it and instead said, “They did?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure if they thought that I was in too much pai—” She cut herself off before she could finish saying pain, and instead changed it to, “That I wasn’t paying attention, but they talked quite a lot about how Lance Carmichael’s friends are heading for the Enhancer right now and how it was going to win the war for them.”
“The problem is that they’re right. If they can get both the Enhancer and Lance, we won’t stand a chance.”
“What is it? You’ve told me that we’re going to some mountain to get it before them, and I understand that it’s somehow dangerous, but I still don’t get what it is. What does it do?”
Twigs snapped somewhere on the other side of the glen. A moment later, Callan came striding through the trees. His eyes locked straight on me the moment he came into view, and it looked like he was going to stalk over here to start another fight. But once he saw Paige working, he tore his gaze from me and instead moved over to where Henry and Lance waited.
“It’s a relic,” I answered as I shifted my attention back to Paige. Blowing out a sigh, I drew my fingers through my hair and then leaned back on my hands. “An old relic from the last full-scale war that Eldar waged against the dark mages. Before Lance, that was the last time they had a Binder. And that Binder wasn’t just skilled with her magic, she was apparently a damn genius too.”
“You said that the Enhancer was made by a Binder. So, she’s the one who made it?”
“Yeah. And she also made it so that it can only be destroyed by a Binder. But of course the dark mages back then didn’t know that, so once they had killed her, they tried to destroy it. It took them a few years to figure out why nothing worked. So they hid it instead, and it’s a secret that has been passed down between dark mages ever since.”
Her blue eyes flicked up to my face as she paused her work to switch to a different pen. “How come no one from Eldar has been able to find out?”
“Dark mages only tell other dark mages.”
“Yeah, but I mean, couldn’t they just have sent out someone who hadn’t gone through with the ritual? You know, have them pose as a dark mage, learn the secret, and then go back to the city?”
I chuckled. “Sneaky as always.”
A smile played over her lips as she shrugged and then returned to her forgery. “I know.”
“But no, it wouldn’t have worked. For one, I don’t think the people of Eldar even knew that the dark mages had hidden the Enhancer to begin with. Like I said, they tried to destroy it for a few years before they hid it. But also, you have to survive two years as a dark mage in the hills around Eldar before you’re allowed to learn that particular secret.”
“Clever.”
“Right?”
“But so, what does it actually do? Why is it so dangerous?”
“It allows a Binder to throw their magic.”
Her gaze snapped up to mine. Blinking, she stared at me with wide eyes before pressing out, “What?”
“Yeah.” Expelling another deep breath, I picked up a blade of grass and started absentmindedly twisting it around my finger. “It apparently looks kind of like a glove, and if a Binder summons their magic while wearing it, they can throw it the same way that I can throw poison or Callan can throw force blasts. Which means that Lance would no longer need to touch people to bind their magic. He could just stand behind a massive wall of constables and shoot ranged attacks at us. And if just one attack hits…” Clicking my tongue, I shrugged and let the blade of grass fall back to the ground. “It’s all over.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
A gentle breeze blew through the grove. It made the canopy of leaves flutter while two blackbirds danced in the air above us. Seriousness descended on Paige’s features as she looked back at me before giving me a firm nod.
“Well then, let’s get this done.”
