Once we stopped moving, the kiss ended, our ragged panting the only sounds in the room. I stared up into his eyes. Then reached out with my senses, tracking my magic from my own body to his and back again. I felt the familiar pull of him too, inside me, but found new magic. Bright shining liquid stuff like a pool of mercury in my gut I could sift through my fingers.
I realized two things at once. First, Fin had a depth of power I couldn’t even begin to understand. He’d been deliberately keeping it tamped down. Not to hide it but to limit the effects he had on people. He could turn them into walking zombies without a second thought. It hit me all over again how he could have used me for his own ends and cast me away.
Next, our magic complemented each other. His was liquid and smooth, honed and ready for battle at a moment’s notice. Mine was silken black smoke thick and hard to grasp yet strong all the same.
I popped my eyes open to find him staring down at me.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
It took me a moment to clear my throat and find words. “I’m not entirely sure. I understand and know what we just did, and yet, when I reach for the magic it feels almost unwieldy. I’m not sure what to do with mine around yours.”
“You don’t separate them. From the moment we said the words our magic became one.”
He’d deliberately taken my mage magic into himself when he’d accepted me. I cupped his cheeks and stared into his beautiful eyes. He’d taken the darkness into his light and he still looked at me like I was the most precious thing in the world to him.
“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it. For the gift he’d given me, and the way he’d loved me in so many ways I hadn’t noticed since we met.
He opened his mouth to respond, and my phone let out a sharp ding beside the bed.
I’d set the text tone when I added his number to my phone, so I didn’t need to look at the contact name.
Helix was ready for us.
Chapter Sixteen
FIN DIDN’T EVEN ASK who texted. It was like the second I realized who was on the other end of the line, he did too. But I couldn’t think about that fact too much or I’d get bogged down in the whole mind sharing aspect and likely do something stupid.
Fin eased out of me, left the room, and returned with a warm wet towel to clean me up. The look in his eyes as he did so made me shiver. It was proprietary. As if he couldn’t wait to come back and finish what he’d started.
We dressed and then I checked the message. No doubt Helix had some shady place for us to go, another hoop to jump through as if we were trained circus animals there for his amusement. Strangely, a lot of our interactions made me feel that way. But under it all I could tell he genuinely felt protective over Melinda so I couldn’t completely hate the man.
His text was simple: go to the house.
I assumed he meant the townhouse where I’d first met Melinda. We loaded ourselves up with easy to carry weapons, jackets to conceal what we could, and headed out.
I kept waiting for things to get awkward, for something to feel off between Fin and I since the bond sealing. But every movement he made, every word he uttered, even him opening my door for me felt perfectly natural. As if the sealed bond meant something inside me had finally clicked into place and this is where we were meant to be all along.
“Stop worrying,” he told me, climbing into the driver’s seat.
We crossed town as dusk fell. I hadn’t even realized how much of the day we’d lost.
I checked the magic inside me, feeling Fin’s magic rise under my call the same way. At least I could see his magic had returned; there didn’t seem to be any lasting effects from Melinda’s battery drain on him.
Helix held the door open as we parked in front of the house. The same sort of bubble slid over our skin as we crossed the sidewalk to bound up the stairs. This time, the barrier let Fin enter instead of shoving him away.
On the other side, he looked back at it and I knew he marveled at the construction. It wasn’t like reading each other’s thoughts but feeling the same thing he felt. Reading emotions on an ultra-detailed level.
“It sucks in the power of those who try to enter and uses it to keep them out,” he whispered to me.
“Cool,” I said, deadpan, but gave him a smile.
I’d attached myself for life to an uber nerd, which should have been glaringly obvious by the size of his library back at his mansion.
I shoved the thoughts of our previous headquarters away. It wouldn’t do well to think about the Captain right now when we needed all our focus. Fin grabbed my hand and squeezed, thanking me for remembering his friend, for appreciating him in the end.
We entered the house and Helix closed and locked the door behind us. I gaped at the sheer number of locks down the door frame.
Helix shrugged. “I believe you should use the tools that require the least amount of effort first. Then move up from there. If any of these locks buy us more time, then it was worth it.”