Standing this close to him, the firelight behind him outlining the muscles of his shoulders and back, I yearned to be touched by him again. To feel his sturdy hand on my waist, my neck. To have his breath against my face as he rested his forehead against mine. His admission shattered me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you?”
As if reading my thoughts, he stepped closer. I swayed toward him, as if my body were asking in its own language for something I was unable to request in words. I looked into his face, fighting tears, fighting screams, fighting every instinct that kept me clinging to any sort of hope at all.
As I closed my eyes and rested my hands against his chest, I realized that I was tired. Tired of games with life-and-death stakes. Tired of being managed and manipulated. Simply tired of holding the weight of my own soul.
He wrapped his hands around mine and lowered his forehead to mine, like he had in the woods. But this time, no hood covered my face. We had no need to hide whatever impulse brought us together.
“You don’t know how long I’ve…” His voice shook, a low confession that seemed to pour from deep inside him. “Pali…”
I lifted my face, eyes still closed, seeking the feel of him under my hands, the press of him against my hips like in Kyruna. I was not certain how long I’d carried this spark of passion for Syndrian. How many years I’d sought his eyes over Idony’s table, sharing smile and an unmistakable feeling of closeness between us. How many times had I dreamed of feeling the muscles in his arms under my fingers, his hands around my waist.
My breaths came in tiny bursts through my lips as he whispered a question.
“The torch you lit in Kyruna. You had no fire striker. I…I fear giving voice to the question. But are you in trouble because of magic?”
The girlish fantasy that we were sharing something intimate, something real, shattered the moment he said the wordmagic. I stiffened but looked into his eyes as I answered with as much honesty as I could.
I nodded, not specifically admitting to the question of whether the magic had caused my current trouble. Certainly, magic had ruined my life from the day of my birth, although I knew that was not what he meant. But that was as much I would risk sharing with him for now. “If I am to have any hope of buying my way out of my…mess, I will need the winnings from that tournament.”
“Can you go to your parents? Pali, surely…”
“My parents…” I pulled away from him completely, frustration replacing the other, more complicated feelings. “No. The consequences would be grave. Not just grave. Fatal.”
I felt his hands on my shoulders then, a firm, unyielding pressure. I closed my eyes, wishing I could lose myself in the pleasure of his touch. But this man was not intended for me. My betrothal would soon be announced, and to hope or wish for anything other than escaping that fate and disappearing from Omrora was foolish. Reckless.
“I need to win that tournament,” I said, lifting my chin and turning to face him.
“You can never return to Kyruna,” he said, his face contorted. “And if you do, I will not be able to help you.”
“I expect nothing from you, Syndrian. I…I only wish…” The words would not come. I could not speak them. What I wanted did not matter. It never had. Giving voice to them would only make me foolish in his eyes. I may not have had a solution to my problems, but I could preserve the shreds of my dignity and salvage the bonds of friendship we still shared by keeping this too to myself.
“Kyruna is run by the Otleich family.” Syndrian’s dark eyebrows lowered, and his words passed through gritted teeth. “You cannot go back to that pub. You must not play in the tournament.”
Despite the affection I had for him, I could not abide another person—not one more person—telling me what I could and could not do.
“Why not?” I studied his lips as I asked the question, as if I could read the emotions behind his words, but he turned away from me.
If the direction, the order, had come from my father or mother, I would have lashed out. Resisted and rebelled. But coming from Syndrian… I somehow could not muster the anger required to fight him. I heard something behind his warning that my parents’ restrictions lacked. Something that sounded like genuine concern for me.
“A gorgeous, intelligent woman beating every player, winning the tournament pot…” Syndrian moved away from me and paced the cottage at a near-frantic speed. “You don’t want those people to know you exist. You’d walk out of there with a purse full of their coins. And then…” He stopped and straightened his shoulders, his chin raised, as if ready to defend me against an enemy only he fully understood. “No, Pali,” he said. “There must be another way.”
“I am certain there is no other way,” I said sadly, pressing my fingertips to my temples. “And it is unfortunately too late to keep me from the Otleiches.”
After the perilous journey, the vicious fight, and the resurrection of my magic from the place it had been buried…I felt light-headed. I wondered if the symptoms I was experiencing were the consequence of using magic. It made sense that the exertion of power carried a cost, but I was unsettled by what was happening to my body. The fatigue and the slight throb behind my eyes were new and unusual but not terrifying. Almost like the sourness of tasting something that I wasn’t quite certain I’d like but had swallowed for the sake of appearances.
My fine leather shoes were quiet on the braided rag rug as I stepped close to the fire. I stared into the flames, entranced with their vibrant dance.
“How?” Syndrian pressed. “How can it be too late? You didn’t play tonight, did you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I don’t understand.” His voice was tight like the knotted muscles of his forearms. Dense and ready to strike. I only wished his composed emotions could lash out in another direction. At the true darkness in my life.
“I have always known I am strange,” I admitted, lifting my hands before the fire. “I could stand before a fire and feel the flickering of flames in my blood. As if there was a connection between me and…”
I motioned toward the hearth, moving my hands in a circular motion. The flames followed ever so slightly.