“Why don’t you two start?” Davien suggests. “Katria and I will watch for a bit so she can get a sense of it.” Davien retreats back to the beaten path that lines the front of the lot, motioning for me to follow.
I look back out over Dreamsong. I can see the entire city from this vantage as it slopes down around Vena’s main hall. Hundreds of displaced people and families, living in danger…struggling and fighting to reclaim a homeland that they might never see again and, even if they could, might not be the same when they return.
That feeling is so foreign to me that I have to struggle to comprehend it. I’ve never felt that drawn to anywhere. I’ve never had somewhere I would fight at all costs to get back to.
Davien’s manor? I suppose? I’m fighting to get back there. But even that…it’s just a house. It’s not my home. Maybe I could turn it into my home someday. But for now, it’s just a place to lay my head. Is that what I’m struggling to get back to? Is that the best I have to hope for in life?
“Your thoughts are heavy,” Davien interrupts my contemplations.
“What?”
“Your shoulders hunch slightly when you’re thinking about something sad.” He runs his finger along the ridge of my shoulder from my neck to the edge, where it hovers.
“Do you really think we’ll be able to defeat Boltov?” I ask softly, avoiding the truth of what I was thinking.
“I do. We have to. I refuse to entertain any other option.” Davien turns his gaze over Dreamsong as well with purpose. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“Even though none of this is happening how I intended, I can’t shake the feeling that you’re meant to be here, with me, while I do this.” He finishes his sweep of the city and his attention lands on me.
“I’m holding you back.”
“You’re helping me learn. Forcing me to take time to become acclimated to Midscape before I have full use of my powers. Teaching me to be still and patient—that I can’t charge ahead and defeat Boltov overnight. I shudder to think of what might have happened if you weren’t here to force me to slow down.”
His mouth tugs into a smirk at one corner. The look is a bit sultry, in an entirely unintentional way that makes it all the more irresistible. Davien doesn’t realize just how attractive he is, I realize. His appeal is like his magic. It was unused in the human world. A muscle that went unflexed for such a long time that he doesn’t even realize the strength he has. Soon enough, he’ll realize that power, too. And then women will be fawning over him left and right. A handsome prince returned from exile to claim the throne… I bet there are a hundred fae like Laura who will trip over themselves to be with him.
And where will that leave me?
Forgotten, back in the Natural World.
You never had a place here to begin with, a nasty voice seethes in the back of my mind. You were never even meant to be here. Or with him.
“I’m doing all that?” I arch my eyebrows skeptically, keeping my reservations to myself.
“And more.” Davien reaches for my hand and then thinks better of it, as if he can read my mind. “Oh, look, they’re going to begin.”
I do as he commands, relieved for the distraction.
There’s a small pile of supplies off to the side that Oren and Giles are moving—materials I would and would not expect to find for building. It’s everything from lumber, to blocks, to geodes—cracked like eggs, their shimmering, crystal yolks catching the sunlight. There are buckets of paint and brushes, one of which Giles picks up.
He begins to dribble paint along the ground, murmuring as he goes. Meanwhile, Oren is taking some of the smaller tree limbs and placing them at the four corners of the outline Giles is making. At the top of each of the rough posts he places a crystal, the branch magically weaving around it to hold the stone like a jewel at the top of a scepter.
Giles goes back to the foot of the mountain to paint swirls, dots, and lines across one of the stones there. He does the same on the wood off to the side. Oren and Giles square off against each other on opposite ends of the outline they’ve made. They each crouch down, pressing their fingers into the wet paint that’s pooled unevenly in the divots of the hard-packed earth.
In my periphery, I see Davien move. His lips brush lightly against the shell of my ear as he whispers, “Watch closely. Feel their magic. Feel their connection to the earth—to everything around us—all that was and could be.”
I want to do as he instructs, but I don’t think he realizes just how painfully distracting he is when he speaks like that.
Giles and Oren’s chanting becomes fast and low. The air around them pops with small sparks of light in increasing frequency. I hear a rumble off to my side. The giant tree trunk groans with unseen pressure. A crack splits the air and the wood. Simultaneously, the mountainside comes to life like a sleeping golem waking. The stones behind Giles begin to levitate as the marking he placed on the large boulder glows.
It’s a maelstrom of shimmering magic, stone, and wood. Invisible builders saw, hammer, and nail. They fit the joints with careful precision as a hole is bored into the mountainside. The magic does the work of several craftsmen in a blink. Before I know it, a tunnel has begun. Clay seeps up through the ground, beading and joining along the path. Support beams shore up the overhead.
I stare in awe…and frustration. The latter must show on my face because Davien asks, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s so…so simple.”
“I assure you it only has the appearance of simplicity. In actuality, to perform magic like this takes years of practice to understand both rituals and your power.”
