Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

Then gone.

Rabbit awoke to find himself lying on the stone floor of the library, cold and stiff, with tears drying on his face and an aching hole where his heart used to be.

“Hello?” The word came out as a croak, nearly unrecognizable. “Are you still here?”

There was no answer. She was gone.

He rolled onto his side with a groan, then lay there for a few seconds, gulping for oxygen. His stomach muscles hurt and his throat was raw, like he’d been retching. And his whole world felt off balance, like it had gone off the road and halfway off a cliff, where it teetered, waiting for a stiff wind to send it crashing down.

His eyes locked on two gleaming pieces of stone lying nearby, fitted together. Dragging himself to a woozy sort of upright position, he reached for them, then hesitated.

The eccentrics had faded, one to its normal flinty black and the other to a bright white quartz that was shot through with reddish iron streaks. They looked like normal stones now rather than artifacts that had the power to allow a spirit’s essence to pass from the dark barrier onto the earthly plane. But that was what they had done.

His mother’s ghost had come to him. He had seen her, talked to her.

It almost felt like a dream, except that the eccentrics were there, connected. Just as he felt connected now to her… and to the twin brother he’d forgotten. Tristan. Gods.

Exhaling softly, he touched the stones, which parted with a soft, almost musical grating sound. He didn’t feel anything when he picked them up, didn’t get any indication that they were more than plain stones, not even when he fitted them together once more. They aligned perfectly, with the spiky shapes of one fitting into the indentations of the other to create a single whole. But they didn’t click into place and there was no heat, no power.

He would have tried putting his own magic into them, but he was too damn woozy. He needed to eat something—not more chili dogs—and take some downtime to recharge before he attempted to summon the spirit, or send his own to the dark side of the barrier to speak with her again. And he needed to think things through before he tried any of it.

His gut said she was the real deal, but the things he’d seen in that vision didn’t line up with what he knew of his old man. Not by a long shot.

He’d always figured he’d been an accident, something that Red-Boar had kept around as a sort of sacrifice, a penance, just like the brown robes he had worn and the grisly self-sacrifices he had performed on the cardinal days, though he would never say why he was doing penance or what he was praying for. Now, though… Shit. He didn’t know what to think, how to feel.

Even searching for his mother had really been about figuring out the limits of his magic, not finding some sort of model family at the end of the rainbow. But now… Gods, he used to be part of something. He’d had a real family once… and a brother. A twin, for fuck’s sake.

All the times he’d felt jagged and unfinished, or turned to say something to someone who wasn’t there… well, it made sense now, because twins were sacred to the Nightkeepers, powerful.

The hollow place inside him ached—for himself, for his mother, for Tristan… and, yeah, even for his old man. Because the guy in that vision sure as shit wasn’t the guy he’d grown up with. But at the same time, he knew the past wasn’t the most important thing right now, not with the war coming. Sluggish excitement stirred at the realization that if he could learn to use the stones to summon her again, he might be able to pump her for information about the dark barrier, maybe even the plans of the Banol Kax. And maybe, possibly, how he was supposed to become the crossover.

Dragging himself upright with a muffled groan, he stuck the stones in separate pockets, righted the box, and used an ancient codex to scoop the other, garden-variety stone chips back into it. He knew darn well that Lucius would have an aneurism if he saw the one-of-a-kind-text-turned-dustpan routine, but his instincts were suddenly telling him he needed to work fast, with his pulse throbbing to a tribal drumbeat of, Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry! He was sweating by the time he’d put the box back where it started, stuck the codex back in its folder, and headed for the front of the library, zigzagging like a drunk.

Beyond the racks, the library opened up to a workspace furnished with stone tables and benches. The walls were carved and windowless, and a single wooden door on the short side led out.

As he lurched for the door, it swung open and Myrinne stepped through. He jolted at the sight of her, and at the slash of heat that cut through him—as always—when she came into the room. With her dark hair cut in a sassy, asymmetrical bob and her foxy face bare of makeup, wearing embroidered jeans and a pale yellow shirt that flirted up to show a gleam of jade at her pierced belly button, she looked young and fresh, and so damn beautiful his knees nearly buckled the rest of the way.

Ah, baby.

Longing stabbed, not because he wanted her right then and there—he probably would’ve passed out right the fuck on top of her if he’d tried anything—but because he wanted things to be back the way they used to be: the two of them against the world. Now they were just… different. Tenser, even if he couldn’t always put his finger on what was making him tense.

Her face brightened at the sight of him, showing none of that strain. “Hey! I was just coming to— Gods!” She hurried toward him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I’m… Shit.” He took a step toward her, sagged, and slapped out an arm for balance.

“Rabbit!” She got her shoulder under his, and managed to prop him back up. Once he was stabilized, she felt his face, then his forehead, her hand cool on his clammy skin. “You’re on fire!”

“Not literally, thank fuck.” He let his cheek rest on the top of her head, let himself breathe in the knowledge that even when things weren’t quite right between them, she cared for him, worried about him, loved him. Which still seemed like a fucking miracle some days. “I’m okay,” he said into her hair. “Just overdid it after pulling so much magic earlier.”

It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized he wasn’t going to tell her about the vision.

And what the hell was that about?

She frowned up at him. “You’re sure it’s just a crash? You didn’t get nailed by one of those animals, did you?”

No, he’d been bitten by something else: reluctance. He knew that if he told her about his mother and Tristan, she would start asking questions that he wasn’t ready to answer yet. More, she would push him on experimenting with the eccentrics using any means possible, including dark magic. She didn’t care that he’d promised Dez he wouldn’t try to reawaken the hell-link—as far as she was concerned, he didn’t owe the Nightkeepers anything.

Shit, he just wanted some breathing room. He wanted her to keep looking at him like she was right now, with the glint in her eyes that said she was seeing only him, Rabbit the guy, not Rabbit the pyro, telekine, mind-bender, warrior, crossover, or what-the-fuck-ever.

He caught her hands when she would’ve started patting him down, checking for injuries. “I’ll be fine; I promise. I just need some food.” And a few hours to process things. Because as his scattered brain cells started checking in for duty, he was realizing that he couldn’t tell the Nightkeepers about his vision, either. His mother was Xibalban, after all. The enemy.

Under any other circumstance, keeping this shit all to himself would’ve felt way wrong. But as Myrinne guided him out of the library and into the passenger seat of one of the compound’s ubiquitous Jeeps, clucking and fussing over him as if she too had needed an excuse to let their recent bickering fall aside, it all felt very right. There was a new warmth inside him, singing soft, half-remembered lullabies and letting him know that whatever happened, he wasn’t alone anymore, not deep down in his heart. His mother’s spirit—and maybe even Tristan’s too—was watching him, watching out for him. And thank the gods for that.