“Open yourself to the magic, girl. Let it in. Tell me what color the tremors are this time.”
I rested my tired head on his toned, soft shoulder. I dropped my walls, and the magic rushed in. I sobbed, gulping in air.
So much magic and I couldn’t use it.
“The colors, child. What are they?”
Opening my eyes, looking toward the Spine, the land was covered in green. A light, minty green that pulsed and waved and traveled toward the mountains.
“Green, light green.”
“Jealousy,” he breathed. “It takes time for it to build. We may yet save S’Kir.”
The laugh bubbled up out of me. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t even care that I was laughing at the oldest and strongest of the temple masters.
Dropping me on a cold bench, he took a step back and stared at me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“We can’t save S’Kir,” I answered. “There’s no way. Elex left again, without sex. I have no power. None. There’s no way to stop the tremors.”
Master Dorian narrowed his eyes. “You did last time without—”
“That’s because there was some left, and I had a mated couple lend me their power.” I wiped away a laughing tear, starting to sober. “I have nothing. Zero.”
A rumbling growl came from Master Dorian as he stared at me—but in that instant, I realized it was not directed at me.
It was directed at Elex. He was unspeakably pissed at him for leaving me here, time and again, and not fulfilling the primary reason he was asked to move in.
Stalking in closer, Master Dorian leaned down and hissed his question fiercely. “You presented him with this marvelous tableau, and he can’t blow off work—not even a quick fuck?”
What?
In that same moment, I also realized my robe was wide open.
Master Dorian was staring at my bare breasts.
With a yelp, I pulled the robe closed. “He left. I can’t stop him. I tried. I even begged. I wouldn’t let go, but had to at the last moment, because he would have dragged me with him. There’s nothing I can do!”
“You’ve endangered all of S’Kir, girl.”
“I didn’t ask for this, and it’s not like I’m not trying!” I pulled the robe open again as if to prove that with my naked breasts I was trying.
What did it matter if he stared at me if we were all going to die anyway?
“Close that.”
“Why?”
Master Dorian grabbed my chin. I expected the touch to be uncaring and rough, but it was…
Tender. Reverent.
“Because if you don’t, I’ll take you myself and fuck the power back into you.”
The air rushed out of my lungs.
“What’s going on?” Rilen ran across the roof from the other entrance. Alone, he skidded to a halt not a few feet from us.
I jerked the robe closed.
He sucked in a breath. “Oh, no, Kimber. He didn’t.”
Master Dorian took a step back. “She has no power.”
Rilen let out the saddest, most sorrowful sigh I had ever heard. “Oh, ilati. I’m so sorry.”
“Where is your twin?” Master Dorian demanded.
“He’ll be here in a moment.”
I finally took notice of the tremors, when a particularly bad one shook the building and threw Roran out of the doorway we had come through.
“What’s going on? Kimber, why aren’t you—” Roran’s eyes darted between the four of us.
What a group we were at that moment.
“Are you serious? After all that, he left. Again?” Roran strode forward and stood next to Master Dorian. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”
“We’re all going to die anyway now.” I sighed.
“No, we’re not,” Rilen said, sitting next to me and taking my hand. “That’s why you ordered us up here, isn’t it, Dorian?”
Rilen motioned his brother to sit next to me on the bench. In a heartbeat, Roran took my other hand.
Each of them kissed my knuckles and reached their other hand for Dorian.
“This will only work with mates,” they chorused.
Dorian stepped forward. “Why do you think I called you up here?” He took their hands and completed the circle.
Power surged through me. The simple colors of magic that painted everything leapt to life, glowing and dancing again like I remembered them in the cave.
The green pulsed and flowed toward the Spine, the colors growing darker from the original soft mint. I couldn’t see the flow beyond because Master Dorian stood directly in front of me.
With his very prominent erection.
I swallowed and tried looking around him.
“Move, Dorian,” Roran snapped.
“Where?” His words bit back.
“Let go for a moment and walked behind us,” Rilen said. “You know she hasn’t had a chance to really be trained. She still uses her vision to help her.”
“Also, that’ll get your giant dick out of her line of sight and let her concentrate,” Roran barked.
With a disgusted grunt, he let go and walked around the bench. When he did let go, the magic sank back to just mere existence.
Bland and disconnected.
The twins shifted my hand to the ones they had been holding Master Dorian’s with and put the others behind my back. A moment later, Master Dorian’s hands slipped back into theirs.
The magic was back.
The flow of the magic toward the Spine was starting to speed up even as I watched it.
Grabbing a thread of the flowing green, I let my sense of it follow along, tugging gently. But the further I followed, the thicker and stronger the magic felt.
It was a consuming sense of unfairness and injustice. There was more due to me than just what I had. After all, I had—
I jerked myself out of it, snapping my eyes open.
Carefully grabbing a few of the strings near me, I pulled them close and popped them open like popcorn. It made them stick, unable to move or flow away.
Perfect.
I moved quickly through the local flow, popping them open, moving faster, and I got the hang of it.
Stop, please. This isn’t the time yet. The time is coming, but not yet. Please.
Everything I hadn’t grabbed yet slowed, listened.
Please. You are not complete. There is more you are due. Wait for it…
The trembling slowed as I pulled on the strings again. I didn’t want to pop anymore because I had to reverse them.
One more tug and everything settled.
“Don’t let go yet.” Master Dorian whispered in my hair.
“Not yet,” the twins chorused. “Take the power, fix the strings.”
I was shaking, my arms and legs felt like jelly. I used the power flowing through the three of them and spun the strings like wool, back into shape. It took me twice as long to recreate them.
Wouldn’t do that again.
“Beautiful, Kimber.” Master Dorian’s words were next to my ear. “I want to see you really use your magic.”
“Please, let me…”
“No,” Rilen said. “We trust you—”
“—but we do not trust him.”
Master Dorian was in my other ear. “You need power. You will have power.”
I knew the instant he slipped his hands out of the twins’ hands.
I passed out.
*
I feared for Elex.
He didn’t come home that night or the next.
Scenarios played through my head of where he was, what was going to happen.
Master Dorian’s scowl followed me through the days. When I saw him, his frowned deepened.
Worse, though, were Rilen’s and Roran’s faces. They were angry. They weren’t interacting with me, either. Once they saw me, they would turn and walk away, whether they were alone or together.
“They’re angry and rightfully so.” Lunella placed the dish of food in front of me.
I studied the plate. Meats, cheese, veggies, and crackers. I sighed. “No one has any right to be as angry as I am, and I am not angry. I’m frightened.”
“Frightened?” Lunella was taken back.
“Yes. Elex is not only a man I could mate with if I chose to, he’s not only the man I sleep with, but he’s one of my oldest and dearest friends. I’m positively petrified that one of those three is going to do something hot-headed, and I shudder to think if the three of them got together.”
Lunella placed her fork next to the plate and folded her hands.
This was going to be bad.
“You should not fear for him. You should be as angry as the rest of us are.”