His mouth flattened. “Grab some water and let me judge if you’re capable of two things at once.”
“And here I thought it was just a friendly game.” He’d seen me do far more complex divisions of magic than handling two elements at once. I’d hoped having a little food in his stomach would offset his sour mood, but it’d been too much to ask of a single meal, even one as spectacular as the potpies.
I wound together a bundle of water element strands and prepared to throw it to Marcus.
“No. With water.”
“What water?” I asked, looking around. Oliver had smashed the teapot.
“Gather it up.”
I examined the spray of moisture staining the floor, then Marcus. He raised a challenging eyebrow. Gritting my teeth, I got to work. Pulling the droplets together took more of my concentration than I would have liked. I fumbled the air ball, dropped it once, and had to shave it in half to keep it under control before I finally wrapped strands of water element around a collected handful of water, encased it in a bubble of air, and floated the wobbling blob off the floor.
“Bring it on,” Marcus said, not commenting on my sloppy work.
I lobbed the water inside my thin barrier, hoping it’d break apart and drench him. Instead, Marcus caught it, combined it with a separate perfect sphere of water I hadn’t noticed him collect, and tossed it back to me as I released the air ball toward him. I caught the water, wrapping it in thicker elemental bands to stabilize it.
In between throws, I sent tiny probes of magic into the dormant gargoyles, checking their health levels. They hadn’t gained much strength, but they were no longer weakening. Celeste had relaxed, too, and the worry had eased from her expression. She’d curled up on the open threshold, but her head remained high and she watched Rourke like, well, an eagle.
“Why do you feel more comfortable with water than air?” Marcus asked, breaking the silence and startling me into almost dropping the air ball.
I’d half resolved not to speak to him again, but his tone had lost its bickering edge, so I responded. “My parents are both water elementals.”
“Really?”
“Pretty strong, too. They spent a lot of time working with me to help me perfect my limited ability.”
“Where’d you get your knack for earth?”
“I don’t know. No one in the family had an affinity for quartz like I do.”
“Add in some earth. No. Make it quartz. I should get some practice.”
As easily as thinking, I’d collected earth element and tuned it to quartz. For reasons I’d never been able to explain, I was stronger with quartz than I was with untuned earth. I used to assume it was because I’d practiced with the element so much, but lately I’d been considering I might have been born with a specialized strength. Quartz had always been easier for me and more accessible. It was only as an adult that I’d thought to use it to make a living. Then I’d met Oliver and his siblings, and my life had been completely changed.
For the fun of it, I wrapped the quartz-tuned earth around three seed crystals, then tossed them to Marcus. He caught it and fumbled, the crystals clattering against each other like castanets, but recovered quickly. I took petty delight in his lack of perfection.
“Wood, too,” he said.
I dutifully wove pure wood into a knot and bounced it to him. Marcus added a cotton rag from his bag to give the element weight. If not for the gargoyles’ extra magic, I would have had a hard time holding all the separate elements together with air, but with their help, keeping four elemental balls alight wasn’t even tough.
“Now fire,” Marcus said.
I made a glowball. Marcus returned it with a two-inch flame fluttering at the heart of the light. I caught it delicately, looping it back to the fire elemental from a safe distance. Schools forbade playing with real flames. Losing control of a bucket of water was messy but easy enough to clean; losing control of naked fire could cause permanent harm. That didn’t mean I hadn’t tried—and walked away with singed eyebrows.
“It won’t bite,” he said.
“I’m rather partial to my hair,” I muttered.
Marcus chuckled. The warm light of the lanterns and the bouncing flame softened the hard planes of his face, and his mirth held a hint of The Smile. I pulled my gaze away before he caught me staring and focused on the arcs of elements between us.
For a while we let the muted clack-clack of the metal wheels across the seams of the rail fill the silence. Outside, the sky had darkened, and the scenery through the gap of the missing door had become lost in the shadows. Reaper’s Ridge and all the dangers it presented were still a day away, and for the moment, no urgency pushed against my thoughts. In this warm environment so far removed from the real world, it seemed perfectly natural to strike up a conversation with Marcus. We skirted around discussing tomorrow and the dangers awaiting us, sticking to innocuous topics like our pasts—my rather ordinary upbringing in Terra Haven, his adventurous military experiences and exciting missions with the FPD—our favorite places to eat in the city, and the best temple for the summer solstice.
While we talked, we tossed the elements back and forth until our moves were so synchronous I didn’t have to think about them, which was probably Marcus’s intent. The whole game was likely a strategic plan designed to familiarize me with working with him and vice versa. I didn’t care. I enjoyed the moment of comfortable normalcy—something I’d lacked during the frantic months I’d searched for a cure. I also monitored the dormant gargoyles. When their life signs had been stable for over an hour and Celeste had fully relaxed, I reluctantly ended our game.