“Neither can I,” I mutter. But for some reason I’m suddenly glad Breck can’t see my warming cheeks.
She points in the general direction of Eogan’s cottage. “Go behind there into the forest. Just make sure an’ kick my brother’s hindside for me, will ya?” Then she’s gone and shuts the door behind her.
I tramp across the damp yard, coughing on the haze and gaping at the eerily burning mountainside, until I round the cottage and stumble into a clearing. It’s surrounded by a giant, frothy-branched pine-tree forest, and the air is filled with their homey scent. Eogan’s lithe, broad-shouldered frame is standing in the middle of the arena, wearing green leathers and scowling at the bald man I saw out the window yesterday. Except the man’s not really a man. He’s my age, maybe a year older, with the same freckled skin and brown eyes of his sister, Breck. He’s got his shirt off, showing muscles hardened through what must’ve been months of training.
“Oh c’mon, you’re hardly even trying,” Eogan says in his low voice.
“What are you talking about? I’m better than you!” the boy yells. “You can’t even—” His argument drops when he sees me. His gaze starts at my legs and moves all the way up to my hair, settling on the odd way Breck tied it up this morning. It looks ridiculous, but she was in a mood and insisted. I meant to take it down once I came outside but forgot. Drat.
The boy grins, and I’m pretty sure he flexes his stomach muscles for me as he strolls over. He sticks his hand up in a flat-palmed salute. “Hello, pretty lady. It appears you’re a pet of my sister’s.”
He reminds me of the rascals in the marketplace who flirt with the servant girls, pretending each one is the love of his life. Until the next girl comes along. Usually it annoys me. But this one . . . something about his eyes is so sincere that I find myself approving. I like him.
“Nym.” I give a half smile.
Eogan steps behind him and cuffs him on the back of the neck. “Quit flirting, mate, and show me.”
I open my mouth, but Colin doesn’t seem to mind. ‘Quit flirting and show me,’ he mimics as he skips to the far end of the clearing.
I smirk.
Eogan pays no attention to me, his gaze trained on Colin. “Your stance is still wrong,” I hear him mutter.
Colin has his feet a pace apart, with one knee bent, his weight resting on it. The other is stretched taut to the side. He glances up and gives me a quick wink, then dips his body down and places both hands flat out in front of him, level with the ground, and shuts his eyes.
The earth beneath us begins to rumble.
Is that him?
The ground shakes.
He’s causing this?
Then it’s quaking so hard that the trees around us are swaying and tipping at dangerous angles. There’s a great ripping sound, and a crack in the earth opens in the middle of the clearing. It begins to spread out, growing deeper, wider, until it’s headed straight for Eogan, the earth crumbling away into a six-foot chasm.
Eogan doesn’t move. He just stands there evaluating as the perfectly aimed fissure shoots for him.
I start to back up. Horrified. Fascinated. I glance at Colin. Is this his way of getting even with Eogan?
Seven feet to Eogan. Six feet. I scramble toward the cottage. If Eogan wants to die, that’s his choice. But he doesn’t even bat a black eyelash. If anything, he looks bored. I bite my lip.
Five feet in front of him, the crack slams into something and stops, sending dirt clods and pebbles up in the air, tossing sand all over me, Eogan, and the clearing.
Colin laughs. “That good enough for you, Master Bolcrane?”
Eogan runs a hand through his hair, ruffling out the dirt, which just ends up making his thick, ragged locks unruly and boyish looking. “Better. Now seal it back up.”
I pause from wiping my face off with my sleeve to look back and forth between them. Just like that? It’s some kind of game for them?
Colin stoops down and places his right hand on the earth. I tiptoe a few steps closer as his eyes close again. Then the rumbling starts back up, the groan of rocks and dirt moving, but this time it’s deeper. The trees don’t sway so much, and I’m able to stand without wobbling. The ground in front of Eogan creases together and seals shut, and then backtracks toward Colin, closing in on itself as it goes. Like someone is stitching it with a sewing needle. By the time it’s shut completely all the way to Colin’s hand, I can’t even tell where exactly the crack had been. The needles and grass appear undisturbed. Colin straightens and gives a loud whoop.
“There you go. Now again,” Eogan yells at him. “But this time wider.”
“Wider?” I look to Colin, who immediately stoops to obey. I brace myself.
“So you decided to stay,” Eogan says to me, without turning around.
“So you’ve decided to speak to me now that I’ve stood here for ten minutes.”
“Colin’s a Terrene,” Eogan says. “Not as rare as Elementals, nor as dangerous, but still not one to take your attention from while he’s in action.”