Constantine’s expression remained bland, thoughts dark. “In exchange, it will move us to our destination—albeit slowly—without alerting any of our five billion enemies. You can give it half your sandwich, if that makes you feel better.”
I tore a section and carefully set it to the side. “You are sure the compound will wear off?”
“I'd never hurt an innocent soul while you are holding my leash.”
“That's not funny.”
“He's not joking,” Axer said, not turning from the spot where he was nudging the tortoise to keep to its path. They were both oddly tense.
I cautiously poked around. All connection points were still opt-in and strong. “There's no leash anywhere,” I said carefully. “And if there is something—”
“Metaphorical only,” Constantine said nonchalantly.
I frowned at him.
Axer took a drink, gaze quickly traversing the landscape. From another saddlebag, he had dug out some of the special goggles the Ophidians used, and was watching the perimeter with enhanced vision, occasionally dropping chunks of some orange plant into the turtle's mouth in the type of peace offering I was used to him making with outrageous wildlife.
He scratched the underside of his arm. Magic sparked under his skin, even in the internal loop he had set up.
The magic was unattached to either Constantine or to me, but it occasionally reached toward both of us before he could pull it back.
I looked over at Constantine and could see the same thing—but somehow even worse—with magic from far away seeking him out in bursts.
I watched the jagged sky. They were dangerously close to overloading. More so than even I, which was beyond strange. Comparatively, I’d been in a far worse condition when we’d started.
Each of us had already expelled involuntary bits of magic—like the involuntary act of breathing. “Random” patrols had started to inch closer to our location in response to the spikes.
“Are all of us going to blow up when the magic becomes too much?”
Constantine, finished with his food in the way that all boys over the age of thirteen made it disappear, was sketching out something in his long pencil strokes that could later be converted to magic. “Probably. We are too accustomed to intermingled magic. We too often get the sustained pleasure of using each other as outlets in a situation where no other outlet is available.”
We'd had a few of those situations in the last few months, but they'd all been short. Who knew how long we'd be on the run?
Guilt, shame.
In a magic rich environment, they could jettison the magic and use it, recycling their own system with the room wards—but here…
I looked between them.
The tension that had been simmering between them since we'd all started working together had been far lower in the past weeks than when I'd first discovered they were roommates.
But it had never gone.
It was almost a different sort of tension now. Like two broken ends of a string that were alternately trying to reknit or shred the other.
With as drained as I was, I strangely didn’t seem to be in the same imminent danger that they were.
I swallowed and chewed the last bite. “How long are we riding this death trap?”
“For as long as we can manage.”
“This is a good exercise,” Axer said, without looking back. “I work with either no magic or with unlimited resources. Having to keep it so close and share it between such thin parameters is a good exercise in control.”
“Control is your drug,” I allowed.
“Don't worry yet,” Axer said. “We’re fine.”
But by the second day of travel it was obvious that they weren't.
We had avoided two caravans and five strike teams by the edges of our fingernails. And the best warrior of the age had needed to do everything he could to hide every part of himself that wanted to fight. He was brimming with enough magic to shadow a sun.
Constantine's magic, on the other hand, looked dark and sick.
Even Axer became tight-lipped when he looked at his roommate’s magic. “If you continue this way, you'll put yourself into a coma.”
I watched Constantine with a frown while stretching my limbs skyward trying to move around the aches where magic was forming overfilled blocks. Pressure needed release. It was the thing hindering us the most—the three of us were veritable signposts of magic, especially together. We were on borrowed time in more ways than one.
“We can try the field,” I said.
“No,” Constantine said bluntly.
“You could do your roommate thing. You should do your roommate thing.” I frowned.
Roommates—especially ones who got matched due to a level of overwhelming magical sympathy that dwarfed personal hatred—had connections that others did not. They shared magic across layers during the combat competition without breaking a sweat.
“It has been offered,” Axer said in a clipped voice.
“No,” Constantine said blandly.
“Martyrdom suits you ill,” Axer said to him.
“I’ve been balancing Ren for weeks,” Constantine said, and the snap of his emotions couldn’t be contained. “Two days...” He waved a hand.
“Weeks that involved ample outlets and frequent returns to campus. Calling continually on the others without those outlets still gives you their powers, but at the expense of your own,” Axer said. “I can feel the strain.”
I frowned, looking down at my magic, then at Constantine’s. Appalled, I scooted away from him.
“I’m wounded, darling, I have a very nice spell set to prevent cooties.”
“That’s not funny,” I said harshly. “Have you…?”
It was strange, in retrospect, as to why he had kept returning to campus when he always seemed so incredibly irritated to leave—like I was going to disappear while he was gone, but he had to make the trip anyway.
Because he’d had to. “No. I refuse to let—”
“My choice, not yours,” he said lazily. “Is it not?”
“Your magic looks terrible,” I whispered.
“Never.”
“Let Axer fix it.”
“No.”
“I will cut you off, if you don’t.” I touched the threads. “My choice, is it not? You can heal on your own, and so can I.”
Constantine didn't answer for a long moment and I felt the spiking of different emotions before they settled into the more even ones that he had mastered in the past few months. “Fine.”
He grabbed the device we had perfected, and draped the field over them. The conduit opened—a thin beautiful, complex weaving of magic between them.
I stared. Constantine’s magic blossomed, the sickly gray cast disappearing like a shadow hit by a burst of sunlight. Even under the careful magic exchange allowed by the shield, it was glorious. What would it look like, freely flowing between them in waves?
I had seen highly sympathetic mages do magic together thousands of times at Excelsine. Mike and Will's lovely, steady hum, and Patrick and Asafa's compatible bursts of frenetic energy and soothing slides entwining into a thick net. Sari and Bess with their enchanting single hum of overt goodness. Neph's magic with nearly anyone.
It made me wonder what my own magic looked like when intertwined.