Wandfasted. Laurie Forest

he says, in gentle but firm censure. He slides his hand down to grasp mine, to pull it away from his leg.

      The minute the skin of his hand touches mine, my affinity lines shudder. Vale’s breath hitches, and I melt into him, like seeking like, my affinity in perfect proportion to his. So perfectly aligned. I give out a long, chattering sigh as my hand warms. The magical void in me is like a bottomless chasm, ready for him to pour himself into me.

      “Ancient One, your fire...” He’s like a dream. The void in me is so great, it’s overwhelming. I breathe in, grasp at his hand and pull.

      A strong, long tendril of Vale’s fire floods into me, through my hand, up my arm, into my chest. I groan and throw my head back, meeting his hard shoulder. My cheek slides against his hot neck.

      More skin.

      “No, Tessla,” Vale cautions, but I barely hear him.

      I press my forehead to his neck and pull, this time harder, inhaling deeply as I drag a strong edge of his fire, his complete affinity, toward me.

      Vale flinches away, jerking his hand from mine and wrenching me away from the skin of his neck. Breaking all contact.

      “Stop,” he snaps sharply. “It’s too much.” His tone is coarse with shock.

      I’m breathing heavily now, and so is he. My teeth are no longer chattering, but the world is spinning. The stolen fire kindles inside me in uneven fits and starts, exposing new pain where it flares, but melting the ice.

      “We match,” I slur, in a heated fog. “I fall right into you.”

      “You can’t make a...” His words are seethingly tight. He breaks off, as if deeply angered and reining it in. “You cannot ransack my power. You’ll throw yourself even further out of balance and drag me there with you.”

      “I’m sorry,” I say weakly, catching my breath. Too Magedrunk and disoriented to be fully ashamed of my brazen grasping of his magic. It’s an intimate thing I’ve done, like stealing a deep-seated, secret emotion. The very essence of a Mage.

      He’s stiff and uneasy now. I can feel how tense he is, recoiling from me.

      A small part of my brain, some part of me far away on a distant shore, feels chastened and small. Fearful that I’ve angered him so intensely, that he finds me to be a grasping, repulsive parasite of a thing.

      But there’s a kinship in this affinity match—something I’ve never felt before. It makes me want to cling to this stranger Mage, because he doesn’t feel like a stranger at all. I feel, instinctively, like I understand him better than anyone on Erthia ever could. And his sharp rejection hurts with a spearing pain that rivals the agony of Fain’s purging.

      The regular rhythm of the horse lulls me into dulled, shamed oblivion. Vale is balancing me carefully at the far end of his shoulder, his fire closed off now, tightly banked to keep me out.

      A chaotic tendril of green forest winds out toward us from the mountains where an expansive forest once stood, the rest of the central mountains charred to soot. The remaining forest winds out to a point, the tip of it almost reaching the road.

      I look into the trees, and that’s when I see it.

      A Dryad.

      The Forest Fae is camouflaged by the leaves, blending in perfectly with the last stand of brush and trees. Its skin is a pale, glimmering emerald, accenting its piercing forest-green eyes. Its black hair is tied back, revealing pointed ears, and it’s clad in armor made of leaves.

      They’re supposed to be extinct, wiped out years ago by the Kelts. But the figure before me is starkly real, looking just like a picture I once saw in one of Jules’s books. Except this Dryad is staring out at the charred landscape and weeping.

      Then it meets my gaze and narrows its eyes. Its hatred rocks through me, like venom coursing through my veins.

      I lift a weak, trembling finger toward the tendril of forest as we ride close.

      “A Dryad,” I weakly rasp out as the creature’s anger pounds against me. Then I blink, and the face is gone.

      But the echo of the Dryad’s fury remains.

       Chapter 11: Untethered

      I am unconscious and untethered, grasping in the black. Flailing, my center gone, the drawn-out lines of my affinity shattered.

      Stripped bare.

      I’m spiraling down into a bottomless void. Crying out into the nothing.

      Vale’s fire firmly grasps hold of me, and I hang on for dear life. His flames are tentative at first, then flare as he finds me, his heat burning hot and steady.

      I hang on, as if dangling off a cliff. Desperation courses through me.

      I hang on for Wren. For my grandfather. For Jules.

      I can’t die.

      Vale holds tight, his fire looped like a burning crown around my wrist.