“Don’t be afraid.” Dane reached up to cup Lindsay’s cheek with one hand. “I’d go first, but I have to
see you better before I let the old man waste his magic on me.”
Nodding, Lindsay rubbed his cheek against Dane’s palm. The contact was soothing, as Dane’s
touches so often were.
“Sleep,” Dane said. “We’ll both still be here tomorrow night.”
Lindsay gave in and curled himself against Dane’s chest, closing his eyes. He listened to Dane’s heart
beating like a metronome and let the regularity soothe him into sleep.
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Chapter Eleven
It felt as though they’d hardly slept at all when a knock at the door woke them both with a start.
“What?” Dane snapped.
“Ezqel is ready for you,” Izia said as she opened the door and peeked in. “You shouldn’t eat before
you come. He’s expecting you both.” Slowly, she stepped into the room. In her arms, she carried a pair of
black robes. “Wear these and nothing else. He expects you to wash before you come.”
Lindsay looked at the robes, then at Izia. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.” Izia laid the robes over the chair by the fire. “You weren’t dressed when you were
born, were you?” She gave Lindsay a smile.
“All right.” Lindsay wasn’t happy about it, but he’d do whatever Ezqel needed so he could have his
magic back.
“Don’t leave him waiting. He’s been looking forward to this since Cyrus contacted him.” As she let
herself out, Izia gave them both a look that said, louder than words, not to fool around.
Lindsay flinched. “Looking forward to it?” He didn’t like the idea of anyone looking forward to
fucking around with his magic. He’d had enough of that already.
“He doesn’t see things like we do.” Dane nuzzled Lindsay’s temple, but didn’t kiss him. “It’ll be fine.
He’s also looking forward to finally getting me to give in to him. We should just go get it done, so we can get back to living.”
Dane offered to shower first so Lindsay could stay in the warm bed a little longer, but Lindsay didn’t
want to wait. “But I wouldn’t get to watch you shower.”
“I’m just eye-candy to you, aren’t I?” Dane pulled a robe on and held another out for Lindsay. “Come
on, you can appreciate my male beauty a little longer before Ezqel has his way with me.”
Lindsay slid his arms into the robe. “As long as you’re you, I don’t care what you look like.”
“I hope I’m still me, then. I haven’t been that other person in a long time.”
Lindsay didn’t know what that meant, so he kept quiet as they walked to the bathroom to shower.
When they finished cleaning up, Taniel was waiting for them in the sitting room. “Ezqel will see you
outside. This is not a magic to be done indoors. I will take you to him.”
Naked and outdoors. In winter. Lindsay sighed quietly and pulled the robe tighter around himself.
“Does the magic cure frostbite too?”
Tatterdemalion
“It will be warm enough.” Taniel led them out through the back of the house, but this time he took
another path, one that led toward a tall, gray mountain.
It was, shockingly, warm enough, and the path under their feet was dry. Tiny green spikes of new
flowers poked out from under black, rotting leaves. The air smelled like snow with a hint of spring when
the wind blew.
“This is a safer place to break magics,” Taniel explained, growing breathless. “The stone is very
stable, it goes deep, and it draws in power. The water that runs through is clean and carries away excess
power, the fragments of spells.”
“I’m starting to feel like I grew up with blinders on,” Lindsay murmured. “I never would’ve guessed
there was so much magic in the world, or so much…infrastructure for it.”
“The human race drifts on the surface of great depths, in every way,” Dane said, as though he were
quoting something. “You’ll learn.” He offered Lindsay a hand as the path grew steep. He seemed to know
the way as well as Taniel, his feet finding the path without hesitation.
Dane was right, Lindsay thought. When the spring-laden breeze pulled at his damp hair, he
remembered all the times he’d felt the wind before and had never known it could have a voice. He’d never
known that people like Dane and Vivian and Kristan existed. Lindsay had assumed that Taniel was a
human student and now he wondered at Taniel’s magic. What was it?
And how did Izia’s magic work? She’d saved Dane from death, with help, but she looked like some
graduate student playing monk at a party. The kuni that had tested his magic, it had seemed like a normal
stone, but someone had made it and polished it. The box that held the guul heart, had Ezqel made it? And
what about the ring that Dane had worn to kill the guul? It had shimmered with a red light that reminded
Lindsay of the glow in an animal’s eyes.
Lindsay was used to living on the surface. At home, he had lived on the surface of all his mother’s
secrets and wealth and all his father’s power. He’d always known, even though it was never talked about,
that his father had seen combat and had ordered the deaths of soldiers and had even killed men himself.
There were medals to prove it. Lindsay had floated above those depths, but this was different.
Now the depths below him meant safety.
There was awareness in Dane’s expression and Lindsay realized that Dane could see into the depths,
not just into the mundane dark. Dane had come up from those depths for Lindsay. It was time for Lindsay
to leave the surface behind and dive, to swim deep and to learn. He didn’t want to be ignorant anymore.
After a while, the trail leveled out to wind along the side of the mountain where it jutted out of the
earth, a ragged, weathered face rising to Lindsay’s left. Dane moved to walk on the raw outer edge, his bare feet sure over even the sharpest stones. The forest rolled away below them and Lindsay thought he could
see, in the distance, the other rise where they’d been when they’d eaten breakfast before Jonas had come.
Maybe he was just making it up. Who was he to know where they were in Ezqel’s forest?
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Anah Crow and Dianne Fox
The wind pulled at them again and Lindsay clung tighter to Dane’s hand. Dane’s eyes said what
Lindsay needed to know. It’s okay. I won’t let you fall.
“It’s just here,” Taniel said, carefully negotiating a turn around an outcropping. Lindsay could hear
water falling. As they came around the corner after Taniel, Lindsay saw that the path was cut by a silver
ribbon of water that plunged down several storeys before breaking into foam and rainbows on the rocks
below. “This way.” Taniel led them back the way the water came, through a rift in the mountainside so
small that Dane had to duck to get through.
Lindsay followed, quiet again. Nervous again. He had no idea what Ezqel was going to do to him,
except that it involved the demon heart they’d brought back from Mexico, and that they had to be outdoors
because the magic wasn’t safe indoors. If it wasn’t safe inside a building, how could it be safe inside his body? The passage widened until Dane could walk on the edge of the stream and hold Lindsay’s hand,
keeping him steady on the worn, damp stone path.
Lindsay would have been embarrassed except that Dane wasn’t. Dane never made him feel like being
looked after was wrong or weak. Dane made him feel like it was a gift, a gift he deserved. Lindsay wasn’t
used to deserving anything, or he hadn’t been. He was now. It hit him then how much he could lose if this