didn’t work right on Dane.
Dane’s eyes were wide like a cat’s in the dim light, and he squeezed Lindsay’s hand. “It’s okay,” he
murmured. “It’ll be over soon.”
Lindsay didn’t want it to be over. Not this part. What if, once Lindsay had his magic back, Dane
didn’t want him anymore? It wouldn’t happen, he soothed himself. Dane had seemed so happy at the idea
that Lindsay would need him afterward. What if Dane thought, secretly, that Lindsay wouldn’t want him
anymore? Lindsay leaned his head on Dane’s shoulder, watching as Taniel’s shadowed form grew darker
as the light ahead of them grew stronger.
“And then we can go home,” Dane added, kissing Lindsay’s hair. Everything would be okay. Lindsay
closed his eyes for a moment and wished as hard as he could. He’d never wished for anything, really,
because wishes never came true. Let everything be well. This was his new life. Wishes came true here.
Taniel led them into a cavern flooded by water from higher up the mountain that pooled here before
pouring out the way they’d come and plunging down the mountain. Humidity gathered on the ceiling and
dripped from long stalactites. Something growing in patches on the walls and ceiling gave off just enough
light to see by. Lindsay had never seen anything like it before.
“Lichen.” Taniel answered Lindsay’s half-formed, unspoken question. “It feeds on more than just air
and stone and water. It knows much. The earth and the things on it, they remember more than man has ever
known. But we can’t dally.” He took hold of his robes in both hands, lifting them above his ankles, and
hurried toward the shadowed end of the cave.
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It knows much. Lindsay let himself be led along, looking up at the lichen a little longer. But what did it know? He was beginning to understand Taniel’s obsession with knowing everything.
They went through another narrow passage, this time with the water all the way to their ankles,
washing their feet and numbing their toes. They emerged into the light. The vaulted ceiling went up high to a crack in the roof where the sun came in and caught on the crystal edges of the stone, lighting up the whole room.
All around them was the sound of water running. Lindsay realized that most of it came from the
spring that welled out of the rock at the far end of the room, but there were little tributaries falling from the ceiling, seeping from the floor, rippling down the walls. The floor was worn with wandering silver streams, tiny veins leading to the pool that rushed out to feed the side of the mountain and the forest.
Unnatural things were here, as well, if magic things were unnatural. Runes were inscribed all over the
floor and walls. At first, Lindsay thought they were gilded, but there was only stone when he stopped to look at one. The shimmer he was seeing was magic, not gold.
It was real. Magic was real. Like stone, like water, like light, it was real and Lindsay could feel it all
around him. He could feel his own broken magic yearning for it and falling short.
Ezqel’s equipment was in the cave also. Lindsay had seen movies like Frankenstein and thought them
laughable, but here was the real thing: brass and glass instruments, blue flames and coiling tubes and
burbling liquids, shimmering crystals and clockwork gears. A magical laboratory hidden in the side of a
mountain, in the heart of a thinking, knowing forest. And in that laboratory, a faerie scientist was working, just like in a fairytale.
“Are you ready?” Izia stepped away from the table that she had been helping prepare, wiping her
hands on a rag. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, as though she’d been working hard since
she’d sent them to shower. Ezqel had his back to them, bent over a workbench so that Lindsay couldn’t see
what held his attention. “I was about to come find you.”
“More than,” Dane grumbled, before Lindsay could apologize for being slow going up the mountain.
The way Dane sounded, it was Ezqel and Izia who’d been slow.
“I need to take some notes.” Taniel bobbed at them, a funny little cross between a bow and a curtsey,
and scampered off. Lindsay liked him more all the time. He wondered if he would have been like Taniel if
his parents hadn’t wanted him to be something he wasn’t.
“You first.” Izia gave Lindsay a smile, rolling down her sleeves and smoothing out her robe.
“Me…?” Lindsay wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. What had he been expecting?
The doctor’s office? More and more, he felt the huge gap between his knowledge and his new reality.
Awareness was only a small step toward knowing. He had so far to go.
“Unless you want to see your friend go first,” Ezqel said, not turning around. “But I don’t think he’d
like that.”
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Izia held out her hands. “I’ll take your robe. You won’t need it until after.”
Oh. It wasn’t like Lindsay had any shame, not about that. He just felt so exposed already. “I…” He started to speak, but Ezqel turned to look at him and Lindsay really was ashamed. Coward. “Here.” He slid the robe from his shoulders, surrendering it to her.
The tiny purr of approval that Lindsay heard from Dane made him flush and stand straighter at once.
Dane liked the look of him. Even that small thing made Lindsay’s vanity—silent so long he’d thought it
dead—rise up and give him more strength.
“On the table.” Ezqel’s voice filled the room effortlessly. The fae mage stood and came over to the
table. Taniel was a step behind with a tray of instruments, including an inkwell and quill, in his hands. “I’ll deal with you later,” Ezqel said to Dane. There was a dismissive chill in his voice that gave Lindsay pause.
Izia was trying to help him up onto the table, using a small wooden step stool, but Lindsay froze. The
fact that he was broken and naked didn’t matter a damn. He wasn’t doing anything as long as Ezqel was
speaking to Dane that way. “I want him to stay,” Lindsay blurted out. Something in him whispered that,
though Ezqel was doing him a favor, he’d done one for Ezqel too, something no one else could do.
Everyone turned to look at Lindsay and he sat on the cold stone table quickly, hands in his lap, trying
not to shiver, trying to stay brave. “Please,” he added quietly. Please don’t send him away.
The silence was unbearable, finally broken by the shifting of velvet as Ezqel shrugged. “It’s not my
healing,” he said flatly, as though it really were.
Lindsay couldn’t look at Dane, in case Dane was disappointed in him or, worse, embarrassed. Instead,
he turned his attention to the stone table that was freezing his backside. It was dark silver granite inset with metal and stones, white and red and black. The metal had been shaped into runes that he thought he
remembered from somewhere. Maybe from the floor.
“Are you sure?” Izia’s voice was soft. She put a gentle hand on Lindsay’s arm. “Taniel and I will be
here with you. If he stays, he will see you.”
The way Izia said that word, see, made Lindsay realize that she was talking about something other
than seeing him naked. Dane would see something about him that even lovers wouldn’t normally share.
The moment his eyes met Dane’s dark stare, he knew. “I’m sure.”
Dane stepped into his range of vision, keeping himself the focus for Lindsay’s attention. His arms
were crossed over his chest and his expression was calm. “You’re going to be fine,” he said, his voice low.