Page 43

Chapter 43

Rev

“ Just a little higher. Like this.” I took Karus’s hand, raising it far above her head, stealing a quick kiss on her nose to make her laugh.

She did. It was beautiful.

She chewed on some fermented cabbage she had found in a jar tucked in the cellar of the Fortress . Her cravings the last few weeks had been…surprising.

“ This high?” she asked, pulling her right hand up in a cupped shape.

“ Right there,” I confirmed. “ Now this one down in a quick movement, like this.”

I showed her the movement again, a portal of my making sparkling under a birch tree in Viridis . She pressed her hand to its surface, staying put.

“ Just checking,” she chuckled.

I stepped through instead, catching her around the waist when I appeared behind her instantly.

She laughed in a cough, turning in my arms. “ Revich !” She pushed herself out of my grasp halfheartedly, and returned to her jar, scooping another spoonful of the wet cabbage.

We were only a few weeks away from when Clairannia predicted Saelyn would arrive into the world. Karus had blossomed into this gorgeous creature. She’d always been so beautiful, but motherhood gave her a rosy glow in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes I had never seen before. Her body had adjusted well to growing another human, and I admitted to myself that I had very much enjoyed her new curves.

“ So , I just think of a place?” she asked, covering her mouth in her chewing.

“ A specific place. The better you know where you want to be, the more accurate you are. If it’s just a quick thought, you might end up smacking into something.”

“ But I can go to a place I’ve never been?”

“ Yes , but again, the more you know about it the better. For example,”— I spread my hands again, another portal forming—“this will take me to Radyx , right to Madame Zoreyah’s courtyard. I’ve been before, so I know the layout of the gold columns and the pattern of mountains and streams on the tiled floor. I know exactly where to land. But this,”— I created another one, glowing next to the first—“will take me to a peak in the Attatok Mountains . I’ve never been to the top of a mountain, but I can guess at what it’s like. I might land on a Horned Vintras , for all I know.” I made a step for the second portal, and she shot out a hand, pulling me back by my vest.

Laughing with me, she said, “ You wouldn’t leave me for a mountain top, would you?”

“ Mmm ,” I hummed, winking. “ Convince me to stay.”

She wrapped her arms around my waist. “ All I have to offer is a cabbage kiss.”

I tilted my head back and laughed, closing both portals behind me as I reached down to pull her face to mine, taking my reward for staying.

She broke our kiss, going back to her coveted jar of the fermented vegetable. “ I’d like to try to send you somewhere. Then you come back here and tell me if I got it right.”

“ I’m happy to be your test subject anytime, Baron Karus .”

She finished chewing and straightened her back, pulling her hands apart in the motion I’d shown her a dozen times. The portal, emerald and buzzing, flickered to life under the tree.

“ Perfect ,” I said.

“ Let’s hope it goes where I think it goes,” she murmured.

I smirked and stepped inside.

I arrived immediately into tall grass around a copse of nitor trees. The sun’s heat grazed across my skin, and I took in the fresh forest air.

“ Ah , Karus ,” I murmured aloud, shoving my hands in my pocket and taking a moment to remember.

It had been around eight years ago now since I had brought her here for the single purpose of kissing her and secondary purpose of kissing her twice.

She had allowed a few dozen more as we lay under the night sky. The nitor moths’ journey to the nitor trees occurred only on nights of the full moon, and on that night, I had been a young man forsaking any kind of life without her in it.

I took one last look at the grove of trees and left that place to memories. I stepped back into Viridis through my own portal, landing right in front of where she’d been.

I pressed my forehead to hers, finding her hands in mine, pulling them to my shoulders. “ Can I …” I whispered.

A blush flushed to her cheeks. “ Kiss me?” She leaned forward, pressing all of herself into me. “ Why , Baron Revich , I was hoping you would ask.”

* * *

Leaning against the wall of the circular room under the foyer, I stared at the pedestal which had once held the Blightress’s heart. Adaynth had kept it suspended over the stone, caging it in the warmth he claimed was his love still burning for who she had been. I had maybe twenty minutes before I needed to get back to Karus , who would be waiting with the painter from the Spire . She had commissioned our portrait as Barons , again insisting we needed one along the winding staircase to the tallest tower, adding to the long line of Barons of Felgren .

“ I don’t like it here.” The first Baron appeared as a faded image on the opposite wall, leaning against it in his usual folded arms and cold grace.

I took my hands from my pockets and rubbed my face, scratching at my beard which I had kept for several weeks because Karus seemed to like it.

I had seen Adaynth in this form every day for weeks now. He’d appear for a few minutes at a time, saying something somber and cryptic before leaving like a whisper of magic in the wind.

I cleared my throat. “ I came because I was curious how you did it.”

His eyes flashed to mine. “ How I kept my companion’s still-beating heart alive or how I subdued her power with it?”

“ Both .”

He crossed one leg over the other. “ Her heart will always beat as long as it’s preserved. I truly do not know what would happen to her if it was somehow destroyed.”

“ And her power?”

“ That’s an interesting question, Revich .” He glared down at where her heart had been hidden for centuries. “ I didn’t know at the time that keeping her heart warm would suppress her power. I only meant to love the woman I remembered in the only way I knew how.”

I shifted, careful in my next words. “ But the Simulair Solum spell…that’s what you used?”

He nodded. “ I used some of the power of Baron to set the spell inside her heart. It didn’t burn it. It never hurt her. I —” He stopped, a rare occurrence of pain crossed his eyes. “ I just wanted her to be warm. I could not hold her and give her warmth of my own, so I held her the only way I knew how. That had the secondary effect of stifling her rage, and therefore, the power she possessed. I don’t know why.”

“ Lia’s hair was black,” I stated. “ Was Visalia’s hair black when you knew her?”

His lips upturned slightly. “ Finding more correlations to Karus , are we?”

I shook my head, pulling myself from the wall and walking to him. “ No , I asked you if your lover’s hair was black before you left her and suspended her heart in a simulated sun, Adaynth .”

He slid his jaw to the side before giving me a silent nod.

“ Show me how you did it.” I jerked my head to the pedestal. “ Show me how you kept her warm.”