Page 94 of Blood Fist
His big eyes were bright with sincerity when he did finally look up. “I was just worried. I don’t think I could—I mean, if something happened, I wouldn’t know how to…” he swallowed, his black tea scent curdling with nerves.
Corric reached out and took his hand. He smoothed the crooked fingers between his palms, tracing along the ridges of thickened knuckles. They were good hands, even if they weren’t perfect.
“I understand, Jonen. I do. But if I don’t do this…I won’t be able to live with myself.”
He nodded, curls bouncing. “Then I’ll be here the whole time.” There was a pale pink dusting across his cheeks. It made him look young. Corric wanted to kiss his cheeks.
They stared at each other until the tent flap opened and Halm, Ridan, and Brune ducked in. Exhaustion hung over them like a shadow, but they stepped into the tent with eyes bright and hands on their weapons.
Buzzard pushed himself from where he had been resting. He didn’t look at Jonen or Corric, giving them the illusion of privacy. He plucked at one of his feathers, pulling it loose. Holding it between his hands, he rolled the quill between his fingers.
“Well?”
Halm pushed her sleeves up. “I think I’m ready.”
“Such confidence,” Buzzard said wryly, his tone belying the tightness in his shoulders.
“Hey, I’ve said from the beginning that this is just guess?—”
“Enough.” Ridan stepped between them and glared. “No one knows what the fuck they’re doing. What else is new? We’ll just do what we always do.”
“Our best?” Jonen asked hopefully.
Ridan snorted. “We’re Stone Blade. We do whatever it takes to win.”
Brune smiled at the back of his head with such joy, Corric had to blink from the sheer brightness of it.
Halm instructed Corric to lie beside Schok while Buzzard sat at his head. Jonen took a position beside Corric, while Ridan and Brune stood with arms crossed.
Corric tried to ignore whatever Halm was doing. She seemed to be largely concentrated on herself—legs crossed and eyes closed. Growing up in Kaldonea, Corric and Brune had both seen their fair share of minor magic. Quick tricks and illusions. Some conjuring, perhaps. Brune said he saw one or two magic users as a soldier, but they were kept separate from the infantry and those of lower ranks.
Despite growing up in the center of it all, Corric remembered very little of magic. They tried to use it to heal his father once. He could remember that, but the user was too weak or not knowledgeable enough. Magic had infinite properties, but healing was still beyond most people’s skills. Weaponizing it was easier.
His nose tickled as Halm’s mouth twisted in concentration. It wasn’t quite like the urge to sneeze, more like a fuzzy caterpillar crawling up his nose. He resisted the urge to rub it, clenching his hands in the dirt beneath him. As the feeling ascended his nose, his eyes watered, thick tears trailing down his cheeks to pool into his hair.
Jonen made to reach for him, but Buzzard chirped at him, shaking his head. The longer Halm stayed quiet, the more Buzzard's eyes seemed to glow. Always bright, tonight they shone like they were molten gold, and he was certain it had nothing to do with the torches he’d lit.
Corric’s teeth began to tingle. Like he’d swallowed soap and it was foaming between his molars, sparking as if ignited. It nearly hurt, and he clenched his jaw.
“Grab Schok,” Halm gritted out, eyes still closed. Corric blindly reached into the pit his brother was lying in, fingers trailing until they caught on his wrist. The moment his fingers clamped down on clammy skin, the feeling in his teeth intensified. Crying out, Corric tried to stop the tears from falling, but there were too many. His vision watered. Flame, tent, and person losing definition behind the onslaught of tears.
And then he saw it. Between the thick droplets clinging to his lashes. It was a streak ofsomethingstretching from Buzzard to Halm. Almost indefinable, it was color. But it wasn’t tangible. Like the iridescence on a bird’s feathers—colors changing and swirling with movement.
He tracked it, occasionally losing the glimmer of what must be magic. Slowly it looped through the air, dipping and lifting as if tasting, looking for something or gathering strength. Finally, it stretched across to Schok.
The moment it connected with him, it changed again, blasting upward like a fire with too much to feed it and nowhere to go. The colors shifted wildly and Halm groaned, as if she was having difficulty controlling it before themagicswung out, tendrils loosening to stretch towards Corric. He gasped, breath shaking as hewatched a tendril slide around Schok’s arm and crawl towards his.
Blinking the tears away, he watched it inch closer and closer, sparks spitting out, until it hesitated. Pausing just at the junction where Corric’s fingers were digging into Schok’s wrist, it seemed cautious.
Then it struck like a snake.
Corric jerked away from the strike, only to slam into a wall. Breathing heavily, with tears still drying on his cheeks, he glanced down at his hand. It looked fine. There were no marks. Clutching his hand to his chest, he realized he was sitting up against a stone wall.
Blinking in confusion, he looked around. He was sitting in an eerily familiar hallway. It was dark, the only light spilling into the long hall from open doors. Turning, he ran his fingers over the stones. The masonry was good, but old. Plaster crumbled under his touch; exposing edges of the stones. Corric recognized these walls.
He was back in Kaldonea.
Corric spent many years wandering these halls, fingers dragging along the damp walls as he listlessly looked for something to entertain his young mind. But how? The last time he’d been here he’d been a child, stuffed into a dress and destined for a marriage he was too young to comprehend. He hadn’t thought about these walls since he’d been pulled from a wrecked carriage by a boy with curly hair.