Page 94 of Found in Obscurity

This…

This was solidifying it. This was the core of him. This was who he was meant to be.

He heard footsteps behind him again, but he couldn’t focus on them. Voices he recognized as Glenn’s and Stella’s. They were whispering, sounding awed, but Lorin wasn’t there fully. He wasn’t in the room completely.

He walked between shelves, touching the spines of books. They tingled under his fingertips. The marks on his nails and fingers darkened right before his eyes. They spread.

They covered the exposed skin and reached toward the back of his hand. There was a hum in the air. A breeze in his hair he was sure wasn’t really present in the room with them. There was a taste of ozone and electricity on his tongue, and all of his senses ran wild with the notion that he had finally found his place.

A hand wrapped around his own.

He looked to the side and found Kit standing next to him. In the middle of the pathfinder’s room. Lorin’s room.

A circle complete.

Kit smiled at him, proud and sincere, and Lorin felt the need to just make the world perfect for him. There was a drive inside him to use his newfound resources to give Kit his shift back. He pushed all of his magic into the feeling, pushed all the power he had access to into the need to find the right answer.

He didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but it felt right. It felt like something inside him knew. Sparks flew where his skin was brushing against Kit’s. The magical exchange between them burned bright and Lorin leaned into it.

It was all for Kit.

He had to do it for Kit.

He closed his eyes at the sensation, feeling it burn through his veins until it moved him forward as if he were a puppet. Kit trailed after him because Lorin refused to let go of his hand.He felt like it would break whatever trance he’d managed to put himself in if Kit wasn’t touching him.

He walked between rows, between shelves, deeper into the room, feeling like it had no ending. Like it would keep stretching and growing until he found what he was looking for.

And then the same driving force froze him in place. Glued him to the floor. Made him turn his head toward the shelf where the dark purple spine of a book glowed in front of his eyes, calling to him, leading him on, urging him to take it.

He reached out and plucked it off the shelf, gasping when he saw the cover image. It was so familiar. He had seen that exact same image before in flashes, as hazy memories while he floated in ice-cold water.

Plucked from Kit’s past.

A circle of witches staring at a half person, half animal in the middle of it. Their faces ugly and angry. Their hands threatening as they reached for the shifter.

He clutched the book tight in his hands, and just like that, the sensation that had been pulling him toward it was gone.

It was just him and the answers he was looking for held between his fingers.

He’d found it. The pathfinder inside him knew. And for once, Lorin chose to trust himself.

Kit

Kit recoiled from the picture on the book’s cover, hissing as a flood of memories surfaced in his mind.

Pain.

Humiliation.

Anger.

Lorin’s eyes, backlit by the overwhelming magic racing through his body right now, moved to him. The dark brown he’d come to know was now a burnt honey color, and even though he trusted Lorin implicitly, that book’s presence made him wary. He couldn’t help the pure animal instinct to run from the room. Get out. Find a cave and curl up like he’d done on the night he’d escaped, exhausted and dirty.

He took a step back, whimpering.

Lorin dropped the book to the ground and closed the distance between them, taking him in his arms and holding the back of his head. Kit did his best to breathe, his eyes on the book on the floor over Lorin’s shoulder even as he buried his nose and mouth in Lorin’s sweater. His scent was the same.

“It’s okay,” Lorin murmured, hushing and soothing him. “You’re safe.”