Page 17 of Tino

Silver looked down at the letter and even without having Xarius’ powers, I swear I could feel his sadness.

“Thank you,” he whispered, then tucked the letter into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“Let’s start the meeting, dear,” Willow said, offering both her husband and Silver a genuine smile.

“You’re right,” he said, standing up straight, looking like the leader he said he was. “First things first.” He looked between me and Altair and then nodded as if satisfied with what he saw. “You’ll have to hold off on bonding yourselves until we know for certain we can hide your new magic from the false leaders.”

Chapter 13

Altair

‘You’ll have to hold off on binding yourselves until we know for certain we can hide your new magic from the false leaders.’

What?!

“And when is that? In a day? A week? A month?” I asked, not at all okay with waiting for even a day longer.

“We simply do not know. But once we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll stand watch outside your cabin as you do the ritual and use our magic to shield yours as you gain it,” Willow explained casually.

“Come again?” Silver stuttered.

“We’llprotect their magic from being located,” she explained calmly.

“However romantic that sounds,” Tino began.

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” I added.

“So, you’d rather they locate us and attack us here? Forcing us to lose mages in the meantime and without a safe location?” Nujik asked, raising a brow. Damn, he did have a point.

“It’s not like we’ll listen or watch,” Tane grumbled from his seat amongst the other mages, likely sensing we thought what they’d planned to be creepy.

“That makes it so much better,” Silver said sarcastically.

“What would you prefer we do instead?” Nujik asked, proving to be willing to compromise without us arguing over it.

“Maybe if we put a silencing ward around your cabin, then the mages outside won’t be able to hear anything,” Silver suggested.

“That could work, as long as you’re not fighting against our ward and it’s only being used to silence, then it shouldn’t be a problem at all,” Willow said, looking pleased that we’d come to a solution.

“Perfect, but you still don’t know when?” I asked, needing them to know how I felt about it, just not ready to go all angry and stomp my feet. I really wanted to, though.

“We don’t, but we can make a deal. Give us two weeks, and if we haven’t figured it out by then, you can bond and we’ll do our best to secure everything before then,” Willow offered.

Two weeks? Damn…

“Okay,” Tino said, and I nodded my agreement. I knew it was better to wait until we knew everyone would be safe, butfuck. I hated waiting. Before we came up here, we’d planned on doing it after lunch.

“What would you have done if they’d done it yesterday?” Xari asked.Thathad my attention.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” Nujik shrugged. “We hoped the last few days had taken its toll and you needed rest. If you did bond, we’d do our best to protect the area and then search for another location we could all stay at.”

“So, good thing you didn’t!” Willow grinned.

I grimaced; it seemed it would have caused them a lot of trouble if we had done it. It didn’t sit right with me somehow.

“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” Xari said with a warning note to his voice.

Willow sighed. “We had Grethe add to your exhaustion as she healed you, something she uses when she needs the patient to stay still or fall asleep as she works. We figured that would go over better than us telling you not to do something. If you did anything that caused your heart rate to spike too high, you’d feel more tired.”