Page 27 of Xarius (Shunned Mages #1)

Niam

We decided to buy the camper first thing in the morning, opting for a night at a motel with our familiars surrounding us.

We slept peacefully and since Snowflake and Leon had fully healed, they weren’t in danger of messing up the carpet, which was a creamy beige this time.

Snowflake was asleep on the foot of the bed, happy to snuggle up with our toes as we slept.

Sleep found us quickly, the fight and me being injured exhausting us both.

My wound was now just a small ache in my head, which I easily removed with my magic .

We woke up to hissing and as soon as my brain was back to functioning, I sprang up and noticed the door handle was rattling.

Xari was out of bed, and, quickly moving over there, he held up three fingers, telling me there were three mages trying to get in.

“Snowflake and Leon,” I whispered, “guard the door.”

I joined Xari behind where the door would open and got ready to unleash a world of pain on them.

Xari had made several locks with his magic, all in different metals to ensure our safety as we slept, but now the mages were melting them and trying to break in as silently as possible.

When they were able to turn the handle successfully, they almost fell inside, not expecting the door to give way already.

I suspected Xari was tired of waiting and had removed the locks.

He could do it faster since he’d made them.

I quickly made them writhe in pain, while Xari took their oxygen. We’d already made the mistake of thinking we were untouchable. It wasn’t happening again. This time we took them out before they could do anything.

They fell dead on the floor. All suffocated and lifeless.

“How are we supposed to dispose of them?” I asked, feeling panicked over getting caught killing people.

I hadn’t even once felt bad about killing someone, and I believed with my power not only came a better tolerance of blood, but also of killing.

Xari closed the door, grimacing at me. “I have an idea. It’ll be messy, but effective.”

An hour later we were on the road again, my stomach churning with what we’d had to do.

It involved stripping them and placing their clothes in the trash.

There was zero blood and since they weren’t from here, they wouldn’t be considered missing, and their clothes then held no value or risk to us.

We’d melted their phones and thrown them in the trash, too.

The next part was what had my stomach in turmoil.

Removing all towels and any kind of fabric from the bathroom, we’d placed them all inside and then Snowflake was sent in there to… yeah.

Something we would need to examine further was the fucking glow that emitted from Snowflake once he was done… doing his thing. We simply hadn’t had the time to focus on it, needing to flee the scene and get a move on.

We had dismissed them both and were now parked at the car dealership to look at the camper we’d seen online.

Long story short, we were now the proud owners of a small teardrop trailer that was now secured behind our van.

It was large enough to house two men for sleeping.

We deemed it good enough for now. The camper we’d had our eyes on, had been sold yesterday and the smaller one they had hadn’t been available for over a week; they’d just forgotten to take it off their site.

Since we were in a hurry, we’d decided the teardrop trailer was better than nothing, plus it was cheap enough that we could pay for it in cash without taking on any debt.

We’d just bought a mattress and some pillows and a duvet, so when Silver joined us, he would have his own place to sleep.

If we planned on having him stay in the back of the van whenever we drove around, maybe we could offer to have Snowflake there to help protect him so he wasn’t alone.

There was a window separating us from the back to the front, but it still felt better not leaving Silver entirely alone in the back .

“Can you take out the locket?” Xari said, jumping back behind the wheel. The mattress was now fully in place and we’d made it cozy enough.

I took it out. “Much brighter,” I said, showing him just how much it shone now.

“I think we’re less than an hour away,” he grinned, the relief evident in his tone.

We drove into a town much bigger than the others we’d visited so far. The locket dimmed noticeably whenever we steered off course, making it easy to track him down to the strip club that we were now parked behind.

We got out and called our familiars. Thank God, the glow wasn’t noticeable when Snowflake was invisible. “So, a strip club,” I said, looking around, trying to gauge just how seedy of a place it was.

Xari shrugged. “It’s one way of staying alive, hell even I’d thought about it at first. No former job experience and no one to vouch for you? Yeah, stripping was likely his only choice.”

“He could be a bartender, or a bouncer,” I offered, thinking about just how different my life would’ve turned if I’d never met Betty and Jerry .

We walked inside hand in hand, and I instantly knew this was the sort of seedy I didn’t like.

I tried peeking at the locket, which rested against my chest, the chain comfortable around my neck.

I led us while Xari helped steer me out of the way so I could focus on how the locket behaved.

I stopped outside a door labeled “Employees only.” I ignored it and walked inside with Xari right behind me.

The door took a little too long shutting behind us, Snowflake and Leon battling it as they followed us.

We entered a hallway with several doors on either side. The music from the club was still loud, the bass more noticeable than the actual music. I watched the locket as it guided us to a door on the right. I knocked and when a cheery “come in!” sounded, we entered.

And there sat Silver. He was beautiful, with wavy hair that went to his shoulders, and was, of course, silver. Not that I believed that was his true hair color, not with his young age. Though it did look natural. His green eyes watched us warily as we entered. “Um, can I help you?”

Xari quickly shut and locked the door, making Silver look tense. I didn’t want to scare him, so I quickly blurted, “we’re shunned mages, too! ”

His eyes widened and then he smiled with relief. “I’d hoped to one day meet some of you, not that I believe the council would want that, with the weird place they decided to dump me in,” he said, and his irritation with the council matched my own.

“I was dumped in a forest, several hours away from any road and with protective mama bears surrounding it,” I said, hoping we could bond a little before getting into things.

“I was dumped in a hayfield,” Xari said. “I swear I can still feel the hay against my skin some days.” Silver and I laughed at that. This was good! We would get along perfectly.

“I was dumped into the ocean,” Silver said. “At night, the only thing guiding me to shore was a lighthouse.”

“Those assholes!” I exclaimed, not caring that Xari’s mother was one of them, because that was just plain cruel.

Silver shrugged, “well, I did tell them exactly what I thought of them, not my fault they couldn’t take constructive criticism.” I was pretty sure Silver and I were platonic soulmates. “How did you find me?” he finally asked.

I decided to start with the most important part first. “It’s a rather long story, so let’s start with the most pressing thing first. We’re being chased and attacked by mages from our world trying to kill us.

” His eyes widened as he looked between us both.

“We got our magic, which they tried to keep us from getting, and now they want us dead.”

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand that had pretty nails with glitter on them. “You were born without magic like me, right?”

We nodded. “Or we thought so, but we just needed our soulmatch to unlock our powers,” I explained, then realized it sounded ridiculous.

“Mmmhmm sure,” he said, totally not believing a word we said.

I sighed. “Snowflake, you can be visible now.” My beautiful snow leopard was still glowing. “We need to check out why he’s glowing,” I reminded Xari, then looked at Silver who was understandably startled. “This is my familiar Snowflake. I got him after we unlocked our magic.”

He shook his head, then took in a deep breath. “Okay, so let’s just say I believe you. Why would they try to kill you? They sent us here because we were ‘ defect mages ’ so shouldn’t they be fucking pleased we were deemed good enough for their fancy world? ”

Xari spoke up now. “Because we’re more powerful than the council of mages.

The legends of old spoke about six men who ruled our world, all born without magic until they met their soulmatch and unlocked their magic, getting familiars to help fight and protect them.

We were shunned because they didn’t want us to get our powers and steal the throne. ”

“Umm,” Silver said, and we decided through eye contact to tell him the whole story. Sitting down on a worn couch, we got into it, telling him everything.