Part Six

IT WAS AS if Corey were stuck inside the two triangles Ward had painted on the boulder. Half the space he floated in was bright white, the other pitch-black, and yet there were tiny pinpricks of white floating amid the black just like stars in the sky. There could have been a sun somewhere in the white, but Corey didn’t turn around to look. He was in the very core of his magic; he could feel it. The space around him pulsed with energy, almost flashing like sparks in the corners of his eyes. His skin vibrated.

“Please,” he called out. “Please, I need more power to save Ward. To save the world. Please.”

At first, nothing happened. The energy continued to flow around him, but after a moment, the buzzing against his skin intensified.

Mage.

Corey heard the sound, but not with his ears. The word seemed to come from everywhere, and at the same time from nowhere.

The Mage. Long has it been since you came to the core of power. We thought you banished.

“I’m new,” Corey tried to explain, although he didn’t know that he believed Sin’s story. Him, the son of a god…a god himself?

New, yes. The old Mage abused the power. It was his nature to abuse, but we were hurt, and we were glad when he could not return. Do we chance the new Mage?

“The old Mage is trying to escape,” Corey explained. “I need the power to stop him. The Sentinel and I are fighting him now.”

The Sentinel!

The vibrations increased until Corey’s bones felt like they were going to shake out of his skin. Power rippled around him like waves, distorting the painted stars.

We will give you the power to help our friend, the Sentinel, but remember, New Mage, that we can take the power away again. We will not make the same mistake with you that we made before. Treat us with respect or lose everything.

As suddenly as he had reached the core, he was pushed out. Corey was yanked by a thread in his core, and with a snap he landed back in his body.

He slowly opened his eyes and saw that despite his internal battle not much time had passed in the real world. Sin still had his fingers curled through the shield, Ward was still grinning at him as if he weren’t worried, and Corey’s fingers were definitely going numb. Except, he glowed as if the strongest of light magic was emitting through his pores, and the shadows on the ground around him seemed to writhe with dark magic. Even through the numbness, Corey could feel the power inside tingling at his fingertips. He could even taste it on his tongue. Power filled him to the brim.

Corey resolutely gathered the magic together, shamelessly mixing dark and light, and sent every last drop of it through their clasped hands to Ward. Ward’s spine straightened with a snap, like he had been struck by lightning, and his eyes, usually so neutral in color, glowed in a strange swirl of white and black.

“Don’t you dare!” Sin screamed. “That is my power. My godhood! How dare you steal it from me?”

“You lost it,” Ward said softly, almost sadly, even as his hands began to glow. “The power chose a new master. I am sorry, Sin.”

A beam of dark-specked light shot from Ward’s palm, hitting Sin directly in the chest. Sin went flying backward, his fingers ripping from the barrier with an audible tearing sound, and his back hit the far wall of his prison.

“No!” Sin screamed again. He stumbled to his feet and ran at the barrier with both hands extended in front of him. “I will be free!”

Corey heard something crunch as Sin slammed into the barrier before being flung backward again. And again. And again. Each time Sin got back up and ran at the barrier, he was repelled until, at last, he stayed down, unable to get back up.

Sin lay crumpled on the ground. It was as though his muscles would no longer obey him. With Sin no longer able to stop him, Ward finally reached out the last few inches and touched the barrier.

“I will make this barrier completely impenetrable, Sin. Nothing will ever get through again, be it a woman to carry your child or your fingers to try to break it.”

Sin found the strength to turn his head, and the look of malevolence that flashed across his face was so intense, Corey had to stop himself from taking a step backward.

“Goodbye, Sin.” Ward stepped away from the barrier and then turned to walk back down the long hall of the intersection, leading Corey along by their still-clasped hands. They walked up the ramp hand in hand and ducked under the low ceiling to step back into the bright noon sunlight. The ring of boulders was unchanged, and the trees looked unharmed. Corey suddenly didn’t know if Sin’s shaking the ground had only been the floor directly under their feet. Everyone else from their group was gone.

“I told them to go back to camp to get lunch ready and to start packing. We should be able to travel a few hours today.”

As Ward stopped just outside the boulders, Corey stopped with him. Ward was looking down at their hands where their fingers intertwined. Corey knew his fingers were red because they hurt from Ward’s previously tight grip, but he wished Ward would look at him instead.

“I didn’t mean for you to find out like this,” Ward said softly.

“You knew what I was—what I am.” Corey stated.

Ward shook his head. “I only knew the possibilities. The Oracle told them to me a very long time ago. You were a prophecy she once gave me. Either I would love the child of someone I hated, or I would be forced to kill the child of someone I once loved. She didn’t know the prophecy would torment me when she told me, nor could she give me the circumstances that would lead to either outcome.

“I swore back then that I wouldn’t love you because I knew you would be Sin’s, but the moment you stumbled so awkwardly into my bedroom I was entranced. How could I kill someone who looked so lost and hurt? But, yes, I always knew what you could become.” Ward trailed off and finally, slowly, looked up into Corey’s eyes. “What will you do now?” he asked hesitantly, almost as if he didn’t want to know the response.

Corey couldn’t reply right away. He looked down into Ward’s eyes, which were still swirling with the remnants of Corey’s magic, and saw hope and fear hidden in their depths. That intense gaze told Corey of Ward’s hope that Corey would choose him and his fear the answer would be no instead.

“Go home to the Tower. I think I was finally beginning to settle in,” Corey explained gently. “I had a friend there to spend time with, a friend I really, really liked, who accepted me when I was sad and was glad for me when I was happy. I would like to keep learning more about that friend and to see if our friendship might grow to something more.”

“You want more...with me?”

“I do,” Corey replied, his voice soft with a mixture of hope and fear. His chest was tight with all the emotion he was trying to simplify into words, but he knew one thing was absolutely true: he wanted to get to know Ward better to see if his feelings would last for what might prove to be a very long life.

Ward smiled then, and it was like the first peek of the sun on the horizon after the endless dark of Star Season. The tightness in Corey's chest eased.

Ward tilted his head slightly, and Corey found his own chin dipping to the right at an angle, and then their lips pressed together. Corey moaned and pushed closer as a zap of power ran up and down his spine. Corey wanted more than lips. He wanted tongue and skin and all the parts of Ward that Ward could give him. Corey wanted to give all the parts of himself that Ward would take.

The kiss was an endless moment in time that may have gone on forever, but Ward pulled away slowly. He smiled at Corey and reached up to brush his fingers along Corey’s cheek.

“Where are your mittens?” Corey asked, even as he was leaning into that hand.

“Elda has them. It’s hard to work magic through fur.” As if the mention of his missing gloves was a reminder, Ward shivered. “Let’s go back to camp where my blankets are also waiting.”

Corey laughed. “Yes. Let’s go.”

They turned away from the prison and started walking through the trees, heading back to camp.

“The story you told me was that the light and dark mages were always yours.” Corey had to ask.

Ward nodded. “I did tell you that version of the story. History is written by those who survived the last battle, and by the time we finally confined Sin, the mages were mine. Why torment an entire people with the history that they were originally created from Sin? I felt it was best to allow them that ignorance, and so I let the new story flourish. Now only four people in this world know the truth.”

“Is Sin really defeated?” Corey asked, unable to resist one last glimpse of that squat building as they slowly walked away.

Ward shrugged. “For this battle, yes, but for the war? Is it possible to truly defeat a god, even one so diminished? I couldn’t say. I do know he expended nearly all his stored power in this escape attempt, and it will take him a very long time to replenish it, especially since you have taken control of the Mage’s power, and he knows he won’t have access to it again.”

“And you strengthened the barrier keeping him confined,” Corey added.

“I did.” Ward nodded. “He won’t be able to try the same scheme again, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t already started planning his next one.”

Which Ward would be watching for, up in his lonely Tower high at the top of the massive complex they both now called home. Except Corey would make certain that Tower wasn’t a lonely prison for Ward. Not anymore.

There were people in the Tower complex that Ward ought to meet, meetings to attend, and day-to-day life to plan out. As the Sentinel, he should have some say in how his Tower and his people carried out his will. Besides, Corey would be there to make certain Ward never had any wish to retreat to a solemn and lonely existence. And he had no doubt Ward would help Corey fight off those same demons inside himself too.

Hand in hand, Corey and Ward walked out of the forest and headed to the waiting sleds, knowing the rest of their lives were just beginning.

Together they would watch for Sin, and they would live for each other. And that, more than anything, made Corey happy.