“Kael!” My shout was burned away by the writhing flames and sizzling air. Heat clutched at my breath as I straightened outside the tent.
I snatched up my bag leaning against the side of the tent and threw it over my shoulder. I called for Kael again, hoping he would hear me before the smoke started to choke my lungs.
Where had he gone?
A loud snap drew my attention behind my shoulder. Furious flames licked their way up a nearby tree, the bottom already marred in crumbling, black bark. The tree creaked and groaned, then began to tip.
I rushed out of the way as it fell with a crash. The top of it smashed into the tent, flattening it under its weight.
If I hadn’t hurried out when I did I’d be dead.
The smoke burned my eyes as I called for Kael again. I couldn’t stay in this place much longer.
A rumbling snarl reached me, and a shape broke free of the gray smoke. It was a large jaguar, his padded feet silent as he ran straight toward me. I panicked for a second as the massive cat quickly closed the distance between us before remembering it was just Kael.
He shifted back as he reached me. The fact that he was naked from head to toe couldn’t even elicit a reaction from me in the current situation. He snatched up his clothes from near the fire ring and began shoving his legs into his jeans.
“What happened?” Kael asked. He pushed his feet into his boots.
I didn’t like the suspicious scowl on his face. “I didn’t do it. Where were you?”
“Checking the perimeter when I smelled the smoke and saw the fire.”
Checking the perimeter, I thought, rolling my eyes. You could take the shifter away from PITO, but you couldn’t take the PITO out of the shifter, apparently.
“Where did it come from?” he asked. “It wouldn’t have spread that far and quickly from the ring.”
That was true. I blinked my burning eyes and studied the fire ring. There was no charred trail leading to the forest. “It had to have been set by someone.”
The fire glowed closer. Flames dripped from the blackened branches to crawl across the ground at an alarming speed as embers swirled through the air like stars of hell.
“Grab what you can,” Kael said. “We have to get out of here.”
I hardly paid any mind to what I was grabbing. I just snatched what I could before Kael began to tug me up the mountain. We hadn’t gone several feet before the fire closed into an unforgiving wall of flames ahead of us. I pivoted to find the way down was the only clear way out.
Something was trying to force us to abandon our mission.
Kael pulled the bag he’d managed to snatch up farther onto his broad shoulders. “We have to go back down. Maybe we can find another way around.”
Aileen’s words found me then, like a breath on a crisp breeze in hell. She’d said to head straight north east and that the journey was part of the test. I vaguely heard Kael holler my name, but I didn’t budge. Something was strange about the fire. Why would it come out of nowhere? Kael tugged on my shoulder, but I shook him off as I stared at the blaze before me.
I drew on my magic. Energy swirled around my fingertips, begging to be let loose. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I molded the energy into a sphere and threw it at the fire. The orange and crimson flames parted around it as the magic shot through. My heart raced, and I threw some more with the same result. I whirled to Kael. Sweat was dripping down his stubbled jaw.
“I think I can get us through the fire.”
His gaze flicked to the fire then back to me. “If you think I’m going to let some novice mage turn me into barbeque—”
“I have this power for a reason. Just trust me.” I waited for an argument, but Kael fell silent. “Follow closely.”
I stalked straight toward the flames, ignoring Kael’s low swearing and questions of my sanity at my back. Magic sleeved my arms in a brilliant blend of fuchsia and silver.
Extending my arms, I threw the energy forward. By widening my arms, I was able to extend it out. The flames moved away, parting a path directly in front of us. I hurried through it as my boots kicked up puffs of warm ash. Heat pressed in on me from the sides, making it hard to breathe. Though it had to be only seconds, it felt like minutes to get through the flames.
As soon as we cleared the blaze, the fire vanished.
The campsite was little more than charred grass and glowing embers. The tent was still smashed under a blackened tree, and whatever else had been left behind had been incinerated. Other than that, there was no more signs of burning. It was as if a massive breath had suddenly snuffed the fire out.
“A test,” I said. “It had to have been a test.”
Kael was still beside me for several quick breaths. “Let’s get out of here.”
The shifter’s eyes shone in the light of the magic still caressing my fingers. I held my palm up and let the glow illuminate our way through the dark trees. I was just as eager as he was to get away from the flame-ravaged campsite.
We trekked upward in silence until we were far enough away that I could no longer catch the scent of acrid smoke in the cool air. When the light of my magic fell on an area that was somewhat flat and seemed to be less peppered in rock than the surrounding area, we stopped.
Kael dropped the pack he saved heavily to the ground. I’d barely managed to grab my bag and a canteen that felt as if it were only half full of water.
I squeezed my middle with one arm in an attempt to ward off the brisk breeze. My other hand still held onto my magic. Though my mind could still recall the terrible heat of the sudden flames, my skin pebbled with the cold.
Kael sank to the ground and leaned against a wide tree. My legs were shaky as I lowered myself down beside him. I thought we should perhaps make some sort of temporary shelter, but exhaustion kept me on the cold ground.
“Your jacket was in the tent.” Puffs of mist feathered my words up in front of my face. “Sorry.”
“It’s just a jacket.” Kael’s voice was soft. His hair still stuck to his forehead in messy swirls. His head rested against the rough bark of the tree.
I stared at the magic wrapping my hand. It was dimmer now, and I could tell I was beginning to run low on energy. The darkness closed in as I let the magic go with a weary sigh. Though my magic had been providing me no warmth, the chill in the air now seemed to shiver straight to my bones.
Kael slipped an arm around my shoulders, and I tensed.
“It won’t do any good if you freeze to death. Try to get some sleep, Livvie. I’ll keep watch.”
Livvie, again. I wanted to argue, but exhaustion was already beckoning me to sleep. I closed my eyes and inched slowly closer to Kael’s warm side, wondering if he would notice.
There was a steady thumping in my ear, and something soft and warm beneath my cheek. I opened my eyes to the pale morning and realized with a shock that my head was laying against the side of a jaguar. The heartbeat faded away as I sat up slowly.
This was the closest I had ever been to a large cat, even if it was Kael. I admired the pattern of his dark spots against his golden coat and felt a ridiculous urge to pet him. I studied his face. He was making a slight huffing noise. The edges of his mouth lifted up and down, and his left ear twitched. I smiled. Was he dreaming?
Slowly, I reached down and touched the spot between his nose and his eyes. The fur there was incredibly soft and I ran my fingers up between his ears.
Kael’s golden eyes flew open.
I jerked my hand back and opened my mouth, but no words came. What do you say to a guy that just caught you petting him?
The cat regarded me for a long moment before getting to his feet. He stretched, claws digging into the ground and mouth opening in a wide yawn. He shook his head before walking toward his pile of clothes. I turned around to give him privacy. He’d already caught me petting him. I didn’t want him accusing me of ogling him, too.
Breakfast was a non-existent affair. With nothing around us but stark, gray trees and cold rock, our stomachs would just have to keep rumbling until we were able to make the trek back down the mountain. With little chance of finding any sort of stream this far up, the pair of us took measured swallows from the canteen before we started again.
I studied the compass and pointed toward the north-east. Kael took point this time, and I was still too tired to argue.
It seemed as if we had walked for hours, and still there was no sign of any sort of clearing or of the owl Aileen had mentioned.
“We have to be getting close,” I said hopefully.
Kael let out a short laugh. He bent down to help me up a particularly steep section of rock jutting out of the cold ground. “That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.”
“Thanks.” I came to stand next to Kael. I peered into the branches, half-expecting to see an owl watching us. “I wonder if the owl is a shifter.”
“Who knows?”
“Can you tell a shifter in their animal form when you see one?”
Kael shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes you can smell the human on them and be able to tell. Other times, it’s difficult to know.”
“Are there shifters of all kinds? Like elephants, or flamingos?”
“Ha!” Kael threw his head back in laughter, the most mirth I’d seen from him yet. The sound bounced off the trees and rocks, echoing around us. “I feel bad for the poor person that would end up a flamingo shifter. Most shifters are predators, though I’ve known one horse shifter in my life.”
It seemed strange that there were shifters on this world living among us in the guise of fangs and fur. How often had I seen a wolf or caught a glimpse of a jaguar or leopard that had in fact also been a person?
“Look!” I pointed.
Ahead of us, the trees thinned, letting in what little light there was filtering through the blanket of ever-gray clouds above.
We hurried over the rough terrain, Kael moving with grace, leaning forward as if he were ready to shift into a jaguar at the first sign of danger. I pulled out my knife and caressed the magic swirling inside of me. We emerged through the trees as they opened up.
The clearing.
It was made of pale, wispy grasses that swayed slightly in the soft breeze and was bordered with twisting trees. Massive boulders and stones, blanketed with patches of moss and lichen, were piled together in the center.
Kael stalked out slowly, and I followed. We reached the boulders and waited in silence. No owl flew down from the trees. Kael grumbled.
“Can you, I don’t know, sniff it out or something?” I asked.
Kael frowned. “I’m not a bloodhound.”
I walked around the boulders, and Kael trekked around the perimeter near the trees. We met back up at the center, both clueless.
I raised my voice. “Um, owl?”
The shifter scoffed and leaned heavily against a boulder. My heart jumped.
“Watch out,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.” I shoved at him.
He was too heavy for me to actually budge him, but he sighed and got out of the way.
There, right where he was leaning, was moss in the shape of an owl.
“It’s the owl,” I grinned, “it has to be.”
I leaned down closer, and there at its center was a tiny rune. A whisper came to me on the wind, pulling me closer. The rune beckoned me to touch it, to utter foreign words from my tongue. I reached for it, but a hand grabbed my wrist.
How did Kael’s fingers get so frigid if he never gets cold?
I tilted my head to ask him what his problem was and found the mage. Fear rippled through me. I wasn’t ready to face him. Not yet.
“I see you,” he said, words crackling like heat lightning. His lips turned up, his smile lanced through with cruelty and darkness. “You would do well to turn back now.” His hand constricted more, threatening to snap my wrist with the pressure.
I gasped, and then Kael was standing there. I blinked several times. It had been a vision. Even without the key in my possession, the mage was still messing with me.
Kael closed the distance between us. His hand squeezed my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Two things,” I said. The air seemed colder, a bone-marrow freezing chill clutching at me. “One, the mage knows we are here. And two.” I glanced at the mossy owl. “I don’t think he wants us going in there.”