Blood pounded in my ears as I stared at the key that was knotted to my soul. I tightened my grip on the relic in an effort to keep my hand from shaking, but even as I did so, I could sense a tightening around myself.
“Livvie?”
I jumped at the voice breaking through the silence and looked up. “Kael.”
His name came hushed and surprised from my lips.
He crouched beside me, and I had to blink a few times to assure myself he was really there. Relief washed over me. My shoulders sagged, and my throat constricted.
Kael.
I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around him without thought. He was alive. “Are you okay?”
His chuckle hummed against me. “Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that question?”
I leaned back. He had taken one of my shirts—a yellow one that made me look like a canary, but that I was still fond of—and had it balled up and pressed to his wound. A great deal of the bright fabric was stained with rusty splotches. Thankfully, the blood didn’t seem to be spreading, though it was a miracle. For a man who had been climbing into his deathbed not long before, Kael seemed to be doing rather well.
“You don’t seem that bad off,” I noted. I was tempted to move his hand away and peel back the shirt to have a look, but I didn’t want to make it worse.
Kael grinned. “Well, sorry to disappoint you.”
I shook my head. “No, I mean, you’re not bleeding to death. How come?”
“I heal fast.” He shrugged a shoulder when I continued to gape at him. “It’s a shifter thing.”
Of course, it was.
“Well, that’s convenient,” I muttered. I wished I could say the same for myself. I felt bruised and battered everywhere.
Kael stared at my hand. “Hey, you got the key!”
My fingers were still wrapped around the golden key, my grip so tight my knuckles were white. “Yeah.”
“Wait, where’s the mage?” The shifter glanced around, his eyes narrow and shoulders tensing. He was expecting an ambush, no doubt.
I squeezed the key against my palm, and it was almost as if I were squeezing myself. My soul was bound to the key. I swallowed. What had I done? More importantly, how was I going to fix it?
Kael reached up to touch my cheek. His fingers lingered there, warm and surprisingly comforting. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, then nodded. “I…”
His eyebrows pinched together, and he tilted his head. He knew something was wrong. “Are you hurt?”
His gaze ran over me, though he didn’t withdraw his hand. I knew he couldn’t see any bruises; I couldn’t even see any bruises. Vehrin’s magic attacks had left me hurting on the inside, below my skin and into my muscles and bones.
I paused, glancing up at Kael before dropping my stare back to the key.
Should I tell him? What would he do when he found out? What did it mean to have your soul bound to an object?
Certainly, I was no expert on this new supernatural part of my life, but I was fairly certain that had to be some kind of dark magic. Kael was so honorable, a rule follower. He worked for PITO, an organization that protected magical artifacts, and here I was having just tied myself to a very powerful one.
Did that impede his mission? Would he be upset? Would he report me?
“Livvie, what is it?” Kael pressed.
I worried at my bottom lip, then inhaled a sharp breath through my nose. “I bound my soul to the key.”
The words came out rushed, as if saying it quickly would somehow make it seem not so bad.
Kael leaned back. “You what?”
I couldn’t read his expression. Was he angry?
“I was trying to bind the mage. Our powers sort of collided. We went down, he disappeared, and then—” I held up the key as if he could see my soul nestled inside. “―I guess I bound my soul instead.” I neglected to tell him the whole story, choosing to keep to myself, for now, the part where I had chosen to sacrifice my own life. “I’m sorry, Kael. I didn’t mean to.” I took a deep breath and ground my teeth. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just—”
“Stop.” Kael got to his knees and brought his hands up to frame my face. His stare was intense, and I became acutely aware of just how close he was to me. “It’s okay.”
He wasn’t angry. If anything, his expression was pale and pinched with worry. Or maybe he was just in pain from his wound. I would have glanced at it again, but he had my gaze trapped on his, my face caged in his firm grasp.
I hated what I had done to myself. It gave me an itch between the shoulder blades of my soul, one that I couldn’t scratch. “What am I supposed to do?”
Kael sighed deeply and dropped his hands. “Well, first thing we need to do is get out of here. I don’t know where the mage has gone, but he could be back, and I don’t think either of us are in a state to confront him again.”
He got to his feet and reached down to pull me up. I stifled a groan as my muscles protested. As soon as I straightened, everything around me seemed to dip and spin. A whooshing filled my ears. I could scarcely make sense of anything—not the ground beneath me, or the crisp touch of cool air, or even Kael.
Desperately, I reached for my magic. The familiar energy swirled within me, but something else was present as well.
Something dark and powerful.
I didn’t like it.
My stomach curled at whatever this new thing was within me. What had happened? Was this part of the mage’s power? Did he do it, or did I?
Kael’s strained voice cut through the loud rushing, but I couldn’t break my thoughts from this power. My heart was racing. What if it consumed me? What if it made me do things I didn’t want to do? What if it—
“Olivia!”
I startled at the loud voice and blinked to find Kael frowning at me.
His gaze was wide, anxious. “What’s the matter?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I couldn’t tell him about the strange magic coalescing with my own. I didn’t even know what it was.
Kael’s gaze dropped to the key still clenched in my fist. “Maybe I should hold onto the relic for a while.”
He reached down and placed his hand over mine. I didn’t release the relic. Then, he started to pry my fingers loose.
My pulse quickened. Every instinct screamed at me to keep the key close.
“No!” I reached out with my other hand and pushed on his chest to ease him back. Or, at least, that was what I had intended to do.
Instead, Kael yelled and went flying backward across the grass-carpeted ground. He landed hard with a grunt several yards away.
Magic seared through my veins and bristled beneath my skin like static shock. I couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t decipher if it was mine, the mage’s, or something new entirely. All I knew was that I wanted it to stop—needed it to stop—before I burned myself to a cinder and got scattered on the wind.
I sucked in deep breaths. I shifted my feet, feeling the ground beneath the soles of my boots and using that reality as an anchor. I stretched my senses farther, to the feel of a slight breeze, the scent of damp earth. Slowly, the magic coiled back to the depths of myself. I opened my eyes and found Kael moaning on the ground.
My blood ran cold.
I had to force myself to move, will myself to wrestle through the horror of what I had done and move forward to see if Kael was all right. I ran over to him as he rolled to his back. He sat up with a wince, and guilt lanced through me.
My hand pressed to my mouth, if anything to shove back down the burning in my throat. I took a few unsteady breaths as I got a hold on the magic rampaging through me. Wild, unfettered…deadly.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Kael. I didn’t mean to.” I started to reach for him, then hesitated and drew my hand back. Perhaps it wasn’t safe. Perhaps I wasn’t safe.
I hung the key around my neck with trembling fingers. I felt a little better with it out of my hand.
Kael tilted his head back to fix me with a calculating stare. I waited for the disgust and the fear. I waited for the hatred toward this horrid being I seemed to be becoming.
Instead, a small smile touched his lips. “You’re not the first woman to knock me on my ass.”
He got to his feet and stepped toward me. I retreated with a shake of my head. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally hurt him again. He stayed where he was, though he looked like he wanted to draw closer.
“We need to find someone who can help figure out what’s going on with you.” Kael paused for a moment, and when he spoke again, his words came out slow, careful. “I think I know who we can ask first.”
“Who?”
Kael’s face twisted with annoyance. “Renathe.”
I had completely forgotten about the fae man who had given us our first clue. Though now that I remembered, I also recalled that I still owed him a date. Looks like I could crack two stones with one chisel.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll be able to fulfill that ridiculous promise for a date.”
The shifter grew silent as I gathered up my bag. The handle for my knife was nearby, and I stooped to pick it up. I ran a finger over the handle. It was charred a bit on the end where the blade had disintegrated. I sighed, a sense of loss weighing on my shoulders at the ruined gift from my father.
It was as if the last anchor to my past had been eaten away.
I dropped it into my bag. All I had now were the two relics hanging on my chest, one key from the Amazon and one from the ruins in Scotland, a surly shifter companion, and a future that seemed to be dragging me deeper into someplace and someone I didn’t want to be.
I shuffled my bag across my shoulders. Together, Kael and I left the crumbling abbey, once again on a search for answers.