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Mal felt Scarlet behind the door as she raised her hand to knock. He opened it with a spell as he rose to his feet and met her with a hungry kiss.
“How’s the evacuation going?” Mal asked, when he had his lips back.
“As smoothly as possible,” Scarlet said with great serenity, straightening her skirt as if she had not just made love to his face. “I think the timing of the earthquake was actually excellent, since it frightened a lot of people. The first flight has come and gone. Liam’s elders are safely off, and the most problematic of the guests.”
“Mr. scarier-than-a-dragon fire ant shifter?” Mal suggested wryly.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Demanded to be on the very first flight out,” she scoffed. “Wanted a full refund of his expenses.”
She looked around, puzzled. “You did not come with this much luggage,” she said, observing the piles of books that Mal was cross-referencing.
“Portals,” Mal said dismissively. “This stack is from a library in London, these are from my personal collection.”
“Portals?” Scarlet looked at him in surprise. “You can do that?”
Mal took no small amount of pleasure in being able to impress her. “It’s fairly straightforward, if I’ve been somewhere before,” he said with a modest shrug. “The power required depends on the distance.” He wouldn’t need to start conserving energy for a few more days.
Scarlet gave him a narrow-eyed look. “That... would be very convenient. Guests would pay a great deal to bypass the hassle of traveling by airline and it would solve probably half of our new-guest complaints. Something about crowding people into tin rockets for several hours makes everyone very grouchy.” She looked excited about the idea. “Everyone says traveling would be more fun without that traveling part... could you teach me to do that?”
Mal smiled at her. Even now she was finding clever ways to improve her business.
They both sobered at the same moment, remembering the impending ruin of that business.
“I don’t know about your capitalistic goals for it,” Mal said carefully. “But I would like to do a little experimentation with your magic. I hesitate to try moving your tree, and that would take a larger portal than I’ve ever even heard of anyone making... but I think I can show you how to harden the earth beneath you, so that it doesn’t move when I battle the wyrm below the surface. You’re undeniably powerful, and you are a creature of earth like I am, so it should be simple for you to learn.
Scarlet gave him a quick glance, then looked down at the clipboard she was holding, the paper thick with notes. “We have about an hour before the next charter gets in for the next wave of evacuations. My people have things well in hand, for now.” She put down the clipboard and spread her hands. “Where do we start?”
Mal began by trying to get her to transform dirt to sturdy stone.
“How?” Scarlet asked.
Mal turned his forearms, showing her the runes. “Each of these has meaning, and a spoken word that accompanies it. Corbin’s acolytes—” he snarled the name “—only memorized chants and never understood a word of them, but there are layers of meaning, and a decent warlock can modify a spell on the fly, simply by changing the order of the runes.” He touched the symbols one by one. “Sleep, nurl. Help, ashenad. Build, yawen. Hinder, break, go, see...”
Scarlet touched one of them curiously and Mal had to tamp down the desire that even a casual a touch caused. “This one is on Breck’s wrist, from the engagement bracelet he shares with Darla.”
“Join, sheln,” Mal said and he said it more intensely than he intended. Scarlet eyes were hot and mirrored his own need. It would be entirely too easy to get distracted.
But as much as he wanted to lay her down and kiss her into filling the room with flowers, he needed to save her much more. “I made those bracelets with the purpose of helping soulmates find each other, at the request of Darla’s father, who very much hoped that she would find true love.”
Scarlet’s needy look turned instantly to irritation. “Do I have you to thank for that nightmare of a wedding, as well?” she asked in exasperation.
Mal grimaced. “I’m afraid so, at least in some small part. Though I am sure that Darla’s charming mother would have found something else to sue over even if everything else had gone to plan. You do not need to worry about the lawsuit,” he was quick to assure her. “The case will be settled quietly out of court. My treat.”
Scarlet didn’t look terribly mollified. She only frowned and touched one of the runes he had already pointed out. “Ashenad,” she said firmly, and she held out her opposite arm.
A gleaming rune, a perfect duplicate of Mal’s, appeared on both her arms.
He scowled to cover his surprise as she turned her arms to inspect her work. “It’s meant to be a painful ordeal. You have to suffer for every rune and gain understanding through trial.”
Scarlet raised an eyebrow at him. “Yawen,” she said, and a second shimmering rune appeared at her wrist. “Is there one for protect?”
Mal showed it to her and told her the word. “You’re supposed to spend a week or more meditating over the order for your rune tattoos, because they will define you as a warlock forever.” He sounded sulky to his own ears.
“Do we have a week for meditation?” Scarlet asked scathingly as a third rune appeared on her fair skin.
“Probably not,” Mal admitted.
“I can rearrange them anyway,” Scarlet said, demonstrating by switching two of them and Mal couldn’t quite keep from sputtering in protest. “Is there a rune for turn-dirt-into-stone?”
“There is no single rune for that. You would build that out of words, like writing a sentence.”
“What other runes will I need to do this, then?”
Mal shook his head in wonder. “This one,” he said, rolling his arm over. “It translates as roots, though it can also mean ancestors. I think that’s particularly appropriate for you.”
They added protect, djek, and strength, rawen.
And at the very end, she whispered, “Sheln,” and when the join rune was on her skin, completing a circlet of her wrist, Mal felt a jolt of power settling into place.
This could work, he thought, full of optimism.