never lifting from me as he went clockwise, then doubled back in widdershins, and then back again, making smaller and smaller arcs until tracing a final arc encompassing all the loops before rising up to my left shoulder, making a sparkling line between my neck and the knitted throw.
My eyes widened as Hodin shifted to stand before me. He looked like nothing I’d ever seen before as his plea to the Goddess spilled from his lips, begging her to help for my sake. His eyes held a thick torment. I knew he was breaking his own promise, one made in anger and humiliation. He’d been a slave because the Goddess had said no. He had suffered because she turned her back on him. And now he was asking again, opening himself to rejection from someone he loved and hated, despised and needed. I bowed my head in understanding, grateful.
His motion never slowing, never quickening, Hodin traced the ink in a shallow curve, staying above my breasts as he mirrored the glyph on my back but in a much smaller size—tingling against my skin. “Un soom ou un ermoon es un soom ou un om. Un soom ou un om es un soom ou un ermoon,” he whispered as he finished the last interior arc, the final swoop curving around the small glyph and rising up to touch the point on my shoulder where he’d begun.
Only now did he lift the brush from my skin. I staggered, and Trent’s hand was there, gripping my elbow as, without warning, the ley line wasn’t moving through me, but around me.
“Mirror it on your elf, and you should be able to merge your circles,” Hodin said, but I was still trying to find myself. I was wrapped in a ley line, the warm humming protecting me from everything, tingling as he shifted the blanket to cover me fully. The ink was already dry. “As long as you are both conscious, your combined strength may hold it.”
Too alone to hold me, echoed in my thoughts. “Hodin, this isn’t an elf or demon curse. It’s both,” I said, pulse fast. “Is this why they hate you? Because you mixed elf and demon magic?”
Hodin’s eyes flicked to Trent standing resolute beside me. “Constantly,” he said. “And now I’m doing it again.” He shook his head, grimacing. “You’d think I’d learn after two thousand years of penance.” His eyes came to me, and I quailed. “But we’re both half what we could be apart, and I can’t bear it. Don’t make me suffer them alone as I try to survive their anger.”
Them being the demons. I didn’t think the elves would have cared, except it would have made the demons more powerful yet. I swallowed hard, fingers damp as I twined them in Trent’s. “We won’t,” I promised. “Thank you,” I added, and Hodin seemed to find a shadow of peace.
“You felt the how of it?” he said as he scuffed back. “Can you do it again?”
I nodded as I pulled the knitted throw closer about me. I didn’t have to see the glyph painted on me. I felt it, knew its every turn and convoluted shift. “Maybe not the words, but the pattern,” I said, and he nodded sharply, as if having expected nothing less.
“Then I’m done.” Hodin tugged his threadbare robe close as if it were fine silk.
“Hodin, wait.” I stepped from Trent, and the demon slumped. “I mean it. Thank you,” I said again, nervous. “I know . . .” I hesitated, not wanting him to think I understood what he’d done. How could I? His Goddess had turned her back on him, allowing him to be enslaved. His kin had shut him out, reviled him for not just practicing but relishing an art of magic that they considered foul and wrong. And all he had from me was a promise that I wouldn’t do the same when they found out he was alive and came for him again. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, realizing how expensive a promise I had made. “With the rest of them.”
It seemed to be the right thing to say, as Hodin nodded and looked from me to Trent. “Bis, you will best serve Rachel outside while she twists the curse upon her elf,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Bis’s leathery wings beat the air once, and he landed atop Hodin’s shoulder, looking embarrassed.
“What am I? Chopped fairy farts?” Jenks said as he rose up on a column of silver.