she came to a door that was locked. She pushed it, rattled it, and finally threw herself against it, filled with disproportionate annoyance that something was being kept from her, there was a place he wouldn’t let her—
She found herself back in the tower, lying flat on her back. She was dazed. Her arm hurt. The membranous stuff was gone. The magus lay in a tight, protective ball next to her, both hands clutching his head. She heard a funny noise—how strange to hear only with her ears again, what limited things her five senses were—and realized that he was retching.
The locked door. Her insistent, frustrated pounding on it. She’d hurt him. She pulled herself up to her hands and knees and crawled to his side. His hair was drenched with sweat and he’d bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood. His eyes, red like he’d been crying, rolled and pitched in his head, but then found her.
“Water,” he croaked, and she scrabbled across the floor for the skin he’d brought. She had to hold it for him at first, watching anxiously as he drank. Eventually his ragged breathing slowed and he managed, slowly, to push himself up.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“So am I.” His voice was rough. “I should have told you to be careful. But you shouldn’t have been able to go that deep inside my head, not on your first—” He seemed to be having trouble finding his words. Pulling his satchel close, he took out bandages and a pot of salve. “Let me dress your arm,” he said, and reached for her.
But she recoiled, holding the arm stiff against her body where he couldn’t reach it. The pain wasn’t bad—she’d suffered far worse—and she felt like she deserved it. Even now he was too pale. His lip was still oozing blood and every time he sucked it clean she felt worse.
Gently, he said, “It’s all right. You didn’t know.” She let him take her arm. Moistening a cloth, he dabbed at the crusted blood. “You’re...very talented.”
A blush heated her cheeks. But even through the blush, even through her guilt over what she’d done to him, she couldn’t help asking, “Could we undo what’s between Gavin and me? By moving that purple stuff?”
The salve was clear and smelled faintly of lavender. “Look at me,” he said. She did; he looked fragile, as if he’d just recovered from a long illness. “You didn’t even try to change anything, and I can barely stand up. Meddling inside other people’s heads is dangerous. I’m not strong enough to do that kind of Work and you haven’t been trained for it. You could end up with your brains addled worse than Theron’s.”
She knew it was true. Her hands still shook; she felt blistered inside and out by what she’d seen, what she could do. Even so, she said, “But it must be possible. What about the Nali chieftain?”
The magus shook his head. “What the Nali do is very different. And the chieftain isn’t in the city; he’s in prison. He’s been there for months. I suspect he’s been tortured. If he didn’t deliberately scramble your brain for revenge, he might be so weak and out of practice that he’d do it accidentally.” He finished bandaging her arm, and then patted the bandage lightly. There was something insensate about the way his hand moved, like it wasn’t entirely under his control. “I’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll keep practicing. Get to where you don’t feel like a volcano erupting inside my head. Then we’ll talk again, I promise. Is it so awful, the bond between you?” he added wistfully. “Do you want so badly to end it?”
Was it? Did she? Sometimes she had pitied other people who were alone in their heads. But she had seen that kind of life from the inside, now: the magus’s life, the good and the bad of it. And she supposed that, with what he could do, his head was different than Elly’s or Darid’s would be, but still. There had been so much magus in it. So much space for him to fill, with thoughts and feelings and sensations that were his and his alone, love and hate and pain and sadness. And no uncertainty if a feeling was really his own, no trying to ignore the nagging pressure of someone else’s desires, motivations, rages. “It’s not awful,” she said finally. “But I’m not free.”
The magus wrapped the bloody mirror carefully in the cloth. She