behind him as his left-hand’s not-so-silent footsteps followed. “Having trouble sleeping?” Draeven asked quietly.
“Always,” came his reply. And he did. The whispers were usually restless when he was away from home, but never like this. Now they were stirred into an outright frenzy, and the cause was a silver-haired woman with far too much mystery under her flesh.
“This is worse than normal,” Draeven remarked, approaching his left side.
“Do you have a point?” Lazarus asked, blunter than he usually was.
The other man shook his head and sighed in exasperation. “It’s the girl, isn’t it?” Lazarus didn’t respond immediately; he didn’t need to. Draeven sighed again and nodded into the hazy gray. “It’s the girl.”
“She’s different,” Lazarus said after a heavy pause.
“She’s deranged,” Draeven replied distastefully. “Or if she’s not, then she soon will be. They always are.” Lazarus shook his head.
“No,” he said, looking to the canopy of trees, replaying the web of fear she’d created in his mind all over again. “It’s more than that. She’s like me.”
“She’s a dark Maji—”
“It’s more than that,” Lazarus repeated, harder this time. His left-hand only stood there and waited for him to continue. “I’ve met other dark Maji, Draeven. Ones that are sane. I’m telling you, there is something about her that calls to me.”
The blond-haired man seemed to weigh his words. “Have you considered that it’s because she’s the darkest you’ve met? There’s only one magic that is naturally darker than a fear twister. Maybe she calls to you because she is the closest you have found both in sheer power and absence of light.”
He had considered it. He’d considered it many times. Had gone so far as to assume that’s what it was. That answer didn’t explain all things, though—only the surface questions brimming in his mind.
“I don’t wish to consume her,” he said so softly that Draeven almost missed it. The answering look told him both too much and too little.
“I don’t think you can,” Draeven responded. “She’s highly untrained, but the things she can already do…” He shook his head. “I think it would destroy you both if you even attempted something as dangerous as that. It would be like trying to control a storm. A wicked, impossible storm.”
Lazarus nodded because he suspected as much as well. Never in his time had he come across one he didn’t think he could take, but that was no longer the case.
“Her magic would drive me to the brink of insanity. Even if I wanted to, I won’t,” Lazarus said, thinking again of that web. He hadn’t lied when he said Maji could see other’s magic, but he hadn’t told the full truth either. Most magic was completely invisible to the eye, unless wielding it at dangerous levels.
Quinn’s very footprints were like blackened soot. The darkness she kept inside her bled out into the tangible world, because even now, before her ascent, the sheer power she was holding in wasn’t meant to be contained. It was meant to be set free, but the liberation of something that untamable would cause too much damage.
He didn’t think that Draeven or other Maji could see it quite that clearly yet, but if she continued at this rate it wouldn’t be long.
“She doesn’t see it, but one day she will be a force that the world will come to fear,” Draeven replied, pulling him from his reverie. “My question remains for you, Lazarus, about what you will do then. If you cannot consume her, will you kill her?”
“I don’t think it will come to that,” he replied stiffly. Draeven laughed, a quiet mocking sound.
“Every ruler in this land is going to want her once they see what she can do—and you,” Draeven kept his voice down but the inflection of urgency was there. “You are bringing her right to them.”
“We’re not going to any of the countries that might sway her loyalty,” Lazarus replied, quite sure of himself.
“You don’t currently have her loyalty to sway,” Draeven answered testily. Lazarus shot him a look, one that shared the worries he wouldn’t speak of. “I think you know that.”
“The contract she and I have would not allow her disobedience to me.”
Draeven snorted, a sound of derision.
“The Cisean people are too old-fashioned and won’t endear themselves to her, and it will make it easier to gain her trust before we reach Ilvas,” Lazarus replied dismissively.
“You hope,” Draeven said, not backing down. “Thorne has a soft spot for pretty things and wild girls, both of which are qualities she possesses.”
“I’m