Bound (32 page)

She couldn't go on then. She was undone by the admission, facing her father's death without anger to shield her from the painful reality this time. He drew her close and she leaned into his chest, smelling him and feeling calmed by his presence alone, though she continued to shake slightly as his arms pressed her closer still. "I should have protected you better though," Tavis said heavily. "I tried, but I didn't know how. I still don't understand what happened in the maze."

She leaned back to look up at him again. "That really was my fault. I promised that I would go with him, with Marcius, that I'd surrender to him if he let my father go. I forgot why they teach us from our earliest years to be careful with speaking certain words. The power they give another over you is ripe for abuse."

"I don't understand."

"Didn't Lydia ever tell you not to ever swear or promise or any of that?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded, "But I thought she was just saying that because, well, I thought at the time it was because of Nevon."

Fay shook her head. "Those of us with magic, when we make a promise, our magic involves itself. I've always wondered if it's because of whatever makes us need our partner, but that's something I'm not an expert on. You see, when you make a promise to another, your magic combines with the words to create its own kind of bond, almost like a rope tying you to them. It can be used to force you to do things that relate to what you swore if you aren't careful what you promise or how it was worded, and most importantly, who you make the promise to. I was careless, stupid. I didn't think at all about what I was saying."

She hung her head, but he lifted her face to look up at him. "And do you really think that was an accident? Has it occurred to you that maybe they put Calder there for you to see that scene, that they did it to make you desperate enough to give that promise without thinking it through first?" No, she realized as she stared at him with her mouth open, that idea hadn't entered her mind at all. "I know that you want to be independent. I understand that you’re stronger than me, that you know more than I do. I can think of no one who should need a rescuer or a protector less than you. But if you'd let me, I would. I'd do everything in my power to protect you. Just let me be there with you."

"Can you protect me from myself? I'm starting to think that's what I really need," she said ruefully, because it was true and because she suddenly needed a moment to think.

Tavis laughed at this, taking her back to their first night together, to his serious question about using a flint and she found herself laughing with him. After a while, his laughter stopped and he looked at her seriously. "I'm not sure how I'd do that, but I'll try, if you want me to."

Because she'd had enough time while they were laughing, her answer was ready. "I want more than that actually. I need more than just you at my side, more even than a promise to always be there. I want to share everything that comes, all of it and myself with you. Tavis, I want you to be my partner, the other half of my magic, my life, and my heart."

For a moment, he didn't even seem to breathe as he stared down at her. The serious expression on his face made her suddenly afraid that she had been wrong, that her admission of her own stupidity had made him change his mind. Before that panic could do more than brush her mind though, he smiled. "A gift beyond measure, such a life with you, and I've only myself to offer in return."

Before she could move or speak, he turned his head to the side and she could see him concentrate. The first half of the spell that would bind them to each other took shape in the air beside them, slowly and precisely, perfect in every part, like a rose of a thousand petals blossoming. She stared at it, then looked back at Tavis, who was looking down at her again, still smiling.

"How did you-?"

"Eliar thought I might need it. He taught me before we left Rianza. I'm not sure I believed him at the time, but I'm glad he insisted."

She turned, smiling, and wove her half of the spell overtop of and around his. They each pulled one of the trailing threads that dangled from the intricate webs of thought and magic, and turned back to each other as the spell spun into motion, transforming as it began its course. Their eyes met and Tavis bent his head to kiss her gently as the spell became a sunburst of light and color in both the air and their minds.

Two arms of light reached out from the spell and enveloped them, lifting them from the ground and ending any sense they might have had of time passing. Fay saw herself through Tavis' eyes and knew he was seeing himself through her. A double-pulse rippled through her, his magic and hers overlapping, which shifted suddenly as the spell shifted, bringing the two rhythms into one harmony that existed within them both. A sense of expanding filled them, their separate magics meshing together for a moment, growing, amplifying each other until it seemed they must explode. She felt his wonder and the echo of her own amazement as it filled him. She could feel her lips on his, his against hers, a dual sensation that made her mind explode with the sheer pleasure of it. A shared thought filled their minds. At last, at long last, they thought, and the thought lived in both their minds because it came from both of them. His was shaded with joy that she had chosen him, loved him, and hers was colored with the simple delight of finding the one she could share herself with, while still able to be herself. They would never again be parted, would always be able to find each other.

Then the spell shifted again, and the shared thought became a single thought. We. Together. Bound together as one, we will accomplish anything we set our mind to. We will learn all we need to know and our strength will be unmatched in all the ages.

And the spell shifted a final time. They floated back to the ground, wrung out and unable to hold themselves up in that moment. The last of the spell fed itself into the arms of light with which it had embraced them as it completed itself. Fay and Tavis both drooped to the ground, their kiss ended but the embrace unbroken. Exhaustion and exultation filled their hearts and minds. It was nearly an hour before either of them moved.

They helped each other to their feet, both still in awe of how much they could feel of each other and sure that it must fade with time. The distraction of it must fade, Fay thought, then wondered if it was his thought. They gathered Swift, who was munching grass contentedly at one side of the camp.

Fay had hardly thought of the question before she felt the answer come into her mind. Lydia and Keari hadn't been able to keep up with Swift, who Tavis had pushed to her limit in his rush to get to Fay. As she considered the answer, she felt shock ripple through Tavis, who had just read in her question the truth about Keari's identity.

"I hope he'll understand that I didn't really tell you," she said with her voice, sighing.

"I- he's been through this himself. I'm sure he'll realize you didn't mean to." He sounded as off-balance as she felt. "We'll have to walk back, at least for now. I don't want to ride Swift until she's had a chance to recover, especially with two of us."

Fay felt amazed and terrible as she relived his memory of riding after her, guided only by a sense that she was in this direction after Marcius had disappeared with her. They started back in the direction he had come from, his passage through the forest easy to follow from the way Swift had trampled everything in her path. They hardly spoke at first, simply drifted between each other's memories. Fay found herself seeing things in whole new ways. How much Tavis had tried to watch over her, how he had tried to convince himself she could never love him before giving in to his own feelings. In turn, he was full of disbelief at how he had affected her from the beginning, and his shock at how much she had wished him to stay the night she had been in her robe rocked them both. She had giggled on realizing he had thought her encouragement and talk of his strength were merely a result of kindness.

Nearly two hours after they had begun their return, they heard hooves galloping through the forest toward them. Tavis halted Swift and stepped in front of Fay, but she pushed him aside after a moment, having let her senses range out ahead. Lydia and Keari stopped and dismounted as soon as they saw Fay and Tavis. She was delighted to see that they had brought Rain with them.

"You got to her," Keari said, his voice harsh with relieved tension.

Tavis nodded and chuckled. "I'm not sure she really needed me though, since she'd just blown him across the camp when I got there."

Keari and Lydia both stared at her, their shock evident. Fay felt embarrassed. "I- He- You were the one who deflected his final spell before it could kill us both."

"Deflection?" Lydia asked sharply, staring at her son. "You deflected an incoming spell?"

"I, well.." He stammered, and Fay could feel through both their linked hands and the bond that he was starting to shake. Shock, she thought, he's reacting to what happened. She dropped his hand and instead slid her arm around his waist, letting her care for him wash through the bond. He relaxed a little and looked down at her, a small, grateful smile telling her as clearly as his thoughts did that he knew what she was doing. She smiled back.

"You will have to start at the beginning. What happened after you disappeared, Fay?" Keari asked, his eyes moving between them.

"Ki," Lydia said, her eyes still on Tavis, "I think we need to find somewhere to sit first."

They found a pair of fallen trees that allowed them to sit across from each other. Lydia set about making a fire and breakfast as Fay told them how Marcius had taken her away in a carriage. They pressed her for details about the other man who had disappeared after the previous night, but she could barely remember his existence. Even the words he had spoken seemed vague and hard to hold on to. She leaned against Tavis as she recounted her dream of him and his arm curled protectively around her as she explained the way Marcius had tried to seduce her. Tavis took the tale up from there, explaining the confrontation, and how he had shielded himself from the worst of the impact with the tree. Keari made him recount his deflection of Marcius' spell twice before shaking his head in amazement. Fay had tried to stop the second telling as Tavis' shakes had worsened, but the prince was relentless about hearing every detail.

As Tavis finished the second telling, he lay his head against hers and said quietly, "I had to do it. You know he would never have let her walk away free. It was the only way she could ever be completely free of him, of the threat he posed to her."

Fay saw how badly the hand in his lap was shaking now. She clasped it in hers, stroking his palm with her thumb. The shaking began to subside slowly.

"This was the first time you've taken someone's life," Keari said and it wasn't exactly a question, but she felt Tavis nod. His mother walked over and sat on his other side. Fay could feel her hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. Keari sighed heavily. "It will pass. The shaking, the feelings about it. You did it for a good reason, at least, which is more than many can say. That was quite a feat, deflecting a spell in motion. An incredible thing to manage."

"For someone untrained like me, you mean." Fay was surprised by the touch of sarcasm in his voice. She felt his doubt that he could ever be good enough and tried to counter it with her own confidence in him.

Keari must have heard some of it too, because he frowned at the younger man. "For anyone, Tavis. I'm not sure that Lydia or I could have done that."

She felt Tavis' head rise at that, and surprise washed through him. She decided to add her own voice. Turning to him, she said, "I might have been able to, though I can't be sure since I've never tried. But I've never met anyone else I was sure could manage that. It's a very difficult thing to do, Tavis."

He had turned to her as she spoke and she felt his quick but thorough probe through the bond. She caught his reaction to her own remembered shock at what he had done and the reasons for that feeling. He really doesn't understand how remarkable he is, she thought and hugged him tighter. The shakes were almost entirely gone now, and wonder was replacing doubt in his mind.

Keari broke the silence. His dark eyes went from one to the other and he raised an eyebrow. "I think that there's a part of this story you haven't explained yet."

Fay smiled. "In spite of my stupidity, my many mistakes and near blindness to the obvious, Tavis has accepted me as his partner. We bound ourselves before we started back. I- We didn't want to wait."

"I didn't want you to reconsider, Faylanna," Tavis said, looking down at her again. She lost herself in his eyes, and found the answer to the question that had been in the back of her mind. The cause of him using her full given name was there, shining clearly in his thoughts. She saw the other side of all her reasons for disliking the use of that name, the positive in all of it that he had seen. Where she had called herself arrogant, he saw her as confident and decisive. He thought she was a little humble, in spite of her father's supposed airs. He had looked at the things she had told him and decided that he loved her for all of who she was, so he used the name that included those aspects of her. Her heart warmed at the thought, which made him smile at her more broadly still.

"I need to go back," Faylanna said into the silence after the wonder of this realization faded and she came back to her senses. "I can't leave my father there, and there's so much to set to rights with the estate. I'm the last of my House, so it falls to me to do it."

"No." The finality in both Tavis and Keari's voices shocked her as they answered together.

"I won't take you back there, Faylanna," Keari said, holding a hand up to forestall her argument. "Beyond even the laws regarding Legacies, I don't want to take you anywhere near that house or the fields, not after what we saw. I can't say what dangers linger there. Better to take you away from here, perhaps back to Rianza."

She opened her mouth to argue, but Tavis spoke before she could. "Be reasonable. We'll go back eventually, but not alone, not even just the four of us."