“Hey,” he said, hugging me close. “Where did your mind go?”
I couldn’t hide emotions, and he deserved to know the truth. “I was thinking about what would happen if I’m not strong enough to protect you.”
“Oh, baby,” he whispered, then kissed my forehead. “We’re a team, you and I. We fight together, remember? You won’t be alone. I promise.” But I had been alone. For yearsIwas all I had. It would take time before my way of thinking changed, but for now I allowed his warm body to soothe my nerves.
“Let’s try and see if our element shows up.” I stepped away from him, and with my magic I first thought of fire, then of blasting a line of fire out from my hands. “Fuck!” I yelled at the now blazing tree. Iquickly did the same thing but with water, dowsing the tree until it was soaked without any burning embers left behind.
“That… what?” Xari spluttered, looking down at my hands and then the now black tree. “You have two elements?!”
“I, um, yes, apparently I do.” I looked down on my hands, flexing them as if that could explain it. “You try.”
He nodded, aiming his hands at the same tree. Leaves started growing, the dying tree coming alive with his magic. “You have earth magic,” I breathed. That meant we had three of the four elements between us. Then he flicked his hand and all the leaves fell off, flying in circles around the tree.Wind magic. “Holy-mother-of-all-things-holy!” I exclaimed. “We have all the elements!”
Xari was beaming at me. “We’re fucking powerful!” We whooped and cheered, feeling so relieved to see proof of our power.
“Let me try something, just to be sure,” I said, looking over at the poorly treated tree. I tried growing leaves but nothing happened, then I tried the wind thing, but again nothing. “Okay, I definitely don’t have your elements. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Good thinking!” He kissed my cheek. “I have an idea on how to practice.”
“Go on,” I said, feeling ready to play around some more.
“We need to grab our dirty clothes and then we’ll try washing and drying them,” he announced proudly.
“Um,” I began, thinking of the forest. “Wouldn’t the soap be bad for the environment?”
He shot me a secretive smile. “I’ve got just the thing.”
We found a set of clothes each and with his earth magic he made some branches appear that could hold our clothes in place between the trees. He unwrapped something from a waxy cloth. “This is homemade soap I got from a lady who also sold these amazing brownies,” he said, giving me the soap. “It’s made out of beeswax and something else I can’t remember, but it’s environmentally safe.” I just nodded and looked it over. It seemed like a regular bar of soap, just homemade.
Xari began making a wooden bowl using his magic. Some mages needed real materials to take from before they could use their magic. The fact Xari didn’t proved just how powerful he was. He literally made wood out of thin air. I rubbed the inside of the bowl with the soap, coating it before I added water, also made by nothing but my magic. I mixed it and then aimed all the soapy water at our clothes.I moved the water around, like a washing machine would, making sure all the parts had been washed perfectly, and then I let the soap go, leaving the clothes dripping wet with soap foam on it. I aimed my hands and with fresh water, I sprayed them clean.
Xari took over, and using wind magic he dried them off, but I decided to test something while he worked. I took his hand in mine and with our combined hands we made warm air. His wind and my fire, working together. “That is so cool!” he grinned, looking over at our clean and dry clothes.
“It’ll make life on the road much easier. We can even shower without having to rent a motel room,” I said, feeling glad we didn’t have to waste money on that anymore.
“As long as we find somewhere we can use magic to shower, then yes. But we don’t know if Silver lives in a city or not; can’t exactly get naked and use magic there.”
That was true. I shrugged, “we’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now, I think some food would be good.”
Chapter 20
Xarius
My beautiful bonded had looked sexy as hell as he owned that fire and water, making it do whatever he wanted it to. I quickly realized that whatever Niam did was sexy to me, the man was just seduction incarnate. I couldn’t stop getting hard around him.
When the locket showed us the letter from my mothers, I’d been surprised, not even thinking something had been locked away in there for years. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to read those words. They were waiting for me and my bonded to come home, but at least they knew they wouldn’t see me for at least a few years,making me less guilty over taking my time, not that I could do anything about it. Niam had been perfect, like he seemed to always be, comforting me as I let my heart ache with the loss it felt from being away from my mothers. It wasn’t until my mind had remembered we were being hunted that I’d pulled out of it, determined to get stronger. Determined to protect my bonded.
Said bonded was looking at me with a soft smile. He wasn’t the same shy guy I’d met a week ago. With our bonding complete, we now had the pleasure of being together without fear holding us back. I was one hundred percent myself around him and if his comment earlier about taking my dick out was any indication, then he wasn’t holding back either, demanding what he wanted from me without fear of sounding too bold or demanding. I loved that for us, almost as much as I’d loved taking my dick out for him.
We’d decided to dismiss our familiars and hit the road, stopping at the first fast food drive through we would find, and eating in the van before following the locket’s direction. The glow would dim if we made a wrong turn, quickly alerting us of our mistake and would then glow brighter once we were back on course.
“Here,” I said, handing Niam the locket to hold for us. “I’ll be too busy driving to look at it.”
He took it and pulled it around his neck, tugging it inside his shirt as we drove into the drive through lane. We were both starving, our magic had been used plenty so we needed to gain some energy back. I ordered way too much, but Niam seemed excited when we were handed our food and I pulled us over to devour it. We shared some nuggets and fries while having ten different burgers to pick from and both a coke and a milkshake, because we were adults who couldn’t decide on what to drink.
“Do you think Silver will trust us?” Niam asked while he ate some fries.
“Hmm, I haven’t really thought about it. You clearly didn’t like me at first,” I said, remembering back to our first meeting.
