I smiled at him and kissed his cheek. “I was so scared, baby. I made the mistake of thinking I was untouchable, letting the power we’ve gotten affect my judgement on what we can handle.”
He squeezed my hand. “I made the same mistake. After the first attack I still felt like I was playing pretend, but as the days went on, I stopped feeling like that, too busy thinking about how powerful we were and our mission. I guess I liked feeling powerful for once and as we stood there fighting them… I forgot to be careful. Untouchable, like you said. We need to train harder for next time.”
“And find Silver. If they could get one of us down, then he’s in real trouble.”
“And Wilston, too,” he reminded me.
“Wilston, too. I was thinking about getting a camper, so as soon as we come by a town or a city that sells them, we should get one. You know, one of those you can drive and live in.”
“So Silver and Wilston can have room to live with us. I’ve thought about the same thing. I just doubt our abilities to get enough money for it.”
“We can check if someone is selling a used one, it’ll be cheaper and we can likely pay in cash,” I suggested, telling him about my plan.
“Let’s find Silver and then we can find a camper while we look for Wilston. I don’t want to risk anything happening to Silver while we take our sweet time, basically guiding them directly to him.” Damn, he had a point.
“Deal. Now we just gotta wait for them to discharge you.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “How’re our familiars?”
“Both are dismissed and healing. They should be fine in a few hours, but we’ll summon them when we leave this room. I will not have you vulnerable at any time. They can heal while we drive.”
“Sounds good to me. Food after this?” his voice was strained and weak. Had it been that long since we’d eaten? And again, I thought about how long I’d waited here. My own stomach growled. Shit. It had been hours if my stomach told me the truth. My poor bonded needed some food.
The doctor came in, smiling brightly as she began checking him. “You’re fine to leave, no need to stay the whole hour.”
We took the bill and since it was way more than we could afford with our goal of getting a camper as soon as possible, we decided alittle debt wouldn’t hurt us. We would simply wait with the payment, or take a loan. It wasn’t like we were staying here either way.
As soon as we sat in the parking lot of a fast-food place, scarfing down burgers and fries, Niam spoke up, “why don’t we just get an expensive camper, like an RV or something, with room for six and make a payment deal or loan for it. What’s the difference between my medical debt and that? We will leave Sutiner, hopefully next year or the year after that. So shouldn’t we get the best and know it won’t die on us?”
How was he able to think about stuff with a damaged head, when I couldn’t even do it with my non-damaged one. “I’m so glad your brain is fine and still able to think of things that are so much better than whatever I come up with,” I said, pecking a kiss on his lips, not caring his mouth was stuffed with fries, just needing to kiss him.
He gave me a big smile as he chewed his fries. “I’ll look for a place that sells brand-new campers,” he said, his excitement obvious as he scrolled my phone. “Okay, so in order to not diverge too much from our current destination, aka Silver, we could check out this one.” He handed me the phone. “They don’t have many options, but they dohave two different models available, and one of them seems to fit our needs perfectly.” I nodded as I looked over the pictures. It was new and seemed very high tech and pretty.
“We should definitely get an RV before the last two mages arrive,” I said, looking at the one RV. “It would help immensely to have a kitchen and a bathroom. Especially since we still have no idea how to get home.”
“That would be amazing,” he agreed. “But an RV seems too big for now, and besides, the others need to agree with this stuff, too. We will start with a camper and then, once Silver and Wilston join us, we can figure out what works best for all of us. Maybe if they’re soulmatched, they’ll want their own van? Maybe they aren’t and each will want their own private space. We can’t know.”
“So damn smart,” I sighed dreamily. I truly got lucky when fate made Niam mine.
Chapter 27
Niam
We decided to buy the camper first thing in the morning, opting for a night at a motel with our familiars surrounding us. We slept peacefully and since Snowflake and Leon had fully healed, they weren’t in danger of messing up the carpet, which was a creamy beige this time. Snowflake was asleep on the foot of the bed, happy to snuggle up with our toes as we slept. Sleep found us quickly, the fight and me being injured exhausting us both. My wound was now just a small ache in my head, which I easily removed with my magic.
We woke up to hissing and as soon as my brain was back to functioning, I sprang up and noticed the door handle was rattling. Xari was out of bed, and, quickly moving over there, he held up three fingers, telling me there were three mages trying to get in. “Snowflake and Leon,” I whispered, “guard the door.”
I joined Xari behind where the door would open and got ready to unleash a world of pain on them. Xari had made several locks with his magic, all in different metals to ensure our safety as we slept, but now the mages were melting them and trying to break in as silently as possible. When they were able to turn the handle successfully, they almost fell inside, not expecting the door to give way already. I suspected Xari was tired of waiting and had removed the locks. He could do it faster since he’d made them.
I quickly made them writhe in pain, while Xari took their oxygen. We’d already made the mistake of thinking we were untouchable. It wasn’t happening again. This time we took them out before they could do anything.
They fell dead on the floor. All suffocated and lifeless. “How are we supposed to dispose of them?” I asked, feeling panicked over getting caught killing people. I hadn’t even once felt bad about killingsomeone, and I believed with my power not only came a better tolerance of blood, but also of killing.
Xari closed the door, grimacing at me. “I have an idea. It’ll be messy, but effective.”
An hour later we were on the road again, my stomach churning with what we’d had to do. It involved stripping them and placing their clothes in the trash. There was zero blood and since they weren’t from here, they wouldn’t be considered missing, and their clothes then held no value or risk to us. We’d melted their phones and thrown them in the trash, too. The next part was what had my stomach in turmoil. Removing all towels and any kind of fabric from the bathroom, we’d placed them all inside and then Snowflake was sent in there to… yeah.
Something we would need to examine further was the fucking glow that emitted from Snowflake once he was done… doing his thing. We simply hadn’t had the time to focus on it, needing to flee the scene and get a move on.
