Heart of Stone (20 page)

Kees snorted. He’d had plenty of experience with spells over the course of his long life. He simply couldn’t cast any of them. But apparently his little human wanted to be fussy.

“One is a grimoire, so you should find that particularly valuable. It’s an individual mage’s collection of the spells he found most useful during his life, and he’s annotated them with notes and commentary. Very enlightening.”

Ella nodded, her excitement beginning to show through.

“There’s also a spell I would like to cast for you. With your permission, Guardian.”

Kees stiffened. The Warden had proved helpful, but this was not a request he had ever heard before. “What sort of spell?”

“A specialized kind of binding. On the two of you.” Parsons hurried to explain, spreading his hands on the table and leaning forward as if to impress his point upon them. “For a recruit who knew nothing of her own magic a mere week ago, Ella’s grounding and control are remarkable. Part of that might be due to receiving her training directly from a Guardian, since magic is part of the very fiber of your being, but I believe that part of it is simply because one day, Ella will be a very, very powerful Warden.”

Parsons caught Ella’s gaze and held it, speaking directly to her. “I can sense the strength of your magic, Ella. It’s a peculiar talent of mine, and I’ve never encountered anything quite like you. Your raw potential for magic is … simply breathtaking. I believe that you are going to do great things for the Guild and for humanity.”

Kees heard his female catch her breath as the Warden turned his attention back to him.

“That power comes with some risk,” the old man continued. “The Light forbid that you should directly encounter the
nocturnis
before we have woken the Guardians, but if such a thing were to happen, there is a chance that attempting a spell just a little too advanced, or even pouring too much raw magic into a simple spell, something like that could cause a dangerous backlash. Ella could be hurt. Perhaps gravely. The spell I’m proposing could prevent that.”

“How?” Kees demanded.

“By binding the two of you together, Ella, you would be able to draw on Kees’s energy and control. In essence, his magic would keep your power from getting out of hand. It would be a second, more powerful method of grounding. A fail-safe, if you will.”

Ella swallowed and edged her chair farther from Kees’s. He had to exert his supposed control not to reach out and yank her back. Even closer this time.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she told the Warden. “That seems like a big burden to put on Kees. I mean, what if I ended up draining too much energy from him? I could end up leaving him vulnerable to an attack. He’s a lot more important to this whole thing than I am. That feels like an unacceptable risk to me.”

He heard her words, but Kees also knew she had other concerns. He could sense that she held something back. “If I feel the risk is acceptable, then it is. I’m not afraid you would drain me.”

“She couldn’t. It doesn’t work like that,” Parsons said. “When I said you’d draw on his energy, Ella, I didn’t mean it in the same sense that you draw on the earth for power and magic when in need. The binding is deeper than that.”

He paused and looked uncomfortable, which made Kees suspicious. “Just spit it out, old man. What are you trying not to tell us?”

Parsons sighed. “The binding joins your souls together. Ella couldn’t drain your energy, because it would be her energy as well. And whatever power she pulled from the earth, you would share as well.”

“That sounds risky,” Ella said, already shaking her head in refusal. “And permanent. In fact, it just sounds like a really bad idea.”

“It wouldn’t have to be permanent. I could remove it when it became unnecessary, but there is some risk,” Parsons admitted. “All spells take as well as give. If I performed the binding, your survival would become linked, as well as your energies. If one of you died while the binding was in place, the other would perish as well.”

Ella jumped out of her chair, the wood scraping and squeaking against the tile floor. “No way. That’s crazy. You want to take the chance that some
nocturnis
bumps me off while I’m not looking, and Kees winds up dead? That’s just stupid. Or even worse, I forget to look both ways before I cross the street, and—
wham!
—I get hit by a damned car. Now not only does someone have to scrape me up off the pavement, but you’ve lost a Guardian just as war is about to break out. I’ve never heard anything so dumb! Kees is immortal. He told me so himself. If you link his life to mine, all you do is make him vulnerable at a time when no one can afford for that to happen. I won’t do it.”

She turned, whether to emphasize her point or to stalk from the room, Kees didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t care. She was not getting away from him. All she had heard when Parsons proposed his plan was that the spell would make him closer to mortal, easier to kill. What Kees had heard was the opposite. If Parsons cast this spell, Ella would have all his strength and power to draw on. With her magic, that would make her a very dangerous opponent. In essence, it would make his little human much harder to kill.

Kees pulled Ella to his side and nodded at the Warden. “Do it.”

She promptly kicked him in the shin.

Once again, he felt no pain, but his female’s growing penchant for violence was something he thought they should maybe discuss. “What was that for?”

“Excuse me?” Her glare could have flayed the flesh from his bones. “What was that for? I don’t know, do you think it could maybe have had something to do with the fact that you don’t make decisions for me, you giant bat-winged jerk? Or how about that I just got finished saying no to something, and the last time I checked, I was the only person allowed to change that to a yes? Which there is no way I’m doing, by the way. You think I want to be bound to an arrogant, high-handed, dictatorial asshole who can’t even admit when something makes him feel good? Fat frickin’ chance, big guy. You can just bite me.”

Kees looked from his red-faced, narrow-eyed human to the Warden on the other side of the table, who had begun to appear very uncomfortable. “Leave us.”

“You know what, I’ll just pop upstairs and put some towels in the guest rooms,” Parsons babbled, already edging toward the door. “It’s too late for you to drive back to Vancouver before sunrise, so you’ll need to spend the night. I’ll just, ah, go get things ready. You two, um, make yourselves at home.”

He made his escape while Ella tried to stop him with empty words about there not being a problem and Parsons not putting himself to any trouble because she’d sooner spend the night in the rental car than under the same roof with Kees.

Not, of course, that she used his name. No, she made up some new ones for him. Some of which even took him by surprise. He hadn’t known his little human had such an extensive vocabulary. It was really quite impressive.

Once Parsons had disappeared, Kees gripped the still-ranting woman by the shoulders and shook her gently. “Quiet.”

She kicked his other shin. “Stop trying to dictate to me.”

“Very well. Will you please be quiet so that we may discuss this rationally?”

Surprisingly, Ella closed her mouth, though she continued to eye him with irritation and no small amount of suspicion. “If by discuss, you mean you’re going to order me to do whatever you say, then no. If you intend to treat me like a thinking, feeling, and logical human being, then feel free to try. I’ll let you know how you’re doing.”

By kicking him, presumably, but Kees knew better than to say that aloud.

Kees gathered his temper. Asking for a human to do as he wished was not an exercise he was accustomed to. It made him uncomfortable, but he’d seen Ella’s reaction to his usual tactics, and clearly he needed a new strategy.

“I would like for us to consider the Warden’s proposal,” he said, making an attempt to keep his voice calm and even. “Perhaps if we reviewed its advantages and disadvantages, we could come to some kind of an agreement that would satisfy us both.”

“I don’t see how.” She frowned up at him. “As far as I can tell, the risks just vastly outweigh the benefits. I get a little more juju, but you potentially get dead. That’s not a fair trade. I’ve been doing fine with what you’ve taught me. I don’t need this binding thing, and I’m not willing to put you at risk ‘just in case’ things go wrong and we end up facing the
nocturnis
before we’re ready. At that point, the last thing you’re going to need or want is me as a walking, talking Achilles’ heel.”

“I think the benefits are worth the risks. You have looked at this only in terms of what could go wrong, but consider the advantages that Parsons has offered us.”

“What, that I’d be less likely to blow myself up accidentally? I’m not worried. I’ve been doing fine so far.”

“No, that you would be able to draw on my power if the need arose. If we did face the
nocturnis,
you would need every bit of that power. They fill their order with magic-users in their own right, and the spells needed to defend against them require large amounts of energy. You might need more than you can access from the earth with the necessary speed. If the binding makes my power your power, it would be at your fingertips with no need to call it up from the Source.”

He had decided to focus on the easily imagined benefits the Warden had mentioned. At the moment, he didn’t think Ella would appreciate his argument that he needed to keep her safe almost as much as he needed to defeat the Order. Or worse, she might misinterpret the statement as a revelation of emotion. He felt no emotion to reveal.

Ella adopted a mulish expression and shrugged out of his grip. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back to put additional space between them. “I still don’t think that’s worth risking your life.”

“Not even if I am willing to take the risk? It is my life, after all. You should not make decisions about it anymore than I should make decisions about yours, correct?”

“Don’t try to throw my own words back at me, you jackass. That is so not the way to woo me over to the dark side.”

Kees sighed. “I simply wish to point out that if I am aware of the risks and I do not mind them, then they should not matter so much to you. I do not understand why you would object to any chances I might take with my own safety.”

She looked uncomfortable, and the index finger of her right hand tapped a restless rhythm where it was tucked snugly against her left bicep. “Oh, don’t you? Then you don’t mind if I take charge of my own safety and refuse to allow the spell.”

The thought made Kees’s gut tighten and he bit back a growl. Right. That had gotten him nowhere.

“I do not wish to see you hurt, of course,” he began again, “and knowing you are better able to defend yourself will make both of us safer, because I will not be distracted from a foe if I do not have to concern myself with you first. But more than that,” he plowed on, seeing her about to object, “the spell Parsons proposes is reciprocal. It will allow you to draw on my power, but it will also allow me to draw on yours.”

Ella’s mouth snapped shut, and she eyed him with obvious suspicion. “What do you mean?”

Her tone sounded sullen and hostile, but at least she had asked the question and not simply shot him down without thought. That was progress. Wasn’t it?

He hurried to explain. “I can allow you to draw on my power, but the bond will work both ways. You will also be able to augment my power with your own. I cannot describe to you how useful such a boon could be in the heat of battle. My kind relies on our strength and size to fight the enemy. Our magical blood offers us immunity to many of the
nocturnis
spells, but we cannot perform magic ourselves, so our ability to tap into the Source as you have learned to do is very limited. If we were bonded, you could send that energy to me if I began to tire. Far from costing me my life, a bond with you could save it, little human. You could save all of us.”

She let out a huff and turned away from him to pace toward the darkened windows. “Nice strategy, big guy, but you almost went right over the edge there. I’m not the kind of girl who goes around saving the world. That’s taking the melodrama just a footstep too far.”

Kees frowned. He could no longer see her face, which made him realize how accustomed he’d become to reading her thoughts and emotions in those gray eyes and soft, pink lips. He could always tell when he had angered her, even before she started kicking, just as he knew he had hurt her when she stepped from the bathroom after their night together only to find him cold and distant toward her. Now she was hiding from him, and he found he disliked the reaction that caused. It made his chest tighten and his palms itch.

“I did not mean to speak dramatically,” he said after a long stretch of silence. “I said only what was true. I do not expect you to save the world; I only point out that you can influence the coming battle more than I think you realize.”

He heard her sigh and saw her head drop, her chin tucking into her chest and her shoulders rolling forward. She looked sad and vulnerable, and the sight made him tense further. He wanted to wipe the image away. He wanted to wipe the sadness away and protect her from whatever harmed her, except an uneasy feeling told him that he might be the cause of her pain.

“Well, I’m glad we agree on that, at least.” She spoke softly, her voice tinged with an odd note, a sort of sad humor, woven through the rich tones. She turned back to him. “If I agree to this, I have one condition.”

He gave a short nod and waited, his heart beginning to gain speed.

“Before Parsons casts the spell, he has to give
me
a way to remove it.” Her voice grew strong as she presented her demand, and she lifted her head to look him determinedly square in the eye. “I won’t agree otherwise. I’m not going to put up with years and years of being tied to someone who comes to resent me. You already made it clear that you don’t want to be tied to me by anything other than the task at hand, and that’s fine. It works for me, but the spell doesn’t. Not unless I know for certain that I can get out of it when I nee—when I think it’s time.”