Take Back Worlds (Diamond Universe: Sierra Walker #3)

Chapter 6

A ping on the defenses I set around the room wakes me: Someone is knocking.

Nariel and I sit up in unison, meeting each other’s eyes.

It’s time to get back to... everything.

I can practically feel the tension settling onto my shoulders again—

And then Nariel shadow-flicks my nose.

I scowl, but my lips curve up anyway.

The knock comes again, and Nariel takes my face in his hands.

I meet his gaze, and take a deep breath, letting the reactiveness drain back out of me.

We can do this.

At my nod, he kisses me briefly—or what I think was intended to be briefly except desire flares—in both of us—and I instinctually deepen it. Nariel’s hands on my jaw tighten and he makes a sound almost like a growl which shoots straight through me.

Another knock.

I tear myself away with a gasp, Nariel with a curse, and we both slide off opposite sides of the bed.

But I’m smiling.

All things considered, that’s kind of miraculous.

After I throw on a robe from the closet—not like, a bathrobe, but a mage’s robe—I join Nariel—who has created a sort of comparable shadow cloak around himself—at the doorway.

When he sees my smile, his own annoyed expression softens.

He offers me a hand at the doorway, and we make our way back to the entryway together.

A government official waits on the other end. With the benefit of Nariel’s senses I feel the magic that the mage was attempting dissipate around him, which means he was trying to break into the room. The knocking was probably his second choice.

But he’s not a cohort of combat mages, so this doesn’t dampen my mood in the slightest.

He doesn’t bother hiding his disdain when he looks at us. I’m not sure if it’s the hand-holding or that we’re not already up and fully put together, boots on and ready for action.

“The Council of Grand Magi has invited you to report on your progress so far,” he announces. “Please follow me.”

I frown. “Have they issued new orders where I’m concerned?”

He smiles, like he expects them to eat me. “The Council of Grand Magi will tell you themselves.”

Here it goes again—

Nariel squeezes my hand.

I look at him, and he lifts his eyebrows.

I blink, suddenly taken aback.

In a way, I’d still played into the grand magi’s game yesterday. I’d presented myself to them for their approval. But they don’t approve of me , or Nariel. Or anyone from Low Earth and Dark Earth. So what is this going to accomplish?

Am I going to make them like me, or vice versa? No. Are we going to make any strides toward solving the problem if we spend the whole time getting digs in, or if I have to fight through another gauntlet again? Also no.

I’m already here, whether they like it or not, and I don’t actually answer to them.

Slowly, like I’m testing whether I’m actually physically able to say this out loud, I reply, “No, I don’t think I will follow you.”

The official freezes. “Excuse me?”

Honestly, I’m right there with him.

So it’s Nariel who continues, “Grand Magus Evram is informed of our progress. Has Lord Destien already reported the list of locations we’re to investigate first?”

Right. That’s the only thing we actually need from them at this point.

Not making a point of reminding people here that we are on the grand magi’s shit list.

Also not making relations worse so they actively start attacking us, which we certainly would with more exposure.

Or is this refusal making them worse?

And do I need to make them worse than I already have, actually, in order to make them better?

I am so unprepared for this.

The official finally manages, simultaneously both incredulous and disdainful, “As Lord Destien is an adept magus in good standing and understands protocol—“ which is to say, not ignoring summons from the grand magi ”—I have no doubt that he has. Perhaps the grand magi will deign to share that information with you at the meeting.”

He has no idea what we’re talking about.

“Perhaps,” Nariel says smoothly, “you might request that list on our behalf, so that we might get started on it promptly. The better to not waste the grand magi’s time.”

“You do not make requests of the grand magi,” the man snaps. “If you’re wasting the grand magi’s time, that is your problem, not mine.”

Nariel probably doesn’t care about that attitude directed at him, but I do.

Making it worse it is.

Probably I shouldn’t make all important political decisions on spite?

“I suggest you take that up with Lord Destien,” I say. “Because if I have to take it up with the Council, they’re not going to like it.”

His expression is aghast. “Is that a threat ? Against the grand magi?”

“It’s a promise,” I say. “By the time I get back from breakfast—“

“Back?” Now he’s scrambling. “You can’t leave —“

”—that list will be ready for me. That’s how long they have to actually give a shit about their own people dying and try to help .”

“You don’t know that they’re not already—“

“An invitation to report,” Narial interrupts him, “is quite clear in its intention. We are not their vassals. Of course, if they don’t need the full time it takes us to acquire food for Sierra—“

“There’s a food hall downstairs,” he snaps.

”—we will certainly accept the list sooner. But one way or another, we will have that list by the time we return.“ Nariel’s shadows spill around him, and the official takes a step back.

I take the opportunity to close the door in his face.

Nariel’s shadows vanish, and he stands there in all his naked glory. Oh, gods.

Then he says, “That went well, I thought.”

I burst out laughing.

Nariel takes the opportunity to wrap his wings around me and kiss me.

Making out with a demon in a grand magi guest room while casually wearing a mage robe is decadent and surreal in a way it’s difficult for me to describe. This isn’t even the life I used to dream of, because it never would have occurred to me that this was even possible.

I jump up, wrapping my legs around him. “We really should get moving,” I murmur against his lips, “but I need to shower first.”

Shadows deftly remove the robe from my shoulders. I don’t know why I’m surprised by Nariel’s dexterity with them anymore—I have intimately experienced what they can do—but this is like, a pinching motion. Flickering is one thing, but that’s next level.

Nariel’s huff of amusement calls me back to him. “Here I am, ready for the taking—“

“Hey, I can appreciate more than one part of you at the same time.”

He grins. “Then speaking of multitasking—“

We disperse into shadow and reappear in the shower still wrapped around each other, though he’s vanished his wings to fit.

“Let’s make sure we can both focus today,” Nariel says as he turns on the water with a burst of magic.

Hot water cascades down from above us. I lever myself up on Nariel’s shoulders briefly while he positions himself, and then I slide down on him, my eyes fluttering shut as he fills me slowly, inexorably, Nariel releasing an oath under his breath.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that I need no preparation to take him inside me like this. Like I’m hardly a sex expert, but there is very clearly magic at work here.

It’s so good, every time. I flex my hips for more friction, going from zero to desperate for him impossibly fast.

At least I’m not alone. Nariel walks us back until my back hits the wall and then he drives up into me harder. I scramble against him, trying to take him closer, deeper.

Then his shadows are there, spreading my legs wider.

I never really understood moaning with sex, but the sound that tears out of me now is not one that a couple days ago I knew I could make.

And I feel not just desire, then, but Nariel’s fierce satisfaction as he thrusts into me again, and again, and again.

Magic boils up inside me—not me taking his magic from him, just an effect of the bond combining it, our joining rejuvenating me and filling me to the brim. I have just enough presence of mind to think fire very hard so that I don’t electrocute us in the shower as magic pours out of me, turning the water to steam as my climax breaks over me, inner muscles tightening around Nariel’s cock and milking him.

He slams a hand into the wall behind us and I hear it crack, and this time it’s my satisfaction surging. Nariel’s shadows bear my knees up higher as he chases his finish and another surge hits me.

Dimly, I hear the sound of shattering, feel Nariel’s shadows close around me like a cocoon.

I clamp my mouth on his neck to keep the sound in as I shudder over him—right this second I can’t remember if my shield is up to blocking the sound of screaming—but that in turn makes him yell as he spills into me in one huge burst.

Nariel continues to move, slowing down, and then finally slipping out and releasing my legs until they slide down to the ground because they do not now have the wherewithal to hold themselves around him.

We stand there for a minute, holding each other, panting. Nariel kisses my forehead, and my fingers tighten on his arms.

But then the minute passes. Nariel’s shadows around us disperse, and I remember that if I want to keep him, I have work to do.

Even if Nariel looks like a god with steam rising off his shoulders.

I visibly shake myself, feeling Nariel’s combined amusement and satisfaction and—longing, I think?—as I consciously build myself a mental wall and reach for the soap.

Only then do I notice there aren’t shower walls around us anymore. “What—“

“They shattered and then started to melt.”

I blink. “You made a crater, and I melted the walls ?”

His eyes dance with laughter.

I’m not so amused though. His shadows had to protect me from whatever molten glass feels like.

Because even though I’m trying, I don’t actually have any idea how to control this power I now have access to, or even just channel it safely.

There are more ways I can hurt him.

I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed again, like they might be infinite.

That douses my happy post-sex feelings fast.

“Is the bond really settling?” I ask him.

“Are you asking if you’re going to want to stop having sex with me?” he asks.

I don’t even smile. “Obviously not. But this isn’t... safe? What if I hurt us?”

“You didn’t hurt us at the moment of our bonding, when you were at your most out-of-control,” Nariel reminds me. “And I didn’t kill you, either.”

I frown at that phrasing. “You also didn’t hurt me. Like yes, that was unpleasant briefly while I adapted, but I wasn’t injured, Nariel.”

“As the person who heard you screaming as a consequence of my magic, allow me to differ in my assessment,“ he growls. “But my point is that everything after that will be easier. And recall that you’re not the only one responsible for us.”

“Will it be easier, or will it cumulatively wear on my control?” I ask. A flash of something from Nariel, too swift for me to identify the feeling. “And what’s with our sharing emotions—it seems kind of random, doesn’t it? Like sometimes it’s intensity of feeling, I think, but not always?”

We each start washing ourselves, apparently by unspoken agreement that if we touch each other again we’re not leaving the shower. Sexy bathing each other will have to wait.

I also don’t want to destroy the shower entirely—the likelihood of needing to wash blood off on this trip is high, and I can’t decide if it will be mortifying or hilarious to ask Destien for a new shower because I broke it with sex—and apparently I can’t be trusted not to.

Sierra Walker: Can’t take a shower without destroying it, but definitely trust her with the fate of three worlds!

Oy.

“Ah,” Nariel says. “I think that’s normal.”

“You think ?”

Nariel glances down at me, a strange expression on his face. “I’ve never bonded before you, Sierra.”

I knew that, but somehow hearing him say it out loud sends hot satisfaction—oh gods, do I have a territoriality problem, too?—ripping through me, and at the same time my chest warms.

Nariel clearly feels it too—though he doesn’t seem to feel my anxiety and frustration, so maybe the bond has a sex agenda – because he grins at me, sending another zing straight to my heart and also other places.

I shake my head. I can’t even look at him anymore.

“My knowledge of bonds is mostly theoretical,” Nariel says as if I didn’t just have to physically stop myself from jumping him again .

The thought makes me want to punch the shower walls I already broke, because even that’s now complicated. I can’t even have sex without breaking shit.

No, on second thought, it makes me want to cry, so I stick my head under the water instead, focusing on Nariel.

“It’s... I have not had the kind of relationships, in Bright Earth or Dark, where people have felt comfortable sharing with me the details of their experiences.”

He sounds embarrassed about this, not sad. Which is how I feel about it, for his sake.

It also means he doesn’t actually know if it’s going to get worse before it gets better—or if it will just keep getting worse.

I glance up at him again, but he’s not looking at me. I pause in lathering my hair and think again about what he just said.

Our relationship always feels so perfect for me , that I forget sometimes that he does actually get something out of being with me, too. He’s even told me before, but I was drawn to him so easily, so completely, and part of that is because we have both been so alone, but I have to stop and take a moment to really understand what that means , for someone his age. To have been outcast and separate, from his own people, and from the people he chose to protect, for centuries .

He’s never had a bond.

He’s also never even had anyone to talk to about being bonded.

I was lamenting never having a peer to work magic with at my level, and that can only be compounded for Nariel.

No one else works shadows at all.

So no matter what, no matter my own anxieties, I’m going to have to figure this shit out, because the one thing I can’t do is push him away. That would hurt him even worse than broken glass.

No pressure.

Definitely not one more precious thing I have a unique ability to break.

I rinse the soap from my hair, my eyes closed as I answer, “It’s probably different for us anyway, since I’m human. We’ll just learn how it works together.”

When I open my eyes, Nariel is watching me with heartbreaking intensity, and I don’t think it’s just him checking me out while water runs down me, though it’s not not that.

I gently float myself up until I can kiss him on the forehead.

Nariel sucks in a breath.

But as I lower myself down, it is definitely the drop on the edge of my nipple that has caught his attention.

I laugh, maybe a little hysterically, and float myself up and out of the remains of the shower before he can catch up to me.

But because he’s maybe the one person I can’t just spell circles around, he dissolves into shadow and reappears in front of me holding out a towel before I get to them.

“I’ll get faster at that,” I tell him.

Nariel grins. “I’m counting on it.”

And somehow, inexplicably, that does make me feel better.

I can rise to a challenge, right?

It’s just that I’m used to the challenges all being magical—and like, spellcraft-magical—not political and social and raw-arcane-energy-magical at the same time.

One thing at a time.

“Come on,” I say. “Let me get dressed so I can show you some of the good food in this city, not what they kept for us drudges in the food hall.”

“I don’t eat,” Nariel reminds me as he finishes deadpan, “food.”

“Are you sure? You’re bonded to a human, remember?”

Nariel blinks, and then his whole face lights up. He starts comically hurrying me along as despite everything I laugh.

I can do some things right.

Maybe not enough of them, but it’s a start.

“ I didn’t know you wanted to eat food,” I say to Nariel as we make our way down the streets.

He’s cloaking us, and I’m keeping an eye out for active spells targeting us.

After some trial and error, we figured out how to modify my defensive spell over the room so angels and spirits can’t get in and out like with the city’s shield, but then also make a temporary tunnel so Nariel could teleport us out of the castle without our having to face all its occupants.

We can’t make the reverse work with the shadow-shield so that I can work magic through it.

After how easy it was to work with Evram, I am frustrated at how hard it is to work magic with the man I have bonded my magic too, so now I’m ignoring it.

Worse, I think Nariel’s frustrated too. Not with the bond, but with me and how I am about it.

I’ll be able to figure it out under pressure, right? I always do.

“I have no interest in having to eat,“ Nariel corrects. “But if I can sample only things that you get enjoyment out of—“

“Big mood.”

He smiles faintly. “Indeed. But I am glad we don’t seem to have transferred each other a need to acquire more kinds of sustenance.”

I wince, and Nariel pats my shoulder in faux-sympathy.

Except maybe one, but we’re not walking in a shield right now and that’s no one else’s business.

Nariel was smiling like he’d made a joke, but seeing that I’m not, I practically feel his eyes narrow on me.

No wonder. He’s probably like, she was fine while we were having sex, and we’re not failing at magic together right now, so what’s the matter?

The matter is I was evidently not fine while we were having sex, nor afterward.

My mood is not improved by the weirdness of walking down the streets of my youth—with a person, and a demon at that, at my side. Not to mention we’re hidden, which has an illicit feeling that I can’t decide if I like or not.

I wanted to be here openly, but I do still get to be here.

At first glance, the city is so much the same that tears of nostalgia sting my eyes. The fairytale castle city of my dreams.

But there are differences. Most of the shops are the same—this close to the castle, they tend to be old businesses with deep connections (read: a history of favors) with long-serving mage officials, though of course there are some new ones, which I explain to Nariel as we pass.

The upkeep has actually gone sharply down, though I imagine that’s more recent. There are many fewer people, too—more like the aftermath of a festival day when everyone sleeps in and the town is quiet.

But it’s a different kind of quiet.

The kind of quiet where people huddle in their houses out of fear.

The kind of quiet of the aftermath of broken-up parties, from, if I were to guess, people treating this like the end times.

This was where I thought home was, but my experience is completely detached from that of people who live here.

I can do something about this situation, and I’m expected to.

I don’t blame them for despair; even in my current circumstances I may not be able to do anything, and the only difference is it’s going to make me go out of my mind rather than hide, so I’m hardly their superior. It’s just weird that now that I can finally go “home,” I’m realizing... not that I never fit here, but that if I felt like I belonged here but didn’t, was it even home then?

Like, yes, I was manipulated and arguably abused. I had no friends. I wasn’t allowed to choose anything but magic.

But magic was the only thing I wanted to choose. I was also excited every day to be here and learning and doing, and even though it was a lie, I thought the most important person in this city was in my corner.

And neither of those ways of looking at my past here is likely to help me now.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Nariel asks me as I peer into dark shops in between scanning for spells.

Answers to existential questions?

“Yes and no,” I say. “Check out those cloaks. They’re shiny . Imagine how cool I would look shooting lightning in a shiny cloak, Nariel.“ I give him a critical look. “Sparkling might give your shadows away, I suppose.”

His lips quirk. “Shall we test that?”

I sigh. “I suppose not.” He cocks his head to one side as I start us walking again. “I had an allowance when I lived here, which I now realize was very small considering I didn’t, like, earn a salary that someone normally would for the work I was doing. But people would probably have had a wealthy patron to even get to that position, and I thought of it like Evram believing in me so much he took on that role for me. I always ended up using it on necessities—saving up for new boots, things like that—which at the time I thought meant a grand magus trusted me to take care of myself and gave me the tools I needed to do so.”

“Where in actuality that never even occurred to him, and he was just giving you token amounts as symbolic largesse.”

“Yeah.” I pause. Another part of my childhood that was a lie; another way I was exploited by one of the people I now expect to take me seriously.

Like the functional equivalent of giving an employee a Starbucks card rather than an actual raise.

“Anyway, if I had any left over I’d get custard tarts. They’re similar to the kinds of tarts you can get in Portugal or China in Low Earth, but they come in these cool colors that literally sparkle. And I was a child, right? That’s always how it was for me—attracted to the sparkly shiny thing. And voilà.”

The café is still here. And it looks as warm and bright inside as ever, but—

“Shit.”

He frowns at me in alarm, feeling my excitement drop like a stone. “What’s the matter?”

I look wide-eyed at him and blurt, “I forgot to ask for local money.”

Nariel scowls. “Good.”

Then without warning he dispels the cloak, making it look like we’ve just appeared in the middle of the street, and stalks up to the outdoor kiosk window and then snaps out his wings.

The person at the window stumbles back a step.

“We’re here at the behest of Lord Destien, working on a special project directly with the Council of Grand Magi,” Nariel informs the gaping cashier. “Please send the bill to Lord Destien’s office, and he’ll see it taken care of. Can you do that?”

Oh. That is probably what visiting dignitaries do here, isn’t it?

I grit my teeth against a surge of irrational frustration. This is what I wanted before, wasn’t it? For him to help me at my side rather than just watching me blunder? For us to supplement each other as a team?

Well, I guess that explains my problem now. I’m supposed to be the High Earth expert, and what am I bringing to the table, exactly?

I don’t know how to navigate this society not as a victim.

Dazedly, still staring at Nariel’s wings, the cashier nods.

“Now, we would like...” He raises his eyebrows at me expectantly.

And there’s something else in his gaze that tells me he caught some of that feeling and is just daring me to let it out.

I blink. “Oh. Diamond flavor custard tarts please.”

Nariel’s forehead furrows. “What?”

“You know—oh, maybe you don’t.” What must it have been like, to experience Low Earth culture all these years without eating food? “It’s kind of like how in the US there’s like. Generic blue flavor. Sometimes they call it blue raspberry, but that’s not real, so it’s really just—“

“Blue raspberries are a real thing,” Nariel tells me.

I blink. “What? No they aren’t.”

He stares at me.

I stare back.

He’s serious.

“You’re... you’re sure?”

It’s not enough that my High Earth childhood has been flipped upside down, but now my Low Earth childhood, too?

Nariel nods like I’m insane.

How does he also know Low Earth better than I do? Argh.

“Okay, I have further questions for the internet when we return, but I’m going to guess that actual? Blue raspberries? Don’t taste like the flavor of the slurpee. Which is like flavored crushed ice.”

“I know what a slurpee is.”

“Why in the world do you know what a slurpee is?”

“Sierra.”

So many further questions. “Anyway, diamond flavor here is like that—it looks kind of iridescent but has a made-up flavor, not like actual rocks.”

“So the first food I’m going to try,” Nariel says slowly, “is a made-up magical flavor.”

I nod. “Yes. That’s correct.”

Nariel stares at me.

I stare back.

The cashier stares at both of us.

Nariel slowly turns back to them. “Diamond tarts, please. Enough for several days.”

Because we may not get to come back.

The cashier practically shovels them into a bag for us and thrusts it through the window, and then they back away before either one of the insane people outside can ask anything else of them.

I stare after them with something like pain spearing my chest. Like, this is kind of funny.

But even though logically I could tell myself it wasn’t possible, deep down some part of me still wanted to be able to come back to High Earth and feel the same way about it as I did as a child. I wanted the same sense of living in a magical place, of being the special one.

But I’m not a tolerated outsider now; I’m a threat.

That’s through my own choices. I can’t ever capture the feeling of being a child again because I’m an adult and am responsible for myself now, and in general I’m happy with that.

But.

I still wanted to visit that café again, but as a person who was there by my own power, not Evram’s.

But my own power is what would keep me apart from everyone inside the café, and the target on my back might even make them hostages, and my choices mean we do have other things to do rather than sitting around leisurely eating. It wouldn’t be productive.

But I still want to, which makes me feel stupid.

“I promise I’ll let you take me to a restaurant another time,” Nariel says, apparently catching the melancholy but not the reason for it.

“It won’t be the same in Low Earth where no one knows you can eat them,” I lament lightly.

He flashes a grin at me but then dissipates us to the shop where I’d been ogling the cloaks.

“After you,” he tells me.

I blink. “I don’t think it’s open.”

He sighs, a very put-upon sound, and then dissipates us inside the shop.

Maybe the cashier was right, and we are insane. “What are we doing, exactly?”

“You are not a child living on the afterthought scraps of a fool too self-centered to appreciate the gift that landed in his lap. Not anymore. You want a shiny cloak? You can have a shiny cloak .”

Oh.

I swallow, looking around.

And notice there’s no one to actually pay, but maybe I can leave a note so Destien can settle up with them later?

It’s... really sweet of Nariel to be mad on my behalf, but I do not really know where to begin.

Do I deserve to get a shiny cloak if I haven’t solved the problems of the universe?

I wince. It sounds stupid when I think it out loud like that, even if it’s how I feel.

“I’m not sure we have time for this,” I say instead.

Nariel isn’t telepathic, but there are moments when he’s close enough because he says, “You don’t want to wait to build the kind of world you want. In that world, do you get to have nice things even though foolish humans want to make you feel small first?”

A beat.

“Appealing to my sense of spite is low,” I inform him.

“When you’re willing to do nice things for yourself without being blackmailed into it, I’ll adjust my tactics.”

“Wow. Burn, Nariel.”

“Sierra, pick a cloak. ”

Argh. Fine.

There are lots of shiny cloaks, it turns out.

It’s amazing that when you finally have the option to actually look at possibilities, they’re kind of horrifyingly everywhere.

“What kind of cloak do you like?“ I ask.

“On you?”

“No, you. I need a way to narrow down. I want to get something that will match with you.”

“You should get what you want, Sierra,“ Nariel practically growls at me. “What cloak would you have wanted as a child?”

“As you just reminded me, I’m not a child anymore,” I snap back.

“Are you telling me you don’t want a shiny cloak anymore?”

“No, I’m telling you that what I wanted was somewhere I could be myself and belong. And that’s with you. So.”

Nariel’s eyes go black.

I back up quickly. “No sex in someone’s store, that’s weird!”

His lips curve, and he holds out a hand.

I take it.

Obviously. I don’t care enough about propriety to turn him away.

But all he does is wrap me in a hug, and I sigh and hold onto him in return.

Despite our differences—different species, different worlds, different centuries, different magic—in this we are perfectly matched.

Cast out from Bright Earth, never accepted in Dark Earth. He never had a place to be all of himself with, either.

I just wish that were enough to bridge the gap of getting my magic to work with his. If I had that, maybe I wouldn’t worry so much about where I fit in High Earth or Low Earth or in the whole Diamond Universe.

Even though we’re bonded, it feels like that isn’t settled, either.

But I spend a minute just breathing him in, because while I might be attracted to the bright shiny café and glittery cloaks, a dark abandoned shop is where I’ll feel most content as long as Nariel is in it with me.

I finally mumble into his chest, “I am actually hungry.”

His chest shakes with his laughter as he releases me and passes me the sack of diamond tarts.

I extract one, take a bite, and close my eyes, savoring a taste I haven’t had in years . It’s sweeter than I remember, but my guess is that’s because my taste buds have continued maturing since I left adolescence. The tarts themselves are probably the same; it’s just my perspective that’s changed.

I refuse to not love them just as fiercely.

And I resolve right then, that no matter how frustrated I get with our bond, I need to make sure Nariel always knows that I love him just as fiercely.

When I open my eyes, Nariel has stepped in close again, watching me intently.

I’m not sure if I had an especially ecstatic expression on my face or if he just loves watching me savor life.

But since he’s so close, reminding myself I still have a whole bag, I hold the rest of the tart up to him.

Carefully, he takes a bite.

A lot of tiny expressions flicker across his face, too fast to track except that clearly he does not know what to make of this.

Didn’t knock it out of the park on the first try, apparently. The metaphor here is maybe too on-the-nose.

But in this, unlike my getting superpowered magic to work, it’s okay. He doesn’t have to like all the same things as me for us to work together. Right?

“Once you’ve sampled some more things, let me know what you think,” I say. “We can come back and compare—“

My stomach drops.

Unless I fuck it up, and I can never come back to High Earth again. Or there’s no High Earth to come back to, or no us to come back—

Nariel pushes the rest of the tart into my mouth.

I glare at him while I try to chew. I hadn’t even been worrying out loud, he didn’t need to physically shut me up!

He smirks. “It worked though, didn’t it?”

If I didn’t know he wasn’t telepathic...

“No, true telepathy isn’t a side effect of the bond.”

AND YET.

“Over time we may be able to read each other’s emotions well enough to approach some semblance of that,” Nariel says. “But in the meantime we’re also getting used to how we each think in the nonmagical sense.”

True. The old-fashioned way—by talking and sharing ourselves intentionally, even when it’s messy.

Fuck. Is that why the bond is like this with all the sex?

What if the way we get our bond to work better together is to work better together?

Okay. Okay. We are going to do a low-stakes thing together. For practice.

I finally swallow, and hold out a hand.

Nariel takes it.

I hold out my other hand and say, “This one’s for the bag of diamond tarts.”

He snorts and passes it to me. “Will this be enough to hold you for several days?”

“I should probably acquire actual nutrition at some point so I don’t get sick, so maybe,” I hedge, casting a light before taking him to wander around the store and peering at options.

Predictably, now that I’m trying to do something with him, I feel completely frozen.

Am I trying to do it with him, though? Like, together, or just next to him? It feels like the difference should be obvious to me, but I can’t even tell. Probably a bad sign.

And if I try to do things with him just to make a bond work, does that negate the whole thing? I do still want to get to know him though, so does it matter if my motives are impure?

I have the awful thought that maybe the bond was a mistake.

Maybe it was too soon for us. Maybe I needed to be more powerful on my own first. Nariel would reject these maybes, but if I tell him he’ll think I’m rejecting him, when it’s the opposite.

I don’t want to choose him for the bond. I don’t even know if that’s what’s happening.

He’s watching me intently, and I realize I’ve been frozen for the last several moments.

I hope he didn’t pick up on any of that.

Abruptly I ask, “Do you actually like the color black, or is that, like, branding?”

“Both,” Nariel says with some amusement. “Though I suppose the branding came first. It’s what people expect from a shadow demon.”

“Even when you were in Bright Earth?” I ask casually. He doesn’t volunteer much about his past, and he’s always so brief when he does. But little by little I am adding to my picture of him. Non -magically.

Who ever thought I’d want to do something without magic?

“Especially then. Shadow magic isn’t glamorous; it’s magic that’s used for sneaking. So when I tried to hide it, everyone trusted me less. I started spying on higher-ups in part because I was so bored , because I wasn’t welcome with others.”

He sounds distracted, like this is all of no consequence.

I know better.

“And if they were going to hate you anyway,” I say, “you might as well get something from it.”

“Indeed. Eventually I learned to use the expectations of me as a kind of armor, I suppose. And a declaration. So.”

He finds what looks like a short mage’s robe—similar to a haori, just a little longer.

Hmm, that could work. It suggests magic worker without being quite so recognizable as a normal mage robe. And I could still move freely in it, which makes it superior to a cloak.

“Would we need to cut slits for your wings, or do they, like, poke through?”

“Cut. I generally use my shadows to mask where the slit is.”

How did I not even know that? “Oh, I can fix that. Hang on.”

I rifle through the options with a different goal.

Forget low stakes. Of course I can’t do low stakes. Nariel tried to take me to get a shiny cloak for myself and I can’t even do that without making a Thing of it, but if I can only do things the hard way, maybe that’s just who I am.

I swing one robe on and hand him the other.

The robes are black but with a pattern of glowing gold lines. Like magic—but also like the lightning that comes to me so naturally. Each of them magically sizes itself to our bodies.

Gods, I miss magical tailoring.

I step over to the mirror, Nariel following me, and look at us both there.

A clear declaration that we’re together. A unit unto ourselves.

And representing that we’re something together, not just ourselves.

A challenge and a promise, all at once.

A commitment.

We come from different backgrounds, but we’re going to make this work together.

And what we are together is even more dangerous than apart.

Maybe I don’t know how to not make everything a fight, but maybe I can make that work.

Or at least buy myself time to figure out how to be the person who was a victim and the person who is overpowered and the person who is out of her depth and the person who wants to fit and also not to fit and the person who fights about everything and the person who has always been a loner and the person who needs everyone to work together at the same time.

In the reflection I meet Nariel’s gaze. “Matching team uniform fistbump?” I ask lightly.

His lips curve, and he holds up a hand.

But when I hold up my own hand, he bends down and kisses it.

Straight to my core, Jesus Christ.

Nariel’s eyes are dancing as he lifts his head back, and I think he realizes.

“It’s still weird,” I say, dancing back. “Show me where I need to cut this.”

I fix his robe as Nariel writes out a note for the shop owner about what we took and to settle with Destien, assuming they’re coming back. The longer we’re here, the more abandoned the place seems. So once that’s done, Nariel uses his magic to clean the shop, while I renew the spells warding the building. Separate, doing our own thing, but together. Maybe that’s how I navigate this.

This is an intentional, tactical choice. We may be helping ourselves, but we’re also going to leave things better than we found them. Even if no one is watching. Because I have zero chill.

But efficient as we are, Destien still finds us—or rather, one of his people does.

She lets herself in as if the lock on the door doesn’t exist for her, hands me a gem the size of my fist—easy to manufacture if you’re an advanced spellcrafter, like I’ve been creating diamonds—and a spell recording cube, announces, “With regards from Lord Destien,” bows smartly, and lets herself back out.

I blink.

But the spell baked into the rock is a messaging spell.

The first message says, “I don’t have time to chase you around. Keep this on you.”

I would have anyway—this is like being issued a cell phone if you’re going to spend time anywhere in Low Earth—but the way he phrases it makes me not want to.

Which is probably the point. He can’t just give me completely secure spells all the time without those watching wondering what he doesn’t want them to know.

The second message reads, “I’ve attached the list. You will be shocked to learn that not everyone is thrilled about this. Do us both a favor and get some results.”

I motion Nariel over, and he skims the message over my shoulder. “What’s your take?”

“Destien is encountering resistance—I imagine grand magi are beginning to accuse him of incompetence—and needs some leverage to get them off his back,“ he says. “I would take the cube as less of a demand and more of a gesture of faith.”

Noted.

I pull up the list of cross-referenced locations, and one snags my attention for sheer irony.

“Well.” I kind of wish we could go back to last night, when I’d begun to feel safe again being with Nariel, instead of now, where I feel like I’m courting magical disaster by even going near him.

But I always have learned faster under pressure.

So I say, “If there’s one thing I’m good for, it’s getting goddamn results.”

Nariel’s jaw tightens, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Maybe he’s feeling some of what I’m feeling after all.

But he doesn’t call me out, and I don’t push him either, and as if that means we’re in accord and super ready to go debut as a powerhouse team, we go to catch an angel.