Unsteadily, she told him, “It’s great. It’s just a huge adjustment. The last time I tried telepathy earrings, I couldn’t get the shop assistant out of my head fast enough, but you’re different. I… I trust you.” Even though she had said it softly, the last three words seemed to echo in the music hall. He had gone silent and tense. Listening to the implications in what she had just said, she added lamely, “At least, for tonight, I do.”
He released the breath she had sensed him holding. Good. Now, you try talking to me. Just reach out, like you would if you looked across the room and tried to catch my gaze.
She thought that through for a moment. Then she shouted, HELLO? ARE YOU THERE?
He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. Then he burst out laughing. The sound was so foreign to anything thus far that they had shared together, she stared.
Why, yes. His telepathic voice sounded strangled. I am indeed right here, and you just made a hell of a noise. Try to tone it down next time.
Sorry, she said loudly, scowling from the intensity of concentration. Is this better?
He laughed harder. There’s no need to strain, or shout, and for God’s sake, don’t make faces like that! In fact, you can whisper telepathically, and I would hear you perfectly fine.
Her scowl deepened, but she didn’t really mind him laughing at her. It sounded good and healthy, almost as if they were enjoying themselves as they carried on a normal conversation about normal things.
God, she wished they could have a normal conversation about normal things. Whatever normal might mean to him. She was sure any conversation she had with him would be as exotic as the ones they’d already shared. She just wanted to talk with him and be easy together without having everything feeling fraught with impending doom. The brief moment of levity made her aware just how starved she was for more.
Heaving a gusty sigh, she whispered, How’s this?
Still intense, but much better, he told her. We can practice as much as you like.
“That would be good,” she said aloud, quietly. “I need to be sure I don’t look like a grimacing fool when I telepathize, but how do I know I’m going to reach you instead of someone else?”
He switched to speaking aloud too. “That’s easier than you might think. If you focus on me, you will contact me. If you focus on someone else—for example, Kallah, Modred, Isabeau, a guard, or one of the dogs—you would contact them. But of course, the dogs don’t have telepathy, so you wouldn’t get a response back.”
“Oh, of course,” she echoed with a touch of sarcasm, when in fact she didn’t know any such thing. As far as she knew, every dog in Avalon could have been a telepathic, talking dog.
“Just remember, the earrings have a range of about twice the size of this music hall,” he told her. “More like the size of the castle great hall. If you can’t contact me, I’m not in range. We can practice as much as you like until you’re completely comfortable with it.”
“Maybe later. I’m getting a headache,” she murmured as she glanced at the lute on the table. Her earlier glee evaporated, leaving her feeling dull and afraid. “The earrings are wonderful, and I’m glad you thought of them, but they’re not going to solve my immediate problem.”
That whole impending-doom thing had to go and rear its ugly head again.
“No, they’re not, are they?” He strode over to the table and fingered the lute. “But I think I know what will.”
She hated not knowing what to call him. It was bugging her more and more as time passed. She even hated it more than not being able to see what he looked like. She had grown accustomed to the play of shadows across his face, attuned to the nuances and shifts in emotion in his body language and in his quietly murmured words.
As odd as it sounded, she had even grown accustomed to touching him and being touched. She had more than grown accustomed. She looked forward to it. She… yearned for it. His touch brought comfort and reassurance at a time when she badly needed both.
Every time his fingers brushed her skin, it was like sunlight and fresh, sparkling water to a dying plant. She needed food to survive, but when he touched her, it nourished her in ways that nothing else ever had.
By comparison, not knowing his name was growing to feel like sand in a shallow cut. It was abrasive and wrong. And assigning an arbitrary name to him didn’t help.
Fred. John. Thomas. They were all empty syllables that carried no meaning.
Magic Man. At least that had meaning.
“Okay, Magic Man,” she said as she walked over to his side. “What’s next?”
* * *
Magic Man.
When he heard the nickname she had given him, he smiled.
She had been traumatized in a way that few people ever endured. She was still in danger, afraid, and vulnerable to the malignant forces all around her, and yet here she walked toward him, ready to hear what he had to say.
Bravery wasn’t facing something you knew you could vanquish, he thought. Bravery was facing the impossible and saying, what’s next?
“I know a spell,” he told her.
She chuckled quietly and touched his shoulder in a quick, affectionate gesture. “Of course you do. What is it?”
“It’s actually a battle spell,” he replied. “You can transfer your skills to another person for a battle. The effects are temporary, and the spell is draining for both people, so it isn’t something anyone would cast lightly. In battle, using it tends to be an act of desperation, in an all-or-nothing kind of scenario, because if you’re in a situation where you need to cast it, it’s unlikely either participant will survive anyway. The times I’ve seen it used were when warriors were battling for the greater good. One badly wounded soldier cast the spell to transfer his abilities to a younger man. They both died that day, but they were able to guard a narrow pass long enough for reinforcements to arrive, which saved their settlement from an invading force.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, and he sensed her shiver. “Sounds grim.”
Putting an arm around her, he drew her against his side. “It is, rather. But here’s the thing—I’ve played both the lute and the harp before. Once, I played them quite well. But that was quite a long time ago.”
As she tilted back her head, he caught a shadowed glimpse of her sparkling, elegant eyes. “Just how old are you?”
“Very old,” he replied. “I stopped aging when I was thirty-seven. That was when Isabeau trapped me with the geas.”
Leaning against him, she turned her face into his shoulder and sighed. “I daydream about tearing her face off.”
That was so unexpectedly bloodthirsty, he coughed out a laugh. “As do I,” he told her. Obeying an impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely, he pressed his lips to her forehead and said against her soft, creamy skin, “As do I.”
Whenever she came close, he wanted to touch her, stroke her face, cradle her slender body against his, rest his cheek on top of her head. Touching her had awakened a hunger he hadn’t felt in centuries, or perhaps ever.
In his human life, he had been self-contained and autonomous, driven by his intellectual passions, the pursuit of magic, and the brilliant realization of political ambitions. Sex had been enjoyable but not something he had obsessed over, and he hadn’t needed the kind of physical demonstrations of affection that so many other people seemed to need from their lovers.
This compulsion to touch Sidonie was completely foreign to him. He didn’t understand why he had grown to need it or why it had to be her that he touched.
But it did have to be her. He wasn’t interested in seeking or offering comfort to anyone else.
Frowning, he loosened his hold on her shoulders. “The only way to know if the spell will work is to try it. Which instrument do you want to focus on?”
She blew out a sigh. “It should be the lute. I’ll have the best chance to learn and play that quickly—or at least quicker than the other instruments. I’d enjoy exploring the harp, but that will take more time.”
He liked and respected the confidence with which she spoke about her musical ability as she assessed the challenges in front of her and what she could do to meet them. When it came to music, she knew herself very well. Right now, her attitude was akin to that of a master swordsman surveying a battlefield.