“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Feeling your soul.” He said under his breath.

I frowned at him. What’s that mean?

“Hawk?”

“I told you, you’d understand eventually, Mary Mage. When mages link, they exchange magic. Enhancing their own.”

“I don’t understand.” I shifted slightly. Feeling achingly vulnerable with him still resting inside me but unmoving.

Seeming more interested in sensing me than in filling me.

“Every mage has magic.” He lifted a hand with fingers spread wide to symbolize one’s magic.

“It has gaps in the things it can’t do and the knowledge the mage doesn’t have.” He outlined the spaces between his fingers with the pointer of his other hand. “But when they link then her magic can seep in and seal those gaps.”

He linked his other hand upside down through the first so the space between was filled. “Like this.”

“But what about her?” I queried.

Meaning me.

“It is the same for her.” He dropped his hands. “She gets the pieces of me to fill what she lacks.”

I eyed him wondering if he was being vain. But I glimpsed only sincerity on his face. And as strange as it sounded, I could feel he was being truthful. As if his every sensation was wholly open for me to view.

We’re linked.

He was right. But it meant so much more than him merely being connected within me.

I suddenly felt immeasurably exhausted. Feeling overly vulnerable. Both in the position I was in on my knees and with his magic linked to mine until I felt every bit of our spirits were touched. And something inside me felt his touch of weakness.

His exhaustion. I realized that was what I was feeling. His need to protect something yet still make Warlord proud made him feel weary.

Like he has to constantly be on guard.

And in that moment, I knew that the thing he had such drive to protect…Was me…

***

The shock of that realization was dumbfounding.

He wants to protect me?

And I’d thought that being everything Warlord wanted him to be came easily to him. That he was a trained soldier.

Willing to obey Warlord’s every command.

Realizing he was more than a bully, a man who felt anxious and insufficient, was not something I’d ever considered.

I thought he was a monster. I envisioned every time he’d barked at me.

“Failing! You’re failing Mary Mage!” He’d shouted down the line. Sounding so cruel.

Now I saw into his mind, his emotions and felt what he did when he behaved that way.

He’d desperately wanted me to do better. Knowing the things that could happen to me as I failed as an Indo mage. Seeing the readiness to give up on my face he’d bellowed at me and saw the rage flare on my face.

Determination to make him eat his words.

Perhaps to make him minutely proud of me. I hated that admonition in my mind.

***

I felt my lower body clench down on him and was reminded that as we’d sat and had such an odd conversation, he was still residing inside me and my body wanted him to be moving rather than holding so painfully still.

“Hawk.” My head dropped and I looked at the grass below me.

“Mary?” He matched my whispering tone. The hint of worry in his.

“Finish with me please. I can’t take any more of this.”

“Being linked to me or me taking you.”

“Either.” I knew my voice was barely audible, but it was all I could muster that moment.

“Why do you see me as so horrible?”

I was quiet refusing to answer him.

“I could make you tell me, you know.”

“You could make me do a lot of things.” I said, defeated.

***

“No, Mary.” He withdrew from me. “I’m guilty of many things but I’ll not let you resent me for offering you what I am. Especially not now that you know.” He withdrew from me and stood.

I rose on trembling legs. Righting my clothes as I refused to meet his gaze.

“Look at me, Mary.”

I didn’t.

So he put a crooked finger under my chin. Lifting my face until I met his gaze.

“What?”

“I am going to teach you what you’re capable of. Even you will not stop me.”

“Why?”

“Because if you truly do fail. He will kill you.” Hawk swept a hand toward that chamber with the balcony.

Warlord.

I knew Hawk was right. It was nothing to Warlord to have us killed if we underperformed. Even though we were of his kind, he seemed to consider us inferior.

All of us except Hawk.

***

“Why is he the way he is?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Warlord?”

“Yes.”

“Cold, you mean?”

“Yes.” I affirmed.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure he’s any humanity at all.” Hawk admitted.

“Without humanity you can’t have loyalty.” I murmured. “So why would he serve King Detry then?”

“From what little I do know, it’s because he has no choice in the matter.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know about him?” I was curious and willing to take advantage of Hawk’s strange inclination to talk tonight. Usually, he was unwilling to tell me much of anything.

Hawk sighed. “What I do know is that when I was a very young mage. The best that the King had before Warlord, the King asked me to design a containment spell. I did.”

“What did the spell do?”

“Reduced a creature’s size and appearance to allow it to be kept within a chambered jar.”

“Soon after that, Warlord came to be his Commander.”

“What did the King use the spell to capture.”

“I’d love to know.” Hawk shook his head in wonder. “But there’s rumors he keeps the sacred jar in his maze of chambers within the walls. Somewhere Warlord can’t sense it and can’t track it because of the dampness of the inner walls.”

“Water blocks us trying to use magic from any distance.” I said aloud.

Hawk nodded.

“The King used your spell to force Warlord as his slave? How does Warlord not hate you?”

“I think he does. That’s why I’m his Second in Command.”

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