Eli woke Nick at their first stop for water, and her son came to with a yawn, a stretch, and a smile that quickly turned to a confused frown as he looked around at the darkening woods.

  “It’s dinner time!” he observed, looking up at Mara, little brows knit together.

  “It is,” Mara said, reaching out to pull him into her arms when Eli handed him over. She cuddled him close, nuzzling her cheek against his. “You had a long nap!”

  If Nick sensed anything was amiss—that his abnormally long nap had coincided with a terrifying and cataclysmic Depths-defying experience—he gave no indication. As soon as they were off once more, and he was perched on Eli’s shoulders, right returned swiftly to his world. He kept up a steady stream of chatter, regaling them with an indecipherable combination of babble and clear but contextless snippets of speech. Mara and Eli nodded and hummed and made vague exclamations whenever it seemed like he expected engagement. But otherwise, they simply walked, Mara in front with the compass, Eli behind with the chattering boy.

  They walked until dark began to seep up the trunks of the trees and ooze from between the branches. Then they stopped and made camp, eating a paltry meal of salted meat, hard cheese, and stale crackers. Nick fell asleep just after eating with his head on Mara’s lap and his feet wedged beneath Eli’s leg.

  “I expected him to be up all night,” Mara mused, combing a lock of her son’s dark hair behind his ear and studying the soft, cherished lines of his profile. “He slept half the day.”

  “Not proper sleep,” Eli said, grimacing as he placed his discarded jacket over the sleeping boy. “I used a healing technique, not a persuasive one. I didn’t harm him,” he promised, when she glanced up at him with alarm. “It’s just a different method. I can mimic real sleep with persuasion, but it takes continuous effort and I didn’t want him waking if we…I didn’t know what was going to happen. If we–”

  “I understand,” she interrupted, and he fell silent. And in that silence, she felt his brewing contrition–bubbling, acidic stuff that burned her own gut with echoes of shame and self recrimination. Odd, that she could sense it so acutely. Then again, given what had happened today, perhaps it wasn’t odd at all. What she really couldn’t wrap her head around was why he felt such potent shame.

  “Mara, I’m sorry.”

  She leaned back on her hands, studying his profile. “For what?”

  “For using persuasive magic on you. I swore to you I wouldn’t.”

  Mara fought the reflexive smile that tightened her cheeks, pressing her lips together to hide it. “Eli, tell me you’re not serious.”

  He bowed his head, face dropping into shadows. “I made you a promise.”

  “Okay, well… I’m cancelling the promise. You made it to a version of me that didn’t know you from the grocer, but things are different now and they have been for a while. I trust you, now.”

  He lifted his face and his eyes found hers. “And I violated that trust.”

  “In order to save our lives.”

  “I should have asked you first.”

  Mara barked out a laugh that slashed like a knife blade through the softly chirping darkness of the forest. “I was too far gone to answer. So were you, for that matter. You had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Okay, fine, there’s always a choice. And I expect you to always choose the option that keeps my son alive. Preferably me, too. And yourself. Which you did.”

  “Mara, I’m being serious.”

  “So am I.” Leaning her weight on one arm, she raised the other and swept her hand through the air. “You’re forgiven for your nonexistent breach of my trust. The price of my forgiveness is that you are no longer permitted to feel sorry.”

  “But–”

  “Ever.”

  He scowled, but his mouth twitched with a suppressed smirk. “What if–”

  “About anything.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He didn’t make any further attempts to argue, and they faded back into mutual, exhausted silence. Mara would have thought her nerves would be drawn tighter after what they’d just survived, but the reality turned out to be quite the opposite. They felt like overcooked noodles inside her.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired,” she mumbled, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.

  He smiled wryly. “I’m not surprised. I don’t even know how to classify what you did today.”

  “I think I do,” Mara said, grinning when his eyebrows shot up with unabashed interest. She so loved sharing knowledge, and she’d come to appreciate how readily Eli received it—the way he’d wander off with what she’d told him and return hours or days later with questions and new discussion points, as if he’d been chewing on it.

  “Well?” he prompted.

  “I have a collection of books from the sages of Ralin—well, had until someone burned my house down—“

  “I’ve said I’m sorry for that.”

  “Less than a sentence in my story, and you’re already interrupting and breaking my no-apologizing rule?”

  Finally, he smiled. The first real one she’d seen since they’d entered the Smokestacks. Maybe before. She knew it was genuine because it crinkled up the corners of his eyes and drew his brows together in an expression of bemused confusion. All of his genuine smiles had that little tinge of curiosity to them, like joy caught him off guard. “Please,” he leaned back on his hands. “Continue.”

  Lifting her chin, she did so. “As I was saying, I have a collection of books written by the wise workers from the Sleepless Glades of southern Ralin. There’s also references to it in journals from Polandria proper, and some ancient Provoncial texts. Really anywhere physiks were or currently are still allowed to prace, there’s been subsects that focus on it. It’s rare, but it’s definitely real.”

  “You still haven’t told me what it is.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. The Ralinian sages call it chaining. I don’t know what the Polandrians call it. But basically, it’s a form of channeling. But the energy being channeled is the magic of an innate user. Like I said, it’s rare. It’s not as if just any physik can channel just any innate magic. The innate user’s natural barriers are too strong. It’s meant to take years of practice just for one pair to get the hang of it.” It was also meant to require profound intimacy between the members of the chain, both physical and emotional. A few rare cases involved twin siblings. All the rest were lovers.

  But she was certainly not going to mention that.

  “Years of practice or a few seconds of mortal terror,” Eli mused, blissfully unaware. “But this is an established practice? Not just a myth?”

  “Definitely. It’s not common, by any means. But there’s been whole manuals written about it.”

  “Hm.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t suppose one of those manuals made it into your pack before I burned your house down, did it?”

  Her lips pressed themselves unbidden into a small smile. “I don’t suppose so, no.”

  With a dramatic sigh, he tipped his head toward her sleeping roll, already laid out and beckoning.

  “You should get some rest. I’ll take the first shift tonight.”

  She scowled. “Every time I let you take the first shift, you let me sleep all night.”

  “Oh no,” he drawled. “You’re onto me.”

  “Eli.”

  “Please, Mara. Forbidden apologies aside, it is meant to be my job to protect you and this is twice now you’ve had to take the reins. Let me do you this kindness tonight. For my pride’s sake, if nothing else.”

  Mara sighed. Truthfully, her sleeping roll was calling to her. Screaming, really. Pleading. Her eyelids sagged just at the prospect of slipping between the covers with Nick safe in her arms. “What if we compromise? You can have the first shift, and you can even take more than your share, but you do still have to wake me before dawn. At least one hour before dawn. And you have to eat a full breakfast and let me break down camp.”

  He met her eyes steadily. “I agree to eat a full breakfast.”

  She narrowed her own eyes and stared back. “I will argue with you about this until we both collapse from exhaustion. Don’t test me.”

  “I’ll eat a full breakfast and I will wake you before dawn.”

  “At least one hour before dawn.”

  “Half an hour.”

  “One hour.”

  “Half.”

  “One.”

  He groaned and dropped his head back as if seeking patience in the trees. Mara grinned. “I win?”

  “You win. One hour before dawn, and a full breakfast. But I’m not sitting like a king and watching you break camp.”

  Mara hadn’t been all that invested in the breaking down of camp, of course. She wasn’t a complete novice at negotiating. Not after spending the better part of her life haggling for ingredients on the shadow-market. She held out her hand.

  His grin showed a glint of teeth as he accepted it. “Deal?”

  “Deal,” she agreed, trying to ignore the prickle of awareness that sparked to life at the feel of his palm against hers, his fingers wrapped around the back of her hand. It felt almost indecent to touch him, even so casually, in the wake of such crashing, enveloping intimacy. Like she risked reigniting a fire that had only just begun to smolder and die.

  Eli tugged his hand from hers with a touch of controlled urgency, and her face heated. Had she been holding his hand too long, lost in thoughts of forbidden intimacy?

  Or, worse, had he felt it too?