"Magelia!"
Chapter 1
Magiere sensed the instant of dawn, though the inn's small room was dark and shuttered. It called her from sleep. This first night with Leesil in her arms lingered in her memory, his shoulder beneath her cheek and her outstretched palm on his chest beneath the blankets. She still feared for him, but perhaps if she kept him always this close, she could keep him safe even from herself.
A more troublesome thought wormed into her awareness. She fought it down, recalling the scent and taste and touch of Leesil in the night, until they'd settled into warm slumber. But the thought wouldn't leave, and perhaps in part it was Leesil's closeness that fed it strength.
Magelia-and Nein'a.
Two mothers waited. One dead, but the second still lived, or so she hoped-for Leesil's sake.
Magiere opened her eyes to see her fingertips peeking from beneath the blanket's edge across Leesil's chest. When she lifted her gaze past his shoulder, still bandaged from their battles, she found his amber eyes looking down at her.
"You're awake," she said.
"I like watching you sleep. It's the only time you're peaceful."
Did he always have to make jokes? Magiere tried to sit up, but his arms closed around her.
"Not yet," he said. "It's early. I don't think the sun is even up."
"It will be soon," she lied, and relaxed back against him.
Her dhampir nature had grown more pronounced in recent days. She felt the sun's presence even when indoors. In the night, the heat Leesil stirred in her made her heightened senses open wide. With only a sliver of moonlight through the window's shutter crack, she'd clearly seen his white-blond hair, narrow face, and lithe body. His amber eyes, almond shaped from his half-elven heritage, were locked upon her. At most times, her unnatural senses frightened or sickened her for what they revealed, but in that night, she hadn't cared so long as all she sensed was him. She was in Leesil's arms, and little else mattered.
Except for two mothers, who'd each left her child with a dark and bloody heritage.
"Did you sleep all right?" she asked.
"A little," he answered.
She knew he might be lying. He often had trouble sleeping, now that he'd stopped drinking. This, as well, was linked to a mother he'd thought dead for years. Magiere peered about the room.
"Where's Chap? Did he stay out all night?"
Leesil smiled. "For once, he showed some manners."
Magiere scowled. She rolled over to reach for the sulfur stick on the bedside table and lit the one candle resting there. The night before, they'd taken this room at the first inn outside Bela, the capital city of Belaski. The three of them had often slept outdoors in past years. Their dog, Chap, would be well enough on his own, but it bothered Magiere that she hadn't thought of him all night.
She rolled back to find Leesil leaning up on one elbow above her. He slid his fingers between hers, a striped pattern of flesh in the mingling. Half-elf and half-undead, they were a strange contrast with his golden-brown skin and white-blond hair and her blood-tinted black tresses and pale flesh. A mischievous smile crossed Leesil's lips, and Magiere lost all concern for the moment. Chap could wait a little longer.
The candlelight revealed their surroundings more clearly.
It was all simple, neat, and pleasant, but it wasn't home- wasn't the Sea Lion tavern in Miiska. Her falchion leaned against the bedside table, close within reach beside the bed on which they lay. Their travel chest and belongings sat under the window, reminding her that soon they would be on the move again.
"What?" he asked.
"Another journey," she answered.
Leesil settled back on the bed, comfortably close as he brushed stands of hair off her face.
"The sages gave me some supplies, but as we get farther north and into the Warlands, restocking could get difficult. More so as we move on to the northern mountains and the Crown Range between there and the elven lands. We'll need more before we leave."
Magiere hesitated. How could she make him face her new choice?
In youth, he'd fled from slavery as a warlord's assassin, knowing his escape would cause his own parents' execution. For years afterward, he drank himself to sleep each night to smother guilt-spawned nightmares. Even Magiere hadn't known, until he'd confessed but a few nights ago. Then an assassin named Sgaile-one of the elven anmaglahk-had come to take Leesil's life. Leesil's mother had betrayed her own caste by teaching him and his father the anmaglahk's cold-blooded ways. The assassin changed his mind and let Leesil go. From this encounter, Leesil suspected his mother still lived, imprisoned all these years by her own people.
Now that he had hope, Magiere had to make him wait even longer.
"Before we seek your mother, if she still lives," she said, "we need to go to my home village in Droevinka."
She'd fled from there nine years ago at the age of sixteen, and the thought of returning made bile rise in her throat. Her discomfort vanished when Leesil's smile faded.
He rose up in the bed. "If she lives? What does that?"
Magiere quickly covered his lips with her fingers as she sat up.
"I didn't mean it that way. I want to believe as much as you… but I had a mother, as well, and a past neither of us knows. I need answers, too."
Twice they'd been manipulated into battles with the undead. The last time they fought, in the king's city of Bela, had left them both with more questions than answers. Magiere learned more of her nature-dhampir, hunter of the dead- in being coerced into ridding Bela of its undead predators. In the end, Welstiel Massing, whom she'd once thought an ally, revealed himself as a Noble Dead akin to the ones he'd pitted her against. He'd staged the encounters to train her for his own purpose in acquiring an unknown artifact supposedly guarded by ancient Noble Dead.
Welstiel had been less than forthcoming or even knowledgeable about her origin, but his actions stirred Magiere's desire to know.
Leesil's eyes betrayed a twinge of dismay as he looked at her. "No… no. " He shook his head. "It's been too many years-"
"Please, listen," Magiere cut in. "This isn't just for me, but for both of us. There's so much we don't know about my past compared to yours."
"And we'll get answers," he said, "but the living come first."
"I wasn't made by the living!" she snapped. "An undead used my mother to make me-to kill its own kind. I need to know why."
Leesil fell silent. Guilt over lashing out at him made Magiere calm herself before continuing.
"Before we can head north through the Warlands and beyond to the elven territory, we must travel eastward and inland, around the Gulf of Belaski. That's halfway to Droevinka and my past, so close to my answers and less than a third the distance we will travel north."
She put her hands upon Leesil's cheeks and leaned in close until her forehead touched his. When she lifted her head again, he stared downward, not looking at her. His expression softened as his hand slid down her cheek, her long neck, and across her breastbone, and finally gripped her hand.
"All right, it makes sense. If my mother is alive after all this time, likely she's in no danger. It makes no odds if we take a little longer to reach her."
Magiere scooted forward and wrapped herself around him, flesh to flesh, and held him. He understood, but it made her feel no better for having forced it upon him.
"And I swear," she whispered in his ear, "once we learn what we can for me, we'll hurry north for your mother."
She pulled back enough to look into his sad but resolved eyes. Although she spoke calmly, the scope of their impending journey left her feeling small and lost. He was about to answer when the thud of a door and running feet echoed from somewhere out front in the inn, and footsteps grew louder.