The Guardian Page 12

  I stepped up to the table, considering everything that was in front of me and what it could be used for. I passed over the jewelry easily; it didn't feel right to use something that another person had set. If I was going to make jewelry out of any of the pieces, which may not actually be a bad idea for the future, I wanted to build it myself.

  My fingers itched and warmed as I stroked over a large piece of carnelian. Unable to resist, I picked it up, cradling it in my palm. "Is something supposed to happen?" I asked, a little lost. My battle with Birch had been nearly instinctual. Without that adrenaline in my system it was hard to figure out what to do to call my power forward.

  "River, why don't you stand across the room?" Terran suggested. "Tori, Onyx and I are going to work together to form an active shield around you and Reed. It should deflect anything you may throw." I didn't really care for his use of the word should in that sentence. "Reed can try and walk you through steps. We'll see what your powers need in the way of direction."

  "Remember it is an act of will," Onyx called out as he raised his hands. I felt the air chill as he worked whatever magic he was using to protect them from any of my potential mishaps. "You can't let the magic control you, you must control it."

  I nodded my head, though I wasn't sure I completely understood what he was saying. Terran mimicked Onyx's pose, green light flaring to wrap around Reed and me. I felt the air close in around us, a wall of air and light blocking us from the rest of the room. Onyx and Terran dropped their hands, though at this point I wasn't fool enough to assume they weren't still pouring their strength into the spell.

  "You've dealt with carnelian before?" Reed asked.

  I nodded, glancing across the table. "I've dealt with most of these at one point or another, even if just for short times in the magic stops Mom frequented.”

  A memory tickled at the edge of my mind: Mom and I at a shop as she browsed for incense and herbs while I buried my hands in the bins of tumbling stones, pretending I'd be allowed to take them home. I'd told Mom once I wanted to be a dragon, to have my own horde to protect, and she had laughed long and hard, even managing to spare a few dollars to get me cheap pieces of stone chips to take with me. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, the loss of her still too raw for me to handle even the good memories that wanted to flow through me.

  "Try calling your powers, push them towards the stone," Reed suggested, glancing up from his book to study me. I reached inside of myself, calling the heat at my center, pushing it through to my palms and into the stone. It took effort, but the stone began to glow, warming more in my palm as I focused on it.

  "Good. Now, try and push your energy out of the stone."

  "This isn't what I did before," I murmured, though I attempted to follow his directions. The stone glowed brighter over the waves of yellow and purple light, though nothing more seemed to happen.

  "How did you direct it?" Reed asked, flipping pages lightly, his eyes continually coming back to the glow of magic in my palm.

  "I thought about what my mom taught me," I admitted. "What the stone's properties were. Then I pulled from the stone."

  "Let's try that first then." Reed dropped the book down behind him. "You should be able to amplify your energy through the stone, rather than draw from it, but we can try more of that later. What are the properties of carnelian, Tori?"

  "Courage. Control. Fertility. Love. Fire." I rattled off some of the meanings, the way Mom had taught me.

  "Good," Reed praised. "Think about that. Pull from the stone and into yourself."

  I wasn't sure how to draw control, and I certainly didn't want to pull fertility or love, but I focused hard on the feeling of it lying against my palm. The warmth turned to heat, the heat to a burn, and I gasped as wave after wave of fire pushed from me. I lit up like a human candle, streamers of fire pulsing against the wall that Onyx and Terran had created. Reed threw up his hands, murmuring rapidly to form a wave of water, concealing himself and the books. Layers of steam spread around him as my fire streamers waged war against his waves.

  "You control it," Onyx called out. "Stop letting it run through you. You took the power, now use it." The words were snapped at me and I instinctively straightened, wanting to glare at Onyx as I fought against the heat burning through me.

  I tried to get a grip on the flames, to pull them back into me or extinguish them, but they resisted. I bit down hard on my tongue, trying to clear my head. I had to admit my mother's mantra worked a lot better when I wasn't on fire. I closed my hand tightly over the carnelian, tugging on that stream of energy until it merged with mine. The yellow and purple of my magic tinted red as the flames died down, absorbing into my power rather than fighting with it. I grunted at the effort it took but managed to hold control.

  "Good," Reed praised again from behind his wall of water, and I resisted the urge to call him a name. "Now try using your magic to call a strand of fire. No flames," he warned pointedly. "Just a single strand."

  "Sounds like a plan. How exactly do I do that?" I couldn't keep the bite out of my tone.

  "Picture it in your mind," Terran responded. "See yourself pushing out a strand of fire from your palm."

  "Picture it. Will it," Onyx added.

  I did as they said, trying to imagine a small flame pushing from my palm like a lighter. After a moment or two, the flame flickered to life, small and bright against the flare of magic. "Cool," I murmured.

  "Now release it," Reed ordered. "Push it back from your magic, into the stone. Let it drain from you and store it so you can use it later." I tried to do as he said, pushing the heat away, back through my body and down my arm. Sweat dripped from my brow, and my muscles ached with the strain. I gasped as my hand cooled, letting the carnelian fall back onto the tabletop.

  "Well, that was fun." Dizziness overwhelmed me and I staggered, but damp, cool arms caught me and I looked up into Reed's twinkling green eyes.

  "Very good." He tugged on a strand of my hair, twining it around his finger as he held me in a tight grip against him. "Now we just have to try that about fifty more times."

  "You know, maybe you aren't my favorite after all," I muttered.

  14

  “This is boring,” I grumbled. I had finally progressed past the point where Onyx and Terran insisted on a protective wall while I played with the flame. I had been relegated to sitting on an armchair in the room and practicing flicking my flame on and off like a human lighter.

  While it had been amusing for the first several attempts, it quickly grew to mundane. I wanted to try and expand the flame. I didn’t really think just causing my finger to light up would do more than help Birch light a cigarette to put out on me — not exactly the effect I was going for as the embarrassment would be solely in my court.

  “Learning control is necessary.” Reed’s voice was muffled, not bothering to pull his nose from the book he was reading. He’d been listening to me grumble for the past two hours. “You don’t get on the ice and attempt to jump first, you learn to push one skate in front of the other, you hold onto something.”

  “You ice skate?” I turned confused eyes to him, letting the flame on my fingertips extinguish.

  “You don’t?” he shot back, still refusing to look at me. “You stopped practicing.” How he knew that when he couldn’t even see my hand, I had absolutely no idea.

  “I’ve never ice skated,” I admitted, turning my attention back to my flame with a pout. I figured they’d kept Reed here not only to help me if I needed it but as my own personal fire extinguisher. The other three had disappeared to their own activities. At least I could be singeing Onyx for fun at this point, but it seemed he had better things to do than to hang out with me while I turned myself on and off.

  “Well we can rectify that this winter. The pond in the courtyard freezes over well, skating is popular amongst several of us.”

  “Terran and Onyx skate?” I asked, skeptical. The idea of large, imposing Terran doing something as graceful as ice skat
ing was a hard image to process, let alone the sulky Onyx.

  “I guess you’ll have to stick around and find out.” Reed’s cryptic reply had me sticking my tongue out at him.

  “I wouldn’t suggest doing that,” Reed commented, dryly amused. “Many would take it as an offer, a pretty woman like you.”

  I blinked, surprised. He thought I was pretty? “Okay, I give, how the hell did you even see me do that?” I huffed.

  “If I told you it wouldn’t be nearly as fun, now would it?” I could clearly hear the laughter in his voice.

  “Well, if you’ve been watching then you know I’ve been flicking this switch on and off for the last hour,” I pointed out to him. “Isn’t it about time I tried something else?”

  Reed sighed, finally putting aside the book. “We can try expanding the flame. I still think you should practice more with it first.”

  “We don’t have years of study here,” I reminded him. “The goal is to approach Birch in two days. I need to be the Human Torch, not the Human Lighter.”

  Reed paused, considering me. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “Oh, read a comic book,” I grumbled. “I thought you were supposed to be training me to survive, not get my ass beat.”

  Reed’s eyes flashed for a moment, and he slowly raised a brow, the control surprising and impressive. “You think we’re training you to get your ass beat?” He approached me slowly, each move controlled. “You really think we’d allow any harm to come to you? That we like the idea of sending our mate out to be potentially injured, just to get a bully to back off due to societal restrictions that should have been removed centuries ago?”

  His tone was cool enough to form ice and I scrambled to my feet, squaring off with him. “Control may seem boring to you, but it is one of the hardest things we will be teaching you.” Reed raised a hand, and I watched as first a water droplet appeared, then froze, before shaping into tiny, intricate snowflakes and melting away again. I stood frozen in place, unable to move as he stalked to me.

  “How did you do that?” I was awed, watching the play of the elements over his fingers.

  “Some of us, with enough practice, are able to control aspects of our chosen elements with merely our thoughts and will. It takes study, practice, effort — the same as any muscle. It will respond when you call, whether or not all of the finery is in place. It took me years to be able to do this.”

  The snowflakes on his fingertips began to dance, brushing across my skin as he stepped toe to toe with me. The icy kiss of them against my skin had me shivering, though I was unable to pull my gaze from his. His eyes were brilliant, dark as evergreen. His icy hand gripped mine, his magic pushing along my own as the flakes brushed my palm. Without thought, heat raced through me, pushing into his palm and melting the small spheres where they touched my skin, steam leaking from our combined fingers.

  “What?” I gasped, staring at the strands as they rose. “How did I…” I trailed off, unable to complete the thought, turning to Reed for an answer, my eyes sliding to his mouth as a wicked grin quirked his lips up.

  “It’s a muscle, like any other.” He made more snow flurries appear, though this time my fire didn’t extinguish them. They were pretty, though their icy chill against my skin was almost a burn. “The goal is to make it so you don’t have to think, you merely react to a situation. Even if it only gets you a few more seconds, that’s enough to get away, to cast a new spell, or for one of us to kill whomever is attempting to harm you.” His blasé talk of death was mildly disconcerting, though I assumed he was merely using it as an expression.

  “I still want to learn more.” The words were low, with him nearly pressed flush against me there was no need to raise my voice. Despite the chill coming off him my body was heating, and I was happy I could blame it on the carnelian still in my grasp rather than on the sexy man standing nearly hip to hip with me.

  “You will. In time. Much of what you will need at this point though, is going to be instinctual. It’s buried memories and a will to survive that are going to get you through training, Tourmaline.” I didn’t mind the way he said my name in full, not when his lips looked so incredible forming the sounds.

  “I’m not usually very good with instincts,” I admitted. “I tend to fight them.”

  “So do I.” He squeezed my hand slightly. “That’s why this is so out of character for me.” Before I could respond he yanked me the last inch forward, plastering me to him as his mouth closed over mine. His lips were warm, despite the flakes of snow around us, and I let myself get lost in him. He tasted of sugar, from the cakes so often near him, and something innately male. Heat raced through me as I kissed him in return. Steam struck my face and I pulled back, seeing his hands encased in water to avoid the flames I was throwing off.

  “Oops.”

  He grinned, a blush mantling his cheeks. “Another aspect we will need to work on. You will need to be guided by instinct, but you will need to learn to retain control when you do not want your instincts taking over. It isn’t only going to be fear you respond to — or at least I sure hope that wasn’t fear.” His grin fell a little as he studied me intently.

  “Ha. Yeah. Not fear,” I admitted. I didn’t know what I wanted yet in regard to him, but kissing him was probably not my smartest move. I wasn’t one to deny I had enjoyed it, or to make him question himself though. “I was surprised, but you tasted damn good.” His eyes flared, and I bit hard on my tongue to resist throwing myself back into my arms and seeing if that sugar taste extended beyond his lush mouth.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He took a step back. “I’d extend that offer to you to enjoy it any time you’d like, but I have a feeling you would object to that.”

  “I’m not looking for…” I trailed off, searching for a word that fit here. Commitment? Sex? Normally I wouldn’t mind it; I liked sex. I had no issue with my body, and I owned both the pleasure I received and the pleasure I gave. It was a little bit different though, when it was with a witch in a Faerie Realm and he was convinced I was his soulmate. Then it felt a little bit manipulative, especially when I had no intention of continuing a relationship with him or anyone else. “Anything,” I finished lamely.

  His eyes were soft, and he made no move to invade my space as he nodded. “I’m aware. You have quite a bit on your plate right now, and my advances aren’t something you’re willing to deal with. Hopefully in the future, you’ll feel differently.”

  “Reed, I…” I hurried through the words, unable to give him a false hope. “I don’t know if that will ever happen. I’m sorry. I do want to be your friend though.”

  “As do I.” He cocked his head to the side, studying me. “It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive, and I can still find you attractive even though you don’t want to go to bed with me.” A blush crept up my cheeks at his blunt wording. “My hopes for a potential future with you don’t skew how I see you or affect my friendship with you. It is simply one potential I hope we can explore eventually. Either way, I am at your service.” He sketched a bow, making me laugh in surprise. “Are you ready to continue working then?”

  “Yes.” I blew out a breath, resisting the urge to lick my lips for a final taste of him. “Let’s get back to work.” I tossed aside the carnelian, wanting to change my focus slightly and avoid the new connection I had with him and fire. “How about we pick something else? Try a new stone? I can’t rely on just the one, right?” I was grasping at straws, but anything was better than me giving in to my baser instincts and jumping him on the couch when I was supposed to be preparing for a battle.

  He hesitated, and I knew he was debating calling on Onyx or Terran to help shield the room. “I should be able to ward the room from the worst of harm.” He nodded, only mild reluctance showing on his face. “What would you like to try?”

  I stared helplessly at the box of gemstones, the different colors and shapes mixed together like a dragon’s hoard in a gleaming pile. I had no idea what would
be the most useful in a battle, or what I would be able to pick up on quickly.

  “How about this?” Seeing my confusion, he wiggled out a spiky chunk of inky tourmaline and placed it in my palm. I considered it, weighing the feel of it in my hand. I could already feel my magic responding to it, creeping up inside of me to connect with the stone. The sharp edges pricked at my palm, just on the edge of drawing blood.

  “Tourmaline Is usually a protective stone. I assume it’s why my mother chose it as my name, hoping some of those protections would transfer,” I murmured.

  “Everything has a dual nature though,” Reed pointed out. “Even love can become smothering and obsessive.” I nodded in agreement.

  “Jagged tourmaline, like this, can be used for pain — physical or mental damage.” I remembered the time my mother had sat me down, pressing the stone into my palm and leaving scrapes. Even the most protective could be harmful. I considered the stone, pushing my magic into it, though nothing was happening.

  “Here,” Reed offered, dashing over to the couch and pulling a pillow from the stack. “Use this as a focus.” I squeezed the stone tightly in my hand, my eyes glued to the pillow as I concentrated, letting the magic rush through me, over the stone, and out. “Good, your magic is active.” I assumed he meant the glow he could see around me, though nothing was happening.

  “It’s not doing anything though,” I complained.

  “Relax your mind and focus. Will it to happen.” Will. That’s what Onyx had said. Everything I did with my magic was tied to my will. The more I wanted it, the more it would happen. I imagined the way he had gripped my arm, forcing my energy where it needed to go. I let the jagged edges dig into my hand, scraping the sensitive skin, and willed the sensation to amplify, to tear and shred. I pushed harder, letting the sweat bead on my skin as I focused. I’d prove to him that my will was as strong as his, that I could control my magic.