Call of Brindelier (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 3) Read Free Page B

ask, trying to place the date. I go back to stroking his auburn hair. It, too, is growing long. In the past months he’s really begun to embrace the Mage style. Soon he’ll be able to tie it back like Uncle does. I’m still getting used to it. It makes him look much older. But that could be a result of the weight on his shoulders lately, too. Rian has been through much more than most Mages in their Twentieth Circle.
    It’s been two years of quiet since the worst of it. Two years on edge. Even now when I think of Jacek’s last words I get chills.
    It has only begun. The wheels are in motion. The Order lurks, waiting to strike. You feared me? You have no idea. Bask in your cursed victory. May it forever blind you to the truth.
    The image of his blackened, crumbling form is etched in my mind. Jacek was the Dreamwalker, a Sorcerer in the Dreaming who terrorized us and tried to turn us all against each other. He haunts my memories daily. Worse than him is the memory of Rian’s cold, limp hand in mine as the battle was nearly lost against him.
    “Do you remember that date?” Rian’s question jerks me back to the present. He meets my eyes and pulls me down to kiss him again. Soon we’re rolling around playfully in the soft grass, breathless. The cool ground beneath me and his loving arms around me push away the dark memories until they’re nothing but wisps.
    “Of course,” I fib and giggle as we tumble to a stop. He props himself on his elbows and brushes his thumb across my cheek. His long auburn forelocks tickle my neck as his smiling gaze meets mine.
    “Look,” he says. His eyes sparkle golden, green, and orange. Inviting and warm, they pull me in until I feel the rush of my Mentalism, which allows me to tumble through his gaze into his thoughts and memories.
    In the training square of the hall of our guild, His Majesty’s Elite, I see a slightly younger version of myself. I’m surprised by how much I’ve changed since then. I look tired and worried, but there’s also a gleam of hope in my eyes. That, and determination. I wonder if I’ve lost that now, after everything that’s happened.
    It’s strange to see myself from Rian’s perspective. Looking through his eyes into this memory, I can feel his emotions strongly: Love and nerves that tie his insides up. I feel his thoughts linger on the younger Azi’s long blond braid.
    Back in the forest park, I laugh and pull myself out of his mind.
    “Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask.
    “What?” Rian winks and runs his fingers through my newer, short-cropped haircut.
    “You said you liked it,” I say a little self-consciously. It was a hasty decision to chop off the braid. After a long, hot day of training I was sick of dealing with it.
    “I do,” he says, but I’m not convinced. “Now hush, and stop distracting. Look.”
    I tumble back into his eyes and into the memory, back to the Elite’s training pitch where Rian and I stand face to face among the various weapons littered on the dirt floor around us. It had been a grueling day of research trying to figure out the workings of the curse that had befallen me and my father after Da’s encounter with the Guardians at the eastern border of Kythshire. The awful curse prevented both me and Da from wielding any weapon, and left Da in the grips of madness.
    We seemed so young then, Rian and I, so oblivious to the obvious attraction between us. I can see it now, when I look into the memory, plain as day.
    Rian takes my hands and poses them a certain way, and I feel his own hands go warm and tingly when he touches me. He casts a spell and a slash of ice appears in my younger self’s grip. An ice sword to replace my own. Rian’s magical creation somehow circumvented the restrictions of the curse.
    I watch it play out from his perspective: My excitement at this new discovery and the knowledge that I won’t be completely useless under the curse, my concern for his use of magic he’s not yet ready