The Stargazer

Stargazer (chapter sixteen)

Aislinn couldn’t hide the quiver in her wings as she stepped into Spring. The silver twilight lent an otherworldly air to the pale season. Cool air caressed her, chilling her skin to bumps. Rowan followed silently behind her. While he’d agreed to try her idea once, he’d made no promises beyond that and he’d taken surly to a new level since then.


“What exactly do you expect to happen?” he asked abruptly. 


Aislinn glanced back over her shoulder to find Rowan had stopped, his feet firmly planted in no-season. She studied his face for a long moment and then sighed. Not a single trace of enthusiasm to be found. His expression remained grim.


“I don’t know what will happen,” she answered again. With her nerves singing something in a high pitched, tightly strung key, patience was hard to find. “That’s why I want to try it, to see if it helps.”


“It didn’t help the others,” he snapped.


A sharp retort tangled on the end of her tongue and she swallowed the bitter words. He was nervous. She could understand that. She was a bit jittery herself. Taking a moment, she studied him again, taking in the tense muscles and the tight line of his mouth. His eyes roved the woods that surrounded them. Even knowing they were alone didn’t seem to put him at ease. No enemies leaped out of the trees at them. No magic path appeared to take them back to the tower. The day faded like all the others before in a soft dimming of light. No stars. No moon. No change at all.


“We’re not the others,” she pointed out. “And you aren’t going to dance with me. Remember? Grounding the power in you will do us no good. You have to stay outside the dance until it’s done.”


“We need to get closer to the barrier.”


A fact but not a particularly reassuring one if he was thinking logistically already. She gave up for the moment, moving deeper into Spring. As long as he got her to the wall of the bubble in time, she didn’t care.


That wasn’t entirely true, she admitting grudgingly. It bothered her that he found so little to like about her. While she found fighting with him stimulating, she really didn’t want to do it tonight. She didn’t expect him to be eager about what was to come but any hint of optimism would have been nice.


The slender silver trees rustled and sighed around her, the scent of fresh green teasing her nose. As pretty as it was, if she ever got out of here, she would never look at the cycle of nature the same way again. To see it trapped in time, never-changing, bothered her on a fundamental level she couldn’t explain. This wasn’t balance, it was stagnation.


A small glade opened under her feet as light faded to a twilight shine. Through the shivering silver leaves, she could make out the faint reflection of the bubble. Her heart sped up.


“Is this close enough?” she asked.


The pulse of the earth under her bare feet sang a seductive song, calling her to dance. She kept her arms down but her fingers moved in time to the music she knew he couldn’t hear. It was there, in the breeze and rhythm of growing things. It needed her to move and she knew, even if Rowan pulled back, she would dance tonight.


“We’re good.”


She looked over her shoulder at the shadow that lingered at the edge of the glade. She couldn’t see his face but the grim determination in his voice told all she needed to know. He wasn’t happy about his but he’d see it through. Oddly, his presence eased her trepidation and she nodded, flicking out her wings and stepping fully into the glade.


“Remember, you can’t dance with me.”


He snorted. “You think I can’t resist you?”


A melancholy smile curved her mouth as she raised her arms to the sky.


“You’ll have no trouble resisting me. It’s the dance that’s more problematic.”


Light faded and the dance took her. She swayed, finding her rhythm. Air curled around her as she spun, her feet barely touching the ground. The pace was slower here than Winter, without the frenetic urgency that had taken her over then. Life stirred under her feet as air and earth responded to the call and Spring rose like sap through her veins, warm as liquid sunshine.


On the periphery of her mind, she could feel Rowan’s eyes on her. He remained apart, leaning against a tree at the edge of the glade. He never moved as she whirled and spun, caught in the magic she called.


Around them, the silver of Spring took on a hint of green, as if the power of the dance were altering the precious metal into true greenery. Life. That was the magic at the heart of any world and this place was no different. Stale and stagnate in time it might be, but life remained and that was the wedge she would use to break free of this prison.


Faster she moved and faster, spinning and leaping, her arms raised to the starless arch of the sky. For a moment, a spark of light glimmered against the dark backdrop and then was gone. Undeterred, she danced, calling on the power around her with everything in her.


The night moved as she danced, time moving around her. Once, she thought she saw Rowan step into the glade and her heart leaped in panic. Unable to break free, she could only hope he wouldn’t give in. No hands closed on her as she spun and twirled. No feet joined hers in the circle. The next time she saw him, he was once more beside the trees, his arm hooked negligently around the trunk and she breathed a sigh of relief.


With earth under her dancing feet and air swirling around her wings, Aislinn pulled the magic into her and felt the tingle of power become a burn that only grew. It was nearly over. The burn became pain but she was better prepared this time. There was no sense of being trapped. Power surged through her, overflowing her inner wells until she glowed with it.


As suddenly as it had begun, the dance ended and she fell.  Flames licked at her senses, obscuring her vision. The fiery glow might be daybreak or it might just be the power that filled her spilling over.


Hands came from nowhere, lifting her. She thought she heard curses and exhortations but she couldn’t make them out through the roaring in her head. A sharp shake jostled her closer to awareness.


“Aislinn!”


The shout jolted through her and she became aware of a face near hers. Rowan.


“You have to ground the power, Aislinn. Now. Before you burn up.”


The wall of the bubble reflected back the silver green dawn of Spring, close enough to touch.


“Now, Aislinn,” Rowan shouted again. “Touch the wall.”


“Through you,” she managed. The power needed a conduit to link to the bubble. If she could release power directly, she wouldn’t have needed him.


She thought he might be swearing but it was difficult to tell over the crash of power that filled her. Something in her cracked, fine lines of stress spreading through her being. Time was running out.


Arms tightened around her, pressing her into a broad chest. Fire filled her eyes, her ears, scalded through her veins. A scream built in her chest but couldn’t get out past the flames.


Power blasted out of her, a torrent of crimson heat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, as the flood emptied her. Her eyes drifted closed.


Cool air brushed her skin as the flames receded. If the flames were gone, why did she still feel so hot? The question edged her closer to awareness.


Rowan was kissing her.


Her eyes flew open and she clutched at his shoulders, trying anchor herself as the world took another spin. With one big hand pressed firmly to the wall of the bubble and the other gripping her like a lifeline, he devoured her mouth. For a moment, she lost her senses and kissed him back, drunk on the heated strength of him.


Realizing what she was doing, Aislinn tore her mouth free, dragging much needed breaths into air starved lungs. Rowan leaned down, his forehead bumping hers as they both struggled to find their footing in a reality gone askew.


He dropped his hand from the wall, the power spent, and Aislinn gripped his shoulders tighter. If she didn’t do something, he was going to move away. He’d put his growly face back on and she’d lose this odd closeness. Curling her arms around his neck, she nuzzled against him, breathing him in.


“Ash,” he groaned. “Don’t.”


His breath brushed her kiss wet mouth and she swallowed hard. “Why?”


“You don’t want this. Not really.”


“I don’t?”


“It’s the magic,” he said, a bit desperately as her lips brushed his. His arms tightened around her. “That’s all. It’s not real.”


“Magic is real, Rowan,” she whispered. “You just have to believe.”


He didn’t answer and she let him pull away. She closed her eyes, concentrating on breathing and steadying the pace of her runaway heart.  Never had she felt such power as she did when she danced here. With that much power at her disposal, she could do almost anything. Anything except make Rowan like her.


“Holy shit.”


The softly breathed words brought her attention back to the present and she looked up to see Rowan staring at the wall of the bubble—a wall that now currently shimmered a hundred feet from where it had been. A border of dirt lay bare and desolate, marking where the wall had once been. Aislinn rose, hardly believing her eyes.


“We did it.”


As the words left her mouth, the world shifted again. From the barren earth, green shoots shot into the air, weaving together as they grew. Thorns bristled, tips gleaming with poison as they locked stalks together forming a thick wall of vegetation.


“I’d say we damaged something,” Rowan remarked from where he stood, hands on his hips and a wry look on his face. “I don’t think the King is very happy about it though.”