A Cursed Hunt (The Wings & Witches Series Book 1), page 16
If gravity ever had a hold on him, it was loosening its grip now. His body was light, his limbs wanting to float up at his side. He inhaled slowly and forced himself to dig his fingers further into the ground. More power flowed up his limbs, into his chest, then slowly slipped farther up into his head. His heart began to pound, a sweat breaking out across his forehead.
This was more magic than he’d ever held before, more than he dared try to use. His hold on it felt feeble, any wrong move and it might all drain from him into the world again. He’d experienced that a few times and the way magic could rip itself from the human form was never pleasant. Each time he’d passed out from the pain of power tearing itself from his body. Every single nerve ending had been set ablaze. Then when he woke it took hours for him to be able to move and then to walk without falling over. Merritt certainly couldn’t carry him and Percy both. If he messed this up then they’d be stuck.
For that second, he considered letting the magic slowly go and refusing to even try. Were the risks worth the reward? Yes. Yes. He needed to know more, if he wanted to survive this he needed his questions answered.
Remis’ teachers had always told him he was nothing short of exceptional—though his father’s opinion drastically differed. He was a good swordsman, a decent fighter in hand-to-hand combat, well-studied, charming, and the heir to a growing inheritance. This connection between him and this strange woman was painfully unknown. There were too many variables that he was unfamiliar with. This wasn’t an equation he could solve with only a few missing pieces. He couldn’t take nothing and multiply it by the knowledge of nothing and divide it all by more nothing. His only conclusion was that this was all some sort of weird spiteful game that really had nothing to do with him and had everything to do with the whims of the wicked.
“Here we go,” Remis exhaled the words.
He thought only then of the witch, of what he knew and how it had felt to have her inside his head. Worry made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t want to open his mind up to have her enter it again; he wanted to cross whatever this link between them was and enter her mind.
The expansiveness of his thoughts were dark flashes of images. He pictured her leather boots and the sense of awe he had felt as he’d let himself look up at the female body that had towered over him. She’d been sensual power then, all curves and intimidation. There was that hazy glimmer that had fallen over the edge of his vision and then winked out as the darkness came upon him. It was that flicking glow that he stretched his thoughts toward. He was able to touch the edges of his memory as they slowed, reaching out with a mental hand to brush mental fingers over it.
His thoughts lurched forward, flinging him into darkness at first. Phantom winds whipped at his soul. He dug his fingers tighter into the ground, aware of his body sitting near the fire and the power he still gathered within himself, though it felt distant, nearly forgotten and the darkness in his mind turned to gray clouds.
When the witch had visited him she’d been in full form. Her body had been visible and she’d touched him. Remis, however, was nothing more than a soul floating alongside the massive wings of a blue-black dragon. He felt his heart rate jump in the body that was miles away and a shout burned at the back of his throat, but whatever form he was in now made no noise.
The dragon, with its wide wing span and stretching spike-tipped tail was far larger than the dragonis he’d encountered. A Bold Wing then, Remis thought. Its long face which ended in a rounded snout with large nostrils and a mouth with snapping teeth, turned toward him. Remis swore it looked at him and when it exhaled a cloud of smoke, he passed through it and felt its humid warmth.
Upon the animal's back sat the witch. She cocked her head, one of her braids falling out of her cloak and down over the curve of her breast as she twisted in her seat. There was more than just the hood to cover her face now. Black fabric was pulled down over her features, almost sheer enough he could nearly make out the shape of her nose and full lips.
You play with magic you do not know. Her mouth didn’t move when she spoke, or where he assumed her mouth would move under that thin veil. Her voice whispered into his thoughts.
Remis tried to speak but he couldn’t, not in this form at least. He settled for thinking his response with the intention of letting her hear. I know enough. He knew more than she thought. The witch underestimated him and that left him in an advantageous position.
The Bold Wing tilted in the sky, the woman’s body leaning into the motion. Of all the places he imagined finding this witch, he’d never once thought he’d see her on the back of a Bold Wing. Only scale riders were known to have tamed the beasts and rode them. The thought of facing someone as powerful as a scale rider and as terrible as a witch made his distant body tremble.
You have a dragon? Remis thought.
Are you going to tell me I’m a witch next? Are we only stating things that are clear to us?
She was right. He was wasting his time and ruining what element of surprise he had by coming to her and marveling at all she was instead of doing as she’d done. So Remis tried to focus on her surroundings. The dragon straightened its body, and through stringy clouds before them, flashes of color appeared before hiding amongst the haze again.
More Bold Wings. His startled mind tried to count the forms as they dipped toward the ground in uniform precision. From this height, he couldn’t make out the details of the ground much more than the dark stain of the forest and not far away the glittering gray waters of the Mitus River.
More movement under them took his attention. Four Bold Wings flying miles below them? Each with a rider on their back. Feminine laughter rippled through his mind.
What is your name? Remis finally thought to ask. It appears that you know mine and I only think it fair that I know the name of the woman hunting me.
Why would I want this hunt to be fair? Now he could tell, as she turned into the wind, that her lips were moving clearly behind that fabric, they twisted up into a sneer.
Annoyance and was it…amusement…was quick to take hold of his chest in its iron grip. To breathe was to force the air through what little space the clenched hand would allow. She had a smart mouth, he’d give her that.
Bold Wings came into view as the group tightened together well below the cover of the skies. They neared the others that circled above the canopy of trees. Remis counted them, ten in total. Each dragon was larger than their lesser cousins, the dragonis, though they all still varied slightly in size. From what Remis could tell, there was only one beast bigger than that of the one that carried his witch. Their scales, some shaped in half circles, others more pointed in triangles or elongated into diamonds like the Bold Wing Remis’ soul glided alongside, came in an array of shades. Gold, like the details of the warlord’s home. Dark crimson that reminded him of spilled blood. Emerald greens that shone like gems under the glittering sun. But her dragon…her dragon was the most beautiful. Even his fear could not dampen his awe of watching the ripple of muscle up close. The Bold Wing’s scales were muted, as though they soaked in the sun and refused to release any of its light. A beautiful blue-black that only changed enough for him to catch the different shades as the animal moved.
Mrithun is considered a great beauty amongst the Bold Wings, the witch said. Don’t let her beauty fool you though. She is as deadly as she is intriguing. She undid the leather strip that was wrapped around her hand, tugging up a sleeve to reveal pale scars that ran the length of her entire arm. She got me once when I first attempted to bond while I was entranced with her.
She’d been bitten by a dragon and survived. Now she rode the thing through the skies. His mind drifted to his shoulder where the dragonis had pierced him. That was enough for him to never want to interact with those terrible monsters ever again, much less attempt to ride one.
Why would you warn me when you only want me dead? His soul felt tired, his vision unfocusing before he forced himself to remain here in this conscious space with her.
When you die it will be at my hand. It would really be a shame for Mrithun to get to you first. She was smiling again. If he’d been more than this incorporeal thing hurtling through the skies next to her, he’d reach out, tear that fabric from her face, if only to see her. If only to touch her. He knew so little. His soul begged to know more. That grin fell, her body going taut. You’re bleeding. Go back to yourself. Do not play with this magic again or you’ll ruin your mind.
The forest below wasn’t visible any longer, nor were the other Bold Wings and scale riders around her. It was all blackness now. His world narrowed down to the pinpoint of light that was her and Mrithun.
Go. Her voice resounded in his head, bouncing around in his skull with the severity of the demand. Go and do not come back, Remis.
His spirit hurtled away, that small spotlight of her presence shrinking and then gone like a fire dying out. Air was knocked from his lungs as his consciousness was slammed back into his physical body. Awareness came in one tidal wave of pain. His fingers were ice-cold, his feet blazing hot near the fire. The ache in his shoulder was renewed and he felt the dampness of blood coating his upper lip and dripping down toward the dirt under his head.
“Holy shit. Remis.” Merritt's voice was somewhere above him.
Lifting his eyelids was a heavy task, exhaustion weighing him down with the need to drift off into a deep sleep. Something at the back of his mind demanded he wake, sneered at him, and told him that if he didn’t he wouldn't wake up again. Not for a long, long time.
Dark branches dusted with snow framed Merritt’s face. A deep wrinkle formed between his brows as he watched Remis with large worried eyes. The dark bruise from the fall was even more terrible to look at up close. Purple and blue swirled together accented with spots of near black. His eye was still swollen, a few red busted capillaries at its corner.
At some point, Remis must have collapsed onto his back. His hands were still arched into the ground, his fingers digging into the earth. Inhaling, he caught the copper tang of blood as he shook his hands free. Dirt was caked underneath his nails, a dusting of it coating his fingers and part of his arms. Large white flakes also gathered along his arms, his torso, and his legs. The sky had opened and fat clumps of snow fell rapidly down around them.
He groaned, wiping at the wetness with his arm, watching as his forearm came away smeared in red. She’d known. Somehow the witch could sense what he could not. Was she that powerful? Was it the connection of this curse that allowed her to know what he could not? He hadn’t any understanding that his physical body was anything other than safe here while he was with her.
Remis felt goosebumps rise all over his skin as realization struck him. He had been able to feel the distance between them when he’d traveled by her side. And the witch was much closer than he’d thought.
20
Meira
She didn’t assume that the man she was chasing was all that smart. In fact, since he’d somehow betrayed her, or so she concluded in another timeline, she thought something had to be wrong with him. But coming to her, crossing that line of magic that connected them both had been somewhere between idiocy and insanity. Of course, he hadn’t been strong enough to make himself tangible. Especially since Meira was conscious, which was particularly hard even for her. Still, the fact that he’d been able to at all was somehow unsettling. He was proving to be more difficult than she imagined.
If he could do that…no. Witches had long since been hunted and gone into hiding, but for him to be connecting to the universe with the magic that bound this world he’d had to have a witch somewhere in his bloodline. His mother? Possibly his grandmother? Whomever she was, she couldn’t be too far down his maternal line.
Augustine had mages, but they were men with far less power than that of the witches. Mages, while still frowned upon, were still welcomed in many areas of the Empire. The main difference between the mages and the witches though, wasn’t the difference in their abilities or their stamina to use said abilities, but mages were men and thus more accepted.
Meira could still remember her parents. Her mother was never quiet about her opinions. If anything, she ran their household while her father, a quiet gentle man, had sat back with a smile and let her. Joining the scale riders had at least given her a chance to be something other than a quiet housewife—or a working girl on the lowest rung of the country’s ladder since she’d become an orphan. There was a difference, she told herself, between submitting to her superior and allowing a man to own her like a dog.
Fighting alongside the scale riders, she’d seen women across many villages who looked at her with open curiosity. Then, as if their husbands feared that she’d give them the strength to be more than they were, they'd whisked them away. Here in Augustine, being a strong woman was like a disease. Top that with dragon riding and her magic and she was the plague incarnate.
Remis had made a mistake when he’d come to her. She’d felt his nearness like a tug on the tether of the curse. He was so close, within a couple of miles. It had only been luck that Bram had pointed them in this direction to get Valen closer to Croughton. He’d claimed to want to stay near the river so their Bold Wings wouldn’t tire when they needed to stop to hydrate themselves. And Remis had lost hours lying unconscious, hours that she’d been able to take advantage of the moment they were moving again.
Thankfully, Bram had let her fly today. She’d felt jittery staying grounded for so long and even relieving Quincy of her guard duty for a while hadn’t calmed it. She liked to think that Bram knew her enough to see that in her, that he’d understood that she might combust if she rode that damn horse for another mile. Her inner thighs were still somewhat sore from the hours-long ride. Horses were far more lean than Bold Wings and she’d felt as if she might topple off one side if she didn’t cling on tightly. It was silly to be so unsure on the back of such a small animal; if she fell off the damn thing she’d only be a couple of feet before she hit the ground. If she fell from her Bold Wing, not that she’d done that in several years, the fall was miles and the impact deadly.
“Dragonis!’ Isaac bellowed.
Though they were coming down, a slow descent out of the clouds, they were still several minutes away from the group of four scale riders upon their Bold Wings that circled the treetops. Three gray dragonis with their long skinny necks flew together directly toward the four. The dragonis would get to them before Meira and the others would.
Someone from the group below, Jaselle, judging by the baby blue of her Bold Wing’s scales, parted from the group, dropping low enough to warn Bram and Brooks who rode with Valen.
Three dragonis up against their Bold Wings…it would be a bloody fight but one they could easily win. The thought had only begun to form when Meira watched as one of the dragonis flew forward and released a torrent of flames from its mouth. It was met with the fire of a Bold Wing and where the flames touched they turned a brilliant white that turned blue at their center.
Brooks was just as good at reading dragons as she was. It was all about watching the way they moved. Dragons were tricky creatures always looking a different way than the one they meant to strike from. The idea of them both being some sort of ‘whisperer’ came because they were both sympathetic toward the damn things. At their core, these things were animals that did what they had to to survive. Once you understood that they weren’t out for vengeance it was easier to predict what they might do. She’d tried teaching Bram once, but he’d scoffed at her, comparing dragons to the small minds of dogs. Bold Wings could be tamed and trained but they were far from dogs.
Flames died down in one direction only for another dragonis to take its turn. Meira watched as the animals circled around to attack the group of Bold Wings from the sides. They were met with the snapping of teeth and more flames that created a billowing fog that clouded around them. Each dragonis swayed in the air but never backed away, a sign of their desperation. These things were hungry, starving even, needing food enough that they’d be willing to go against more than they might be able to defeat.
What had once been a slight sprinkling of snow was now falling thickly and lowering their visibility further. Meira flew close to the rider at her side. She cast a glance at Willa who scowled at the scene below them, squinting through the material that covered her face. A plan was already forming in her head, one that might actually work if she played this right.
Meira was confident though that her friends didn’t need her. That thought repeated as they grew near. They didn’t need her for this. Then another thought. She was so close. Remis was so close.
“Willa!” she shouted above the winds that flared to life. “Willa, I’m going to separate the group. They’ll be easier to fend off when they're not fighting as a unit.”
A scream of pain came from below. Some of the dragonis flames had broken through the Bold Wing that fought it and they licked across the rider’s side. Brighton frantically smothered the heat that ate at his cloak.
“Go, I’ll head in from the other side and we can drive them apart,” Willa shouted back. The two parted with a nod and Meira couldn’t help but smile.
Clutching onto Mrithun, she lowered her body, angling as closely to her Bold Wing as possible. Mrithun, for all her training and the understanding that they had as dragon and bonded rider, easily understood the unspoken command.
Tucking her wings in, dragon and rider dove.
Meira was weightless, no heavier than a feather, as they angled toward the group. Seconds passed as she relished the feeling of the tearing wind. The fabric pressed against her face, blocking the worst of it, but still, her eyes began to water. She blinked away the tears, letting them streak her face and gather in her hair. She had the cover of the clouds and the excuse of this attack to find herself separated from the other riders. Then, when she was free and clear, she could get to Remis.
