Nine
Marin harnessed the wind to speed our way home. During winter, I wanted him to do that all the time.
I’d only been gone an hour or so and I returned with a whole new set of problems. Yet talking to Finn helped clarify things for me. I didn’t want anyone else. Only Marin. I still wanted my revenge, but the thought of the life within me forced me to reassess the situation. I wouldn’t risk this child. So Industry was out for now. Maybe after, or hell, I don’t know, I’d figure it out.
But first, I needed to bury those bands. The choice to mate had to be my own and not based on my pregnancy.
When we got home I sent Marin to the kitchen for drinks. I ran upstairs, grabbed the box, and hurried out to the bench where I first kissed him. I dropped to my knees and touched the ground. The snow melted underneath my hand. I scanned the area. A hole formed in the soil. I placed the box in the ground and covered it up.
With that done, I sat down, my breath a cool mist in the air.
What would I do with a baby, how did I accomplish my goals now, were they even important anymore? It wasn’t safe. How would I keep this baby protected?
My hands shook as I squeezed the bench under me. My mom would kill me if she knew. But she would’ve loved the baby. I could just see her now, fussing over a grandchild. I missed my mom. She would know what to do. And I’d never see her again. Tears burned my eyes when I recalled the last time we talked.
“Beta,” Mom called from upstairs.
“Yeah, Mom.”I shoveled the last load of my laundry into the machine and turned the dial. The washer started with a whoosh.
“You want to watch Vampire Diaries with me?”
“Mom, that’s so lame.”
“I thought you liked it?”
“That was last year.”
“Okay.”
“You want to watch anything else?”
“Not right now. I have to get back and study after I’m done, maybe next weekend.”
“Okay, Beta... I miss you when you’re away at school.”
“I miss you too. And change the damn message.”
Mom laughed from upstairs. “Never.”
“Are you okay, Elizabeth?” Marin’s voice disturbed my reverie.
I wiped my nose and patted the bench beside me. “Yeah, fine. Remembering.”
Marin sat next to me, hot drinks in his hands. “Bad memories?”
“No, good, my mom.”
He glanced down at my belly.
I butted my head into his shoulder. “I didn’t know until this morning.”
“I know. You would have never been able to hide that. You are a horrible liar. You tend to gloat when you have a secret.” I huffed at that, but it was true, at least about important things.
I hesitated, “The child could be Finn’s.”
He nodded. “He might have been the one to impregnate you, but I will be this infant’s father.”
I smiled and leaned against him. “What are we going to do?”
“What we planned to do. This may delay us a bit, but I promised you, and I keep my promises. We will go to Industry and take the fight to them.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I will protect you.” He repeated the words like a vow.
I breathed deep. I knew he would. “Yes.”
As we snuggled in the snowy garden, I thought about the E’mani. They wouldn’t let me go. I was ever so interesting to them. No matter what, I couldn’t let them get a hold of this child.
“Train?”
Marin’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Train. I need to use my muscles a little bit. No more sparring till after the baby, but I can still stay in shape. Practice with the blades.”
“What?” His jaw dropped.
Ha. “Okay, maybe not the blades.”
“Only practice. No contact, no jumping. Only drills.”
“Fine, fine, grumpy.”
He grabbed me close and mock growled. “I am not grumpy.”
“Are so.”
“Are not.”
“So.”
“Not.”
We smiled in unison. He snuggled me on his lap. His hand grazed my belly. “Mine.”
“Yours.”
We headed back indoors and upstairs. One of the bedrooms doubled as a training room. The Fost practiced their version of the martial arts since they were children. It was as integral to them as the magic.
I was never that athletic, but when I arrived here, I found it helped me focus. I could do the same moves over and over and let body memory take over as my mind drifted free.
I stretched on one side of the room while Marin went to change. For the greenhouse, I always wore clothes I could get dirty in.
Marin came back in the room a few minutes later as I finished my movements. I started to practice blocks and blows, working up a good sweat. Then I proceeded to light jump rope and switched it up to march in place with some lunges. I got lost in the motion and my mind coasted. What would the baby look like? Blue eyes, light brown or white?
At the thought of white eyes, my lungs seized.
White eyes stared at me through amber glass, E’mani eyes.
Most nights, I saw those eyes in my dreams—Xade’s eyes. I hated him so much. Every bad thing that had happened to me, I could attribute to him.
“This will only hurt a lot, Elizabeth.” Xade’s blade flashed.
My belly jerked in remembered pain. My hand drifted down my waist. Sometimes I could still feel his hands buried in my gut. Bile flooded my mouth.
“Elizabeth,” Marin called out.
His words brought me back to my surroundings. Marin hurried over to me. I waved him off.
“I’m fine.”
He hovered, so I ignored him and decided to end with practicing my moves in the corner with the bags.
Marin did his own routine of techniques while he kept a close eye on me. His speed made watching him practice fascinating. He was so fast he didn’t appear to move then with a hard kiai his hand extended into a strike. It was damn sexy.
“Careful,” he warned when I staggered after a poorly executed kick while watching him.
My body felt refreshed, but tired when we called it a day. Yet half of my fun comes from grappling and sparring. I considered what I knew of yoga to try, but that only consisted of the downward facing dog. Which when I got big would be too weird. I could swim more when the weather got better. I needed to stay fit and ready for whatever happened. I also needed to get better at my magic.
During the work out, I’d made a list in my head of the things the baby would need, the things I would need. And I couldn’t stop the bubble of elation and worry that tickled my tummy. Maybe all the stomach dropping wasn’t just emotion, but the baby. I’d never felt it move that I knew of but wow. Would using the power hurt him, or her? “The magic won’t hurt the baby, will it?”
“No, our women use their magic all throughout their pregnancies. The baby is a part of you, as is the magic.” Marin replied.
The tightness in my chest eased. We headed back out to my spot in the garden. I didn’t realize Marin followed me quite so closely until I sat down on top of him.
He pulled me back into his arms. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about the baby, the things that need to be done, kind of got lost a little bit. What are you thinking?”
“I think we should mate. We have a baby on the way now. We have a life together. Where are the bands?” My heart thumped once. He’d figured out I hid them but not where.
I kept my face forward. “Uh.”
“Elizabeth.”
“Not yet. Please. This is all going too fast.”
Marin surprised me, because he let it go. He settled back with a muttered, “Soon,” and rubbed his nose into my neck.
We both started to use our magic as was our routine. My magic swirled in my gut. Sometimes it felt light. Other times it felt like an undigested burrito. Marin said his started in his head as a pressure behind his eyes.
Mine was warmth and heat. His was cold and wind. We complemented each other.
So far, I could heal. I could sense the land. Thinking of this, I reached down and pulled. I felt a power, separate from myself, curl around my hand and slide up my arm. I held up my hand. Then pushed out with a thought and watched green grow through the snow.
A flower bloomed bright against the white backdrop off to my left. A small purple flower with six petals, hard like shell, the stem armed with thorns. Things were so similar to Earth that a simple flower threw me. Like home, but not.
The power ebbed. The cold overtook the plant and the green receded.
I sensed things. I knew when the E’mani were around. There was this bone-deep cold I associated with them. Sometimes I knew what would happen before it did, kind of like an enhanced intuition that guided me forward.
Marin could whisper to me from other rooms, across the city. I had a much shorter range, but I could whisper back. It tickled to hear him both in my head and in my ear, like now when he blew into it. Shivers raced down my spine.
I really hoped it wasn’t like that for anyone else when he talked to them.
And the lightning.
Xade cooed and held out his hand. Extending my own hand, palm up, I smiled and let the hate shine from my eyes. Power coursed through me and I reveled in the feeling. I watched the E’mani when lightning crashed into the trees behind them, too close to be random. Ozone filled the air.
They turned as one to look. “What is this?”
Lightning danced in my vision, across my eyes, along my fingertips. They didn’t look afraid yet. I wanted them afraid. I wanted Xade scared and weeping before me. So many times, it was me crouched there.
Rage tightened my jaw. Lightning struck in the middle of them. They turned back to stare at me. A few moved toward the woods, in a swift wave.
“Ungrateful child, still you would seek to hurt us after all the gifts you have been granted? Your magic will not save you.”
Xade lifted his gun. The metal called the lightning. It struck the clearing. Once, twice...three times, too many to count. Electricity crackled in the air. My hair punked out. A blue haze covered my hands, sparks flying. The marks along my left wrist glowed with power. As I watched, the band spread up my arm, a bolt forming in the blue background.
Xade fired his weapon. The ammunition flew toward me. In slow motion, I swatted it aside. Xade tilted his head at me, a question in his eyes and finally, a trace of fear. He cocked his hand to Lara, who trotted up to him like a well-trained dog.
Zanth made a desolate sound beside me and sprang at the closest E’mani. The lightning covered the sound of his movements. His air magic, so like Marin’s, lent him speed. He reached the nearest one undetected, not Xade unfortunately.
I called more lightning and watched a bolt smash into the chest of another E’mani. He arched back, screaming. Flames burst from his mouth and he flew backward into a tree. The fire spread. Mist and smoke coated our surroundings, eerie in the daylight gloom.
I hadn’t yet figured out what the hell I did, but it was so pretty. And I was glad I hurt them. But I was unwilling to practice that now. It was too destructive and there was a new life growing inside me.
I’d once tracked a killer. I asked the land what happened and a haze rose up. I saw a shadowy mirror of the murderer’s action. Others could track the wind, follow scents and even change shape.
All this power was new to me, and the Fost, for all that they’d historically carried the ability. The magic abandoned them soon after they arrived in Groos, but like my memories, they were slowly trickling back.
We practiced our magic for over an hour. Time got away from you here. Afterward, we went back inside for dinner and to talk to Zanth. I thought he would take it well even though he was a jerk.
Boy was I wrong.