Dorian Wraith's Arc

Chapter 2 of 27

Beak's cabin sat in a clearing half a day's walk from where they had met. Sunflowers grew tall by the blue door, and soft yellow light curled around the logs like smoke that would not leave. Callie ate two bowls of stew and slept in a real bed for the first time in a week. Dorian stood outside at dawn with the fairy, palms up, and tried to do what he was told. Fire came easy. He shaped it into a ball, a ribbon, a low steady flame he could hold for a full minute without shaking. Beak nodded once and moved on. Water was next. Dorian could not do water. He could not do wind. He could not coax a single leaf to lift off the ground. Beak set a clay cup on a stump and asked him to fill it from the rain barrel without touching either. Dorian stared until his eyes stung. The cup cracked down the middle and steam hissed out of the barrel. Beak wiped his face and said try again. They tried for three days. Every spell that was not fire turned into fire. On the fourth morning Dorian burned a hole through the porch step and Callie jumped back with a small cry, and he saw the bakery again, the woman in the doorway, the smell. He waited until the cabin was dark. He wrote Callie a note that said Beak will keep you safe. He did not wake her. He took bread and a blanket and walked into the trees. Better to be alone in the woods than to burn another person he loved. He walked until his legs shook, then sat against a trunk and pressed his hands between his knees so they could not do anything. Something snapped in the brush. Dorian stood. A young man stepped into the moonlight with his hands open, blonde hair cut short, a fine blue tunic torn at one sleeve, a small pack on his back. "Don't run," the stranger said. "I'm not chasing you. I'm running too." He looked at Dorian a long moment. "Call me Evander”. Dorian kept his hands behind him. "From what?" "My father. He's a bad man with a lot of soldiers." Evander sat down slow, like he was tired of standing. "There are men on the road behind me. Two, maybe three. I can't lose them alone. You look like someone who knows the woods." Dorian did not know the woods. He knew fire, and fire was the wrong answer to almost everything. But the boy's eyes were steady, and Dorian felt something warm move under his ribs that was not magic it was attraction. He sat down across from him. "I'll help," he said. "I don't know if I'll be any good at it." Evander smiled. "Neither do I."