Dorian Wraith's Arc

Chapter 3 of 27

They walked until they found a pool of clear blue water ringed by mossy stones. Evander drank, splashed his face, and stretched out under a tree with his pack for a pillow. He was asleep in a minute. Dorian sat on a flat rock and watched him breathe. Then he pulled the pink and yellow book from his bag. Beak had pressed it into his hands the night before he left the cabin and said the pages would show him what he needed when he needed it. Dorian had not opened it yet. He was afraid of what a book like that would ask of him. The page fell open to a spell called Ball of Light. The instructions were short. Hold what you love in your mind. Push it out through your hand. Dorian tried his mother. Nothing. He tried Callie asleep in a warm bed. A weak spark, then smoke. He looked up at Evander under the tree, the torn blue sleeve, the slow rise of his chest, the shape of his mouth. Warmth moved under Dorian's ribs again. He held out his hand and a small white sphere bloomed in his palm, steady and cool, no smoke, no burn. He almost laughed. Love was the anchor. Not fear. Not anger. This. A branch cracked. Three men in dark leather stepped out of the trees with swords drawn. One pointed at Evander and said the name Dorian had not heard before, a real name, the wrong name for a man on the run. "Step aside, boy," the leader said. "He's coming with us." Dorian stood. His hand shook. He thought of fire and stopped himself. Fire would kill them and burn the woods and Evander with it. He closed his eyes and did what Beak had told him a hundred times. He pictured Evander safe. He pushed the feeling out through his open palms, not up, not in, but forward. Wind tore out of him. It hit the three men like a wall and threw them back through the brush. One struck a trunk and did not get up. The other two rolled and scrambled and ran. Evander was already sitting up, wide awake, hand on a knife Dorian had not known he carried. "That was you?" Dorian nodded. He could not speak yet. He grabbed Evander's wrist and pulled him to his feet. "More will come. We have to move." They ran. Dorian led them back the way he had come the night before, tree by tree, until the sunflowers by the blue door showed through the leaves. Beak stood on the porch with his arms crossed, and Callie's face appeared at the window. Dorian had sworn he would not come back. He had come back anyway, with a prince behind him and a new kind of magic in his hands.