Beautiful and Broken

4.

What mutual curiosity did amount for was not being in a hurry to part ways. I've shared my dinner with him: two grilled groundhogs, complete with a little bread and a few apples I've appropriated from a freshly wrecked skiff. I've also summoned a fire, worried about his still healing wounds getting cold. He expressed his gratitude by questioning me.

"What were you doing in the Fold?", he started.

"I could ask you the same. There were some unusual phenomena..."

"I've asked first", he interrupted.

"I was researching it."

"And did you find something interesting?"

"Yeah, you actually."

"I'm not here to be researched by random foreigners."

I focused all my attention on the apple I was eating, not giving him the satisfaction of an answer. He didn't seem bothered.

"And why would you come from a far away land, to research something like the Fold?"

"Not my idea. I've been assigned by the Council."

"And what does your Council want to achieve by sending you to die?"

"I wasn't about to die, thanks for your concern. I was all right in there for the past few weeks."

"You see, this part baffles me. If I remember correctly, you were summoning light."

I cupped my hands and made a small ball of light emerge. Then I made it disappear, and shrugged.

"Do all of you in Atlantis do this?"

"Pretty much the first thing we learn as mages. Opposed to you Grisha, as I've heard. But someone did summon a great deal of light in there before I've found you."

"What else do you do? What can you create?", he continued questioning, seemingly trying to avoid the topic of what happened earlier. I wasn't about to let him.

"So what actually happened in there? There was light, then you did something to the Fold, then the light summoner got away..."

My throat constricted so that I had to stop talking. It was him of course, sending shadows tightening around my throat with a flick of his fingers.

"None. Of. Your. Business."

My magic was itching at my fingertips, wanting to make him disappear from the face of the earth. But turning to pulp the generals of foreign armies outside of a war situation was not in alignment with our diplomacy guidelines, though that was my smaller worry of the two. I had an assignment. He was my key to succeeding. This is why he was only submitted to a blinding, but otherwise harmless explosion of light, as light seemed to be something out of the ordinary for him anyway. His shadows shrivelled at my neck. I liked to imagine they made small whimpering sounds in the process.

"Very consistent of you, Aleksander, after you've said you wouldn't hurt me."

"I wasn't gonna hurt you. Just warn you."

"I'll consider myself warned. Would you mind doing the same?"

We started an impromptu staring contest, none of us wanting to be the first to give in and say something. It lasted for a good while, but at least it gave me the occasion to take in all of his good looks. Black hair, half of it slicked back as intended, the other half escaped and framing his forehead. A beard, just enough of it to accentuate his jawbones without making him look like a monk. Eyes so dark you couldn't really see their color. And even with the scars, his face had the features of a timeless nobility, as if sculpted by an artist talented enough to make portraits of gods. It seemed we have a second thing in common: a mutual stubbornness.