“What is an ice lens?”
Drawing out the chain, he showed me a metal ring whose diameter was no greater than the length of my thumb. At first I thought it was empty, but by the light of cold fire it gleamed. When I ventured to touch it, and he nodded to indicate I could, its slick surface chilled my skin.
Startled, I drew back my hand. “It’s actually ice! How can they even have ice here?”
“Professora Alhamrai has devised a cunningly engineered cold room. A kind of an icehouse, created with coils that condense vapors.”
“What does the lens do?”
“Cold magic is weak here. A lens focuses and amplifies the magic. It has to be made out of ice because other substances like a lens ground of glass don’t absorb or transfer the magic. I can keep it cool for a while against my skin.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing with the Jovesday trolls.”
“The Jovesday…? Ah. Yes.” He slipped the chain back under his jacket.
My hands twitched, wishing to trace its path down his chest. “That’s how you froze that wave and saved me during the hurricane.”
“Yes. Otherwise I couldn’t have done it. Not here in the Antilles.” He caught my hands in his. “What possessed you to climb into that boat? Trap yourself, knowing the flood was coming?”
“Should I have left that man to die?”
His fingers stroked mine. “No, of course you would never. Give me a moment to work this through. The Wild Hunt will ride on Hallows’ Night. You fear they will track down and kill Beatrice. The Hunt must shed blood to be put to rest. I trust you do not mean to sacrifice yourself.”
I shook my head. The touch of his hands made me ache.
“It’s likely you are not of interest to the Wild Hunt. I can’t think of any reasons you would threaten them as dragon dreamers or powerful mages do.”
I tried to speak but only an exhalation came out.
“I trust you are not planning to throw me into their path,” he added.
“That’s not amusing!”
He considered more narrowly. “We’d be well rid of that fire mage. He’s very powerful.”
“He is? I’m amazed to hear you say it.”
“I’m amazed he hasn’t burned himself up yet. The only thing stopping him from torching this whole city is the fact, unfortunate only for him, that he would die.”
For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder what it would be like to hold so much power and know you could never use it. To know it could kill you at any moment. “If cold mages are fire banes, then couldn’t a cold mage act as a catch-fire for a fire mage? By extinguishing the fire?”
“Catch-fires don’t extinguish fires. As far as I can tell, they take the fire into them. Or I should more properly say, the backwash of fire magic floods into them instead of into the mage.”
I remembered the way Drake’s fire had limned the skin of the dying man at the inn. As the backlash of his fire magic had consumed the dying man, Drake had healed one who could live. “I just thought if a cold mage could act as a catch-fire, that maybe working in concert with a fire mage they might be powerful enough to…to…”
He pressed a finger to my lips.
“To defy the Wild Hunt and save your cousin.” By no means did he look astonished. “There you have the real question, Catherine. What purpose does the Wild Hunt serve? Everyone is taught that the Hunt gathers the souls of those who will die in the coming year. A few people know it also hunts down and kills the women who walk the dreams of dragons. But only mages know that any mage who becomes too powerful will be killed by the Hunt. Why would the courts fear us? Do they fear what we might discover? Or what we might become?”
I could not resist gently biting his finger. That was a kind of question, wasn’t it? What might he and I become?
He inhaled sharply, but he did not otherwise move.
I had him now.
I released his finger, and he splayed his hand across my cheek. His touch was firm, promising strength, but also precise in being a question rather than a claim.
“Tell me what you want, Catherine. For the worst of it has been wondering if you really meant the way you looked at me, the words you said, on the night of the areito.”
I studied the planes of his face and the precise stubble of his beard. How much time had he taken this afternoon in shaving, trimming, washing, and dressing, knowing I was coming? I considered his eyes, so dark a brown they seemed black, and his lips so full and inviting. Ought a man be allowed to be so handsome? How was a gal to think in the face of such looks?
