He didn’t bother hiding his sneer this time. “If I fail, Eva, you fail with me.”
“I didn’t run away from you just for the fun of it.” Eva wasn’t sure she had the mettle to argue with him more or fight him off if he forced her to anything. She merely wanted to maintain an ounce of pride—all she could afford before him.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this exactly what you want? To learn geomancia?”
Eva ground her teeth, but in the end, she nodded.
With a slap to the air, he sent the flame wisp hurtling onto the logs and ashes of their campfire. The embers took the fire slowly, creating just enough light to encompass them. Eva watched him cautiously, straining to see if the snaking slivers of black were back. She didn’t see them this time.
“So,” he said, “geomancia.” He nodded at the bands on her fingers. “Litio for protection, bismuto for enhancement, and galio for healing.”
From his bedding he grabbed his pocket-sized journal. He opened it somewhere in the middle, then showed it to her.
“Iridio for destruction?” Eva asked.
“No. Iridio’s versatile. The key is in the concoction of the solution and the cunning of the caster. It’s only ever used for destruction because most humans are so unoriginal they don’t care to find out what they can do with it. They just care to blow things up.”
“And you don’t?” Eva asked, uncaring to hide the insolence. She was going to treat him as bitterly as she felt because he’d earned it, and because being disagreeable was all she had left.
“I like iridio. Only a fool wouldn’t. But I have my blade and my blood. In most cases I don’t need anything else. The real masters of iridio figure out ways to use it creatively. For example, I know a nozariel half-breed who is alive only because she has a heart of iridio.”
“A nozariel half-breed…” Eva parroted, her jaw slightly hanging open. “Is she a master of it?”
At this, Javier let out a mean laugh. “In her dreams maybe.”
A small leather knapsack was part of his supplies. He fetched it and opened it for Eva, showing her the velvet pouches and glass potion vials stored within. His slim hand brushed the cork tops of the bottles, clattering the crystals against each other so that Eva could see the solutions glinting in different hues of chartreuse and azure as the liquids caught the campfire light. Glimmering gingers and blacks so dark all the light was sucked in.
“I bought the metals as powders from the trader. We’ll do the lesson of mixing them into solution later. The mixing has to be done carefully, and we need proper light to do it. If the potions come out wrong, they won’t channel our spells correctly, and they’ll go to waste. For now, I want us to go over casting. I want to see what you can do.”
“I know a bit of litio,” she offered, and he nodded.
“Sure. Litio’s the simplest to cast and the hardest to master. Those who master litio, of all three geomancia metals, are untouchable. Your skill with litio is strong. Though you still need to learn how to conserve the potion and minimize its usage. Here, let me refill your rings.”
He unstoppered one of the vials as Eva flipped open the crystal cap of her index finger ring. His hand was steady like steel when he ferried to her the dropper replete with a clear liquid. Javier squeezed three droplets of it into the ring’s capsule, and she flicked the cap shut. Then they refilled the others.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Now try to cast with bismuto.” He placed the trunk near the safety of his bedding and brought out the journal once again. The open page had the illustrations as a series of steps: slapping the hands together, then pulling them apart without separating the digits, and finally flicking the wrists to opposite sides. “It’s supposed to strengthen your muscles, to give you the strength to move faster, to hit harder. Try it,” he commanded.
Eva’s eyes lifted to meet his blood-red gaze. Finally, they were doing what she had wanted for so long.
She pressed her hands together like in the illustration, but nothing happened.
“Harder,” he said, and there was a tremor to his voice, like a stir of the demon.
“Harder? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know—you need intention.” At her blank stare, he said, “You don’t know how to cast body armor with litio.”
Eva shook her head.
“And you’re too slow anyway. So, if I wanted to strike you, you wouldn’t be able to shield yourself from me.” Javier took one step closer, then another, his boots crunching loudly on crisp twigs. His eyes were changing. They were still red, but they were cruel and old, as if he had centuries of life behind him.
The terrible dark magic began seeping in and out of his cheeks.
“You can only run away,” he purred.
Eva’s breath caught in her throat. She tried stepping back but only bumped the back of her calf against a boulder and nearly tripped.
She remembered the way he had flashed from one side of the inn to another, his sword an extension of his left arm. Strides as fast as an afterthought.
“I won’t learn like this,” she breathed. “I—I need more time.”
Javier slapped her on the cheek. It wasn’t painful, just a mocking feathery pat.
“So slow and soft,” he teased. “If only there were something you could use to run away from me?”
Eva was a sheep awaiting a wolf to pounce. A rodent paralyzed by a slithering snake. She was at the inn, when the putrid magic marred his beauty and turned him into something that wanted to hurt her.
Like now.
Eva leapt back. She ducked away from his second strike and performed the bismuto incantation as described in the journal. At once her essence multiplied into existence in a million different planes and realities, fragmented like the unlimited reflections in opposing shattered mirrors, days and nights whooshing past her, animals and people cutting through the spot where she stood like a ghost. In all of them, her spirit brimmed with glittering magic, a million versions all holding a tiny piece, summing to a colossal well. All at her disposal, to be plucked if she willed it so. And she did. Eva channeled the strength through her rings and hands.
At once, everything flared into cognizance. The warm air became spikes to her lungs. The light of the campfire, a blinding flare of orange. Javier’s fist flying toward her, sharp ringing in her ears. She jumped out of the way with strength alien to her muscles and realized: She had evaded him. Finally, that smile did peek through.
Then he pursued her.
Eva skidded around the campfire and dodged his punch. She leapt again without direction, fear rippling through her at the very real possibility of his strike. The demon was back, and it was enjoying every second of the pursuit.
She ran from the fire, for it was so bright she couldn’t see him. She could only hear his breaths, the grass, and his footsteps as loud as shattering glass.
He reappeared in front of her, and Eva screamed.
His laugh was like thunder to her eardrums. “Not bad,” he said with the blackness gone. “Bismuto is simple. You just have to learn to conserve your supplies. Are you almost out?”
Eva could feel how much liquid each ring cap had the same way she could feel how empty a jar was by simply lifting it.