FoM02 Trammel Read Online Free PDF

very old one, old enough that it doesn’t quite fit my magic. That’s why I could make fire, still, a little. The word to end it is finiri . To put it back on, oriri . My will won’t make it work, now that things are decided. It is not so old that it forgets the way of things.”
    Lindsay didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to have anything to do with something like that, but he wanted it off Noah more. That he could simply speak a word and the bracelet would come off but that Noah couldn’t do the same... Noah really was his in a way that the magic understood.

    When Lindsay touched his fingertips to the metal, it was hot like he’d imagined Noah’s skin would be.
    “Finiri,” he whispered. The bracelet had been far too small to move past Noah’s hand, but somehow it landed in Lindsay’s palm with a faint ringing tone. He nearly dropped it in surprise and disgust, but managed to slip it into his pocket first. He’d decide what to do with it later.
    The alley went dark as Noah let the fire go. “I’m sorry to have offended you,” he said, with a formality to his words that reminded Lindsay of when he’d spoken to Cyrus.
    “It’s not you.” Lindsay didn’t want Noah to think it was anything he’d done. There was enough reason for tension and distance and confusion between them without that. “I can’t...” He took another slow breath and explained, “I wore something very much like it, under other circumstances, and Cyrus knew it when he gave you to me.”
    “Cyrus couldn’t have accepted me without it.” Noah stepped back. “Nor could my father have given me over. It would have been wrong to do to all of us.” His tone was dull, like he was tired. “And it’s better than the alternative. For some things, even some terrible things, the necessity of them overrides all else.
    Whether we like it or not.”
    “If Cyrus believed in the necessity of it, he shouldn’t have given you to me.”
    Now Lindsay realized the barre had been—like Noah himself—a wordless challenge from Cyrus and he had no intention of telling Cyrus, or Dane for that matter, that he’d panicked at the sight of it. Whether he succeeded or failed at the challenge set before him depended on Noah, but it also depended on Lindsay stepping up and doing what needed to be done.
    He’d taken care of the barre. Now, he had to take care of Noah.
    Lindsay stalked out of the alley and turned the corner. It was time to take Noah to the abandoned school. There was a huge gymnasium that had been stripped down after the school had been closed, and it would be perfect to work in.
    “Besides, you have to learn to control it on your own. No artifact is going to hold your magic back if it wants out badly enough.” Lindsay knew that first-hand, and he knew how much damage the resulting fracture could cause.
    “Don’t assume I didn’t want to wear it. Nor that my magic wants ‘out’.” Noah took out his flask and opened it, then offered it to Lindsay.
    The sour taste of vomit was enough to push Lindsay into swishing something that tasted like fire through his mouth. Maybe he’d have been better off with the vomit. He forced himself to swallow and passed the flask back to Noah with a muffled cough.
    “I don’t want to know what that is. Christ. But your magic must be new if you can’t tell it’s itching to get out. Look at you. You’re burning up, and I don’t know how many cigarettes I’ve seen burst into flames in the past few days.”

    “It doesn’t want out,” Noah said flatly. “It wants me .”
    Lindsay looked at Noah, charting the scars and burns that marked his face and hands. His eyebrows and eyelashes were intact, but the hair on his head was gone, as though it had refused to return after being burnt away. The way Noah radiated heat, the way his eyes burned, the way his fire seemed to slip out unprovoked, Lindsay...Lindsay believed him.
    “Well, I suppose it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t get you.”