He did as she suggested, surprised to find that the image she evoked could be as restful as it was erotic. He had so many conflicting feelings about the arcanium, and his monstrous ancestors who’d built it, that it hadn’t occurred to him that one of those emotions was deep pleasure, even love. Nic was right: when it was only the two of them in that bubble of moonlight and water magic, when nothing else could intrude, that had become his ideal of perfect peace.

Taking action before he lost that bubble of silver stillness, he reached for Selly’s magic, sipping ever so lightly, like the lightest draw on Nic’s magic. Nothing. No channel opened with generous abundance. It was like taking a drink from a rock, his wizard senses snapping back bruised and stinging from the attempt. He tried again, pulling harder—and again rebounded. This time it was more like biting into an unripe fruit, the rind tough and unforgiving, the taste sour.

Beneath it, though, Selly’s magic, so like his own, water and moonlight, tumbled together with keening pressure. Honing his magic into a mental version of a silver spike, he jammed it through the rind of her resistance.

And broke through.

Her magic roared over him, a tidal wave of water both stagnant and churning, like the raging sea that had nearly decimated their barge on the Wartson coast. He choked on it, the foulness filling his lungs, drowning him and sucking him ever deeper. Flailing helplessly under the rancid onslaught, he suddenly remembered falling into a peat bog as a child. The plummeting panic of that first missed step, the desperate need to breathe as the stink filled his ears, mouth, and nose, even his eyes. The chill fear of death.

Only this time, he’d take Selly with him. The certainty came bone deep. You’ll have to assert your control. Do not let her magic run away with you.

He groped for the reins, for some semblance of control, finding nothing. Only dankness and an unsettling lack of any foundation. This was Selly’s magic, and her mind, a whirling cacophony of lightless, airless nothingness. If he didn’t find something to hold on to, a sense of the real world, they’d drown here together, trapped in this wild magic that held no mercy for them.

Then, something. A light permeating the tenebrous depths. Warm and rosy, the light filtered through, showing him a pathway. Not moonlight, but liquid heat, like a summer afternoon in a rose garden, red grapes bursting with juice, the embrace of family and the sweetness of safety. And Nic, holding out her arms to him in welcome, a sensual smile on her lush lips, a sparkle of mischief in her emerald-green eyes.

He stepped into the circle of her arms, bringing Selly with him. She held on to his hand, no more than a child, gazing up at him with trust that he’d lead her out of the trackless wilderness her mind had become. Firming his grip on her, he encircled her magic with his, taking it in.