The drow halfling looked at her fae roommate and raised an eyebrow. “Finally.”
Ember laughed. “Finally, what?”
“It’s been, what? Three hours. I wondered when you’d start talking about it like a badass fae Nós Aní.”
“Oh, you mean the badass who stood on two legs that don’t work and blasted that creepy whatever-it-was back through the portal before it could kill you?”
Cheyenne glanced back down at the O’gúl tech in her hands and wiped a tiny smile off her lips. “Yeah. That one.”
“You’re welcome.” Ember returned her attention to the pages of Maleshi’s handwritten and printer-copied spellbook. “How have you not gone through all these spells yet? I mean, seriously. Anything I can think of, she wrote down in more detail than I thought was possible.”
Cheyenne cleared her throat. “I have gone through them.”
“For real?” The fae looked at her best friend with a playful frown. “Okay, I meant trying to cast any of these spells. Charms. Wards.”
“For the record, Em, I’ve tried a ridiculous number of those spells and screwed up every single one.”
“Oh, come on.” Ember grinned and swiped her light-brown hair, which was now streaked with fae-violet, away from her forehead. “What about the low-level ones, huh? Those are all in the front. Easy stuff.”
“Not for me.” Cheyenne pulled her legs up onto the recliner and crossed them beneath her, hunching over her lap and studying the dark orb of O’gúl metal. “I’m not kidding. I spent a few hours with those ‘low-level’ spells and almost blew up my old apartment.”
Ember snorted. “To match your old car, huh?”
“Ha-ha.”
The fae lifted a piece of the laid-out spellbook and fluttered it in the air. “The easy ones are really easy, Cheyenne. I mean, look at this. Maleshi wrote down everything from start to finish, including the different hand gestures, and there are only, like, three for this one.”
“Hey, if you think they’re super easy, awesome. You’re one up on me, ‘cause apparently, I just can’t nail down how to work a spell that isn’t, you know, part of the whole drow-halfling thing.”
“That’s ridiculous. You just need some extra practice.”
“Ember.” Cheyenne met her friend’s shimmering violet gaze. Ember’s eyes were now larger and much more luminous than before the fae’s magic had fully manifested just a few hours before. “Ask Corian.”
“I’m not gonna ask Corian!”
“He told L’zar my spellwork’s shit.” The halfling cracked a smile, and the young magicals cracked up. “It took me hours to make that illusion ring for you, which you don’t need anymore.”
“Nope. I got an upgrade.” Ember tossed her hand toward the thin silver bracelet Corian had charmed to provide a human-looking illusion now that she was running around in full fae mode all the time. “Really, though? You couldn’t even nail the beginner spells?”
“What part of ‘almost blew up my old apartment’ is confusing you?” Cheyenne laughed. “Everybody has their skillset, Em. As far as I’m concerned, mine doesn’t even include beginner spells. I’m more of a ‘run in with drow magic blazing and fight my way through the issue’ kind of chick.”
“Well, thank God.”
Bent over her crossed legs, Cheyenne propped her elbow on her knee to swing the cold metal orb out to the side and shot her friend a wide-eyed look of mock insult. “I’d love to hear your explanation for that one.”
Ember shrugged and pursed her lips, trying not to smile as she pretended to be focused on absorbing Maleshi’s low-level spell instructions. “All I’m saying is, if you added these seriously powerful spells to your ‘drow magic blazing,’ we’d all be in deep shit.”
“Ha. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Em.”
“Think about it. If you could do everything, you’d be just like…” Ember’s luminous eyes widened as she glanced at her friend. “Oh.”
Cheyenne’s nostrils flared. “Just like L’zar?”
“Hey, you said it, not me.” Ember replaced the loose page and got back to studying the spellbook.
“I’m nothing like him, Em.”
“Not where it counts.” The fae girl tapped her lips, then leaned forward in her chair to rearrange some of the pages on the coffee table and the couch. “That’s the only part that matters, and for the rest of it, you can blame genetics.”
“Fuck genetics. I blame L’zar for all of it.”
“Well, he did lead us through that ceremony, so maybe give him one exception, huh?” Ember glanced at her pink-tinged forearm and the now-visible glow of her fae aura. Then she looked at Cheyenne and gestured to her new permanent appearance. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”
“Fair point, but don’t give him all the credit for that one, Em. L’zar Verdys didn’t make you fae, and he sure as hell didn’t make you my Nós Aní. We chose that.”
Ember looked at her friend for half a second, then returned to the pages with a small smile. “More like I chose it and you couldn’t stop me, but okay.”
“Yeah, don’t let it go to your head.”
“You too, halfling.”
With another snort, Cheyenne returned her attention to the seemingly lifeless orb of O’gúl metal in her hand. Lifeless except for the never-ending data stream. I seriously hope it’s just the activator and not this thing relaying some kind of message to the asshole loyalist in charge of it.
The activator behind her ear fed her line after line of O’gúleesh code, translating it instantly into English now that it had fully synced to Cheyenne’s halfling brain. Her vision filled with the scrolling blue commands, then she found something she recognized. “Wait a minute.”
Responding instantly to her voiced thought, the activator paused the data stream on the bit of code that had caught her attention.
“What’s up?” Ember kept staring at the closest page of Maleshi’s spellbook, only half paying attention.
“I’ve seen this encryption before.” Cheyenne blinked, and the section of code flashed in her vision before zipping into the top
