Can you keep a secret?

Matching the winging rattling of Lucie’s chains, Málmr’s heavy boots pounded down the road. His cheeks were ruddy from the effort over his scarf tied tight over his nose and mouth, and his only attention was to the road. It took a moment for Lucie’s weak voice to pull him from his own thoughts, and he slowed for a moment, going, “Hush now, auðœfi. It’s alright. It’s going to be alright. I’m going to get you help.” 

He had to. After what happened when she fell unconscious, he had no other choice. 

--
In the aftermath of the flashbangs and Lucie’s fireworks, the stunning silence of the forest path was only broken by groans and shuddering gasps from the thief and the Witchfinder. When Málmr’s eyes cleared and he could blink the daze away, a war-torn scene greeted him, scattered with fading stars.

Spears ravaged the path, piercing straight through trees, shredding bushes, piercing flesh. The thief had barely managed to pull out the one in his foot in the flashes of light, but he had a new one deep in his outer thigh, staining his striped pants red, and another piercing his upraised forearm that had initially protected him from the flash – now, he trembled as he stared in blank terror at the spearhead just inches from his face.

Gwyn was pinned to a tree to the left, a spear embedded in her shoulder under the collarbone, another stabbed just above her hip that she was gripping with a hissing, ragged breath. Unlike the thief, she bared her teeth at him in shuddering fury, which he returned with a glance-over of cold steel.

One more voice added to the misery: Lucie writhed in his arms in pain, crying of burning stars as she pulled at his hair. His heart pounded from violence and fresh panic as he turned from Gwyn’s betrayed hatred. He had no time to console her, and could only watch in horror as magic ravaged her small frame, causing her incredible pain. When she fell limp in his arms and the stars on the path died with it, and his enchanted desire to fight was cut clean, leaving him cold and afraid.

“Lucie!” He shook her, but she only let out a pained whimper, her head rolling towards his chest. Her breathing was shallow and tormented, and a crescent moon burned with a searing light on her brow. He shrugged her into one arm, barely aware that his burned shoulder didn’t feel taut and inflamed when he cupped her cheek with his other hand. “Lucie, wake up, don’t-” Her magic – it had done something, turned his shields to spears, made him –

He stopped, looked around the clearing at the pain he’d caused.

“I’m,” Geirr’s sake, he could barely get the words past the sickening bile that rose in his throat. “I’ll – send help back – I need to-” He needed to get Lucie to someone who could wake her, make the pain stop, keep the costs of her magic from raging havoc over her.

Gwyn stared at him, her expression settling like stone. There was no fury in her voice, but no forgiveness either. “There’s a horse and cart to the west. Merchant waiting on his stolen purse back.” She nodded a chin to the thief who was sobbing and trying and failing to sit up, with another spear pinning his cloak back. Both she and Málmr knew that removing the spears without immediate medical treatment would just waste blood. “Hurry.”

“Tha-”

“Don’t thank me.” Gwyn cut him off emotionlessly, her grip tightening on the spear shaft at her hip. She leveled her attention on the tusks at his mouth, and her eyes narrowed. “Next I see you, I’m going to return the favor twice over.”

Málmr stilled, then nodded. He leaned down and plucked the stolen purse from the thief’s hip, who turned away from him as much as he could, his panicked wheezing shrill in Málmr’s ears as he tucked Lucie against his collarbone, and he left the path without another word.

His thoughts burned like a wildfire jumping hungrily from one thing to another and leaving a wasteland behind. He had to get back to the house, to where he’d left his pack, his things, his medicine kit. He could search for something in it to help her, and get back to the merchant’s cart – and then what? Where would he go?

He raced back to the house in short order and set Lucie down on the porch steps as gently as he could. She was getting worse in her sleep, her shallow breathing weak, her skin deathly pale. Her magic was too strong for someone so young, and if it could just stop –

A stilling thought crossed his mind, and he rifled through his pack, letting cooking pans and bottles clatter on the porch without a care as he took out a pair of Order-issue handcuffs with a cold horror.

He remembered how he’d felt when Sylen had cuffed him in the witch’s hut. Cut off, filled with a strange normalcy he hadn’t felt in years. He’d gotten so used to the magic singing under his skin, ready to rip through him once called, that to feel its lack stole his breath away.

He looked to Lucie, slipping away in torment. If it could cut off one’s magic, would it remove the costs as well? He had to try. He had the key in his other hand, gripped so tight that its pattern left a mark in his scarred palm.

He had to adjust it for her tiny wrist, and the lock went click all too easily. Immediately, she relaxed from head to toe, falling into a normal slumber with a little sigh. The relief shuddered painfully through Málmr, and a sudden wave of sorrow burned his throat and eyes as he reached to shoulder his pack and lift her from the stairs.

She was okay. Now – now he had to think of getting help for the people he’d hurt. He had to hurry to that merchant’s cart, and then he could take Lucie.....

.....to those who could figure out what her new magic was. He could take her to Namarast. He looked down at her, brows furrowed. But doing so without Danae's permission-?

No, he couldn't let indecision haunt him. Lucie needed help, and he could always send for Danae afterwards. Resolution settled his nervous heart, and with everything packed and ready to go, he picke dher up once more and headed towards the city of mages with little Lucie in his arms.