Hunted by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #3)(16)

“Keeping the air warm in here would require constant use of my magic, and I’m already using it to steer the balloon,” I told her. “I’m not a never-ending power source, Annia – that would drain me eventually.”

“Oh alright,” she sighed, burrowing a little deeper into her bedroll. “But this still sucks.”

“I told you we shouldn’t have brought her.” Fenris’s voice echoed into my mind, a little smugly. “She’s clearly not cut out for this kind of travel.”

“You have no idea what Annia is and isn’t cut out for.” Annoyed, I turned to glare at him, but I found that he wasn’t even looking at me. Rather, he was staring at Annia over his knees, his yellow eyes glimmering with ire.

My scowl melted away into a grin as an idea came to me. “Go sit over there with her.”

Fenris’s eyes snapped toward me. “Excuse me?”

“Oh you heard me right.” My grin widened. “Go get under the bedroll with Annia and share your body heat with her.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Fenris bit out. “You keep saying she can take care of herself. She doesn’t need me.”

“Oh stop being such an ass.” I would have been annoyed at his recalcitrance if I wasn’t enjoying how uncomfortable he was becoming. I’d never seen Fenris so ruffled. “You know why we need her, and there’s no point in letting her suffer if we don’t have to. Be a gentleman, for Magorah’s sake! Unless you don’t know how.”

“Of course I know how,” Fenris snapped.

“Know how to do what?” Annia asked, and we both snapped our heads around to look at her. Her dark, thickly lashed eyes were peeking out from beneath the bedroll, and they latched onto Fenris hopefully. “Build a fire in here without setting the whole basket aflame?”

“No,” Fenris sighed, his voice softening. He rolled onto his knees, and the basket rocked a little as he made his way toward Annia. “But I suppose I can help warm you up with my body heat.”

“Oooh.” Annia waggled her eyebrows, and I nearly lost it. “Does that mean you’re getting naked?”

“Hardly.” Fenris kept his voice even, but his short, dark hair wasn’t long enough to hide his ears, and I bit back a laugh as I watched them turn red. Annia lifted the bedroll and waved Fenris over – a gesture that cost her as the exposure caused her to start shivering again. Noticing, Fenris quickly got under the bedroll with her and tucked it around them both, pressing his stocky body close to Annia’s.

“There,” I said, grinning. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“You put him up to this?” Annia asked, her brows arched.

“Well, I didn’t want my best friend turning into a popsicle. Feel free to snuggle in closer – he doesn’t mind.”

“What…?” Fenris started to protest as Annia did exactly that, and I let out a snicker. From the glint in her dark eyes, I knew she was playing along with me. Fenris was ridiculously easy to tease, and I found myself wondering why I hadn’t done it before. Probably because we didn’t really spend any idle time together. As I watched Fenris slowly begin to relax, I wondered if he spent idle time in the company of others at all. He was close friends with Iannis, sure, but I’d hardly ever heard the two of them talk of anything other than business, and he didn’t appear to have close relationships with anyone else.

Then again, Fenris was a shifter, so should I really be surprised that he hadn’t made friends with the others? The way the Council had turned on him so quickly the moment Iannis was out of sight was proof that without the Chief Mage’s support, Fenris didn’t hold much influence. It made me wonder if that was my fate, too – if I would always have to rely on Iannis to protect me from the wrath and prejudice of the Mages Guild.

Hell no, I thought, gripping the rope in my fist a little tighter. I might need Iannis now, but no way was I going to be dependent on him for the rest of my life. I was going to become a mage in my own right, a force to be reckoned with, and the other mages would have to respect me.

“Is it just me, or are we swaying a little?”

Annia’s voice startled me out of my thoughts, and I realized that my lapses in concentration were pulling the balloon in the wrong direction – a side effect of letting myself get caught up in my emotions.

“Sorry,” I muttered, reining myself in. The balloon steadied again as I straightened out our course. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Do you need me to take over?” Fenris asked, sounding concerned. “It’s important that you maintain your focus and control, Sunaya. We don’t want to wreck the balloon.”

“No, no, I’m fine.” I waved Fenris away as he started to stand up. “I’ll be good for another hour at least.”

“Very well,” he said, settling back in with Annia. I turned my attention back to the landscape, which was so very, very far below us. It had been six hours since we’d left, with at least another four to go until we crossed the border into Mexia. Right now we were hovering over the state of Aziana, the craggy, reddish-brown landscape peeking through the clouds below us. Mostly canyons and desert, with the occasional green patch of forest. I’d heard they had cacti there the size of trees, with arms sticking out to the sides and up, like a man holding up both hands in surrender. I wondered what the people there were like – I’d traveled all over Canalo on Enforcer business, but never to other states, and it made me realize I knew very little about the rest of the Federation.