Marked by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #4)(58)

The second map was of the island itself, with exes marked in different spots. I imagined these were the locations of various caches Messindor had scattered all over the island, in case he couldn’t get back to the main one he had here. It would help pass the time to track them down. I kept it on the desk while I rolled the other map up and put it away.

In the last drawer, I found various magical charms and amulets, including yet another gulaya, bigger than the one that had brought me here. I picked up the star-shaped charm and sniffed it, but could only detect a hint of magic – it was no longer charged. Oh well. I had no idea where this one would take me even if it did work, and I didn’t have the means to charge it myself.

The wooden chest was possibly the most perplexing thing in the room. It was beautifully crafted, with a variety of runes carved into the dark wood, but there was no way to open it. I could see the seam where the lid met the container, but it was impossible to fit even the tiniest sliver of fingernail beneath it, and there was no visible lock. I considered smashing the chest, but I didn’t want to harm the contents, and besides, it smelled strongly enough of magic that I feared some kind of magical retaliation if I did so.

With nothing else to do, I curled up on the cot and tried to sleep. The bedding was remarkably well preserved, as was everything else in this room aside from the dried ink. The scent of magic clinging to the air made me wonder whether the mage had set some sort of preservation spell on this chamber to hold everything in a magical stasis, so that time or the elements could not harm his possessions. That would be a useful spell, especially for a pirate who had to stash treasure and supplies in all manner of places. I decided I would ask Iannis to teach it to me, if I saw him again.

When I saw him again, I reminded myself firmly. Iannis would come to rescue me. He had to.

My eyelids closed as sleep found me, but instead of dark, dreamless sleep, the heat assailed me, fire creeping in my veins, phantom caresses sliding across my skin. Memories of Iannis swirled in my mind, of his hands on my naked skin, his deceptively wicked mouth on my lips, his seductive sandalwood scent invading my space. His presence forced all thought out of my head, leaving only my desire for him.

“I want you to be mine, and only mine,” Iannis whispered darkly into my ear. His tongue flicked out to caress my earlobe, and I shuddered as more intense heat lashed me. But when I reached for him, my hands only met empty air, and I found myself back in the cot, my clothes on the floor and my limbs tangled in a sweaty blanket. Frustrated, I ripped off the sheet and made my way out of the room and down the tunnel.

Standing at the cave entrance, I allowed the cooler night air to caress my naked skin. The touch was both a curse and a blessing, as it took the edge off my overheated skin and reminded me of the real, physical touch I desperately craved. The full moon was finally here, taunting me with its bright, shiny roundness as it hung over the sea. For whatever reason, the light of the moon increased a shifter’s power; we were stronger and able to shift more quickly during the full moon. But when a female shifter was in heat, the full moon only amplified her desperate need.

Remember your heritage, Resinah’s voice whispered as the breeze picked up, swirling around me. You are not merely the sum of your parts, Sunaya Baine. Whole, you have the potential to be stronger than both your shifter and mage ancestors.

I sighed in relief as Resinah’s cooling breeze drew the heat out of me, and with it, the fog of lust clouding my mind. Whole, I thought, looking at the full moon. I had the capability of being stronger than a mage or a shifter, if I could figure out how to combine my two halves into a whole. That was something I could try to work on while I was stuck on this lonely island.

I only hoped that Iannis would come to find me, as I’d found him, and that when he arrived, my sanity wouldn’t be splintered into a thousand pieces.





23





“I am going absolutely bat-shit crazy,” I muttered, swinging from one tree branch to another like the damned howler monkeys that were chittering away in the branches across from me. Unlike them, I wasn’t doing this because I was trying to get anywhere. After a whole week on the island, I was literally bored out of my f*cking mind, and with little else to do, I was mimicking the wildlife while figuring out new ways to train my muscles.

It turned out that the local animal population was a lot less scared of me when I was in human form. I thought they still sensed the predator in me, because a lot of them stayed away, but the howler monkeys had grown used to me to the point that they didn’t even run away when I tried to climb into their trees. Of course, some of the animals had good reason to fear me, especially the white-tailed deer – whenever I got hungry, I’d simply change into beast form and go hunting, and deer and the wild pigs were on the top of my menu list. I’d also tried fresh fish and lobster while swimming in the ocean as a panther, but they were harder to catch, and I had to eat a lot more of them to satiate myself.

During the first couple of days, I’d gone around the island with the map I’d found, locating Messindor’s ancient caches. Some of them were tougher to find than others, and each of them held something different. One had a pair of pistols, a small sack of gunpowder, and a box of blackened bullets that I scalded my fingers on before I realized they were silver. Another location turned out to be a cellar dug into the ground and filled with glass jugs of booze, no longer drinkable. But in a third one, I’d found a clay jar filled with gold that was heavy enough to pay my food and rent for the next few years.