***

  [Lorelei]

  Calypso was slowly getting better. For now, he’d been put on strict bed rest, and they still wouldn’t let him eat regular food because it could disrupt the fragile balance in his body. Cal was only given endless serums and potions, many of which had strong sedative effects, so he slept most of the time.

  His stubbornness wouldn’t let him lie still, but after one particularly disastrous attempt to get up on his own, Calypso stopped trying to leave the infirmary early.

  Calypso hated feeling weak… And he was terribly ashamed to show that weakness in front of me. And each time he was surprised that I perceived this temporary weakness of his so differently. I tried hard to convey this different perception to Cal, and I think I was even starting to succeed.

  I myself was fine and continued active training with my classmates during the day — for now without my warden, with Eric temporarily looking after me. My magic was behaving surprisingly stable; I only felt the familiar murky fluctuations I’d learned to live with. But now it wasn’t as pronounced as usual.

  In the mornings I managed to stop by the infirmary and prevent a local apocalypse.

  Specifically: save the healers from Calypso’s righteous fury at their attempts to spoon-feed him recovery potions, since Cal was still too weak to hold a spoon or cup in his hands. And he only didn’t freak out when I fed him the potions — actually, the opposite, he’d suddenly calm down and go quiet. And the look in his eyes when I did… deep, attentive. Like he was trying to look into my very soul through my eyes.

  After that I’d rush off to exhausting classes, and in the evening I’d return to Calypso again. Just talking with him, just holding his hand, just joking and laughing at his jokes… just being there. Just loving.

  Calypso noticed that his regeneration sped up from my touch, after which I consciously tried to channel my energy into him to help him recover, trying to tap into our bond.

  At first it worked weakly, but then I learned to control it — under Calypso’s attentive guidance and with his advice, of course. He was visibly getting better right before my eyes, which made me incredibly happy.

  I was exhausted myself and felt drained and starving after each energy transfer session, but I kept going, invested in Calypso’s speedy recovery.

  “Thank you,” he said once, out of nowhere.

  “For what exactly?”

  Calypso didn’t answer right away, biting his lower lip and looking at me thoughtfully.

  “I got carried away and almost lost my physical form during that battle,” he said very quietly.

  “I misjudged my strength. Shadow magic… A little more and it would have pulled me into the flip side, from which I wouldn’t have returned. If not for you… The flip side would have already dragged me into the spirit world.”

  A shudder ran through me at those words.

  I couldn’t really imagine what the flip side was, or how it could pull a mage in, but I had no doubt that it could. Good thing I sensed what was happening in time…

  “I guess if we were a manifested battle pair, I would have been able to sense the danger sooner…”

  Calypso shook his head.

  “For you and me, that doesn’t matter anymore. We may not have Arma marks on us, but you acted exactly like a Guardian works with a Fighter.”

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  He was silent for a moment, then added:

  “Actually, I call this kind of bond between us something else.”

  “What?” I asked with interest.

  “Well, in our case, it’s not quite right to call ourselves Guardian and Fighter,” Calypso began, starting from a distance.

  “After all, we work through the shadow aspect… And that’s very different from everything Armarillis teaches. Guardian and Fighter are Fortemins who use ordinary magic, so-called manifested magic. Dark or white but it’s manifested in the world of the living, and that’s what they teach at Armarillis. But you and I, well… We work differently, basically. Actually ignoring manifested magic and going into shadow magic. To save you, I had to use very delicate stuff from complex shadow spells that I developed myself…”

  Calypso ran his fingertips over my wrist, where you could still make out a very faint rune in the shape of a golden spiral.

  “I call it the bond between an ilúnari and her eruál. These words have a certain energy encoded from the Ancients; after painstaking research, I discovered that this particular combination of sounds should give the best results. I didn’t have time to test it in practice, so I ‘tested’ it right on the battlefield with you… Ilúnari that’s you. A powerful energy source of dark magic. And I’m your eruál, the shadow conduit for your darkness. Remember that golden spiral symbol that appeared during our first joint meditation, when we fought the kernals? Polly told us about that symbol, she was the first to notice it. I studied a lot of information about it afterward… And I became convinced that this is how the bond manifests, well… a shadow pair, let’s call it that. That is, if mages have a predisposition to dark magic and a latent affinity for shadow magic — and I mean any mages, not just Fortemins — then they can form a battle pair similar to the Fighter-Guardian pair. Only Eruál-Ilunari in this case. For the pair to form, something has to bind them strongly. Family ties, for example. Or…”

  Calypso faltered, in brief embarrassment, it seemed to me. But I’d already guessed where he was going.

  “Or fated mates, right?” I asked with a smile, intertwining my fingers with Calypso’s and examining the same faint golden spiral rune on his hand.

  Calypso smiled, somewhat guiltily, and nodded.

  “During that recent battle, when the lergal wounded you, I sealed this bond between us at the shadow level… A very delicate one. This kind of bond is damn near impossible to break.”

  He was silent for a while, then added:

  “Technically, I should have asked your permission first, of course… A shadow bond like this… I don’t fully know yet what it will lead to. It really is very strong; shadow magic in general is a very complex binding element. You can feel yourself that you’ve become much more stable, right? Even though you took a serious hit, you haven’t had a single hint of an energy episode or loss of physical form in the past couple of weeks, right? Exactly. I bound us like this without asking you, but the situation didn’t allow for choices or questions, so I acted fast. I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, so I’m sorry if you’re against it, but I was just trying to save you and…”

  “I’m not at all against being your ilunari,” I smiled.

  “Sounds great, in my opinion. Where am I going to go, right? You don’t run from your Fighter or your fated mate. And why run from someone you’re happy with? Besides… I trust you, Cal. And I’ll follow you anywhere. Including into the unknown called ‘shadow magic.’”

  Calypso smiled too. Broadly, genuinely, with eyes sparkling with happiness and something like hope. He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it in the center of my palm. Then lower — on my wrist, where the golden spiral was visible.

  You know, I adore this dazzling smile of his. And I want him to smile like that as often as possible…

  With each passing day, Calypso was gaining strength, though his condition still left much to be desired. For faster recovery, he slept almost all the time, kept in an enchanted sleep by the recovery potions. He was extremely unhappy about this because, aside from just endless irritation at his unbearable weakness, he was itching to spend some quality time alone with me, but his constant drowsiness left him too drained for anything, he couldn’t even manage a proper hug. I was amused by his frustration, laughed, and reassured him with words about how we’d still have time to ‘make up for lost time.’

  But one evening, when I was about to spoon-feed Calypso his potions again, he finally grabbed me in a tight embrace, pulling me down on top of him and demonstrating with heated kisses that he was almost fully recovered physically. Mmm, what sweet kisses those were…

  “When I finally stop being a boiled vegetable and get my strength back, I’m going to lock us in the bedroom for a couple of days and not let you out of bed,” Calypso whispered hotly, covering my neck with kisses.

  “A couple of days is too much,” I snorted with laughter, leaning into the kisses and squinting happily.

  “You won’t last, since you can’t live without training.”

  “We’ll train together, just the two of us. A private training session, following a special methodology I’ve developed! You’ll love it.”

  Mmm, I can’t wait!..