spellbound | book #1 | completed

X I X

[edited: 05/08/2017]

Remy knocked sheepishly on what Hilda had pointed out to be Maksim's bedroom door. The moment that she had arrived back, she had wanted nothing more than to go to bed, but she was sure that she would not be able to do much sleeping if Maksim was still angry—why he was angry, she could still not quite fathom.

"Max?" she called, and was met with a low grunt. Sighing, she tried the handle, but it would not move even an inch. "Maksim, please let me in."

His reply was muffled. "Must you always be so irritating? I wish to be left alone."

"And you will be as soon as you talk to me."

She heard him huff before the door handle clicked and sparked with a blindingly bright light, and when she tried the handle again, reluctant not to burn her fingers, the door opened with ease. "Using magic for doors. Really?" was the first thing that she said. "Can't you use a lock and key like everybody else?"

Maksim was stood at his window, half of his body illuminated by the dark pink glow of the sky and the other golden from his bedroom lights. "If you are here to lecture me about my door locking preferences, you may as well leave now. Besides, everybody else here is just as likely to use magic. Remember that it is you who is the oddity here."

"And don't I know it?" Remy rolled her eyes and plonked onto the end of Maksim's bed, which was covered in silk sheets. His bedroom was not at all the way she might have imagined it; there were no decorations, no fancy wallpaper the way there was in the hallways, just a few bookshelves, a small beige armchair, and a wardrobe in the corner.

"Why are you so angry?" she asked when her previous question bade no reply. "If this works, you could get your brother back."

"By losing you?" he retorted, his voice no calmer than it had been in the trial. His expression, reflected in the glass of the window, was thunderous.

Remy was taken aback by this and could not quite form a response at first. "You can't lose something you never had," she whispered finally. "It's not like you care much about my well-being."

"No?" He turned to look at her incredulously. "Is that honestly what you think, Remy?"

She was beginning to get angry, too, so she stood up to face him, though it didn't make much of a difference. He was still at least a foot taller than her. "Isn't it the truth? Or have you broken out of your superiority complex enough to realise that I'm not just some stupid mortal girl with no purpose or importance?"

Now it was Maksim's turn to look shocked, and he did so with wide eyes and slightly parted lips. He shook his head wordlessly, running a hand through his auburn hair, which seemed much lighter in the strangely twilit room. Remy thought that it was the first time she had ever seen him speechless.

"That's what I thought," she said finally, taking his silence to mean the former. "So why are you so angry?"

He sat down, his hands clasped together and his head bowed. "Is it so difficult to believe that I do not want you to get hurt? That perhaps I would like to get you back to the Mortal World in one piece?"

"Yes." She pursed her lips. "You know, if this is about you feeling guilty, you don't have to. This was my choice."

"It is not about me feeling guilty," he said, without much conviction. "I just know what my brother is capable of. You could have been hurt much worse than you were yesterday."

"But I wasn't." She sat down beside him, her leg almost touching his. Almost. She would not dare shuffle a few inches to meet him. Already, she could feel the warmth radiating from him, and in turn, it seemed to remove the cold that had been trapped in her bones ever since she had slept in an underground cell. "I'm fine."