Rune Mage [Fantasy/Adventure | Book 1 +2 | Complete]

Chapter 81: A Flash of Madness

"This is madness."

Seiren resisted all instinct to whip her hands away and, instead, kept them still, not letting Portendorfer sense her unease when he held her hands in front of her, palms up. His gloves were stowed away in his cloak pockets and his cloak lay neatly folded behind him. His skin was surprisingly smooth despite the destruction the hands brought. Outside, the views whizzed by, taking them further and further towards Moakai.

"You just need to look away and I'll blow this thing up," she said through gritted teeth. Portendorfer smiled back, like a child who got his birthday presents early. Without his wide-brimmed hat, his head seemed surprisingly small. His straight black hair was slicked back.

"And why would I do that? I could teach you, or I could kill you. That's up to you."

Seiren's jaw tightened and she stared down at her hands again, recalling the words Portendorfer told her. King's only trained burst and rune mages; flash was another specialty that required at least five further years of sole training and dedication. How on earth could he expect her to master it in however long she had until it was too late to return to Benover?

One great surge of emotion. His examples weren't helping.

"For example, I imagine the crying of newborns, because the incessant noise drives me insane. Then, the desire to wrench them from their mothers and tear their heads off is so strong the power practically explodes from my hands."

Seiren couldn't even put it into words how disturbing Portendorfer's nonchalance was. A source of strong emotions. She had plenty: the guilt of her family's death, the betrayal from her own country, the fury at Karis Bonneville for murdering the only good person in her life, the desperation to rejoin the fray before the end for all mages came. But although she felt those emotions acutely, it was hard to have them at her beck and call. Yet Portendorfer could summon feelings strong enough to power flash magic and cease them as quickly as they came. No wonder he was so impervious to her begging and bargaining; his emotional capacity was wholly binary, black or white.

"Do you trust me?" he said.

"No," she said at once. He grinned.

"Smart girl."

She shut her eyes, keeping her breathing even. What would Madeleine say? She so wished her sister were here to ground her.

Madeleine didn't need to physically be present in her mind. She could be the brake in Seiren's emotions. She thought of the Hannan's fuzzy face in her compromised memories. A wave of fire swept over her. Her sister's life hung on by a thread and Seiren's world was turned upside-down, and she didn't even have the eidetic memory to make up for it. Someone dared to mess with her, toy with her. She gritted her teeth, imagining meeting the murderer and person behind all this puppet game for the first time. She'd love to set those monsters on them.

Her hands warmed. Little sparks of light, red, golden, green, danced on her fingertips. She funnelled the humiliation and vengeance, the increasing jumps of sparks and their intensity.

The frustration overcame her in a storm and with a yell, she wrenched her hands away. Little showers of sparks came away from her fingers, shooting into the sky before dissipating.

"Huh." Portendorfer sounded disappointed.

"What?" Seiren said, defensive.

"When I first met you, I thought you were so promising. I thought you were different from the rest, who are so obsessed with following the rules and restricted by their morals. I thought you could see outside the boundaries. I saw myself in you."