Rowan drops his pack beside the silver roots and pulls out an old compass. Its brass casing is worn and dented, the needle stuck at north no matter how many times he's tried to fix it. Perfect for this.
Auro sits cross-legged across from him, mist pooling lazily around her. She watches him with open curiosity, chin propped on one hand, not bothering to hide the way her eyes glow faintly in the silver light.
"What're you doing now?" she asks.
"I just" He unscrews the compass face and pulls out a chalk stub from his jacket pocket. "To track great magic."
"Ooh. Sounds interesting."
Rowan scowls down at the compass. " It's also dangerous. So please don't ruin it."
She rolls her eyes, unconcerned. " I'm not gonna... When have ever?"
He presses his thumb to the center of the metal, murmuring the spell under his breath. Normally, something like this would drain him for hours—his mana isn't endless, and he's no master. But he isn't pulling from himself this time. He leans into the Everglades, tugging on the ancient magic that throbs through the roots and soil like blood.
The compass needle shudders, spins— the spell he chants coming out in orange swirls around them.
Then it stop, and locks dead-on to Auro.
Rowan lifts his head, heart kicking at him.
He expected to feel exhausted. Expected the draining ache in his bones that always followed with bigger magic. But instead, he feels...charged. Like the forest itself poured strength into him. Like he could cast again without even blinking.
He looks at Auro.
At the vines that lean toward her without command. At the mist that hums with barely contained energy. At the faint pulse of light under her glassy skin.
She wasn't just a cursed forest guardian. Not with the amount of power that she possessed.
What kind of curse is this?
And the curse—their curse—is making him stronger too.
Auro kicks her legs out lazily, smiling at him like she has no idea what she's sitting on top of. "Did it work?"
Rowan swallows hard. "Yeah. It worked."
She beams, gorgeous and oblivious, and he looks away fast, focusing on tightening the compass casing with fingers that don't feel entirely steady.
He would need to mask the compass from detecting his or her power.
" I'm going to have to do another spell." He tells her.
Auro raises her brow in concern. " I thought you said it worked? What went wrong?"
He picked up the book, flipping through the pages for the spell that he needed. " Don't worry about it. It's a masking spell to only detect bloodline magic. You know so that we don't stubble across anything other the witch."
It wasn't necessarily going into details. Auro doesn't know the rules or the basis of the world they lived in. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
But it would help him a whole lot.