When Riordan woke up, he felt… good. Rested. Not being drained or burdened by anything outside of himself. After the hell of the last week or so, the sensation of being healthy felt decidedly alien. He lay on a mattress, the soft material cradling his body, with a blanket covering him. So, definitely not in the woods anymore.

The scents and sounds quietly filtering into the room told Riordan he was in the pack house. When he cautiously cracked an eye open, he recognized the little guest room he’d been using there. He blinked his eyes a few times and gathered his scattered thoughts. The events of the ritual had left Riordan rather numb and scrambled inside. He knew it was going to take a while to get used to his new normal and to unpack what everything meant for both his sense of self and his future.

He’d always imagined his future as a hazy penance of drifting about, leaving simply like a monk to atone for his past mistakes. It would have been an easy life, the easy way out of any responsibility. Self-punishment helped no one, Riordan had been forced to realize. If he really wanted to make up for his failings, what Riordan really needed to do was to learn how to bring more good into the world instead of just choosing to do no evil.

Of course, he needed to learn how to trust himself again to do that. That was what Riordan had really lost when his old pack leader and beloved teammate had led them into an increasingly dark path. He’d chosen to follow that man, to put his faith in him, and Qusay had betrayed everything the pack had once stood for, dragging them all down with him. Riordan had forgotten how to trust his instincts.

Dealing with the ritual had forced Riordan to try again though, to lean into his instincts and to trust both a pack of his own and the shifter community as a whole to help him. And here he was, alive and mostly whole on the other side of it all, if not unaltered. That was a lot to process in such a short time after so many years of wallowing.

Riordan might have been content to just laze around in bed and think if not for the fact that he wasn’t alone. He swept his eyes over the other occupants in the room.

“I think it’s rather creepy that you are all hanging out, watching me sleep,” Riordan commented blandly, his voice rough with sleep.

Frankie snorted and took a drink of something that smelled like hard liquor from where Riordan sat. She grinned at him over the edge of her cup. “We weren’t too sure what would be waking up. You were the center for some very interesting magic, boy.”

Riordan gave a snort of his own and sat up enough to lean back against the headboard. “You can’t have been too worried or you wouldn’t have let me sleep here.”

Frankie dismissed that with a wave of her bony hand. “Yes, yes. Your friend Daniel made a compelling case for your sanity being no worse than normal. Which isn’t saying much, mind you.”

“That was kindly of him,” Riordan replied in the same conversational tone. He glanced to the space where his ghostly friend hovered, watching him. “Thank you.”

Daniel stood beside Frankie, who was flanked by Norris and Vera. All of them were staring at Riordan, so he felt perfectly justified to stare right back. Everyone looked relaxed except Daniel. Or rather, the three living people were hiding their caution while Daniel was slowly relaxing the longer Riordan proved to be alright.

“How are you feeling?” Daniel asked, his concern genuine.

Riordan spared his attentive audience another glance before deciding fuck them. His last week had been life altering and hellish. If they wanted to be annoying before Riordan had a chance to pull himself together, they could deal with him being bitchy.

“Physically, I feel better than I have in… quite a while,” Riordan answered Daniel. He assessed himself again. “Between my prior living conditions and then the ritual curse, I can’t remember the last time I felt this well rested. Mentally, I’m… less than ideal. That will need time to process more than anything. Magically…”

Riordan stopped there. His mental state left him feeling vulnerable after being flayed open and rearranged and marked and just the general relief and delayed grief of his recent experiences. Being vulnerable made Riordan pricklier than a porcupine and spoiling for a fight, just to prove he wasn’t weak. Self-awareness kept him from literally snapping at people. Mostly. Sometimes he didn’t want to stop himself. If he had someone he could actually trust for it, Riordan really could have used a therapist.

Most of that grief and vulnerability would pass if Riordan got enough time to actually come to terms with all the changes in his life, but his magical situation was different. He probed inside himself, trying to understand what the changes meant on a practical level.

Even touching his magic was enough to make Riordan gasp. It didn’t hurt exactly. Instead, trying to use magic disoriented him. To Riordan, using his shifter magic had been a natural experience. He’d been able to do it as long as he remembered, calling out to the animal that was his other half. Even adding spirit magic to that, while overwhelming, changed what he could do but not how he did it.

Now, reaching for his well felt like reaching for something he could see, only to find everything was actually three feet to the left and he kept missing his grab. Even the simplest actions, like connecting to his well and feeling his badger, required Riordan to think about each step and correct for the change. Splitting his well and his core had moved everything out of their natural positions.

Riordan was going to have to re-learn how to use his magic from scratch.

He had lapsed into silence for his internal review, leaving his statement hanging. Frankie was projecting endless patience, taking sips from her booze and watching from the outside. Norris seemed as patient, though his attention was fully on Riordan in a way that revealed the pack leader Norris used to be instead of the retired house husband he usually showed. Daniel was fussing and worried, but still letting Riordan take his time to pick his words.

Vera didn’t wait. The pack leader had duties. She growled slightly, the annoyance at odds with her curvy grandmotherly appearance. “Magically, you are what?”

Riordan winced. He wasn’t sure what to tell them. He liked and respected this trio of elders. Daniel knew bits already and wouldn’t understand most of it. But he knew that his current state was weird. Especially the second well and core inside him. Riordan had been working very hard not to think too closely about those. How much or little of his current state did he share?

He started with a question of his own. “Things were very… chaotic at the end there. How much do you know about what happened to me?”

They had to know something, given Frankie’s first statement of concern. Hell, maybe they could give Riordan some insights. He’d hardly been in condition to pay close attention to the changes to himself in the middle of what felt like surgery without anesthesia.

Frankie fielded that one. “You and that tree spirit took over the ritual after Phenalope died. Some sort of strange ghostly tattoo showed up on you. All of the death magic from the ritual poured through you into somewhere. Quinn says you sent it beyond the Veil. You were left full of death corruption. Then the spirit did something directly to you. From the outside, it looked like it split your core and well in half and then drained the corruption out of you, breaking the rules on a whim as greater spirits are known to do.”

“That,” Riordan said, thinking over it carefully, “isn’t a bad summary, though it’s missing things. I don’t understand everything that happened. The end result is that I seem to have two wells, feeding off of two interlinked but differently attuned cores. And some interesting new magical tattoos.”

He held up his arms at that. The tattoos on his spirit were severe enough that they carried over to his physical body. Black elegant knotwork on the left, delicate silvery flowers and vines on the other. Both went surprisingly well with his dusky skin tone.

“Not what I would have chosen for you, stylistically,” Frankie offered as commentary, “It does make you more symmetrical. Now, your wells. Can you access both?”

Riordan snorted. “Yes and no. Nothing’s blocking my access, but everything has… moved. Nothing is where I expect it to be when I try to use magic. And…”

He hesitated here, trying to come to a decision. Did he trust these people enough to draw their attention to the dangerous aspects of his changes? Or maybe the better question was, did he trust himself enough to decide he wasn’t a threat without an outside opinion? Was this what he had to look forward to from now on? Constantly examining himself and wondering if he was lying to himself?

In the end, it was the lack of judgement in the faces of his audience that decided him. Even Vera looked grumpy but not suspicious or upset. They were ready to listen if Riordan was ready to talk.

“And I’m pretty sure my second well is full of death magic.”

Frankie just nodded, as if his words confirmed something she had already known or suspected. “You were pumped full of the stuff as part of the ritual. I’m not surprised the spirit used it inside you, given it took on death aspects as it ascended. How are your corruption levels?”

Riordan scrubbed a hand over his face and shrugged. “I don’t feel any corruption, but would I? My only direct experiences with the stuff are either from the outside or from being absolutely soaked in that rot. I don’t know how much I can trust my mind right now.”

“That’s one of the least stupid things you’ve said yet, boy,” Frankie told Riordan, saluting him with her cup. “I hope that means you won’t object when I go over you with a fine tooth comb to confirm.”

Part of Riordan rankled at that. Such inspection would be another invasion of his most personal and private self, right on the heels of all the rest and while he was still so emotionally unsettled. He dragged a hand through his hair, feeling how shaggy it was getting.

“Do I get to object?” Riordan finally asked, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “What is my status now?”

“Now that is the question, isn’t it,” Vera said with a sigh. “You are currently a packless shaman who can’t use even the most basic magic reliably. You are also a death mage, but potentially not corrupted at all. And you are the favored of a new greater spirit, one who has closed their domain to outsiders.”

Okay, that last one was new. Riordan put all of Vera’s statements together and came to one conclusion.

“I’m fucked, aren’t I.”

Riordan was currently in a state of having a ton of potential power but also being unable to protect himself. He had an unusual combination of magic in a unique configuration, but needed time and training to use any of it correctly. If he was a normal death mage, that meant he would fall under someone’s supervision and control or be killed. If he was somehow immune to death corruption from the changes within himself, then the people who would want to possess him would only increase, both to study and to use as a tool.

And anyone looking to contact a spirit of nature and death, or looking for the favor of a greater spirit for some task such as setting up a new pack territory, would love to hear about him. Riordan was the easiest leverage to use against a greater spirit. Fucking hell.

To Riordan’s surprise, Norris spoke up. “It’s not that bad yet,” the old man said grimly, “Right now, the number of people who know those things about you are still quite limited. That buys us time to examine you, find out if you are really a threat to anyone, and if not, figure out how to give you choices about your future.”

“And your pack is fine with buying me that time for nothing in return?” Riordan challenged, not willing to accept anything as goodwill at the moment.

The smile Vera gave Riordan was absolutely feral. “We didn’t say that. Let’s just say it’s in our best interests to not let someone snap you up before you’ve had time to figure yourself out, especially in terms of how not to let someone else manipulate you and a local greater spirit for nefarious purposes.”

Riordan appreciated Vera’s honesty. Having death mage bait so close to their borders must be unnerving. Besides, shifters liked to keep their issues in-house as much as possible. Maybe he could actually get a break for once. At least he knew where he stood with the main faction here.

Frankie cut in, crushing Riordan’s burgeoning hopes. “And it really is a matter of buying time. In light of recent events, the Department of Magic is sending more agents to assist with clean-up. They’ll arrive soon. And I have to say, Riordan, they are already very interested in you.”

------------------------------------------- END OF BOOK ONE -------------------------------------------