Page 13 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)
CHAPTER 13
T he minutes ticked by as the debate heated up within the confines of the throne room. The Renaissance Spell had us divided. Glory, Lennyx, and Leyanna—of all people—were urging caution. While all of us had hit the private bathhouses of the High Shaedes to scrape off the bits of human matter that had welded itself to us like a second skin, Glory had had a servant wipe her down while she read the majority of the book on Nymphs and was now holding herself an expert on all things refinement magic. Lennyx was, by nature, hesitant and calculated. He didn’t want to touch anything that might have resulted in Draku, and Leyanna was loathe to agree. Mostly, she was just aggravated with Dru for causing her to miss out on an epic fight, so siding against her was also Leyanna’s sullen attempt at reprisal.
Dru and I were convinced, however, that this spell was the clue to understanding what Ciaran could not. Why else would he and Amira have sent people there? Jovii knew something. He was very wise and very old, as well as a friend to all creatures. History painted him as kind of a bleeding heart. He lived during a time when all animals were subject to the laws of faeries. They were to serve the realm as needed, and whether they were reticent and wild or loquacious and domestic, it didn’t matter. A beast of burden was just that, and carry the burdens it must. If you had wings, you carried messages. If you were a predator, you were enlisted to fight against the enemies of the realm. But there was unrest among the superior of the animal species, and Jovii took up their cause as his own. He convinced his fellow High Shaedes to allow him to create a new realm. And creation is always soul magic. It is something so rarely done because a literal piece of your soul goes into the spell, and oftentimes leaves the faerie forever changed themselves. But it was my understanding, as it was in Jovii’s case, if the spell is blessed by the Balance, the Balance can make you whole again. And Jovii’s Isle was definitely blessed.
All the talking creatures migrated there, and there has been no conflict with them whatsoever. The faeries still have the blind loyalty of all the other feral animals of the realm, so there have been no repercussions here either.
Had Jovii seen a new cause in the dark ones? Was his research just random curiosity, or was he driven by objectives that might be in alignment with the Dark Princes themselves? Amira seemed like a manipulative creature; had she somehow convinced Jovii to find the answers to her and Ciaran’s burning questions about his transformation? There were too many questions and not enough time.
Dru was starting to yell, and when Dru lost her cool, things had become too heated.
“Enough,” I said firmly. “We don’t need to agree on a spell or its intentions to make the best decision for the court. There are options we have and options we don’t. Looking at only what we know, how are we going to handle the Night Court?” I looked up at the dawning sky. Fatigue had settled deep in my bones from lack of sleep and adrenaline emptying out of my body. “Ciaran attacks tomorrow,” I reminded.
“Now that we have a name for this spell, let me go back to the Room of Records. Maybe I can find out more about it,” offered Glory.
Dru groaned. “That could take weeks of research, and you could still come up empty- handed. I’ve changed my mind. Let’s prepare for war. The odds are not in our favor, but I’m not going to just hand the Night Court our people. We must get ready to fight.”
“Preparing defenses is not the worst idea,” said Lennyx. “Maybe Leyanna and I could prepare some heavy elemental spells that will make portaling anywhere in the realm very difficult.”
“But not impossible,” I muttered under my breath. “I have nothing to offer here. My best contribution will be prayer at this point. Prayer to the Balance that whatever cruelty might be headed our way might be quick and decisive. It’s dawning on me that we’ve been positioned as scapegoats, and maybe it’s all by design. Destined to sit high, destined to fall far. But you all don’t need me here to list our weaknesses, even if it is my only true skill.”
If we had tried so hard only to arrive at reading history books and strengthening defenses against an enemy who had already beaten death and a foolproof curse, then we were truly already lost.
I turned to leave, and nobody stopped me. Maybe they recognized in my words the self-loathing that was always just underneath the surface, or maybe it was that they agreed with my disparaging assessment of the situation. But either way, the other High Shaedes let me go without a word.
Farris was waiting in the hallway, just beyond the doors of the throne room.
“Well, what is the next step?” he asked.
I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.
“Bed,” I said grumpily as I stomped right past him. I was ready to let my anger and frustration fester. My hate had come full circle, first jumping from myself to the Night Court, then to the Balance, and back to myself again. I didn’t want to be around Farris or anybody else, for that matter, lest they get caught up in some residual animosity.
“What happened, Opal? Talk to me,” he pleaded. He reached for my hand as I walked on, and I snatched it out of his reach. I knew I was acting like a child, but there was nothing left for me to do. I tried being responsible, I tried being strong, but in the face of adversity, I was weak. And tomorrow, it was going to become glaringly apparent just how weak.
“Stop,” Farris begged. “Did something happen?”
My anger flared, and I spun on him.
“Did something happen?” I echoed bitingly. “Farris, you were there! You saw what we are up against first-hand, and those weren’t even faeries. Shadow beasts, humans with super powers, dark magic we don’t understand—we are fucked. FUCKED.” I stopped, suddenly aware of the volume of my voice and the fact that we were in hallways, where any member of the court could walk by at any moment. I was mad, but I wasn’t ready to incite a panic. I pulled him into one of the meeting rooms, an antechamber really, set up with a large table and chairs and little else. I shut the door and leaned against it. Farris came and leaned next to me.
“We are not cut out for this kind of decision-making. I am not cut out for it. Even if there was more to learn about the Renaissance Spell, we are out of time. Something tells me Ciaran is not one to negotiate anyway. We could attempt to lord the spell over him, but he would probably burn the whole world down anyway just for spite.” He went for my hand again, and this time I let him have it. I didn’t want to feel comforted or safe, but being so close to him—it was a feeling I would never be able to fight.
“If the Balance chose you, Opal, and you are so certain it was not because of your magic, perhaps it is because of another reason. Have you thought about that?”
“All I can think about is how I miss my mother and father. How angry I am at Amira, and yet, somehow I miss her too. How close to death we all are, how I should be walking you to a portal right now to keep you safe instead of burdening you with all this.” I rolled my head to the side to look at him. Reflected in his eyes was a different path—one I didn’t have to walk alone. He was looking at me longingly, his lashes selling promises, his lips tempting every inch of my body to leap and let go.
I jumped into his arms, and his hands deftly spread my legs to wrap around his waist in one fluid movement. He spun me around and slammed my back into the door, while I took a fistful of his wavy blond hair and yanked his head toward me. I needed his lips pressed against mine. It was a ravenous moment, like someone throwing food to the starving. Our lips met again and again, lost in a passion that only comes when you know you are not guaranteed tomorrow. He pressed his hips against mine, pinning me to that door, and I could feel my magic awakening inside. There was a new sensation there—something I couldn’t quite place but also couldn’t quite ignore. It was like a tiny little spark of something that wanted to be an inferno. A wisp of a feather that wanted to be a falcon. A shining star that wanted a galaxy to revolve around it.
He was massaging the sides of my bottom with his hands, while I was clawing at his back in a way that scared me. The kissing went deeper, his tongue now invading my mouth. Possession was not a desire; it became a need. I needed him—every inch of him—to be mine. I tilted my head back to reach some air, my eyes fluttered toward the open ceiling as he nuzzled his way down my neck, kissing and rubbing his soft cheek on my skin. Then my magic surged, and it was like an electrical shock.
He stepped back away from me so fast that he almost dropped me. I braced myself against the door and tried to regain my balance, my legs shaky. My vision was a little blurry, but it only lasted a few seconds. I looked at my hands, and my arms and their normal level of sparkly iridescence was more vibrant. I was glowing. I looked over at Farris, who was steadying himself on the table, and realized that he too had a faint halo around him. His eyes had turned a sea foam version of their former blue, and his hair had gone almost completely pastel green.
“This cannot be good,” I whispered. After having been so angry and then so contrastingly blissfully happy, the shock of seeing the changes on Farris was enough to make me feel faint.
“There is nothing possible that could be bad about what we were just doing or about to do.” He smiled, still bracing the table and panting. At least his sense of humor was still intact.
“Did you feel that?” I asked. “Your eyes, your hair. You’re different.”
“Oh I assure you, I felt everything just now,” he said, laughing. He pulled some of his hair in front of his face to inspect it. “What do you think it means?”
“I-I’m not sure.” My head felt dizzy. “You aren’t magical or anything, I can feel that. But my magic reacted to you. Though I have no idea why or…” My voice trailed off. Farris was suddenly by my side, always so solid when everything else was unsteady. As soon as he touched me, my magic came alive again, but not as violently as before. Regardless, it made me afraid.
I pushed him back hard, and he looked so wounded. My mouth opened to speak, I wanted to assure him that this was love and not some sort of wild reach before the end of the world, but nothing came out. I was horrified by how uncontrollable my magic had become. Visions of what Draku must have gone through when he became the thing that we all detested the most flooded my mind. Only it was my face in the place of the silver Shaede’s and it was my blood that transformed a man into a monster. There was nothing I could say to Farris that would salvage this moment, and I didn’t know enough about my own magic to reverse whatever I had done. It was as if I had marked him somehow, and now he’d be forever altered.
Instead of making things worse with words or with actions, I went back to running away. Not toward my room this time, but toward the kitchens instead. I downed some daphweed tea behind a wall of stacked plates, trying to stay concealed from courtiers who understandably had a hundred questions to ask. Then I tore west in the palace, heading toward the Room of Records, where I quickly found Glory poring over a pile of books and loose papers, trying to solve all the problems of the universe.
“Opal, hi. I’m sorry for earlier. We all have vastly different ways of dealing with impending doom. Are you okay?” She looked generally concerned as she left her perch on the second level balcony and crawled down a ladder to me.
The Room of Records was one of the most under-hyped places at court. For starters, it wasn’t just a room; it was a four-tiered warehouse of documents that held all the extensive knowledge of the realm. Scrolls and tomes of ancient histories and descriptions of places no one had visited in millennia. Spell books from all the courts in the realm also resided here, happily revealing all their secrets to the High Shaedes over time .
“Something’s happened, Glory, and I need your help.” I didn’t know at what point on my walk there I had decided to ask Glory for help, but now that I had, I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
“What happened?” she asked in a hushed voice. I didn’t know if there were any servants or registrars hidden from sight in the thousands of stacks of books, but it was best to err on the quiet side.
“I kissed Farris, and my magic—it changed him,” I said. Of all the people on the planet, she was the last person I wanted to confide in, but she was perhaps the only one I could trust to ask for help, so here we were.
Surprisingly, she didn’t act surprised or say anything to humiliate me further. Instead, she just furrowed her brow and got right to the heart of the matter. “Changed how?” she asked.
“Slight physical alterations, pale, pale green. He didn’t develop magical abilities or anything or seem otherwise transformed, but I’m freaking out. Glory, is this the beginning of what my sister did to Ciaran? We have to get to the bottom of that spell.”
“Well, Farris is a human, so I wouldn’t worry about turning him into a daywalker,” she said candidly. “But if you do have access to refinement magic, Farris aside, perhaps if we understood it, you could somehow undo what your sister did to Ciaran.”
“Jovii’s notes said it was a permanent change, and I have absolutely no control over it.” I blushed, thinking of Farris’s kisses blazing across my jaw.
“And unfortunately, I have learned virtually nothing in these stacks,” she admitted. “Just a lot of really sordid accounts of Nymphs doing some crazy things under some crazy circumstances. But no evidence as to how. Just stories, really. I think you were right before; we don’t really have time for this.” She tossed a book she was holding onto a table nearby, and a little dust cloud puffed into the air.
“I have an idea, Glory, but I don’t think you are going to like it,” I whispered. Glory moved in closer. “I need you to enlist a speedy creature to carry a message that is for Amira’s eyes only.” Glory’s eyes went wide, and I kept talking before she had the opportunity to refuse. “I need to talk to her. She had something to do with Jovii’s research, I know it. It’s all too coincidental. And it’s really been bothering me that Ciaran even deigned to wait three days. Why not make his demands and then just release his beasts and burn the place to the ground? Could it be that Amira is advising caution? If that was the case, perhaps she could be reasoned with. I’ve been so blinded by my hatred for her betrayal that perhaps I’m missing an opportunity for discourse, or at the very least more information as to what Ciaran and Edmyn are planning.”
Glory actually considered my idea. “The other Shaedes will never sanction this. Refinement magic is a lot like dusklight magic, I think. You can’t understand it until you live it.”
“I don’t want them to know, Glory. Dru, especially, would never let me meet Amira alone. Her sense of duty to protect is too strong.”
“Well, call it a sense of duty, but I’m calling it common sense. I will send your message and keep your secret, but I will accompany you to the meeting. Amira smells like death and is about as crooked as a centaur’s hind leg.” I knew this was the best arrangement that I was going to get, and the minutes kept rolling by.
“Have her meet us in the meadow of the Gaylenswood. Close to the tree edge, somewhere private.” Glory nodded before grabbing ink and paper.
“My parents say the Filly Moth is the fastest flyer with a message, and the most direct,” she said. And for the first time, I hoped her parents were right.