Page 18 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)

CHAPTER 18

M y eyes opened to an empty chaise lounge and a loudly snoring Glory beside me. The heavy blankets, amplified by our own body heat, had created a furnace, and I was sweating. I got up and walked around, trying to see Edmyn in all the luxurious finishings in the room. He was basically a farmer; an herb hog was what the other courts called the forest faeries when they teased them about their botanical passions. Herb hogs were the happiest with their hands and feet in the soil or mud, but this room looked like a pampered prince lived here, one who owned a belt for every day of the month and had a penchant for decorative fabrics that looked more like works of art than functional hangings. He was a walking contradiction. Both dead and alive, both full of dreams and doom, both loving and hating his brother. I almost felt like I knew him.

The door opened slowly, and Edmyn entered. He was not quite as roughed up as he had been the other day, but his hair was windblown and his clothes were definitely soiled. I crossed my arms over my chest, hyperaware of my near-nakedness all of a sudden. He gestured to Glory, and I whispered that she was still asleep. He walked over to the dressing area and exchanged his dirty shirt for a clean one, but that was it. He started walking toward the door again. I moved in close to get to him before he left and grabbed his arm.

“What is it, Little Prism? Did you miss me already?” he whispered. His smile was radiant in the dim light near the doorway. I dropped his arm, and refolded my arms knowing full well I looked like a stubborn child.

“No,” I whispered with as much dignity as I could muster. “I’m just wanting to know how it went. You were gone all night.” He took his hand and put it delicately under my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. My hands dropped to my sides, as if they had forgotten their purpose in life, and I realized in that moment that it had become very possible that I might have actually missed him. More than I should have.

“You have nothing to worry about. My spell still holds, and I was working on the berries half the night.” It was very apparent that he was staring intently at my lips. Even the mere thought of him kissing me caused a small fissure in the block of ice that had been my magic. It was like he was calling to it, whether he knew it or not. Whether or not my brain had said no or reasoned the emotions away, my heart was ready to defy everything and give in. There was no understanding it—something between us was electric. No matter how wrong it was or the fact that we had only known each other a few days, he had managed to show me a glimpse of his soul, and something about it called to mine.

Glory stirred, and the snoring paused, only to begin again seconds later.

“I think I do worry. Not like Amira worries. But what happens, Edmyn, if your plan fails?”

His hand fell from my face to his side. He leaned forward so intimidatingly that I had to step back and make my back go flat against the wall.

I felt his power flare, but he was not angry, merely provoked. I should have known better than to question someone so easily prone to violence. I had momentarily forgotten all the volatile flaws of his breed and was unprepared for the repercussions.

He leaned into my ear, his wavy curls tickling the side of my face. “Do you not think my magic can stand against Ciaran’s? Do you think me weaker than my brother?” His hot breath was a warning against my skin, as shivers ran their way down my body. I shook my head just ever so slightly, but it wasn’t enough. “Say it,” he whispered into my ear. “Tell me you feel my power.”

For a moment, I didn’t think I had a voice anymore. My body had sort of melted into the wall, held in place by his weight. His palms went to the wall on either side of me, and that was when I felt his arousal. His pelvis pressing himself into me, clearly revealing that something about this exchange was undoing us both. “Say it, Opal,” he urged. “Fucking say it, so help me.” His breath sounded ragged, like a man trying to decide whether or not he was going to jump off a cliff.

“I feel it.” I breathed, aware of my magic burning hot in its prison of glass. Fire burning in my cheeks, between my legs, and in my very soul felt like I was about to implode. “I feel it,” I whispered again against his cheek. His musky smell was like being outside again, and a part of me wanted to stay there. “I feel your power, Edmyn, and Ciaran is no match for you.”

His tensed muscles relaxed, but he stayed against me. His closeness brought such a confusing mixture of fear and longing. I thought I might wrap my arms around him, but that had the potential to ignite something that neither of us was ready for. His breathing steadied, and I felt the hardness against my thigh pull away. He was suddenly just a few inches from my face, desire running like mad sprites between our eyes. They would have us close the distance. They demanded it, even. But I remained silent and only a little scared for us. How close we came to something very intense. Something irrevocable. Something unnatural.

He pushed away from the wall and ran a frustrated hand through his tousled curls.

“I cannot fail,” he said hoarsely. As if that explained everything that had just happened.

“I know,” I said. Because somehow it did.

Then he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him as I slid to the floor and tried not to crave him.

Two days passed, and the Night Court had become restless. News had spread of Ciaran’s heroic efforts to rescue their food supply, and Edmyn had left us in his bedroom that morning and never returned. A war was promised. Curses were supposed to be broken. And their leaders were suddenly absent, leaving all the dark faeries to their own sinister devices.

Glory had stopped going to the library as several orgies had broken out randomly among the stacks. I had found the courtyard, a dim and dreary concrete square with stone benches and a few wilting potted plants, but was immediately accosted by two male human servants making crude comments and threatening violence. Every time we stepped out of Edmyn’s room, it seemed like a raucous party was beginning in the halls or a vicious fight. The last meal we tried to hold in the dining room ended with two dark faeries clawing each other to near death right outside the doorway. From then on, we decided to have meals sent to Edmyn’s room. Court had turned into the savagery we had always expected from the Shadowlands, and I wondered how Ciaran and Edmyn had ever been able to tame all these ruthless fae to begin with.

Glory and I were starting to go stir crazy, however. The castle had always been a prison, but this was the first time it had really felt as such. We played cards for endless hours, read whatever books Glory could get the servants to bring her from the library, and laid around talking about home. I was reminded of the time Dru and Leyanna had started reminiscing before the end of our conversancy and how large and looming my personal problems had seemed then. How na?ve and self-centered I had been.

Glory was reading in the sitting area, and I was draped over Edmyn’s bed, lost in thought, when the door cracked open. It was Amira. We hadn’t seen her since her frantic outburst in the dining room days ago. She had gray, almost black circles under her eyes. It was apparent that she hadn’t been eating—you could see it in the hollowness of her cheeks and the weak way she walked, kind of hunched over, as if her stomach was in constant pain.

“Could I talk with you, Opal?” Her voice cracked. She was in despair.

Glory shut her book and eyed me intently. For all the faeries that I could have been stuck with in dire straits, Glory had turned out to be a clever and loyal companion. We had spent enough time together; we could practically read each other’s thoughts. She didn’t want to leave me alone with my enemy, but she was questioning if I needed to be alone with my sister. I nodded to her silently, and she got up to announce she was going to take a bath. She grabbed a robe and made sure to glower at Amira’s back before heading out the door.

“What do you want?” I asked, sitting up straight in Edmyn’s bed and pulling my knees up to my chest.

Amira shuffled slowly to the end of the bed and sat on its edge. Her long, thin fingers fidgeted with a pleat on her silk dress. She just stared at her feet, lost in stormy thoughts, so I asked again, “Amira, what is it?”

She was startled a little and looked at my face. In the flickering firelight, I could see the shimmer on her skin. Our shaede really was ethereal and pleasant to look at. It gave her a mysterious, almost mystical quality, and I wondered if anyone had ever thought that way about me.

When she spoke, her voice was shaky and weak. “You must think me crazy. Crazy and horrible, and evil.”

This start to the conversation caught me off guard, but sympathy was a luxury I could no longer afford as far as Amira was concerned. I watched her stand by while our parents were murdered. I promised Dru vengeance for her father’s death. Amira’s hysterical laughter when Ciaran seized us in the meadow still rang in my ears. I was no longer built for sentimentality. Whether or not Edmyn succeeded, I had accepted my fate. Now she needed to accept hers.

“You chose violence, Amira. You told me you were at a crossroads after your conversancy, and you said you chose adventure. But what you really did was choose violence. Violence, death, and darkness. And, what’s more, you unleashed it onto the people who loved you most. Who never gave up hoping you would return to them. I don’t really know what you want me to say.” I hugged my knees tighter.

“I think we are beyond me apologizing for what happened to our parents. I don’t think you will ever accept it anyway. I wouldn’t. It was reckless, encouraging Ciaran to confront the Shaedes and challenge them. I always knew the risks, and I ignored them.”

I stared into the fire, trying to focus on the flames instead of my own anger. “We are beyond a lot of things, sister.”

She wrung her hands a little, and quietly said, “I know. And that is not why I came here.” She took in a wobbly breath. “Something is not right. With Ciaran. You must feel it with Edmyn, too. There is this terrible ache when we are separated. It started the first night we mated, when he gained his daywalking abilities. We forged a very strong bond. One that I swear is so powerful that it is almost its own living, breathing thing. I can’t explain it. Can you?”

I just shrugged my shoulders, shook my head, and let her take that for what it was worth. There was always a chance that if I described anything about what could have happened between me and Edmyn, I ran the risk of being caught in a lie.

“These past few days have been torturous. I can feel him faintly still, but he must be using a lot of his magic to shepherd those beasts. And I don’t know if it is because he is all I have, or because of our magic, or if I’m still kind of shaken about what he did to you.” She looked at me with so much regret in her eyes that it spilled over in the form of tears, which fell hard and stained her dress. “But I fear for the future. He has always been ambitious, yes. But also a visionary. I thought he was capable of more restraint. Of a calculated, multi-front attack on the realm to influence faeries into a different way of thinking.”

“You mean into submission,” I interjected.

“No, I never thought Ciaran wanted to be king of everything,” she said soberly. “He would have been happy with equality. A seat for himself alongside the High Shaedes would have sufficed. But it was the Shaedes that wanted submission—the Shaedes who looked down on him and called him lesser and unworthy.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Her assessment was flawed in that she didn’t believe someone as egomaniacal as Ciaran wasn’t constantly scheming for more power and more influence, but the Shaede Court, for centuries, had turned their backs on the cursed ones, and that kind of slighting was bound to incite rebellion. I glanced at my shoulder, where the Perryflower was in constant bloom. I, too, was guilty of taking my ire from feeling ostracized at court and breaking protocols set in place to control us. My love for tattooing was rooted in it. But I was only rebuffed for my shortcomings. I tried to imagine a world where I was called cursed, and maybe we all end up like Ciaran in the end. Especially if fighting to be seen was all you’d ever known.

“I can see why you chose each other,” I said. “But now you stand by him. He is going to destroy everything and everyone that stands in his way. Amira, how can you support this? Tell me that there is still a part of you that thinks clearly enough to see that this is wrong. Bond or no bond, your love aside, can you see how astray he’s gone? Could you persuade him to change course?”

She shot up onto her feet and raised her hands in the air. “I’ve tried, Opal! Oh my stars have I tried. Ever since that day in the throne room, having finally faced his rivals, he has been different. He loves me, of this I have no doubt. But his love for power far exceeds anything I could offer. He already took the daywalking abilities. I am without anything left to offer, Opal, and I am scared! And I am so sorry for Edmyn and everything that has happened!” She was stomping around the room, crying and covering her face.

There was nothing I could say to comfort her, even if I wanted to. She was in love with a demon.

“Love makes us do strange things,” I said unhelpfully, my mind flashing to Edmyn trapping me against the wall. “Do you think we are the only Shaedes that can do refinement magic of this magnitude?” I asked in an effort to get her to focus on something else.

She came back to the bed and sat beside me, closer than we had ever been before. Had anyone walked in just then, we really did look like two sisters with near identical complexions, huddled together in conspiracy. Amira reached slowly into her pocket and retrieved a folded piece of parchment. I repositioned myself cross-legged on the bed and took the paper, unfolding it with care as it looked very old.

“This is a letter from an ancient Nymph named Sandrell. I think you and your friend might have found the other one buried in Ciaran’s collection. Over the years, Draku, Ciaran, and all the other dark lords of the Shadowlands have collected works on dark magic and ancient beings with ties to great spells. During my personal research on the spell that broke Ciaran’s curse, I came across the letters, but found this one particularly interesting.”

I read quickly, my voice in a whisper. “Dearest Eyllaria, I write to you with tears streaming down my face. The most unthinkable calamity is taking place, and I pray the Balance takes pity on me when I release all my magic back into the sea this night. I shall let it go with the evening tide. My vikingr, Erik, is dying. He is in so much pain, and his final moments are unbearable. He has brought such ferocity and light to his people. He has mated with seven of the women in his village and spread his seed so more warriors like him might take up his legacy. My legacy. But now he is slipping away, and my heart cannot be mended. I knew this day would come, but I urge you, sister. This spell is not for the faint of heart, for it has cost me more than I can bear. We few who have the faint colorings of the many must not be tempted to take from our fellow fae. We few who are gifted the ability to refine the work of the Balance must do so with fervent caution. I am sorry that I will miss your wedding, Eyllaria. I have many regrets, but Erik cannot be one of them. It is just our time to leave this realm. I will leave you kisses across the stars, my sister. Yours, Sandrell.”

My own eyes had welled up with tears to the point where I could barely make out the Nymph’s signature at the bottom.

“What a tragic love story,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Sandrell fell in love with that Viking. She gave him a piece of her soul. She was always going to outlive him, but when the time came for him to die, she couldn’t bear it. It’s very romantic, but also very telling. This is a magic only a few faeries have. She describes it there, toward the end. ‘We few, who have the faint colorings of the many.’ ”

“It makes me wonder how many faeries there have even been with this shaede, ever,” I said. It was hard to imagine a realm with an entire tribe of iridescent fae, all with some of the most powerful and dangerous magic the realm had even seen. If they existed, they weren’t very well documented.

“I just wanted to share this with you. You deserve to know some of our history, even if it isn’t much.” She got up and smoothened her skirt. I scooted to the edge of the bed, suddenly realizing something truly terrible.

“Amira, if you had this information all along, did you ever share it with Ciaran?”

She looked at me, her body going tense. She couldn’t have thought that I wouldn’t have connected the dots. “I never showed him,” she said. “Until recently, that is.” She moved a few steps back, as if scared I was going to lash out. “I told him after the night our parents died. He understands finding more faeries that have the magic to undo their curse is going to be difficult, but believes the realm is vast.”

She was right to back up. Suddenly, I was on my feet, anger boiling under my skin. “ Is going to be difficult? Do you even hear yourself?! My stars, Amira! He wants to force Shaedes to mate with dark faeries! He killed our parents over it! He stole me for Edmyn! He was about to pass around Glory to the dark lords like a plaything! And he did almost all of it, knowing full well that none of these Shaedes produced the magic needed for that spell. At what point is he just wicked, Amira?! And at what point are you just an accomplice?”

She grabbed the letter off my lap as complex emotions washed over her face. Maybe she was having a crisis of conscience, but if she had explained the contents of this letter to Ciaran and he was still moving full steam ahead to undercut the power of the Shaede Court, then we were all lost anyway.

Having no good answer to my question, she left the room quickly, slamming the door behind her. I lay back in bed, exhausted from the conversation with my sister and slightly obsessed with the story of Sandrell. I wondered if we were somehow related across millennia, or if we both just happened to find ourselves in a serendipitous set of circumstances, the consequences be damned. Sandrell had created something that she loved. And in the end, although it killed her to see Erik fading, she had no regrets. Would I? My magic, even in its confinement, wanted to do something with Edmyn. Something that blurred the line between good and evil, something significant and new. But would it be worth what it cost me?

There was no doubt in my mind—the “good” side needed all the help it could get. If the poisoned berries failed, Ciaran would not only be powerful enough to turn the faerie world into his own little kingdom of hell, but he would have learnt that his brother tried to betray him. And I unfortunately knew how horrible that felt. Only, I was not an unhinged sociopath to begin with, so I could only imagine what Ciaran’s reaction would be.

The door flew open with a bang, and Glory came in white as a ghost, her hair in drenched purple tendrils falling down her back.

“Glory, you gave me a fright.” I clutched at my heart, worried at what had prompted this outburst that had her running from the baths.

“It’s Edmyn and Ciaran. They are back,” she said between heavy pants, throwing on her heavy dress and whipping her hair into a twisted bun.

My heart didn’t slow at that news. I slid quickly out of bed and resisted the ridiculous urge to comb my hair. We weren’t going to a party or a ball—we were going to war.

Glory nodded as we marched out of the room and down the hall. I had learned the complex system of hallways fairly well by now, and Glory had said that the Dark Princes were in the throne room having a meeting with the lords of the court. Apparently, the servant tending to her bath was very talkative.

We arrived at the throne room doors. I’d yet to see them closed. We waited with the few guards positioned outside, wondering if it wouldn’t have been a better idea for Edmyn or Ciaran to come looking for us. I was terrified Ciaran would have immediate plans to go test Edmyn’s daywalking abilities, or even worse, set his hostile takeover of the Shaede Court in full motion. But either way, we had to know, and I had to see Edmyn and confirm he was still on the side of good.

The enormous doors lurched open with a sonorous moan, and a small flood of lords, talking in hushed, tense tones, exited the room. Henrick was among them, but he didn’t dare glance my way .

We entered the sepulchral space, which seemed to have quadrupled in size with the absence of the court. Edmyn was standing above Ciaran, who was seated on his throne, looking absolutely exhausted. His soiled shirt was torn open across his chest and was missing part of a sleeve, but his skin showed no marks. His freakishly long hair was tied loosely in a ponytail, but even from the foot of the stairs, I could see some of his hair was singed. His nails were black with dirt and blood. And his face had lost some of the mania we had become so used to seeing in his presence. There was no sense of drama or electric energy to this Ciaran. This Ciaran looked like he needed a nap.

Edmyn turned when he heard us walk up, and although he was also a little worse for wear, he still seemed himself—at ease and apathetic to just about everything in his brother’s presence.

“Edmyn, it looks like I was not the only prince that was missed these past few days,” Ciaran croaked. Even his voice had been worn down. “Look at them, like little pets searching for their master. How well you’ve trained them.”

“We want to know what you plan to do to the Shaede Court,” said Glory boldly.

Ciaran waved his hand dismissively. “Go away, woman. Like I have the time or the energy to explain my great plans to either of you.” He got up slowly—very slowly—as if he still had some internal healing to do. He put a hand on Edmyn’s shoulder and said, “Thank you, brother. Your assistance wasn’t needed, but your company was a comfort. I am blessed in these shadows to have such a loyal friend.” Ciaran patted his shoulder and then took the stairs one at a time. I couldn’t see Edmyn’s face, so I could only wonder whether or not he was having second thoughts.