Page 22 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)
CHAPTER 22
T he raised voices echoing throughout the empty throne room all blended together in a resonant cry for my attention, but all I could do was stare at the wall where the portal had closed, separating me from Edmyn and a part of me I could never have back. There was always a chance that Edmyn’s plan wasn’t going to work, and there had always been a chance that I would die in the battle, but the undead careening into the palace, watching the man I loved choose his brother and walk away—these were images that would always haunt me.
Amira was somewhere in the palace, heavily guarded and undoubtedly equally a mess—being separated from someone with whom you shared this kind of bond was sort of like having a painful disease of which there was no cure. Dru had quickly sent green faeries to strengthen defenses around the castle and purple faeries to send messages to the other courts about what had happened. A few orange faeries alerted the minds of all the palace’s residences to Ciaran’s attack, my return, and that the order to remain in their homes until further notice was still in place.
Leyanna had dismissed Farris before he could interrogate me further—a small mercy. I wasn’t sure if she just didn’t want him around while we discussed official Shaede business or if she sensed that my affections were unequivocally divided and that my mental state was in complete disarray. Either way, I was thankful.
Now we stood before our thrones, once again arguing and talking too fast, terribly aware of our inadequacy. I had filled them in as much as I could about Edmyn’s plan with the berries and his hopes for rendering Ciaran incapable of causing more harm. Glory had already reported all the details about the Night Court she could remember, as well as the information we learned from Sandrell’s first letter, so that was less I had needed to divulge.
However, there was much interest in everything that had happened after she had been forcibly released and a growing desire for an explanation of my new found powers. But Leyanna and Lennyx were currently arguing about the odds of Edmyn and Ciaran tearing each other apart on the other side of the portal, allowing me a short opportunity to mourn.
“Maybe they aren’t even our problem anymore,” Leyanna said, her hands on her hips. “Eternity can be a long time to hold a grudge, but something tells me Ciaran is up to the challenge.”
“It was Edmyn who held the grudge,” I said quietly, still staring at the wall. “He was a yellow Shaede before Ciaran killed him.”
“What?” said Glory, and all of them turned to me.
“Edmyn told me that before Ciaran came to turn him, he had recently received his shaede. He loves his brother, but they’ve never been as similar as Ciaran had believed them to be. Edmyn kept the secret at first because he didn’t want to hurt his brother, but as time turned Ciaran into what we know him as today, Edmyn’s secret became a bitter and constant companion.”
“How do you know all this?” Leyanna asked, but it wasn’t like they hadn’t seen my and Edmyn’s final goodbye. It was just that no one had been brave enough to ask me about it. Reliving my short stint at the Night Court was a necessary evil. These were my friends after all, and the only heroes this realm had. They deserved to know, even if I longed to keep my memories all to myself.
“Edmyn did not force himself on me,” I said, finally turning away from the wall. “The darkness was very disorienting at first, but eventually, my preconceived notions were worn away. I spent enough time with Edmyn to learn much about him, his history, and his complicated relationship with his brother. I mated with him willingly—his daywalking abilities were a gift.”
Lennyx looked embarrassed enough for the both of us. Dru and Glory looked appalled, while Leyanna appeared a little bit enraptured.
“When I witnessed Edmyn walk in the light, I knew something had happened,” said Glory in disbelief with anger creeping into her voice. “I imagined countless horrors, questioned everything about our time together. But you willingly gave our enemy the keys to our kingdom? Are you insane?”
“She was in love,” said Lennyx, surprisingly. “Relax with the judgment, Glory, or you will make us guilty of everything the Dark Princes accuse us of.”
Leyanna’s face softened and turned toward Lennyx, their eyes meeting above solid common ground. “I’m inclined to agree with Lennyx,” she said. “Without all the seedy details, are you saying we should all be team Edmyn? What do you think is happening in the Shadowlands right now?”
I paused, trying to imagine the Night Court when the brothers were at odds. “There is a delicate balance at their court, relaxed and refined one moment, but feral and shaky the next. Their courtiers have all been willing to die for Ciaran. I’m sure Edmyn will face a political nightmare once Ciaran fully heals. But whether or not he is capable of forgiveness, I haven’t a clue. And this undead army, I wonder how that will be received at court.”
“I think we have all been faced with what would seem to be a revolving door of impossible choices. Whatever your choices”—Dru took my hand and squeezed it—“I trust you, Opal. We have lost much in this conflict, but we are still here. Balance be damned, we are still here. Help us fight them.”
Dru would be forever true, and she was right. We had so many people counting on us. In a way, I imagined Edmyn was now counting on us too .
“About my magic,” I said to the group. “At first, it was just Amira’s theory. She was sensitive to other faeries’ magic, but she never had any access. She believed with the help of the added Balance magic, I might be able to actually take, store, and use others’ magic as my own.”
“So on top of the refinement magic, you have the ability to syphon as well?” asked Glory, looking at me like a science experiment she desperately wanted to tinker with. “Do you think you could take all of Ciaran’s magic away?”
“I definitely had access to Edmyn’s, but I think that was only through our bond. It’s like we share magic now, through some invisible funnel, if that makes sense. I’m afraid to touch Ciaran’s dark magic without consent. I’m afraid of what it might do to me. If I’d even be able to control it. But I could try, I suppose.”
“No,” Leyanna said firmly. “I want to trust you, Opal, but what if his magic got a hold of you? No one needs a third Dark One running around and reanimating the dead. And even if you drained him, I don’t think he would actually die.”
“There is one more thing,” I said, making eye contact with Glory. “Amira shared with me another letter from Sandrell.” I quickly paraphrased its contents and shared how long Amira had kept that information to herself.
“That bitch,” said Leyanna. “But I guess we are talking about someone who sold her own sister into sex slavery.”
Glory sighed. “I mean, I guess it does clarify things about your magic, but my parents say that the Balance always makes magic available when it is needed most. So why now? Why, after ridding the world of the Nymphs thousands of years ago, why bring back their magic now?”
I agreed with Glory in that it hadn’t exactly been helpful up until this point.
“Maybe it is time to talk to Amira,” Lennyx proposed. “After all, she knows our enemy better than we do. Shall we call her forward?”
“No,” I said, scratching at the lace at my throat. “I think I should talk to her. Alone. Besides, the last time she was separated from Ciaran, she was almost inconsolable. We might get more out of her one on one.”
“If you think you are up for that,” said Dru, “I’m okay with it. But then you really should get some rest.”
“And don’t kill her,” said Leyanna with a wicked smile playing on her lips. “Unless I can be there to watch.”
When the guards opened the door and stepped aside, I wasn’t sure what I expected. Amira was crouched in a corner of the room farthest from the door, partially hidden from view by the gigantic table filling up most of the space. It was much like the room Farris and I had made out in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
She was not crying, sniveling, or whispering to herself anymore. She was just sitting in a puddle of skirts, her hair a little mussed to one side, her arms around her knees, and a determined look on her face.
I approached her as I would a feral animal, unsure of what it would do if startled. Clearly also haunted by the events of the day, she noticed me with wide, puffy eyes and then went back into her steely trance.
“Amira?” I said carefully. “I need to ask you some questions.” I was going to pull up a chair beside her, but decided to slide down the wall next to her and sit with my legs out, staring in the same direction as her, waiting for clarity.
“He left me to save himself.” She spoke in something between a statement and a question, as if she knew what had happened but still couldn’t quite believe it. “I gave him everything. I gave him a piece of my soul. And when things got tough, he left me.”
I tried hard to remind myself that we were talking about her feelings and not mine. But it made my heart ache just the same.
“He did leave you. Though, to be fair, I think his body was starting to disintegrate,” I said. Not in an effort to console her, but we were just two women sitting there, stating the facts. Something in me wanted to believe that had the situation been reversed and I was his to take, Edmyn would have used his last bit of magic to pull me into the portal with him rather than release a bunch of undead monsters.
“It doesn’t matter; we are all dead anyway,” she said calmly. I was ready to ask some follow-up questions, but she seemed eager to talk, so I let her. “Ciaran had a long time to experiment with his magic. When I met him, he was a man full of secrets. I think he kept a lot of things from Edmyn—not out of distrust but because I think even Ciaran knew deep down how dark he had become. He didn’t want Edmyn to see that side of him. Humans, however, flocked to him. He had some sort of network of servants who would travel in and out of the Seam with his blessing and recruit more humans for his dark and divine purposes. They came to him, many looking like they had lived their whole lives as children of the night. Though I knew some were just lost souls that would willingly cling to anyone or anything that showed even the slightest bit of love or attention toward them. These were the most broken humans, living in some of the deepest shadows of the human realm. And Ciaran promised them a home. One day at court, I just happened to be on Ciaran’s arm, strolling around the courtyard, when a guard came to him with a note. ‘Thirteen?’ he had said, reading the note with surprise. ‘Keep one or two of the most devout, and then bring the rest to the Southern Lair.’ The guard had nodded and left to execute his orders.”
“The Southern Lair?” I repeated, confused.
“Yes,” Amira continued, resting her head back against the wall. “Eventually, Ciaran told me all his secrets. The bond we have makes it impossible not to. He showed all of the lairs to me in due course, but basically he had large tunnels dug in five different locations around the castle grounds that led to enormous holding cells for his human prisoners. He was taking the excess humans who were coming to the Shadowlands to seek sanctuary and farming them for their blood. Large vats kept the blood warm until it was tapped, and no one knew about it but him. Now, most of the humans at court gave their blood willingly. Even Edmyn partook on the necks of the eager. But when Ciaran wanted a snack or to gift something special to his lords or ladies, he always had a reservoir to pull from. And he was quite generous, as there were always more humans coming in.”
My stomach churned with the image of stale blood in swirling jugs passed around a party. “What did he do with all the bodies?” I asked, but as soon as I said the words, I knew the answer to my own question. “The army of undead.”
She nodded solemnly, a sad and pathetic smile on her lips. “Yep. There were piles and piles and piles of them. He practiced all sorts of spells on them. He could make them dance, could make them rip each other apart. It was barbaric, but I never told anyone. He never called it an army. He never said that he was going to use them to wage war on his behalf. I am so stupid. I thought they were just the sick fascination of a bored and lonely faerie that had an addiction to human blood. Opal,” she said, finally turning to look at me, “you have to believe me. I didn’t know his plan. Not really.”
As much as I wanted to believe her, and maybe I did, it didn’t really change anything. I knew he would stop at nothing to get an edge over us now. And maybe their love was real, but she was only ever going to be a stepping stone for a man who believed he deserved to touch the sun.
“So how many does he have, really?” I asked. “You said there were five lairs?”
“The spaces were so large, and there were just so many. Fifty or sixty thousand? Maybe more? He glamoured the exits so that Edmyn would never be able to find them. But, then, it looks like Edmyn himself, was keeping his own set of secrets.” She put her hand on mine, and I almost jumped at the touch. My power flared as an overemotional reaction, but it recognized something in her and calmed down. “Are you okay, Opal?”
I scrunched up my face, caught off guard and confused. “Why are you asking me that?”
“You forget that I’ve known Edmyn a lot longer than you.” She smiled sadly again, but this time, there was sympathy in her eyes. “You made him come alive. You bound yourself to him. It must feel awful for him to be gone.” The word gone just hung in the air between us like a guillotine blade that could fall at any moment. If I thought about it too much, I was certain it would come crashing down on my neck. However, what was almost more painful at this immediate moment was that the only person who seemed to really see how much Edmyn meant to me was Amira, the person who had hurt me more than Ciaran ever could. And now she sat here, tears in her eyes for me, looking after my wellbeing and willing to mourn alongside me the love I had lost. It was almost unbearable.
“I will be fine,” I answered robotically. I had to soldier on—there was too much between us that had been destroyed in earlier battles. But then she did the unthinkable. She moved to her knees and wrapped her arms around me. I couldn’t tell which one of us was shaking or both. Tears fell freely, and I was so exhausted, I just couldn’t fight it anymore. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was therapeutic. There was something healing about a hug from my sister, no matter how much distance had been put between us or how different we’d become.
“You have to let the magic lead you,” she whispered into my ear. “You were made for a love such as this.” It was a sobering thought. The heart forever warring with the mind. The magic forever dueling with our own inhibitions. Who were we to judge or deny our gifts?
It was hard to look Amira in the eye after we pulled away. She was still a high prisoner of the Shaede Court, and I was still on the hunt to destroy her lover. But, in the few moments of calm I experienced in her arms, I had found the beginnings of a plan, and I needed to be ready to act.