Page 25 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)
CHAPTER 25
A mira looked like she had seen a ghost. I might have had some concerns about seeing Edmyn again, but it was taking Amira everything she had to put one foot in front of another as she crossed the breadth of the throne room floor, inching her way back to Ciaran.
Even without speaking, I knew what this was costing her. Farris said that she hadn’t hesitated to agree to help us locate the hidden tunnels. She was confident in their whereabouts, and if Edmyn could protect them, she expressed that they wouldn’t be hard to find or difficult for him to destroy. It was Ciaran that had us all apprehensive. He was the loose cannon that we all knew was out there somewhere but hadn’t a clue where he was aiming.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said, taking her hands. “I know how hard this is.”
“I thought you might,” she said humorlessly. She nodded a little in Farris’s direction. “Edmyn will not be pleased.”
“Edmyn has bigger problems right now, I think.” But as we approached the wall that so often bore our portals, doubt began whispering in my ear.
“Okay,” said Dru, gathering us together. Everyone had changed into combat gear or enchanted leather armor, with the exception of Amira. She still looked elegant in her dress from the Night Court. “Now that we are all together, let’s go over this one more time. We get in and move quickly. If we don’t have Edmyn’s protection, we come straight back through this portal.” She nodded to the cluster of red and blue faeries that were huddled by the wall. “Hold it open, unless there’s a threat to the realm. Do whatever you can to hold it open so we always have an exit in case something goes wrong.” They all pledged their maximum effort. She turned to address the wall of green warriors lined up behind us, the Shaede Court’s absolute best fighters. “This will not be an arena for battle magic, but a physical battle is almost a certainty. There are plenty of things that are killable in the Shadowlands, so stay close and be ready for anything.”
I moved to stand beside her, addressing everyone. “Amira will lead us to the tunnels, Edmyn will destroy them, and then we locate Ciaran. That is the best-case scenario, but anything less, and we all die. Are we ready?”
“Fuck yeah!” shouted Leyanna, jumping up and down amid all the somber faces. Only she could make me smile on the cusp of a suicide mission.
“Then open the portal,” Dru commanded.
A swirl of electric blue-and-purple light tails formed on the wall, quickly spinning into a blur that held so much power that it was forced to split itself and open into a shadowy portal. Edmyn was so close now that I could almost smell the kiss of citrus on his skin.
We crossed into the shadows and wanted to adjust our eyesight to the darkness, but there was no time. It was the throne room. I recognized it immediately despite the dim lighting. Edmyn was suddenly there, somehow paler than I remember him, looking like a handsome phantom of portent.
“I wish the Night Court could have entertained the High Shaedes under more palatable tidings, but there is no time to mourn the day. May I introduce Lord Vale and Lord Markis of the Night Court. You can trust them. They are among the few that have expressed their distrust and disgust for the way Ciaran has been handling things of late. ”
Lord Vale was a very young-looking dark faerie, just barely sixteen or seventeen when he had been turned. He had the signature black hair that all the Dark Ones acquired once cursed, but his features all looked soft, like they would have favored the fair. Lord Markis was a more typical-looking dark lord, with a thick eyebrow and squared jaw. He oozed raw masculinity and muscle, which made me happy he was on our side. He looked like someone who could choke out a larger than average shadow beast with one hand.
“Thank you for allowing us passage,” said Dru.
I had been kind of lingering in the back of our group, but I knew it was time to face him. I grabbed Amira’s hand, who also looked like she’d be happy to remain hidden, and marched to the front of the group letting my adrenaline take control.
“Amira knows where Ciaran is building his army of undead,” I said boldly. “We need you to follow us to these tunnels and destroy them. Then we will deal with Ciaran.”
His eyes raked over me with sadness and longing. I didn’t know if he needed comfort, support, or just a release from it all, but I wanted to give it to him. Whatever he required, I wanted to provide it. But instead, we stood on shaky ground with an entire world between us and ached.
“Hello, Opal,” he said. Hearing Edmyn use my actual name was like snapping a shard of my already broken heart just to see if it would break down further—and it did.
“Prince Edmyn,” I pressed, playing the formal name game in turn. “Do we have your cooperation? There isn’t much time to spare.”
He cocked his head to the side as if he were considering something and scanned the crowd of Shaedes he had just let in to his castle.
“I’m inclined to cooperate, High Shaede. But you mentioned ‘dealing’ with my brother? What, pray tell, does that entail?” Amira squeezed my hand as we both sensed Edmyn’s magic turn sharp like a knife. It was easy to forget how lethal he could be when I wanted to trust him so badly. His magic was searching for something, and it wasn’t being gentle about it.
Farris stepped up beside me, his silvery eyes almost glowing in the dark. “I have means to kill Prince Ciaran. If you lead me to him, this war will be over.”
It took Edmyn a minute to take in what Farris was trying to tell him, but then he burst out laughing with a harsh chortle that made the candlelight in the room waver. “A silver Shaede?!” he exclaimed. Lord Vale looked confused. “My stars, we haven’t seen one of those in ages!” He laughed, slapping his leg in jest. “This is clearly your work.” He gestured to me, and I felt my cheeks flush. “What are you going to do, Silver? Beat my brother to death with a proverb or maybe a really heavy encyclopedia?”
“You don’t have to be such an asshole,” I muttered. We didn’t have time for this.
“Do I not amuse you, Little Prism?” Edmyn pouted, a little bit of the gleam coming back to his eyes. “I was under the assumption I was created for your amusement and for that reason alone.” I didn’t dare look at Farris, who was trying his best to remain unmoved. But Edmyn’s words made my legs weak. I didn’t know if I was sharing his warmth through our bond or if I was just feeling the heat of my desire overtaking all the other functions in my body, but my leather armor started to feel like it was smothering me. There were just too many layers between us.
“Okay, we get it,” Leyanna said with exasperation, coming forward. “Your little love triangle isn’t a happy one right now. But now is not the time to hash it out. Are we killing zombies today or not?”
Edmyn smiled and said, “You must be Leyanna.”
I stifled a laugh. This was not funny; this whole situation was dire. But I think the tension was getting to me. Edmyn turned to Farris and said, “You see?” He pointed to me. “I do amuse. I amuse quite well.”
Farris rolled his eyes, trying to avoid conflict but clearly unimpressed with Edmyn’s jesting. Edmyn left a playful smirk rest upon his lips and gestured for the group of us to follow him out of the throne room.
“Lord Vale, come with me. Markis, stay back and keep an eye on the castle in case Ciaran comes back. Take guards with you.” Markis turned on his heel and went back toward the throne room without a word. “I will help you,” Edmyn said as we trailed behind him, weaving down dark hallways I used to have memorized. Everything looked extra dark now and confounding, but it was easy to follow Edmyn by the sound of his low voice reverberating against the walls. “And I will even protect you if I can. But I can make no guarantees of safety. Ciaran’s got the shadow beasts all on the prowl. As far as I can tell, he has two lords with him and a human servant who calls herself Morticia.”
Farris snorted. “As in the Addams Family?”
“Is that some sort of ancient Shaede nobility you are going to bore us about?” Edmyn asked with exasperation. “I knew a silver Shaede once, and he was insufferable, always spouting off little factoids that had literally nothing to do with the task at hand. Let me guess, the House of Adams was the first faerie family to boil Leggen’s moss to cure Mushroom Toe.”
It was Farris’s turn to startle us with a laugh. “No. But sadly, I have been blessed with the knowledge of who did.”
A welcome silence followed until we turned a corner, and I recognized the small gray door that would exit out to the twisted path that led down to the castle crops and gardens.
“All right, Amira,” called out Edmyn once we were outside. She shuffled forward and stared at his boots. “Don’t look too forlorn, my dear. I love him too, but his way will never sustain a life worth living. There will only be death and destruction.”
“I know,” she said as she accepted his embrace. The wind blew around us, and the smell of death hung in the air. “The farthest tunnel from here is on the far end of the swamp.”
“Okay, let’s start there and work our way back,” said Edmyn. He opened a portal, and we all crossed through.
Leyanna couldn’t hide her disgust with the swamp. Glory didn’t seem to be enjoying being in such close proximity to it either. The murky water bubbled and made gurgling noises as if it were a living thing. The ground that surrounded it was liquid mud and absorbed our every step with a squelch. Amira led us to a fallen log and told Edmyn that the entrance was right on the other side. Edmyn spelled the area to uncover the glamour, and almost instantly, an enormous, cavernous hole appeared. He held up his palm and searched for Ciaran with his magic. I sensed nothing living. He started a spell I had never seen before and chanted words in a language completely foreign to me. Glory leaned over to me and whispered, “It’s desecration magic.”
Farris leaned back and added, “The language is old Corynthian. I doubt the dragons even remember it.”
Glory glared at him.
The ground heaved under our feet and you could hear and feel the earth turn into itself underground. We watched in awe as the entrance to the tunnel filled up with the dusty soil of the region and in moments it was like the tunnel had never even existed.
“One down, four more to go,” Edmyn said brightly. “The dead are truly at rest now. I made sure of it.” It was weird to live your whole life thinking there was only one kind of dead only to learn later on that it could be a lot more complicated than that.
Amira was giving directions to the next tunnel when, out of the acrid swamp, burst a giant frog-like creature with snapping claws on its front feet and a pinching scorpion-like tail attached to its back. Once it made landfall, it scurried quickly over to us and darted at us viciously, testing the range of its pincer. I felt Edmyn’s magic lash out, but before the spell hit the shadow beast, Farris’s enormous sword slashed forward, beheading the revolting creature in one fell swoop.
Edmyn looked mildly impressed, as did Dru—as did we all. The warriors we had brought with us decided they would create a circle around us as we traveled, just in case we had any more unexpected shadow beast encounters. Luckily, the second and third tunnels were void of any unwanted visitors. At each location, we waited, anticipating Edmyn to tell us that Ciaran was inside. We braced ourselves to be overrun by the zombies. But everything was quiet and still. There were even murmurs of encouragement from our group to Edmyn, and small cheers when he turned more earth in on itself and laid the dead to rest. There was little time to mourn them, these dead fae and humans who were forced to sacrifice their lives for whatever sick torment Ciaran had imagined for them .
Amira was sad but resolute. Her heart had already broken when Ciaran left her at the Shaede Court, but if she had had any hope that there might be a chance to reconcile the situation, it faded quickly with each tunnel visited, for each tunnel was a reminder of the pure evil to which she had bonded herself.
As we reached the fourth site, I noticed Edmyn had begun to look tired. He raked his hand through his hair, and when his palm went up to search the tunnel, I saw his muscles strain and his eyes try extra hard to focus. He remained as composed as possible, but turned to us with raised eyebrows.
“These bodies are animated. Ciaran isn’t down there, but they are all alive. There must be ten thousand, maybe more. He must have them corralled or spelled to stay underground until he needs them. I think the lords and human servants are down there too.”
“Can you still seal the tunnel?” I asked. We were all thinking the same thing. Ten thousand zombies would take a lot of magic to destroy, and it was magic we didn’t have.
“I can seal it, but they’re undead. They’ll just climb out of the earth again.” We were so close to accomplishing the first part of our mission. So close to destroying one of Ciaran’s largest weapons against us. We couldn’t fail now.
“Seal it,” said Farris, with a confidence that no one else possessed at the moment. “Seal the tunnel and let them dig themselves out. We portal quickly to the next location and pray we have enough time to seal that tunnel and take care of Ciaran before we are overrun by his progeny.”
“Everyone knows spells die with their casters,” said Glory, reluctantly agreeing with Farris. “I just hope you really know what you are doing.”
Edmyn also looked at Farris, perhaps for the first time really seeing him. “Though he doesn’t deserve it, will his death be honorable, Silver?”
Farris sauntered up to Edmyn, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. There were probably courtiers that had lived at the Night Court for over a thousand years who wouldn’t dare touch a Dark Prince, but we all watched as Edmyn’s shoulders relaxed, and I felt their magic intermingle and recognize the piece of my soul that they each possessed. Farris spoke with gentleness. “I can promise you it will be swift, and it will be fair.”
Edmyn bowed low before Farris, turned toward the tunnel entrance, and began to chant.