Page 26 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)
CHAPTER 26
W e crossed the fifth portal into pandemonium.
Large winged hawks with long, scaled necks and mismatched feet like griffins, clawed at the sky above us. More of those frog monsters were hopping around the space frantically, their pincers looking to make contact with flesh. At least ten of the wolf-like shadow beasts, like the one that had attacked Farris in the alleyway, circled us immediately, their hungry growls loud enough to make the ground quake.
We had popped out on the hillside near where Edmyn and I ended up after the walk we took among his crops. The access to this tunnel was no longer glamoured, and out of it crawled the undead two at a time. There wasn’t time to discuss any sort of strategy or plan—we drew our weapons and began to fight.
Dru and Farris, followed by the green warriors, charged forward at the wolf beasts, beating them back with swift strokes of sword and dagger. A flying beast swooped down, wailing its battle cry, trying to pick off Glory, but she spun around quickly at just the right moment and sliced off one of its back paws, causing warm blood to rain down on us. Lennyx and Leyanna had moved toward the zombies, hacking at them one by one. Limbs and heads started rolling down the hill as we ineptly attempted to overtake our enemies. Edmyn did his part by throwing a protective shield around us, but that was all the magic he had left to give. If he had been a living Shaede, he would have gone white by now, or worse. But whatever darkness held on to his life force had a death grip and made him able to keep eking out just enough magic to blanket us with some protection.
Amira, Lord Vale, and I were defending ourselves against three of the enormous toad-like shadow beasts, but it was so difficult to fight and move backward up a hill at the same time. The two years of combat training we all received as children were never going to be enough in a battle like this. While Glory was wielding her sword at the closest frog beast to us, its companion made a quick advance and lashed out with its stinger at me, only to find Edmyn’s shield hovering over our bodies and no way to break it.
It was forty or so minutes of terror and exhaustion, and parrying and hacking, until we finally earned a reprieve from the shadow beasts. Their oozing carcasses lie in dark heaps scattered along the hill like giant, black, bleeding boulders. One hawk beast that managed to evade our blades decided to flee and could be heard screeching somewhere far off in the distance. Edmyn’s face had become almost ashen with fatigue. At some point, I caught him staggering over to the body of a brutalized wolf beast lying dead nearby and saw him punch a hole in its abdomen, scoop out handfuls of blood and shiny entrails, and consume them from his own hands. Dark red blood ran from his mouth as his shields held and his magic continued to stretch to its limits, the whole scene becoming more and more macabre with every passing minute. All of us were elbow-deep in blood and viscera, destined to climb that hill for eternity. For every ten zombies we killed, ten more arrived, and we were never able to make any progress forward.
Then a light flashed from over the hill on the other side. We all recognized it at once for what it was. It even attracted the attention of the undead and sent them pivoting from their endless pursuit of us toward the light source with renewed enthusiasm.
“It’s a portal!” I yelled, “Run!”
We clambered up the rest of the hill, our bodies aching, our lungs spent. The zombies were not even interested in us anymore; they had a new task. When we reached the precipice, we were looking down a gradual slope where a giant portal had opened, showing a scene on the other side that I did not recognize, mountains against a violet sky. And there was Ciaran, looking possessed but in perfect health, encouraging his scourge to cross the threshold and wreak havoc elsewhere.
“Stop!” Edmyn bellowed. He whipped his magic at Ciaran’s doorway but could not force it closed. Ciaran looked up at us, lined up to watch him dispatch his horrors, laughing hysterically and blind to the evil that had overtaken him.
Amira dropped to her knees. “Please, Ciaran,” she pleaded, tears streaming down her blood splattered face. The sound of her voice calling to him echoed over the hills like a dirge, as if they weren’t separated by inches but by entire worlds. Even from a distance, I could see the love in his eyes for my sister, but for him, it wasn’t enough to leave his hate behind. Edmyn took a few steps down the hill when a different sound echoed through the bleak gray day. Was it thunder?
We all mechanically turned in the direction of the rumbling and saw a cloud of dust not nearly far enough away, approaching very quickly. It wasn’t weather—it was the sound of the thousands and thousands of undead from the fourth tunnel that had managed to free themselves from the dirt in which Edmyn had entombed them. They were now rushing toward us, extremely pissed off and with a taste for our flesh on their desiccating lips.
“That’s not good,” said Leyanna. She grabbed Lennyx by the collar of his armor and smashed her lips on his. “Just in case this is where we die,” she said, smiling. Poor Lennyx had no time to react. It would be mere minutes before they were upon us, and I wasn’t even sure Edmyn had enough magic to portal us away.
I looked at Farris, wondering if I had led him to his death. If perhaps I should steal one last kiss before we, too, were overrun. But his eyes weren’t afraid, and there was no sense of urgency to them. In fact, they were glowing again, and maybe a little sad. He turned from me and walked over to where Amira knelt, her head now touching the ground before her, her body heaving with uncontrollable sobs .
Farris tenderly lifted her head and whispered something in her ear. She looked at him warmly, spoke something in return, and then turned to look at me, smiling through the tears that fell like rain. Then he snapped her neck, and her body went limp in his arms.
“NO!” I screamed and ran over to her, diving onto the ground. I collected as much of her ragdoll body as my muscles allowed into my lap and looked up at Farris, who stood there, empathy saturating every detail on his face.
Simultaneously, Edmyn was shouting Ciaran’s name as he went flying down to his brother. I turned to see Ciaran’s body fall to the ground in a heap. The portal disappeared as if it had never been, and the Shadowlands fell silent. The dead went dead again.
“Why?!” I shouted at Farris, my eyes blurry and burning with tears mixed with blood and dust. “How could you?”
The others were still watching above us, their faces a painful mix of shock, compassion, and elation.
“He’s dead!” exclaimed Edmyn, openly weeping over his brother’s corpse.
I was too tired to walk, so I crawled. I abandoned my sister’s cold body and started crawling to Edmyn. On my hands and knees, I grabbed handfuls of that itchy brown grass and pulled myself toward him with everything I had left. He saw me coming and gently laid Ciaran’s head on the ground and met me halfway. We knelt in an embrace that was laced with sorrow, love, and commiseration. There were no words. We had both lost this war.
Edmyn took my head in his hands and kissed me. His dark lashes, laden with tears, felt like extra kisses on my cheeks. There was a little movement in the earth, which caused us to break the kiss and look toward where Ciaran’s body lay.
Everybody gasped as his body disintegrated into dust. Then, as if a funnel had opened up in the earth, the ground swirled and pulled his remains in deep, eventually settling into a smooth pile of fresh chalky soil with a tiny green sapling protruding boldly in its place.
Edmyn got up and pulled me to my feet. I followed him over to the tiny plant, and we gazed at it in silence for a few moments, his arm around my waist, steadying my tired legs. Even in the few moments we stood watching it, it looked like it had already grown half an inch.
“It’s growing fast,” I said, at a complete loss for meaningful words.
“Yes.” Edmyn smirked sadly, an errant tear falling from his jaw. “Knowing Ciaran, he will grow like a weed and try his best to overcome this crop with his shade entirely.”
I heard his bitterness and knew that healing took time. “I think this might be a good tree,” I offered. “A healthy one that bears healing fruit or something.”
“Or poison,” he spat, turning away from the sapling and looking at me. “I’m sorry for everything,” he said, suddenly impassioned. “For my brother, for your parents, for your sister, your realm. Everything.”
“His sins are not yours, Edmyn.”
“I should not love you as much as I do. It is not fair to either of us.”
“Since when does the Night Court care about fairness?” I smiled sadly.
“Since now,” he answered, his tone serious. “Things will be different.”
“You cannot leave now, can you?” I asked, already knowing the answer. That mythical place on the other side of the tyrannical reign of his brother, the secret scenario I desired that I only shared with myself, was a world in which I looked out from the throne at the High Shaede Court and saw both Edmyn and Farris smiling up at me. It was a fantasy, but it was mine.
He bowed down to lay a gentle kiss on my forehead, but instead of confirming the truth, he said, “Tell me you love me, Little Prism.”
Was there anything that this man asked me that I wouldn’t do?
“I love you, Edmyn.”
“And I love you,” he said in a voice low and even, heavy with feeling. “I love you the way the moon loves the sun. And I will be in endless pursuit of you. Every morning you wake, although I might not be there, a part of you—the part that has always shone on me and given me purpose—will always be with me. Even if I fade into the darkness, I will shine again—and again, and again and again for you, my love.”
My tears began again. “We’re forever intertwined, you and I. ”
“I trust you will treat me kindly.” He kissed my hand, but he might as well have been kissing the most intimate parts of me. Our bond was so that he could make me feel what he wanted me to feel. And in that moment, as I looked at him, he was no longer a Dark Prince forced into the shadows by his brother, but a Dark King with a smile that promised all the dark, vicious, and gloriously wicked things I no longer feared.
Farris approached, and I was suddenly reminded that Edmyn and I had been mourning and kissing with a full audience.
“Ah, your silver pet,” Edmyn said, loud enough for Farris to hear.
“I know that it doesn’t change anything,” Farris began, seemingly unfazed by seeing us together, “but I am truly sorry. For both your losses.”
“Farris, how?” My anger had turned to awe. “How did you know their life forces were linked?”
He did not look like a man who had just won a war. There was no evidence of triumph on his face or in his voice when he spoke. “Amira had found two copies of Sandrell’s letters, but the ancient Shaedes had the entire correspondence. Sandrell suspected for years that the bond she had created with her Viking lover was so strong that if he got wounded in battle, she could feel his pain. But when he started to die of old age, that was when she really felt it. Her power weakened, and she died with him—happily, mind you.”
“Her letter made it sound like suicide,” I said. “And she thought the Balance was punishing her.”
“Not exactly,” said Farris. “The Balance wasn’t angry with her and other Nymphs for using that spell and creating special refinements. The Balance blesses any union that offers more good into the world. But the Balance couldn’t sever the bonds forged by the Nymphs, and they were dying. Sandrell’s letters are not the only account of Nymphs blessed with refinement magic, falling in love or transforming beings for spite, and then perishing right along with them. Faeries were dying—that was what upset the Balance. Eventually, the Nymphs died off, and the Balance concealed that type of magic to protect the rest of the species.”
“So if I die…” I started, but couldn’t say it .
“Then we all die,” said Farris. “All three of us.”
I glanced up at Amira’s tiny body folded over on the hill. “She knew, didn’t she?” I asked.
Farris nodded. “I told her what I was going to do before I took her life. I wanted her to know that her death would hold significant meaning. She thanked me, actually. She said she prayed often for Ciaran to be at peace.” Edmyn’s eyes welled up again. “Again, I am sorry it had to go this way.”
I left Edmyn’s side and jumped into Farris’s arms. I wished I could comfort him. He walked on scene and I turned him into a homicidal hero who had to fight beasts, kill family members, and watch me be in love with another man. The only thing I could offer him was part of my heart, and with everything he had been through, that didn’t seem nearly enough.
“I love you,” I whispered into his silver waves that were matted and stained with drying blood.
“And I you,” he echoed.
“I think I will bury Amira beside Ciaran, if that is all right with you,” asked Edmyn, interrupting our embrace. It was fitting, and so I agreed. By his side was where I was sure she would have wanted to remain. “Why don’t you both go back with Lord Vale? You all need access to your magic to heal. I will take care of Amira and this tunnel. I’ll also need to address my court. This will be a shock to everyone.”
Edmyn crossed over to Farris, and they grasped forearms in a way that made it more than a handshake. “Take care of our girl,” he said boldly.
Farris’s silver eyes intensely bore into Edmyn’s as he replied, “Like our lives depended on it.” He took my hand and led me away as the hawk beast shrieked its lament far above in a sea of clouds and sunless sky.