Page 4 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)

CHAPTER 4

I couldn’t stop staring at him. Farris, a human, was in my bed, in my bedchamber at the Shaede Palace. It was surreal—and not in a good way. The attack was still harrowingly fresh in my mind, and only the rise and fall of Farris’s smooth, expansive chest and the faint sound of his heartbeat kept me from falling to pieces. Somehow, he had survived. He lay there, deathly still except for the steady breathing, in a deep sleep after being generously dosed with calming potions. The bruising was already fading from his face, and the shadow beast bite marks, though dangerously severe, had not been fatal.

Hours ago, we had crossed the portal into the great hall, into a vast room with dual sweeping staircases, white washed stone walls, and icy blue marble floors. The ceiling was nonexistent, apart from the massive, leafy Corewood trees that grew plentifully around the castle. They leaned over charitably to provide shade from the sun or protection from rain should the need arise. The great hall, which was always the traffic hub of the palace, felt electric. On this night, it was like everyone in court was also moving with a heightened sense of urgency. Servants were flitting to and fro, focused on their work, and not pausing to gossip. A stream of green Shaedes laden with sharp and dangerous weapons headed toward the front gates. The expressions of the courtiers passing us by ranged from focused, to worried, to angry.

As soon as we had crossed the threshold, the portal disappeared, and only my parents’ servant and close friend Meridee seemed to be expecting us. The rest of the scene was such aflutter that we were hardly noticed all.

“Meridee, quick!” I called. “This human, his name is Farris. He was attacked by a shadow beast and needs healing now!” Meridee was a lovely, brown-eyed faerie with long, thick, curly brown hair that she always wore loosely tied on one side with a glass clip in the shape of a daffodil. It was a gift from my mother after the birth of her son, Lydon. She snapped her fingers, and more Naturals appeared, taking Farris from Dru and heading toward the recovery wing of the palace.

“I am going with him. I cannot have him wake up in this realm after what happened to him. He needs to see a familiar face.” He will wake up, I tried to reassure myself. “Just tell my parents I will be there as soon as I can.” And before I gave them a chance to respond, I was already gone.

There was deep penetration of the shadow beast’s fangs, but the Master Healers, including Leyanna’s mother, who shot me some harsh looks over the operating table, were able to set his bones and draw out all the poison. I was allowed to watch, and even though it was brutal and fresh tears rolled down my cheeks each time Farris’s body violently spasmed in his unconsciousness, it was hardly punishment enough for putting his frail life in danger.

He didn’t look that frail, though, for a human. He was still wearing his coffee-stained jeans but had lost his socks and shoes somewhere along the way. He lay there shirtless, crisp white bandages wrapped deftly around his right arm, another set of bandages around the small of his waist. Even through the cloth, you could see the definition of his abdomen and the ridges of his hips that were disappearing into the loose waist of his jeans. Clearly, he was an active human who took care of his body. His blond hair lay in chaos across my pillow. What was I going to say when he woke up? How could I explain?

I looked around the empty room for a lifeline, but found little comfort. I was finally back in my bedroom. My safe, circular section of the castle with its oversized bed, navy velveteen coverlets, and rugs the vibrant colors of precious gems. The long white table along one wall was still home for all my neatly stacked sketchbooks, and across the room was a matching white armoire filled with tunics and dresses. Faerie lamplights were lit on stands by the table and the bed, filling the room with soft, magically manipulated white light. The windows arched like the ones at the Jefferson Market Library, but instead of stained glass, these were just decorative holes in the stone. Ivy draping over the outside wall of the castle created natural curtains, and the ceiling was nothing but Corewood tree branches and the occasional Perryflower blossom—giant periwinkle-colored flowers whose petals were the size of dinner plates and whose scent was a perfect mixture of lavender and summer rain.

I waved my hand at the sky, and the branches listened and pulled back a little to reveal the deep dark of night. Millions of shining stars were telling me sleep was calling, but I ignored them. My adrenaline might have been running out, but my desire to see Farris through this traumatic ordeal was augmenting with every passing moment.

He stirred a little and winced in his sleep. Not only was the pain going to be awful when he regained consciousness, but he was in for quite the hangover as faerie sleep potions were very strong. He stirred a little more, and then, while I sat there on the edge of my bed holding my breath like I had been for hours, his eyes suddenly fluttered open.

“Farris,” I whispered, trying not to startle him. He blinked slowly, in and out of the dream realm, until he finally focused his eyes on the sky.

“The stars are never this bright in the city,” he said slowly, his voice husky and hoarse.

“We aren’t in the city,” I said, agonizing over every word I chose. How do you explain to someone that their fantasy world was your reality?

He made a move like he was going to sit up, but his upper body tensed with soreness, and then came an exasperated, terse sound from his lips as the pain in his arm and his sides immediately caught up with him. He arched his head back to take a deep breath and closed his eyes while the tremor of pain shot through him. When he opened them again, they were centered on me, his long lashes lazily blinking as some essence of sleep potion still held its power over him.

“Three times in one day. Now who is the stalker?” He smiled. And it was a full smile. It was a full, dreamy, satisfied kind of smile that one would only wear after victory.

“Well, technically, it is after midnight, so not quite all in one day,” I said.

“I don’t know what kind of hospital this is or what kind of drugs they put me on, but did you know that you are shiny?” He lifted up his good arm, wincing only a little, and reached out to run a long index finger along my arm, instantly inviting goosebumps. Having dropped my glamours as soon as we crossed the portal, I had forgotten that he hadn’t ever seen me like this.

I arranged my long hair on one side of my body so he could clearly see my pointed ears, my hair, and my skin in the lamplight of the room. But these were the actions of a coward. I wondered if somehow his curious half-asleep human mind might just fill in the gaps for me and I could avoid the difficult conversation that was to come.

“You’re beautiful,” he said with a sigh of appreciation.

“You’re not quite conscious enough to be making those types of assertions.” I smiled. The hand that just traveled down my arm now rested on mine. I stared for a moment at the line between where the two contrasting tones of our skin met, thinking that a deeper chasm had never been drawn on any map. Then his body spasmed vigorously, like he was being repetitively stung by an unseen enemy, and his hand suddenly went quickly from my hand to his side. He panted through gritted teeth as the pain slowly passed and his eyes cleared.

“Okay, what happened to me?” he asked, still clutching his side. “I was walking down the street after checking my books out. I remember thinking about ordering Chinese food for dinner. And then something huge hit me from the side, and everything went black. Did I get hit by a car? And why are you here?” he asked, quickly adding, “Not that I mind one bit. ”

The questions were bound to really start flowing now, and even though there was a whole heap of trouble undoubtedly waiting for me in the throne room, he deserved the truth.

“You weren’t hit by a car, Farris. And we aren’t in the city anymore,” I said.

“Right, you said that. But then, where are we? What happened?” he repeated.

I fidgeted with my hair again, and this time he noticed my ears.

“Wait, what?” He didn’t even finish his thought. He just hyper-focused on my features, but it was torture watching his wheels spin. I needed to put him out of his misery; it was only fair.

“It’s incredibly hard to explain this, but you were painfully honest with me at the library, so I guess now it is my turn.” He squinted his eyes in concentration. “You were walking home from the library, like you said. And you were hit—but it wasn’t a car. It was a beast. A part wolf, part reptile, part monster type of beast, and it must have slammed you into an alley and then started eating you.” Farris tilted his head as much as he could while still lying on a pillow. His face went blank, divulging little emotion, so I continued. “I was with Leyanna, my red-haired friend, and Dru—you’ve seen her at the coffee shop, too. We were walking home when we found the beast tearing your arm apart. They killed it quite quickly, actually. And then we got you here as fast as we could so you could receive healing.”

“And where is here?” he asked again, hesitantly, though, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anymore.

“Here is the palace of the Shaede Court. It’s the highest court of the faerie realm and my home.” It took him a minute to process, but eventually came the smile, followed by laughter that visibly pained his wounded stomach.

“Faerie realm? And you are what, some sort of faerie queen?” That stole a peal of laughter from me.

“No.” I laughed heartily. “Not even close. In the Shaede Court there are no queens or kings. We are a species divided by colors, called shaedes. The shaedes define our powers. By having a shaede, you are a Shaede. In the simplest of terms, reds—fire. Like Leyanna and my father. My mother is a yellow Shaede, they have plant magic. Greens, battle magic. Blues are water faeries, oranges are mind readers, and purples have creature and dusklight magic. If you don’t have a shaede, then you are considered a Natural. They still possess common faerie magic but are extremely limited in their powers.” I paused, realizing that if I just kept going, I could avoid the incredulous response that was undoubtedly already hanging on Farris’s lips. So I continued.

“The faerie realm encompasses several courts: the Fire, Water, and Forest Courts, the Night Court, and the Shaede Court—the home of the Five. Five High Shaedes hold court here, and they are pretty much the leaders and advisors of all the faerie realm. My parents happen to hold two seats,” I added reluctantly. “And after what happened to you, I’m not all that eager to face them. This is all my fault.”

With his mouth opened slightly, he looked like a man frozen somewhere between fight and flight. He then bit his lip, exercising all the self-control that I seemed to be unable to muster in difficult situations, and slowly let out a shallow breath.

“And what happened to me?” he asked cautiously. “If I was bitten by that beast thing, how is that your fault?”

“Because shadow beasts don’t belong here. Not in this realm, and especially not in a non-magical realm like yours. To best understand, you need to know that faeries and humans used to live together—long before our histories became written works. Stories passed down for millennia depict a very wild planet, our Earth, bursting with life and magic, and beings that possessed it living alongside beings that didn’t. There were times of great cohesion and times of brutal war. Many of the nightmarish creatures of your childhood came from your elders retelling these histories. You give them different names, but they were just various types of ancient fae. Maleficent. Rumpelstiltskin. The Snow Queen. But the faeries of these earliest years, recognizing their superiority and their ability to wipe out the whole species of man, grew tired of warring among themselves. They summoned the Balance to shift in their favor. The Balance is the deep pool of magic that every living faerie is connected to. It is the Balance that gifts us shaedes, and it is the Balance that selects our leaders. It guides us and helps us find equilibrium in an ever-changing world.

“The Balance heard the cries of our ancestors and bore witness to the tumultuousness of the times; thus, it tore an invisible seam down the Earth and let all the magic flow from the world you’ve always known, to the world you have just discovered. All the magic became trapped in the Seam, and the old fae willingly left the rest of the Earth to the humans. The Seam was a magical haven for faeries and other magical creatures, and it had only one cost: to protect the realm of humans and not interfere.”

It had been a long time since I had thought of the old stories my parents and grandmother used to recite to me after dinner to soothe me to sleepiness as a child. Ironically, instead of lulling me to sleep, they always filled me with excitement, pride, and a stirring sense of duty. But looking at Farris’s bandages and remembering his damaged body sprawled under the jaws of the shadow beast, all I felt now was failure.

“Over the years, faeries have interceded in the affairs of humans when the Balance calls for it—or out of generosity. You have names for these faeries too—Santa Claus, for one. But only to provide peace or to counsel, never to harm. That is what me and my friends were doing—serving a period of time in the human realm—to learn more about your kind so we could grow to be better protectors. There is only one place in the Seam that was not directly created by the Balance, and it is called the Night Court, located in the Shadowlands. That is where the dark magic lives, trapped by ancient spells. Dark fae that only deal in death inhabit this place, and they breed and assert control over the type of beast that bit you. They should be unable to portal anywhere outside their lands. So, for that creature to have found itself in Greenwich Village means something is terribly wrong.” I looked up at the sky to see the stars departing, making way for swirls of warm-colored dawn light. I had pretty much abandoned my friends and my parents at this point and felt a growing twinge of guilt stabbing me in the stomach.

“It was the coffee,” I clarified. “The coffee I spilt burned your arm. I healed it, stupidly, without thinking. And then, against all quantifiable odds, that shadow beast smelled the magic on you and came to eat you. I’m sure of it.”

It felt about as bad as I had thought it would, spewing every hard to believe truth about the faerie realm at a human who used to think I was cute and worth flirting with. If the shadow beast hadn’t killed him, I was pretty sure this conversation might, but he just laid there, relaxed and attentive, a thousand questions churning behind his beautiful eyes.

“Show me magic,” he said. Of course, he wanted proof.

“Oh.” I held my palm out, only a little flustered by his request. I created a little flame in the palm of my hand and watched it come alive in the reflection of his irises. He was transfixed and immediately reached out to touch it.

“It’s real fire, Farris,” I said, closing my hand and causing the spell to dissipate immediately. “I don’t think the healers want to see any more of you tonight. Besides, a burn is what got you into this mess to begin with.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yep. I said, okay. ” He took his one good arm and stretched it up behind his head to prop himself up a little. He didn’t even grimace with the movement, meaning the healing was still succeeding in overtaking the poison.

“I’m sorry,” I said with an edge of disbelief to my voice. “But just to be clear, I just told you I am a faerie from a magical, invisible realm and that you just got bit by a monster that is supposed to be trapped in the shadows, and all you are going to say is… okay?”

“I’m not not shocked, Opal.” He smiled as he said my name. “I think I will just choose to believe it. Maybe it comes from living in a world without magic but always looking for it anyway. Who am I to ignore it, especially now when it’s sitting right in front of me with such a beautiful face?”

Not exactly the response I anticipated, and with the sun on the rise, the blush on my cheeks was undeniable.

“Do you have any other questions? I mean, very few humans have ever even seen the faerie realm. ”

“Just one. I think.” He paused to consider his wording, then asked, “If all faeries are either Naturals or Shaedes, which one are you?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” I said, bitingly. How quickly my frustration and anger came bubbling to the surface about this one very basic problem in my life. “You are either born with your shaede, or you become one by around… well, now. It hasn’t happened for me for some unknown reason, but I’m no Natural either. When my parents see that I have not yet transformed and when they hear, if they haven’t already, that my misstep in the library was the catalyst that summoned dark magic to harm a human, dreams of their legacy will die.”

“I’m sure they love you. They should be able to get past it,” he offered kindly. But I shook my head.

“They are definitely past it. I had a sister that disappeared years ago, so all I have to do is basically exist to have their love, but what I want—what I need—is their approval. I have grown up watching them be so impactful, so significant. To me, they have always been larger than life. And now, once they see me today, I know I will always be their daughter—but as a member of their court, I will be irrelevant. Inconsequential. Nothing.”

“When I look at you, I don’t see nothing.” He reached for my hand again, and I let him intertwine his strong fingers with mine. For a moment, all I wanted to hear was what he did see in me. I wanted to leave my perch on the edge of despair and join him where everything was light, fun, and undemanding. But this was the Shaede Court, and although life could be very easy for a faerie, being an anomaly was always going to be arduous.

“You are very kind for saying that. And for listening to me complain. And for not seeming to hold a horrible grudge against me for what happened to you.”

“If getting hurt means I get to have you take care of me, then show me some stairs I can throw myself down.”

“You’ve got to stop saying things like that,” I said but smiled wide despite myself. “Save it for the next pretty girl who pours your coffee.”

He grabbed one of the many pillows that surrounded him and whacked me in the head with it, wincing a tad as his abdominal muscles stretched against the wounds. “I’ll save nothing and take my chances, thank you very much.” His eyes were shining, full of playfulness and promise, and I didn’t have the heart or the energy to argue.

“Well, I should leave you to get some rest. It should only be a few days until you are healed enough to portal home. I need to go report to the High Shaedes, but in the meantime, would you like some more sleep potion? To help you relax?”

He tilted his gaze back to the brightening sky and settled a little deeper into the bed. “Opal, I walk those perilous extra city blocks for you on the daily but would easily cross a hundred portals across a thousand realms to wake up in your bed. So, no. I am going to lie here and wait for you with my eyes wide open, because I don’t want to miss a thing.”

There really wasn’t any way I could respond to that, so I reluctantly released his fingers from mine and left the room to face my fate.