Page 6 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)
CHAPTER 6
W ithout even blinking, I was suddenly up on the dais next to my father. I had to get a closer look. She was radiant, as iridescent as myself, with long, wavy sherbet-colored hair. Her nose was a little longer than mine, echoing our father’s, but we both shared our mother’s expressive oval eyes. They were twinkling back at me, perhaps with the same sort of mischief that was in Ciaran’s. I knew she knew who I was. She had to. Ciaran, on the other hand, was relishing his surprise.
“Amira, darling. You didn’t say you had a sister!” He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips. “What a lovely little family reunion. Is it not?”
“It is,” my sister said, beaming. Apparently, this was her moment to shine as well. “Hello, Mother. Father. And sister, I suppose.” My mind quickly tried to weave together how my sister might have left her conversancy and ended up in the good graces of the Night Court prince, but there was no thread long enough, smooth enough, for it to make sense. I just stared at her, trying not to be afraid of her. Almost hoping that she was some sort of prisoner or under a dark magic spell that forced her to be there, batting her eyelashes at the Dark Prince and smirking at my parents, whom she abandoned .
“Amira,” my mother whispered. She and my father looked destroyed.
“As you are all so infatuated with the ‘ how ,’ allow me to indulge you,” said Ciaran excitedly. “Amira’s love has turned me from a shadow prince to a daywalker. While you all are so concerned with your precious Balance and its connection to only a select few, this beautiful angel saw what all of you are blind to—that there is something worth refining in just about everything. Even a dark old soul like me.”
“There has not been refinement magic in this realm since the dragons left,” sputtered Betta indignantly.
Ciaran was triumphant, standing there and showing off his prize. He could not be dismissed. Edmyn might have been smirking, but otherwise just lazily gazed about the crowd. For a moment, our eyes met, and I refused to let him see my pain. My sadness and surprise transformed into anger, and my attention turned to Amira.
“Why, Amira?” I demanded, to the astonishment of the court. “Why would you willingly leave this family, this court that was your home, to settle with something like him ?”
“Oh, dear sister, you do ask the only question that really matters.” She stepped before the whole of the throne room, addressing all the concerned fae. “This was my home. It was where I lived, dreamed, learned, and grew as a faerie. But you five…” She looked over her shoulder with disgust. “You sit up on your high seats and perpetuate the same hierarchal garbage that our ancestors and the ones before them did, squeezing all the juice out of the fruit that is this realm for your divine purposes, and then casting the seeds and the rind into the trash. Naturals are slaves to this system, and Shaedes line up to accept all the glory.
“I crossed the Seam on my conversancy and observed the human plight. I saw their weaknesses and bought into the duty that was ours to protect them. But I also saw them thrive. I witnessed them overcome diversity and pivot when obstacles blocked their path. I started to wonder if they needed us as much as we think they do—as much as all the High Shaedes say they do. We, who are so puffed up by the endless ego that comes with being of magical descent. But when my shaede never formed, I was at a crossroads. Go back home to the disappointment of my parents and receive the looks I’m sure you, sister, have undoubtedly received; go about my business doing whatever menial tasks the court would find for me to preserve the Balance for all eternity; or I could adventure. Make my own path. I could take a sabbatical of sorts and search out what great evils they’ve been shielding us from. If the humans don’t seem as helpless as we’ve been taught, perhaps the dangers that had been hidden from me my entire life weren’t as perilous as we’d been told.
“So, I slipped back in the Seam and headed north to lands we are normally not welcome in. From the shores of the Gaylen Sea, I could see Jovii’s island, but a portal would not open for me there. I begged for a ride from a few talking lemurs that were sailing back after a storm had shored them on our beaches. They were happy to take me, even though the Court of Beasts doesn’t really interact with faeries. I spent a year, there learning their ways and trying to understand their magic. But after the year passed, they asked me to leave. By then, I understood that faeries do not belong among the talking beastfolk, and that was the whole point of Jovii creating their realm in the first place. So I sailed further north and was dropped off in Corynthia.”
“You dared step foot in the lands of the Dragon Court?!” my father erupted.
“Yes,” Amira said, jutting up her chin. “What did I have to gain if there was nothing to lose but knowledge? Better magic? A good story? The dragons, however, would not receive me. They actually were quite uninterested in the fact that I was even there at all. So I just hung around the castle, if you could call it that. It was more like a giant mountain with a cave system so vast that I’m pretty sure I was lost once for about a week. I stayed mute and just observed, learning that most dragons were still the same dragons from the beginning of time. The ones that our ancestors harnessed and rode in war against the realms of man. They have long memories, and although they prefer to live in peace, they do not care much for faerie folk or the humans that used to hunt them. I stayed a year there too, give or take, and then traveled further.”
It was hard to believe my sister had only lived a few more decades than I but had already seen more of the world than I would probably in my entire immortal existence. I, too, had been at a crossroads. I just don’t think I realized it at the time. And now, as horrified as I was by her choices, I felt a mix of jealousy and awe that she was able to persevere so much with so little.
“Over the next many years, I saw bits of all the faerie courts,” she continued. “Sliding in and out undetected as the daughter of a High Shaede. Then I spent a few more years with tribes of shapeshifters and trolls, centaurs, and a realm of wizards in the south that was particularly fun. But one day, when I was milling around the vastness that is the Gaylenswood—I went as far west as I could go. The edge of the forest there opens up to a golden field of yellow daisies, and the scent of strawberries permeates the area. It was like ambrosia to the nose. The sun was so warm and vibrant, even though winter was knocking. It was like there was a spell on the meadow to freeze the perfect day on an endless loop. Because there was a spell. There was a spell and a curse, we all know the story. I walked until I found myself at the very edge of the Gaylenswood meadow, at the foot of the darkest hills in the faerie realm.”
She paused for effect and then continued, “It was as we have called it in stories over time—Death’s Door. Others call it Death’s Haeven, and the oldest among us refer to it as Draku’s Lair. The Shadowlands stretched wide before me, in both directions, hills of black dust and a sky that was forever clouded. Dark and angry-looking. The nightmarish things these dark fae have done, their sins against faeries and humans alike, are too numerous to count. We all grow up learning the fear, and fear I had. But so much had surprised me in my travels that there was no going back now. I had to face it. So I climbed the tallest hill to the windowless castle of the Night Court and spent years getting to know the dark ones our kind have chosen to forget. ”
Ciaran voraciously rolled his eyes up and down my sister, and I felt ill. She went back to stand beside him, a stark contrast to him in every way.
“You see, High Shaedes, my lovely Amira is a freethinker, an intellectual. She, at twenty, was more enlightened than any of you at two hundred or two thousand. At first, I was a little skeptical.” He chuckled a little with my sister. “A high-born faerie from the Shaede Court just happens to wander into the Shadowlands alone? It seemed like some sort of trap at first. But unlike you all, who would never dare entertain a dark faerie in your homes had the situation been reversed, we invested the time to get to know her. Edmyn took the longest to warm up to her, of course, but he isn’t much of a conversationalist, and Amira was ravenous with her questions.”
“I eventually grew to know him and his court well,” Amira explained. “And to know Ciaran was to love him. I couldn’t help myself. Something awoke inside of me, and when we mated, my magic somehow overturned some of his curse. The invasion of the shadow beasts was to get your attention, and now”—she turned toward Ciaran and put a loving hand on his face—“I think they are ready to listen, my love.”
The whole thing was very unreal. It seemed plausible that she was driven to run, I could identify with her desire to flee the pressures and expectations of the Shaede Court. I could understand the traveling and the exploring, who didn’t dream of seeing dragons someday? Maybe, if I really sat awhile, in the depths of my soul I could visualize crossing into the Shadowlands. She was right there, it was the last great adventure, maybe she had a death wish. Maybe. But this grotesque love affair with the Prince of Night was enough to make me want to hurl the contents of my near-empty stomach across the dais. It was the ultimate betrayal of her family and her people. Ciaran and Edmyn were not bad-looking, or poorly mannered for what little we knew of them, but the dark fae were murderers. They only dealt in dark magic and death. They were practically the living dead themselves. It was abhorrent.
“This leads me to the real topic at hand.” Ciaran’s over-the-top, sickening charm had suddenly dried up and his voice held a serious edge. “It has been too long that we dark fae have been imprisoned for the sins of our ancestors.”
“Your ancestors?” repeated Betta. “You have just admitted to attacking and kidnapping; you hold plenty of crimes of your own.”
“Perhaps,” he mused. “But what I have accomplished the past few nights is nothing compared to the suffering and fear I can and will expose your realm to if my demands are not met.”
“Your demands?” repeated Father.
“Yes. First, you must create a seat for me at the court,” Ciaran said matter-of-factly. “We are part of the realms of faeries; I deserve a say in the affairs of our kind. Second, you must require a host of your faeries to mate with our court. In the spirit of freedom, Amira willingly bedded Edmyn in hopes of bestowing the same daywalking gifts upon him.” Edmyn’s face remained passive, but my sister’s face betrayed her. Sleeping with Ciaran’s brother was not something she did too willingly. “Alas, it was a phenomenon that could not be recreated. We don’t really understand this magic. But if it was possible once, it is likely that with the right spell and circumstances, it can happen again. Thus, in good faith, if we are to work together, we should be blended together. This should be a common goal. There has to be more of this refinement magic in the realm, and your Shaedes must be willing to do their part to help us find it. Perhaps we start with this one.” He was pointing at me.
My father quickly moved to stand in front of me, a corporal shield from Ciaran’s hungry eyes.
“Edmyn and our other loyal subjects deserve their day in the sun too,” Ciaran persisted. “Amira agrees that there is more to the Night Court than a history of blood and violence. And I think if others conceded, your magic might heal ours over time. In return for the respect and privilege that we deserve, we will maintain a strong peace between our courts. The shadow beasts will mind their manners, and we will return to you your stolen people. But a word of warning,” he advised. “This portal will close, and another can and will open in any realm of my choosing. And the attacks that will ensue will leave your people begging at the foot of our hills, praying to the darkness for mercy. We will give you three days to decide.”
“There will never be a day that this court, or any other, will beg at your doorstep,” growled my father. “You and your kind are an unkillable parasite, and the very thought that you think your demonic progeny have some sort of claim to the men and women of this realm or our highest leadership makes it clear that the same disease that has taken hold of your magic and your bodies has also taken hold of your minds. I’m sorry, Amira”—he gazed woefully at his daughter—“but you are forsaken.”
There was a rush of wind, and the fire pillars that framed that side of the room fell over to intersect and create a cross of fire, blocking Ciaran and his entourage from everything else in the room. I fell to the ground as water from the moat and an even more violent wind ran over me rampantly, pelting the dark fae with such force that their cloaks tore and their faces contorted with pressure that was otherworldly. Face-down on the dais, I could still see the faces of my parents seriously engaged with a rush of magic that no normal faerie could ever accommodate. So much magic. Lorspire moved to put his hand on Betta, gifting her whatever power he had left, and then his eyes went full white before he fell lifeless to the ground. Over near the portal, Ciaran was using some sort of his own magic to stay rooted in his spot, but the winds overpowered Amira, and she went flying violently back through the portal and back into the Shadowlands.
“No!” I shouted. Brilan was the next to go limp and fall. Even through the howling winds, I could hear Dru’s screams as the entire court watched her lose her father. I cranked my neck to look back at the portal. The guards were gone, forced back to their court. Edmyn was also holding firm but seemed indifferent to either side’s gross show of power and simply turned to exit through the portal of his own accord.
Ciaran grimaced against the force of the remaining Shaedes; perhaps it had been his plan all along to drain them. His boots started skirting backward, and he was losing ground at an excruciatingly slow pace, but he was still losing nonetheless. He raised a hand against the winds, trying to cast something dark, but then it all happened simultaneously. I felt an enormous blast of magic go soaring over my head. Ciaran used his magic to fling Meridee into his arms. He disappeared into the portal with her as the magic slammed him into submission, and the portal disintegrated just as the final three High Shaedes dropped dead on the dais.