Page 8 of Shaedes of Power (Soul Magic #1)

CHAPTER 8

A lthough I might have eaten enough grapes, spiced nuts, and speckled grouse to feed a small army of green faeries, there was still a pit in my stomach—and it didn’t have anything to do with hunger. Farris was also happy to consume anything that was put in front of him, making light jokes about faerie wine and magical mushrooms in an effort to coax out my smile. He had cut back on the incessant flattery; I had cut back on being so resistant, which had left us somewhere in the easy realm of friendship.

We walked in step, the night sky exposed by the Corewood trees in a light purple strip above the long hall that led to the bathhouses. We had stopped by my room to pick up my robe and the clean clothes the healers had left for Farris. Our conversation evolved around light topics, mostly just him asking questions about the architecture of the sprawling palace and its history. We passed two young blue Shaedes, and then a cluster of Naturals, their faces full of pity and sorrow. It made me long for the days where stares were only because of my coloring and not for the cloud of loss that hung over my head. But then it hit me how selfish that thought was, as I was not the only one feeling loss or fear at court. Every faerie was carrying their fair share tonight.

We turned the corner, and I wondered why it didn’t dawn on me until we were standing before the large wooden bathhouse doors that this was a public place. By nature, faeries are not shy about their bodies. There were private baths in personal residences, and of course the High Shaedes had an entire private wing of the castle to themselves, but most of us just jumped in a river if we wanted to bathe, or more conveniently, visited one of the bathhouses on site.

Farris held the door open for me, and I walked into the fire lit room. Tall pillar candles were stationed every couple feet along the rectangular space, their fire enchanted to glow bigger and brighter than any normal candle ever could. Even in the pale darkness of early night, the room itself was an illusion. Instead of actual walls framing the space, rows of thick Corewood trees bounced shadows off their trunks from the fire light and sent them disappearing into the dark depths of the forest. The ground was warm and soft. It was covered in bright green moss and the occasional burst of liriope flowers in white and purple. There were a dozen individual, organically shaped pools set in the ground, a few feet from one another, steam hovering over their still, natural waters. The humid, floral scent wrapped itself around us as the two Natural attendants spoke their greetings and guided us to two of the baths.

“Would you like any additives to your bath water?” the brunette faerie asked politely. She didn’t offer me condolences or ask about my parents, and for that I was grateful.

“Yes, please. We’ll both have some harpishberry leaves and lotus flowers.”

She went to grab a tray of ingredients and the second Natural set lavender scented towels at our feet near where I had lain our clean clothes. When the first faerie returned, she carefully sprinkled the red leaves and lotus essence on top of the two pools, and then they bowed a little and headed back to their stations by the front doors.

“Okay, this is amazing. Are those lightning bugs?” Farris was looking around the room and squinting at the darkness between the trees.

“Yes. There are some beautiful night creatures that inhabit this part of the Corewood. The fireflies are not the only things that light up. There are these lizards whose scales are bioluminescent but are so fast they sometimes look like little glowing blurred lines drawn on the trees.” I watched Farris watch the woods and found it hard not to fall in love with his enthusiasm for anything new. When he caught me staring, I felt a deep blush creep onto my cheeks that I hoped could be disguised as a side effect from the damp warmth of the room.

“The healer told me I needed to remove the bandages to bathe. Do you think you could help?” he asked. I quickly moved behind him, happy to hide my face, and carefully undid the little metal pin holding his bandages in place on both his arm, and then another on his lower back. Without further invitation, I started with his arm, slowly and carefully unwrapping the gauzy cloth, feeling his eyes on my hands go round and round. There was no magic that could restore a human’s flesh completely after a toxic bite from a dark magic shadow beast, but it was an absolute transformation from the gory, chewed up arm from the day of the attack and now. I softly ran my hand down his muscled arm, its texture forever changed by the hundreds of tiny indentations that the beast’s teeth had felled. They were barely even red anymore—only a shadow of the trauma they had endured remained.

Farris watched next as I began unraveling the bandage around his stomach. It was slightly awkward, reaching my arms around his thick trunk and pressing my cheek against his bare back to reach a spot of bandage that was sticking to another piece. His skin was so smooth and warm that I allowed myself only a second to revel in its comfort. When the final piece of bandage fell, I stood back so he could inspect his own body. The side of his stomach still looked a little angry, but I knew the harpishberry would help.

“Your healers certainly know what they are doing.” He smiled. He twisted his arm in different directions to get the full scope of the bite, and in doing so, his biceps and forearm muscles flexed into life.

“So it would seem,” I said, wondering if he was distracted enough not to notice if I took off all my clothes and jumped into the pool really fast. I started rapidly fumbling with the button of my shorts.

“So how do we do this?” He caught me. I walked back around the edge to my pool and smiled sheepishly .

“We take a bath,” I said.

His jeans were stained with both his blood and shadow beast saliva. Undoubtedly, his other clothes had been torn to shreds. In a moment of bravado, I turned away from him and took off my stained T-shirt and then the little camisole I wore underneath. I heard water displacing itself behind me and was thankful to be spared the sight of him nude. Unbuttoning my denim shorts and slipping off my underwear, I was careful not to make eye contact as I turned and slipped into the water myself. I quickly plunged under the fragrant, warm water and lost myself for a few moments in the quiet depths of the little hot spring. Water faeries say that they can actually hear things in the water: whispers of encouragement, blessings, songs. I stayed beneath the water a long time, straining my ears for reassurance or inspiration, but nothing came. When I reemerged, I looked over at Farris, who had swum to the back of his pool. He had his arms resting on the edge and was staring off into the darkness again.

“It really is beautiful here,” he said finally. I swam to the back of my pool and mimicked his body. It felt so good to be weightless and clean.

“It is, but there is beauty to be found in all the realms—including yours,” I said.

“Yes, but not like here. Magic is a different kind of beautiful.” He laid his head sideways on his arms and looked at me, his damp hair begging to curl in the humidity. “So, what’s the story behind your tattoo?”

I touched my shoulder that was capped with a black-and-blue image of a Perryflower blossom and surrounded by tiny stars. I’d had it for so long, I often forgot it was even there. “I think I have told you enough stories today.” I smiled. “It’s your turn. Tell me something about you, something I don’t already know.”

“What do you already know?” His eyes twinkled—he liked this line of dialogue.

“I know you like to rise early, have an unhealthy coffee dependency, and study history. You love to read, to learn, and to play video games. And you live in New York. That is about it. Not exactly a fair exchange for the amount you know about my life.”

“Well, life isn’t fair.” He chuckled, but then repositioned himself at the edge of the pool closest to mine. Against my better judgment, I swam to him, resting my chin on my arms, putting only a foot or two of mossy earth between us.

“Have you always lived in New York?” I prompted.

“Not the city, but the state. I grew up mostly in Amherst, which is a suburb of Buffalo. I didn’t move to the city till I was in college.”

“And your parents?” I asked, but my question caused a hardness to cross over his face.

“I was raised by a single mother. Sort of. She was a partier, into drugs and alcohol and toxic men that smelled like weed. She was very young when she had me. She swore my father was some sort of professional football player, but I’m not even sure that is true. All I know is that she wasn’t around much when I was growing up. So, I guess I am just a different kind of orphan.”

It was hard to think of anyone ignoring Farris. Even as a child, with that blond hair and cheeky smile, adorable with that charismatic personality, it was impossible to imagine. But not even a neglectful upbringing had managed to dim his light.

“Do you still see your mom? She must be proud of you for graduating at least and of your dreams of becoming a historian,” I encouraged. But the hardness in his eyes steeled.

“She left me when I was fourteen. Pretty much the worst time of my life,” he said quietly.

I didn’t want to pry—it was clear he had gone somewhere dark in his memories—but I also wanted to be there for him and to listen if he wanted to share. He was close enough that I could reach out and lay my dripping-wet hand on his shoulder. He just stared for a long while at a spot of dewy moss between us, eventually making the decision to tell his story.

“By the time I was fourteen, I was huge compared to other kids. My mom supported me in weight training and football, and that was about it. ‘Bulk up like your dad,’ she would say. ‘He was hot.’ It was weird but I would have done anything to impress her, and I remember she would always sober up for my games so I worked to become the player of her dreams. I was faster and stronger than anyone else. She liked bragging to all the other parents about how I was going to get a scholarship and eventually play in the NFL like my dad. It was horrifically embarrassing, but it could have been so much worse with how high she was most other times. We were super poor, like turn-your-socks-inside-out-to-wear-them-again kind of poor. The idea of going to college was a fantasy, but the idea of playing football and earning money that way somehow seemed tangible.” He stopped to push some warm water onto his face and hair, and then continued.

“My freshman year, we were both psyched for high school tryouts. She was overconfident, but sober for almost the entire second half of that summer, relentless in pushing me to train. I slayed tryouts, made varsity, and came home triumphant. I couldn’t wait to tell her. But when I got home, I noticed a strange black Cadillac in the driveway of our apartment. Apparently, she had met this woman named Evangeline Winston through a friend of a friend of a friend at some nightclub. And when I walked in, Evangeline was signing papers at my kitchen table to take permanent custody of me. She was sixty or so but had enough money to keep her skin and body looking frozen in time. Her husband had passed recently, and they had never had any children, so my mother, for lack of a better word, sold me to this woman for 3.5 million dollars.”

“I’m sorry, what?” My mouth involuntarily hung open. This could not be a real story of an actual human childhood. Not in the modern human world anyway.

Farris just smiled sadly. “I was fourteen. I had no idea if I had any rights, and if I did, I had no means with which to fight this decision. So after lots of yelling and screaming and slamming doors, my mother packed my entire life in a back pack and put me in the back of that Cadillac, and that was the last time I ever saw her.”

“Farris, I am so sorry.” I breathed. I almost couldn’t formulate the words.

“In some ways, I wonder what life would have been like if I had been allowed to stay with my mother. If I would have developed her bad habits, if either of us would ever have eventually been happy. But I didn’t find happiness for a long time. Evangeline spoiled me with lavish toys, video games, and clothes. I lived on one of the nicest estates in upstate New York. A mansion with twenty bedrooms and an indoor pool. I went to a private school with no football team and never really made any friends because it was too hard to explain why I lived with Evangeline. But when I was about sixteen and a half, everything changed. I don’t know if she had sinister intent the day she signed those papers with my mom, but I was swimming alone in the pool one day, and Evangeline came in and made some very aggressive advances on me.”

Now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. Farris was baring his very soul to me, and I wanted to shield it; I wanted to build a shelter around it and protect it forever.

“I was old enough to say no. And I did. I was old enough to know it was wrong. But there was always a part of me that felt like Evangeline’s property, like I didn’t really have the power to say no and mean it? If that makes any sense. In some ways, I think I was still just that little boy trying to impress his absent mother, and if this is where my mom said I needed to be, then this was my life. I was Evangeline Winston’s plaything.”

“Farris, faeries have a word for predatory creatures like that—we call them shadow beasts.”

“Well, then I guess I am unlucky enough in this life to have been attacked by not one, but two.” He examined his arm bite for a quick moment. “It went on for about two years. I used to hide from her in her dead husband’s library. He was an antique book collector and that is when I really fell in love with history. I used to read and reread his first edition copy of War and Peace over and over, praying that dementia would set in and Evangeline would forget about the boy she bought, cowering in the library.”

“What happened after the two years?” I asked reluctantly.

“She died. The coroner said it was an accidental drug interaction that stopped her heart. Valium mixed with a few other things, I don’t know. But I was finally free, legally an adult, and ready to make my own decisions. In a bizarre twist of fate, Evangeline left me almost the entirety of her estate. I donated a bunch of it to charities she hated, invested some, and paid for my college in full.”

“And now you spend your days drowning in coffee and bleeding Manhattan libraries of all their historical knowledge.” He nodded, then spontaneously submerged while I silently prayed that the water would tell him something healing, something sweet and true. When he came back up, the hardness had left his eyes. He did his little half-smile laced with mischief. “That’s not all I do.” He smirked.

“Stop,” I said, but it was a half-assed attempt.

“Opal, I don’t pretend that my childhood wasn’t a total bust and that my adolescence didn’t absolutely screw me up in some serious ways, but I just prefer to look forward. It’s the only way we are going after all. That said, I make my decisions carefully, which is why I haven’t chosen my next step yet. When I’m not pouring over the books, I fill other parts of my day volunteering as a professor at a Jiu Jitsu academy and play Dungeons and Dragons with my fake online friends where, ironically, my current character is a faerie.”

I laughed. “No way! What color is your shaede?”

“There aren’t any colors; I just do all kinds of magic. I have wings and can fly too. And I have maxed-out Charisma, so the ladies fall faint as I pass by.”

I splashed him across the moss. It was just a jerk reaction to his goofy, charming swagger that made me both irritated and scintillated against my will. In retaliation, he sent a small wave over into my pool, sending water cascading down my face. We splashed back and forth until we were sufficiently exhausted, like it wasn’t the end of the world, like we weren’t two broken people that had been shattered and remade.