Page 54 of The Ever King

I’d kept my magic tamed ever since, never pushed too far, afraid it would drag me under again, but one touch to this soil and it was throttling me in agony.

This place wasn’t burned by fire, that much I knew. In my mind, a swirl of shadows surrounded a once vibrant isle. Next, a strange taste that bled into my tongue. Not the smoke or ash I’d expect from a fire-ravaged land, but a bitter taste like herbs and elixirs, tangled with a unique flavor like rain on the wind.

I’d sensed magic in the earth before. Each power had a different emotion, a different taste to the soil.

There was magic here. Dark magic.

The child squealed beside me, but sounded as though she were wading beneath water. Still, it was enough to help me claw my way out of the grasp of the broken earth.

I opened my eyes, hands trembling. While I’d been tossed into a clue that something wretched had gone on here, the girl beamed and clapped her hands in delight. All hells, where my hand had touched the shriveled stem, now a brilliant golden flower bloomed. I’d never seen a bloom like it. Angular petals that gleamed as if made of true gold, and leaves that were more cloverlike than anything.

I buried my disquiet over dark magic in the soil, and forced a smile at the girl. She grinned in return, then bolted back to her folk shouting something I didn’t understand.

A bit of pride took hold in my chest. My fury frightened me, but at least today, it had made a child more at peace with what had happened here.

But contentment shattered soon enough.

“What have you done, Songbird?”

CHAPTER19

The Serpent

Livia rose from the sand, dusted off her knees, and looked at me with contempt.

“I made a child smile. If you find it so disgusting, then I wonder what that makes you?”

I was only half listening. My attention was on the brilliance of a bloom sprouting through land poisoned by the darkening. The Daire had sent word to the royal city nearly a month ago to report a new isle being touched by the plague. But she felt it was oddly placed, completely avoiding the lotus fields. Now, Lucien attacked to take the flowers for his own uses?

There was something that did not sit well about this spread, and it was made worse now.

Here, in cursed soil, my little songbird brought back life.

My gaze flicked back to hers. “What did you do? Explain it to me.”

“Explain . . .” She faced the new growth. “I . . . I used my fury. My magic. You do realize you’ve taken a land fae from the Night Folk clans. That means our abilities involve the earth.”

“I know this,” I snapped. The day the earth bender king slaughtered my father, he’d lifted a rocky wall from the sea floor to prove his power. “What didyoudo?”

“I healed it,” she said, voice soft, but it seemed like she was holding back. “That isoneability I have, though I’m not incredibly powerful with it. My strengths lie in giving more life to growth already in place. Like an amplifier.”

It didn’t make sense. I rubbed the scars on the back of my neck, trying to puzzle it out in my mind how it was possible. Nothing, no spell casts, no song, no magic in the Ever had summoned life from the darkening since it began, and the edges of Skondell were thick with it.

A single touch from the blood of an enemy and new life sprouted.

How? I narrowed my gaze. “Do it again.”

Livia swallowed. She lowered to her knees, fingers trembling, and reached for the dark soil. She winced, a vein of effort gathered in the center of her forehead, but slowly, a verdant patch of grass shed the curse, even brighter than before.

“By the seas,” Celine whispered.

She stood behind me. Tait and Larsson had returned, blood soaked their clothes and skin, but the same as Celine, both gawked at Livia’s trick.

“What do you make of it?” Larsson asked under his breath.

Livia pulled her hand away. “This isn’t normal soil, is it? It feels a little strange, and the way you all keep staring like I might burst into flames, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

No one spoke.