Page 80 of Magic Cursed
I face the Regent. “Give me your word, they’ll be unharmed,andyou’ll let them both go.” I ignore Daimis and Elsie’s protests behind me. They can hate me for this, but at least they’ll live.
The Regent smiles and I want to rip it from his face. “You have my word.”
Taking deep steadying breaths, I calm the magic within until every last tendril fades away into nothing. The weight of exhaustion pulls at my body from the use of so much magic at once. It is the price we wielders pay. I throw the bloodied sword to the ground, lift my chin, and walk into the circle, refusing to let the Regent and Kellan see how drained I am.
“If you hurt her,” Daimis says, his voice low and menacing. “Iwillkill you.”
“She will be fine,” Kellan says. “She’ll end up saving us all.”
He really believes that whatever role I’m playing here, it will save Thaaryn from the shadow demons. And yet, his words do nothing to ease my growing fear. The chanting begins again, growing louder and faster with each passing second. My heart pounds and I clench and unclench my fists, as if I’m about to fight for my life. All at once, the chanting stops and on the last word, the guards touch their torches to the black powder. It ignites, the searing sound echoing in the silence as everyone holds their breath. I brace, knowing something is coming, but not knowing what. The small flames follow the path of the black powder until they meet my own circle simultaneously.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
So much of it. Everywhere. Excruciating and searing. It tears through me, fills every part of me, like my cells are being ripped in two and torn from my body. I promised myself I wouldn’t scream, that I wouldn’t let Daimis and Elsie see me suffer, but it’s just too much. A cry rips from me, and I fall to my hands and knees.
I vaguely hear Daimis yelling for me, cursing and fighting the Steel Guards. I hold on to the sound of his voice calling my name—my real name. I use it as a tether to reality while I experience an invasion of who and what I am. A part of my very soul is being mutilated and stolen. The agony is all-consuming, and the only thing left to do is wait for death to take me away from it all.
Until suddenly, it ends. The pain is gone, but it did not leave me unscathed. I’m left broken, utterly defeated…empty.
Chapter24
Puppet Master
Abright ball of blue light leaves my body and follows the burning path of black powder to the Faestone. I feel shattered into a million pieces, and I don’t have the means to even know how to put myself back together again. I lay twitching on the ground and watch through slitted eyes as the Faestone absorbs the magic ball of light—my magic, my power. . .a part of me. The Faestone brightens into a luminescent blue.
I long for that blue, my every pore thirsts for even a drop. I’m lost and empty without it, my soul is a sea without water. It took me losing my magic to realize that it is woven into the very essence of who I am. Why did I ever believe that I wanted to give any of it away?
I reach out toward the Faestone, trying to will my magic back to me. I gasp in horror at the state of my hand. My skin is a gray hue, it’s so thin and hugs every bone, every tendon, every vein. My hair hanging around my face is as white as the snow soaking into my leathers beneath me. I reach up and touch my sunken cheeks and I realize exactly what had happened to the people I saw leaving the athenaeum. They were sorcerers, and the Regent took their magic forcefully, just as he took mine. He must have been experimenting on them until he perfected this heinous spell.
I wonder if my magic needed a bigger Faestone because he knew my father’s magic was in me as well as my own. What he doesn’t know is that I am also descended from each of the strongest fae bloodlines. Tanaris from my mother, Kestra and Drimaak from my father. That would make my power stronger than any before me. And now, I’m nothing but an emptied-out shell of a person.
“It worked,” the Regent says, gawking at the glowing Faestone. He smiles and it’s almost as horrible as the thing floating over the Regent’s head. The creature has a sickly white face, rimmed red and cracking at the eyes and mouth. The skin is stretched too tight in some places but hangs loose and wrinkled in others, like it’s not quite a right fit. Its lipless smile pulls unevenly against sharp pointed teeth and the eyes are depthless pools of milky white. Its ears, come to jagged points, longer than any fae’s that I’ve ever seen, and red stringy hair falls around its shoulders. The creature wears black and floats in the air, its lower body turning into a gray smoke, like it’s only partially in this world, the rest of its body in another. The creature’s fingers end with sharp nails, which are embedded in the Regent’s skull.
I’ve never seen anything more horrible until the thing turns its face and smiles at me, bowing its head slightly as if to say nice to meet you. An ice-cold finger runs down my spine, and I’m instantly freezing, my teeth chatter and hands shake uncontrollably, nausea weighing my stomach down. What the hell is it? Where did it come from? I look at the others, but no one else seems to notice the creature. Am I the only one who can see it?
I wonder if it’s a result of my current condition. Perhaps I can see it because I have one foot in the land of the living and the other in the grave. I’m in between worlds like the creature is. Suddenly, the Regent’s strange behavior starts to make sense. He’s been talking to this thing, taking instructions from it. That must be how the Regent learned these awful spells, even without magic of his own. He has had a puppet master pulling his strings all along.
The Regent pulls a vial from his cloak. “This spelled dragon saliva will mimic being dragon-touched, and I have you to thank for helping to get it back to me.” He brings it to his mouth and swallows the contents. I remember reading that only dragon-touched can access magic stored in Faestone. Once he has emptied the vial, he lays both his bare hands on the glowing blue Faestone.
“No!” I croak, my voice hoarse from screaming. That kind of power will be in the hands of someone who wants to annihilate entire races.
His hands suck the blue light from the Faestone. The Regent’s head falls back, and his body convulses until every last bit of glowing blue light flows through his hands into his body. When it’s finished, he collapses to his knees. Complete silence follows.
The Regent slowly climbs to his feet, laughing. When he turns around, his eyes are blue; my blue. “This is like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” the Regent says.
Dark tendrils of mist leak from him, slithering, twisting, and turning around his body. I used to fear those tendrils, but now I want nothing more than to have them and the rest of my magic back.
The Regent watches them with hungry excitement. “Now for what we came here for,” he says. “I finally have the magic needed to control the shadow demons; the magic that created them.”
The creature leans down to whisper in the Regent’s ear. He then nods before speaking words I’ve never heard before, a spell I realize. When he finishes the spell, he thrusts his hands up to the sky. The shadow tendrils shoot from his palms, growing into a cylindrical column of turning shadows. It collides into the clouds, creating a hole. The clouds seem to shrink, disintegrating around the shadow tendrils until the night sky is clear overhead. The column of tendrils twists, turning into a black tornado of pure magic. The creature on the Regent’s shoulder nods his head in approval. It told the Regent how to summon the shadow demons. I didn’t even know I could do that with my magic.
The Regent’s face is strained against the magic he’s wielding, and I start to notice changes in his appearance aside from my stollen blue irises. His veins show beneath his pale skin. A bluish at first, but they begin to slowly darken like they’re being poisoned. Is it a result of him using powerful magic which doesn’t belong to him? Is my magic rebelling against him? A human body isn’t meant to bear the weight of magic. Let alone some of the world’s strongest magic. Moments later, silhouettes of sharp spikes drenched in living shadows appear in the sky. Shadow demons. They fly at the black tornado like moths to a flame. The creatures circle around the column of spinning magic until more and more appear and join the others.
“That’s right, every last one of you come!” The Regent says, his face sickly with a sheen of sweat.