Forgotten Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 3)

by Melinda Kucsera

  “Have you found anything conducive to romance in this strange world?”

  “All I’m saying is the looks you two share are so sweet I almost hear bluebirds tweeting in the background.”

  Jessa had scoffed at her exaggeration, but couldn’t deny how unusually close she felt to Simith. Closer than she felt to anyone except Katie. That wasn’t like her—at least, not since the accident.

  Realizing she’d been about the tear the belt loop off her jeans, she’d clasped her hands together. “I live alongside his memories in my sleep. And he with mine. It’s hard to feel like I don’t know him.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Katie had said. “It’s given you both a false sense of intimacy. Just be watchful for its influence over your decisions.”

  A false sense of intimacy. The idea had sent a startling sense of loss through her, but an odd weightlessness came along with it. Maybe that dizzying flutter in her stomach when Simith took her hand or held her gaze it wasn’t entirely real. An aftereffect of a magical thread binding them together.

  Jessa had promised to be careful and to double check her reasoning in case the magic did sway her choices. It was only after Katie had climbed out of Jessa’s sight that she’d realized her choices hadn’t been stellar even before her life had been knotted with Simith’s. She glanced down at her belly. Yes, there was a lot of reality waiting for her back home. If she lived that long. A stab of guilt pierced her. She’d come to this world under the pretense of saving their lives, and here she stood on the precipice of risking them. For her and Simith, that was a choice, but for the hopeful potential growing inside her…

  Tentative, almost with a sense of unworthiness, she let her fingers travel over her abdomen.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “You deserve better.”

  Bark scraped above her. Jessa startled back from the tree.

  “It’s only me,” Simith’s whisper came from the shadows. “Where is General Seshi?”

  “She went to check on our trail.”

  “Good.” He descended, the air shuffling with the quick beat of his wings. He landed behind her. “Is everything well? Here, let me give us some light.”

  A trio of emerald orbs lifted the darkness, hovering in the air next to her like friendly glow bugs. Intrigued, Jessa lifted a hand and tapped the nearest one. It twirled playfully around her finger and returned to its previous position.

  A smile touched her lips. “Did you do that?”

  He paused, as though he’d surprised himself. “Only if it amused you.”

  “And if it didn’t?”

  “Then I’d claim it was the vagaries of magic, never to reoccur.”

  “Smooth.” She tapped one again, and this time it looped down her arm and past her cheeks in a swish of soft emerald sparks. Her smile grew. “Very cool.”

  “Cool is a good thing?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And hot is bad?”

  She turned, stifling a laugh. “Hot is not bad in certain—” Jessa gasped. The magical orbs’ glow illuminated Simith’s split lip and the fresh bruise at his temple.

  She gaped at him. “What happened? Did you get into a brawl while you were up there?”

  He touched the side of his head with a wince. “Ionia was less than pleased with her granddaughter’s condition.”

  “But that wasn’t your fault.”

  “She wasn’t of a mind to hear to explanations. It’s nothing truly,” he insisted, brushing a hand over his heart where his conduit tattooed his skin, “and will heal in no time. I’ve endured much worse.”

  She knew that. He’d nearly lost a limb to an axe once, leaving him to fight left-handed with a half-severed, immovable arm full of fire. He had endured worse, yes. That didn’t mean he should have. Pain changed a person, both in receiving and inflicting it. One came to expect it, anticipate it like a recurring dream. Pain sometimes opened wounds no magical conduit could heal.

  As Jessa watched the bruise fade from Simith’s temple and the cut on his lip close, she wondered how much of herself still dragged along her pain like a mangled limb. Maybe some battlefields were impossible to leave, even after all the fighting had ended. No wonder she hadn’t been able to write a single poem in a year. Words had become fallen comrades, scattered like casualties. Voices silenced by death.

  A terrible thought struck her. Relle said this lich liked makers of verse. What if it demanded she create verse before it agreed to a bargain?

  “Relle improves,” Simith said then, drawing her mind back. His voice held comfort, likely misinterpreting whatever look she wore. “You need not fear for her. Ionia did not think she was beyond her care, and Katie remains by her side.”

  She exhaled a grateful sigh, but pressed past it. “We might have a bigger concern right now.”

  His gaze darted to the trees.

  “No, not that.” She swallowed. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but I…well, since I’m supposed to play the poet for this lich, you should probably know that I haven’t written anything in a long time.”

  His eyes rested on her. They were kind. “I know.”

  “So, you see the problem we might run into. Since I’m not a maker of verse anymore.”

  “Jessa. These empty months have not taken away who you are.”

  He didn’t understand, which should not have disappointed her but did all the same.

  A false sense of intimacy.

  “I could give it something written by others,” she offered. “As a plan B.”

  His face grew eager. “Perhaps you should practice a selection with me. Just in case.”

  She bit her lip against a smile. His people really did enjoy poetry. It returned to him a boyishness that seemed impossible in a trained warrior wearing a bandolier of knives over his shoulders and a sword at his hip.

  “Let’s see.” She pressed fingers to her mouth. “Something simple? ‘I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.’”

  As if in reply, bark groaned in the distance. Branches creaked.

  She smirked at their surroundings despite the shiver that rolled down her back. “Too derivative? Yeah, I see that.”

  “Try another.”

  She gave herself a moment to think this time. A little Poe might be in order, since this whole world felt like a gothic poem. She knew just the one. Jessa let her eyes fall closed.

  “‘Yet if hope has flown away

  In a night, or in a day,

  In a vision, or in none,

  Is it therefore the less gone?

  All that we see or seem

  Is but a dream within a dream.’”

  As before when she’d recited poetry to Simith at the edge of Relle’s sunflower field, she felt the words illuminate her insides. But it was like the slant of sunlight through the trees: warm against her skin, impossible to grab onto, and vanishing behind an overcast sky. She could say the verse. She could feel it, an electric charge like the paddles of a defibrillator, but it wasn’t strong enough for her creative spirit to come back to life.

  She opened her eyes again. The hollow feeling evaporated at the rapture in Simith’s eyes. He’d drawn close, though he didn’t seem aware of it, as if her recitation created an invisible string between them and pulled it taut.

  “I wish,” he said softly, “you could see how you brighten when you speak in verse. How you glow with the words.” He lifted a hand, and the air itself stilled as he brushed his thumb across her cheek. “I think you would not doubt yourself then.”

  The touch was soft. Softer than a butterfly’s wing, but the way his eyes darkened as he did it made the sensation shimmer through her bones.

  A branch snapped and the crunch of foliage from the shadows made her startle. Lightning quick, Simith moved in front of her with his blade drawn. He shot a hand forward, and the glowing orbs zipped into the darkness like little green torpedoes. They revealed General Seshi hastening for their position. She batted the lights away with a growl
.

  Simith eased his posture a degree. “Have you no stealth? You’ll wake the dead with your noisy steps.”

  “Blame your cursed trees. They’ve been clogging my path at every pass.” She cleaved in half a vine that tried to wrap around her boot. The hard expression beneath her glowing eyes was grim as she reached them. “Trouble’s headed this way.”

  Chapter Five

  Simith stiffened. “Fairies?”

  General Seshi nodded. “It must be the rearguard you feared would follow.”

  “How close?”

  “Close enough we shouldn’t bother with running. I spotted half a dozen before the blighted forest tried to reveal my position.”

  Simith sent his three witchlights into the surrounding dark, brightening their luminescence until they shone like emerald suns. He saw nothing except the skeletal shadows of tree branches, but that would change.

  “The Jaded Grove suffers trolls even less that other woods,” he told Seshi. “Here, take this.”

  He passed to her the ring Ionia had given him earlier. One could say much about the Fae, but underprepared wasn’t among them. She’d sent him back with a few helpful items. After she’d bloodied his face, of course.

  The general pushed the golden band onto her smallest digit, though it barely fit past her first knuckle. “What is this meant to do?”

  “Signal to the trees that you have permission to be here.” He turned to Jessa. “Do you have the blade I gave you?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide.

  He sheathed his sword. “Use it only as a last resort. Come, you must climb out of sight.”

  She stepped into his interlinked hands and reached for the doorway tree’s lowest branch. “Fairies can’t climb trees?”

  “They can.” He pushed up to let her clamber easily into the canopy’s shelter. “I intend to keep them busy on the ground.”

  “They’re coming.” General Seshi shifted behind the trunk. “Make ready.”

  He pulled free a pair of knives, the familiar fury before a battle sliding over him like a second skin. “I am always ready.”

  Simith moved only so far as to keep their gazes from the tree where Jessa hid. He let himself be seen. He let them witness how he welcomed their arrival. They were skilled at hiding their approach, but he caught signs of them in the whisper of fluttered leaves and hiss of boots amid grass blades. They could not hide from him. No enemy could.

  The first arrow they shot was merely a distraction. He recognized it easily, dodging both the arrow and the knife that followed from another direction. Clumsy, to think he would fall for this tactic. Reckless to reveal their position so soon.

  Simith threw first one blade, then another. The archer’s body slipped silently from the boughs of a nearby pine. The knife wielder emitted a shredded cry, stumbling partway out of a cluster of bushes to his left. The roots tangled the fairy’s feet and he fell. Simith drew his sword and ended him with a single thrust.

  Behind him, General Seshi roared, and a clash of blades followed. Two opponents from the sound of it. He left her to them. His lights betrayed a shadow moving through the foliage around the tree, trying to flank the general. That made five of the six Seshi had seen. The last must be another archer. Fairies favored them in small groups like this. He didn’t doubt that one had him in their sights, but they waited, having learned from their comrades’ deaths.

  Another mistake.

  Simith darted into the air, zigzagging his path, his flight hummingbird fast. The fairy on the ground barely had time to bring up his sword and face him. Simith slid his blade along his foe’s, slicing the hand. The fairy cried out. His grip loosened and Simith tipped the weapon out of his palm.

  Blood tracked down the fairy’s arm as he lifted his hands in surrender. Simith slashed his throat. As expected, that was when the arrow came. He acknowledged the archer’s skill and steady aim. It might have struck him if Simith hadn’t anticipated it. He turned his gaze to a neighboring tree. A pair of startled eyes stared back. They disappeared, the scrape of boots signaling the archer’s flight. Simith cast an ear to Seshi’s battle. She was down to one opponent.

  He flew after the archer who’d descended to the ground. A smart move since the heavy canopy and trees’ close quarters of the made an attack from above difficult. Not impossible, however. The archer gave a shriek as Simith dropped down in front of him.

  “No, please,” was all he got out before Simith planted his sword in the fairy’s chest.

  When he returned, General Seshi had finished her melee and assisted Jessa out of the tree. Simith made a quick check of the bodies to ensure they were all fully dispatched.

  “Any injuries?” he inquired, still scanning the trees. His voice was hard and flat even to his ears. His body still hummed from the fight, his senses as sharp as the blade in his hand.

  “None here,” Seshi replied.

  “Then let us continue.” He took a step.

  “Sun Fury.” The general’s odd tone shifted his attention back. She tossed a cloth at him which he caught. “Clean that blade before you sheath it.” Her lamplight eyes narrowed in disdainful assessment. “Maybe the rest of you too. Unless you prefer looking like a beast.”

  She strode past him as he glanced down at himself. Blood dripped from the end of his lowered sword. It spattered his leathers and coated his hands. His hair and the side of his face felt wet. He realized the horror of his appearance when he met Jessa’s eyes. The way she looked at him transported him from this moment to the sunflower field when he’d thrown his knife into her leg. Ribbons of midnight hair framed her terrified face.

  The savage skin he wore in battle flaked away. He lifted the cloth, wanting to wipe off the evidence of his brutality, but didn’t. He did not wish to hide what he was from her. It felt too much like a lie, and he would never lie to her.

  “Jessa.” Steel still threaded his voice, and he worked to soften it. “I’m sorry you had to see this, but it was unavoidable.”

  “You smiled.”

  “What?”

  “When they died. When that one,” she pointed a shaky finger at a body, “held up his hands, you smiled as you killed him.”

  Had he? He didn’t remember it.

  “I felt no joy, I promise you. In war there can be no mercy. He might have surrendered, but we can’t afford to trust it. A compassionate fighter is a dead one. Jessa,” he took a step toward her and she took one back. He felt the move like a kick to the gut.

  He tried not to think of how close they’d stood earlier and how she’d shivered under his touch. He tried not to compare the invitation in her eyes then to the way she looked at him now. Tried but failed.

  “Please, don’t be afraid of me.” His voice roughened. “I beg you.”

  She didn’t answer at first. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid for you.”

  Shame weighted his shoulders, and he bowed his head. “This is not who I wish to be. I would forsake this version of myself if I knew how.”

  A moment passed. Then she moved and took the cloth from his hand.

  “You think you were made for this, but you’re not. Every time you take a life, part of you dies with them. Don’t argue. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it, remember?” Her voice was quiet but not gentle. It pushed like a high wind, the kind that snapped those trees who refused to bend. “And I don’t mean the way that’s true for soldiers in general. I mean you, Simith. It hurts you so much you’re letting it dismantle you piece by piece. You’re letting the violence destroy you like a disease.”

  She wiped the cloth over the bloodied side of his face and hair. Again, not gently, but with a hard, rapid swipe that demanded acquiescence.

  “A disease,” he murmured. “What must I do to cure it?”

  “I don’t know.” She lifted his hand, clearing the blood away, though streaks embedded themselves into the creases of his palms. “My therapist—a-a sort of healer of the mind—tells me the answer to that question is different for
each person.”

  “What was your answer?” he asked, cautiously letting his eyes rest on her. She didn’t shrink from his gaze as she had before. The relief made his chest ache.

  “I’m not even sure of the question,” she said with a rueful twist of her lips.

  “Truly?”

  “What, you’re saying it’s clear to you?” When he hesitated, she scowled. “We dream each other’s memories, Simith. It’s not like we aren’t fully immersed in each other’s business. Spit it out.”

  “‘Why can’t I write anymore?’” he said. “That is your question, and while the answer is not fully clear, it isn’t because words have abandoned you, as you believe.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s that you have abandoned them.” He paused. “I suppose then, the question really is: why do you not return to them?”

  “I…don’t think that’s it.” Jessa pursed her lips and squinted. He knew that look. She was trying not to cry.

  Simith felt tempted to fall on his sword right there. He was such an idiot.

  “Forgive me—”

  She waved off his apology. “Maybe it’s better if we keep our eyes on our own homework.” She pressed the cloth into his hands and started in the direction Seshi had gone. “Let’s get going. The general’s probably wondering what happened to us.”

  He wasn’t sure of the precise meaning of ‘homework’ but he understood the intention behind it and followed wordlessly. Simith wished she would allow her tears rather than always pushing them away. She packed ice around her heart, forging a dam as a shield from her loss, but she could not reclaim and restore herself if she held on to all that pain.

  But what did he know about it, really? Jessa might have numbed her heart with ice, but he'd wreathed his in flames. He'd let his pain burn through so many lives, a fire that razed body and soul, leaving naught but a husk behind. Rimthea had seen it in them both. Cirrus would be ashamed of what we've become, she'd said. Simith doubted his brother would even recognize him. Was there anything left of who he'd been if he tilled through the ashes? Remorse alone could not save him.