Dark Heart of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

  The longer I stared at her, the brighter her eyes became, the color morphing from their normal hazel to a brilliant emerald green, with a spark of copper flashing every now and then. I supposed that it made sense that Katia’s eyes would take on the tint of the monster whose magic she’d stolen—green for the troll and copper for the crusher. But the magic in her gaze kept flaring hotter and hotter, until her eyes were glowing much brighter than any monster’s ever had.

  Katia grunted, then pulled the daggers out of her chest. The black blades sealed up the wounds they had left behind, so it was as if she had never stabbed herself at all.

  “A tree troll for speed,” she purred, holding up one of the daggers. “And a copper crusher for strength.” She held up the other dagger. “A perfect combo and more than enough magic to let me deal with the two of you.”

  Deah and I looked at each other. I nodded and she returned the gesture. We both knew that we’d have to work together in order to survive this.

  Just like Seleste had told me.

  Katia let out a loud scream and charged at us. Deah and I split apart, with me going right and her going left. But Katia was fast—so damn fast. And since she had two daggers, she was able to attack both of us at once. She lashed out at Deah with one blade, then pivoted back around to me, her movements almost too quick for me to follow. I barely managed to get out of the way of her black blade before she laid my guts open with it.

  Deah stepped up behind Katia and swung her sword, but Katia lashed out with one of her daggers, catching Deah across the arm before she was able to get out of the way. Deah yelped and staggered away.

  Katia turned back to me. She let out another loud yell and charged forward. I was standing by the table, and I kicked out, sending it skittering across the floor toward her. The gold winner’s cup also flew off the top and clattered to the ground.

  That incoming table made Katia stop short, but a cruel smile curved her lips.

  “That’s not going to save you,” she hissed. “Nothing will. Not now that you’ve taken her side.”

  “I’d rather be on her side than yours,” I said. “At least she doesn’t go around murdering monsters just because it gives her some sort of sick thrill. No wonder you couldn’t beat Deah. You were too worried about getting your next hit of magic to really focus on the tournament. Your dad might be a drunk, but you’re nothing but a magic junkie loser.”

  I was deliberately taunting her, calling her the one word she hated most. And it worked. Katia screamed again and threw herself forward. This time, she slammed her fists into the table top, cracking it down the center and wading through the remains to get to me. Then she raised her daggers and slammed them into my sword as hard as she could.

  I grinned because the second her weapons rammed into mine, my transference power kicked in, and that cold burn of magic filled my veins. Katia had stolen the tree troll’s and copper crusher’s magic. Well, I was going to take it away from her, blow by blow, bit by bit, piece by piece. This first attack was already enough to make me stronger.

  But not strong enough.

  Katia was in a rage now, and she slammed her weapons into mine over and over again, each blow harder and sharper than the last, until finally she knocked my sword away.

  She raised her daggers to bring the blades down in my chest. I lurched back, trying to get out of the way, but my sock caught on a nail sticking up out of the floor, and I went down on one knee. I raised my right arm up, knowing that it was useless and that her daggers would lay my arm open to the bone—

  Suddenly, Deah was there, slamming her sword into Katia’s daggers and keeping her from killing me. I scrambled back up on my feet, grabbed my sword, and got back into the fight.

  Katia kept whipping her daggers every which way, but as fast and strong as she was, it still took a lot of concentration to battle two enemies at once, especially two enemies who were as good at fighting as Deah and I were. We gave her all she could handle and then some.

  But we were still going to lose.

  With all that stolen monster magic pumping through her body, Katia was faster and stronger than the two of us. Despite her claims that monster magic didn’t last all that long, she showed no signs of slowing down. Plus, she still had Vance’s strength and speed Talents to fall back on. She was wearing us down, especially since Deah and I had fought so long and hard earlier in the tournament.

  My blows were coming slower and slower, and it was all I could do to parry the hard, vicious slashes of Katia’s daggers. Deah was slowing down as well. All Katia needed would be another minute, maybe two, and she would be able to disarm one of us. Then the other would fall and she could cut us up and take our magic at her leisure.

  The magic chilling my body wasn’t enough to help me defeat Katia. I needed more magic to stop her from killing us, which meant that I had to get closer to her. Had to get her to use her strength directly on me so I could absorb as much of her stolen magic as possible. Unfortunately, there was only one way to do that. I had to actually touch her.

  I winced. This was going to hurt.

  Deah managed to throw Katia back, and she lost her balance and stumbled over one of the chairs. I took the moment to creep closer to Deah.

  “When I tell you, unload on her with everything you have!” I hissed.

  “Lila! Lila, what are you doing?” Deah hissed back.

  Katia got back up on her feet. I raised my sword and charged at her, screaming all the while. Katia smirked, realizing that it was a desperate tactic, but she let me come at her, just like I wanted. I lashed out with my sword, even though I knew that the blow wouldn’t even come close to nicking her. Katia blocked my attack, but instead of stepping back, I dropped my sword and darted forward, wrapping my hands around her wrists.

  The second my skin touched hers, cold magic surged from her body into mine. But Katia wasn’t worried at all by my change in tactics.

  “You stupid fool,” she snarled. “You’ve just made it that much easier for me to do this.”

  She shook off my hold on her left wrist and slammed one of her daggers into my stomach. I screamed, even though the horrible wound sent even more magic spinning through my body, the power whirling around and around like an icy tornado inside me.

  Katia yanked the dagger back out. She started to wrench herself away from me, but I lashed out and grabbed hold of her wrist again. We seesawed back and forth for a few seconds, with her trying to break my grip, and me digging my fingers and nails into her skin as hard and tight as I could. At the same time, I reached down and hooked my socked foot around one of her ankles, throwing her off balance and spinning her around so that her back was to Deah.

  “Now!” I screamed.

  Deah didn’t hesitate, stepping forward even as my scream echoed through the boathouse.

  Katia cursed, finally realizing what I was up to. Once again, she tried to break my hold, but it was no use. Even as she struggled against me, all she did was make me stronger and stronger, and I tightened my grip, my fingers pressing down, bruising the bones in her wrists.

  A second later, Deah rammed her sword into Katia’s back.

  Katia let out an agonized scream at the mortal wound and arched back, as if trying to push Deah’s sword out of her body. The daggers dropped from her hands, thumping to the wooden floorboards, and blood bubbled out of her lips.

  Katia stared at me, her green gaze dimming by the second, the magic and color leaking out of her eyes as they resumed their normal hazel color. Her emotions slammed into me as well, even as the power and life drained out of her, and I felt every single agonizing moment of the red-hot wound in her back.

  It matched the dagger wound in my own stomach.

  Katia struggled and struggled, still trying to break my grip, but I tightened my hands around her wrists and held on. She let out one final, choked gasp, then slumped to the floor—dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Katia might be dead, but she was still going to take me down w
ith her.

  I was holding on to her so tightly that I fell on top of her, and it took me a few seconds to loosen my grip. I managed to roll off her, every motion making more and more pain shoot through my stomach. On the floor, I could see my blood mixing with Katia’s, which was bubbling away like acid. I wondered if that’s what stolen magic did to you—ate away at your insides like acid because it didn’t truly belong to you. That would be some twisted poetic justice.

  I pressed my hand over the wound in my side, but blood kept pouring out from between my fingers.

  “Lila!” Deah rushed over to me. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” I rasped through the pain. “You need to get out of here . . . go get . . . some help—”

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Outside, footsteps pounded, coming closer and closer. Deah got to her feet, stepped in front of me, and whipped up her sword, ready to face whatever new danger this might be.

  The door burst open, and Devon and Felix raced inside, both of them holding swords.

  The three of them stared at each other for a second before Deah let out a tense breath and lowered her weapon.

  “You guys need to help Lila. She’s hurt.”

  Devon dropped to a knee beside me, his eyes going wide with shock at all the blood on me. “Lila—” he said in a strangled voice.

  “Here,” Felix said, crouching down beside me as well. “Let me try to heal her, or at least stop the bleeding until Dad and the others get here.”

  Felix put his hands on top of my wound, making me gasp with more pain. But he ignored my choked sobs and let loose his power. His magic seeped into my body, trying to stop the bleeding, pull the ragged edges of the wound together, and undo all the damage that Katia had done.

  And, for a moment, I almost thought it was going to work.

  But Felix only had a minor Talent for healing, and my wound was definitely major all the way around. He was able to stop the bleeding for a few seconds, but then his magic burned out of my system, and blood started seeping out from between my fingers again. Felix had stitched up the wound as best he could, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  Felix cursed. “It’s no use. Her wound is too severe, and I don’t have enough magic to heal her myself. If I had a bottle of stitch-sting. . . .” His voice trailed off because we all knew that he didn’t and that there wasn’t time to go get one from the fairgrounds before I bled out.

  So Felix leaned forward and tried again, letting loose another burst of magic. I could feel his power inside me and my own transference wanting to kick in, even though it wouldn’t do me any good. My transference power made me stronger, but right now, I needed magic to heal me, not give me enough muscle to swing a sword. If only Felix was as strong in his magic as Devon was, he could have easily healed my wound. But Devon’s compulsion didn’t have any sort of healing element to it, and he could only give people simple commands, like telling me to hold on when we’d been on the rope ladder or to run the night we’d been fighting Grant. Devon’s magic had mixed with my own then, giving me the strength to run far enough to save us both from Grant and his goons.

  I looked at Felix and Devon both huddled over me, and a crazy idea popped into my head. Felix might be the only one here with healing power, but he wasn’t the only one with magic—and maybe raw magic was all I really needed.

  I reached up and clutched Felix’s hand in mine, then reached for Devon’s hand, so that I was holding on to both of them at the same time.

  “Felix,” I rasped, blood bubbling up into my mouth. “Try to heal me again. Use . . . as much . . . magic as you can at once. Devon . . . at the same time . . . you tell me to heal. Put as much force behind it as you can.”

  Devon’s eyes widened as he realized what I wanted, and he shook his head. “No. It’s too dangerous. I’ve never used my magic like that before. I don’t know how or even if it will work. It could kill you outright.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he thought about it, trying to figure things out, the way he always did.

  “If we don’t try, I’m dead anyway,” I rasped. “Do it . . . give me a chance . . . please. . . .”

  My voice trailed off, and black and white stars began to flash in front of my eyes. I didn’t have long, maybe another minute or two before I’d pass out. A couple minutes after that, I’d bleed out and die right here in the boathouse.

  “We have to,” Felix said. “I don’t know if it will work either, but it’s her only shot.”

  Devon nodded and stared back at his friend. “On three then. One . . . two . . . three!”

  Felix tightened his grip on my hand and let loose another burst of magic, this one stronger than ever before, as though he was scraping up every bit of power he had left and funneling it into my body. Even as he blasted me with his healing magic, Devon leaned down so that he was staring straight into my eyes. He only said one word.

  “Heal.”

  The sharp crack of magic in his voice sounded as loud as a clap of thunder booming in my head. From one second to the next, his power took hold of me, and my insides started squeezing and squeezing together, trying to mash everything back where it was supposed to be. I screamed and arched back, my body growing colder and colder as Devon kept repeating his heal command to me over and over again, and Felix kept pouring more and more of his magic into me at the same time.

  But then my own magic, my own transference power, kicked in, and all I felt was the cold burst of energy pulsing through my body, more intense than any I’d ever experienced before. Devon’s command still tugged at my body, so I focused on obeying that order as much as I could, trying to add Felix’s healing magic to the mix to get things done. It was weird, but I could almost picture my insides in my mind, all those torn muscles and severed blood vessels pulling themselves back together. And I realized that I could only feel the cold burn of magic in and around my stab wound—nowhere else in my body.

  I wasn’t sure if Devon’s power and his command had faded away, or if I just figured out how to use my transference magic in this new way, but I slowly started to get better.

  I slowly started to heal.

  I screamed and then screamed again as the blood loss slowed down and then trickled to a stop. My muscles pulled themselves back together, with my skin sealing itself shut over everything. It was worse than any stitch-sting I’d ever used, worse than any pain I’d ever felt, even when Katia had stabbed me in the first place. Every second was utter, miserable, white-hot agony. But I screamed through it, and I focused on using the surge of magic to repair as much of the damage as fast as I could.

  Slowly, my breathing grew easier, and the black and white stars faded from my vision. My screams died down to choked sobs and then even those dissolved into a silent stream of tears trickling down my face. It took me a minute to realize that I actually felt . . . okay. Like I wasn’t dying anymore.

  I blinked and realized that I was flat on my back on the floor, with Devon and Felix still holding my hands and looming over me, and Deah standing behind them, all three of them staring at me with tense, tight expressions.

  “Did it work?” Devon asked in a shaky voice.

  “I don’t know,” Felix said. “But she stopped screaming. That’s usually a good sign.”

  “Well, pull her shirt up and look at the wound, you idiots,” Deah said.

  Devon and Felix kept gaping at me, so she dropped to her knees, shouldered Felix out of the way, and lifted up my T-shirt.

  “Her skin—” Felix murmured, leaning forward and peering at my stomach. “It’s whole again. There’s not even a scar!”

  “Well, then, I would say that it worked,” Deah sniped.

  But her hands were surprisingly gentle as she smoothed down my T-shirt again.

  “Devon! Felix! Lila!”

  Somewhere outside the boathouse, voices started shouting our names. Felix got to his feet
and hurried over to the open door, waving his hands.

  “Over here!” he called out. “We’re over here!”

  Felix stepped outside to get more help, while Devon and Deah helped me sit up and slump back against the wall.

  Deah looked at him, then me, her eyebrows arching up. “That was quite a show, for a girl who supposedly only has sight and strength Talents and a guy who supposedly doesn’t have any magic at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that almost looked like transference power, along with compulsion.”

  Devon’s face hardened. “And what if it was? You going to run and tell your dad? Because that’s exactly what Blake would do.”

  Deah flinched at the mention of Victor and Blake, but anger sparked in her eyes. “No matter what you think about me, Sinclair, I’m not a monster.”

  “But you are a Draconi,” he said in a cold voice. “And information like this would be very important to Victor.”

  “He’ll try to kill us and take our magic,” I said. “You know he will.”

  Deah stared at me. “Is it true? What you said to Katia. That your mom and mine were sisters? That we’re cousins?”

  Devon sucked in a breath at the revelation, but he didn’t say anything. He knew this moment was between Deah and me.

  “Look at my sword. Tell me what you think.”

  Deah went over, grabbed my sword, and sank back down beside me. She laid my sword out on the floor next to hers.

  They were almost identical.

  My sword had a large, single star carved into the hilt, whereas hers had three stars that were equal size. But the star patterns running down the blades were exactly the same, and it was obvious the swords were from the same family—the Sterling Family.

  Deah stared at the swords for several seconds, all sorts of emotions flashing in her eyes, but I was too tired to use my soulsight to try to see what she was feeling. Finally, she got to her feet, grabbed her sword, and slid it back into her scabbard.

  “What are you going to tell people?” Devon asked. “About Katia and everything else that happened?”