The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4)

by Kathrin Hutson

  “And you let this happen!”

  “We did not alter the course. The Dalu’Rázj may have scourged the land above without knowing what he buried beneath it. The Madraqór chose us.”

  Leandras’ hand jerked up, as if he meant to slap the other magical in the face, but he stopped himself with a growl. “You should have rejected it.”

  Ko’alyn smiled grimly.

  “And would you tell us to reject you equally, Vem-da’án?” The female voice echoed around the cavern a second before the already brilliantly lit air shimmered five feet in front of the tree’s base. Then Ati’ol emerged from the wavering window, stepping out of thin air with her arms spread as she grinned madly at Leandras. “The Laen’aroth is quick to judge the Naruli. To judge the Madraqór thus, ah?”

  Leandras bit down on his lower lip and slowly shook his head. “We cannot know the consequences.”

  “Life.” The glow around Ati’ol faded, and now it seemed her body was the only point in the entire chamber where the tree’s blazing light didn’t reach. “That was always the outcome. To whom—or from whom—that life is directed remains in the Laen’aroth’s hands. Does it not?”

  The fae man swallowed, his nostrils flaring. “It should have remained where those hands placed it.”

  “You do not have as much sway here as you once did.” Ati’ol’s glowing-green gaze settled on Jessica. “But the Guardian arrives. If you have claimed her, perhaps your purpose has not yet come to its end.”

  “Uh...nope,” Jessica muttered. “He hasn’t claimed anything. Let’s just make that clear.”

  “I brought her through,” Leandras said, his shoulders hunching as he clearly fought to refrain from lashing out at anyone else in this cavern.

  Maybe even at the tree, judging by how fiercely he glared at it.

  Slowly, he settled his gaze on Ati’ol again and nodded. “I mean to finish what I started.”

  The woman walked toward him, holding his gaze, and lifted one dark, long-nailed hand toward the fae man’s face. With a snarl, Leandras caught her wrist and held her at bay.

  Ko’alyn growled and lunged forward, but when the woman’s eyes flashed with darker green light, he stopped.

  A small smile flickered along Ati’ol’s lips as she studied the anger etched into Leandras’ face. “We are pleased to see you return to your path.”

  She jerked her hand way.

  “My path ends here with this.” He gestured toward the tree.

  “Yet again, we must remind the Laen’aroth of what he already knows.” The woman held her hand out at her side, and a sharp snap and pop came from the drooping tree branches overhead. The glowing-white leaves rustled, and then a dark orb of pure black sailed down toward the matriarch’s open hand. It hovered there above her palm, which she slowly drew toward what little space remained between her and Leandras. “The cycle does not end on its own, ah? Take care not to lose this one.”

  Leandras looked quick back and forth between the floating black sphere and Ati’ol’s challenging smirk. Then he carefully plucked the orb from its place floating in her hand. With a pulse of silver light in his palm—muted and cold-looking compared to the brilliant glare radiating from the tree—the black orb disappeared. His hand clenched into a fist. “It was not lost.”

  “And yet found again perhaps.” The woman’s smile widened as she tilted her head and leaned toward him to bring her lips to his pointy-tipped ear.

  Jessica caught a brief glance of the madness in the Naruli woman’s eyes before it was blocked out by Leandras’ head.

  Madness, maybe. Or hunger. Or it could have just been a dark amusement at the rare sight of this fae looking so wildly out of place.

  He looked terrified.

  When Ati’ol finally pulled away from him with a feral, predatory smile of her own, Leandras spun around with wide eyes. “Jessica.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t say anything.”

  The Naruli woman threw her head back and cackled. The sound pinged off the crystalline tree, the branches, the illuminated gemstones reflecting the glittering brilliance from every surface. The grating sound came only from one throat but sounded like they were being laughed at by an entire auditorium.

  “I have no time for these games,” Leandras growled as he stormed away from Ati’ol. When he reached Jessica, he set a firm hand on her shoulder. “We’re leaving.”

  “Not that way, Vem-da’án.” Ko’alyn stepped in front of them and pointed at the fae man’s face with the top of his staff. The whole stick glowed a brilliant red. “You sowed the seed. Now it is your time to reap.”

  “Christ.” Jessica pointed at the man and glared at Leandras. “Do not-shitty options even exist in this world?”

  The blaze around the tree grew brighter as the Naruli matriarch just kept laughing, spreading her arms and seeming to soak up all the light in the chamber. Or maybe she was drawing it into her.

  “I have no quarrel with you,” Leandras snarled, ignoring Jessica’s attempts to shrug out from beneath his hand without drawing a scene.

  “My memory is long, Leandras.”

  “Then you must also remember what I did for you and this entire warren!”

  “Ati’ol has spoken.” Ko’alyn’s internally glowing grin widened.

  Like a shark swimming right up to a pool of blood.

  “Okay...” Jessica looked over her shoulder at the madwoman cackling away and sucking light and energy and magic from the glowing tree. Leandras turned with her, sliding his hand off her shoulder until his cool grasped intertwined around Jessica’s fingers. She hardly felt it with all the thrumming energy in the chamber growing hot and buzzing like a fuse box about to blow. “Would now be the right time to ask what the hell our next move is?”

  “Certainly.” Grimacing, Leandras turned to meet her gaze and frowned. “I wish I could provide you with an answer.”

  Was he fucking serious?

  “If you survive the dissection,” Ko’alyn shouted behind them, “deliver word from the Naruli. We are buried but not forgotten! He will change his mind. Tell your Roth’akán we will—”

  The rest of the magical’s bellowing cry was lost beneath the energetic buzz of Ati’ol’s unknown spell bursting with a massive crack and a resounding boom.

  The tree exploded.

  Except it couldn’t have. There was no pain. No scattered shards of living crystal—if that was even what had formed the tree. No debris from the blast peppering Jessica’s face and chest and her arm raised to shield herself.

  Just light. Pure, blinding energy enveloping everything until she could no longer see her own body. Her hearing had given out already.

  She tried to reach for Leandras, but he wasn’t there.

  A blistering cold hit Jessica in the face, and she dropped to the ground with a grunt. Leandras crumpled beside her.

  At least, she really hoped it was Leandras.

  As Jessica gasped and fought for breath again, cursing the entire existence of teleportation magic, she pried herself off the ground to see a magical who looked very much like Leandras writhing in agony on the dirt less than a foot away.

  Only this version of him had skin as dark as the Naruli, his hair shocked to a ghostly white. Worst of all, his eyes had taken on that glistening, swirling darkness like liquid mercury from when he’d been on the verge of dying inside Jessica’s bank without the rest of his magic.

  And now, apparently, he was on the verge of dying again.

  Chapter 26

  “Shit.” Jessica threw herself toward the choking, seizing fae man in the dirt beside her and couldn’t decide if touching him would kill them both or just her. “I swear to literally every deity everywhere, Leandras. If you die right now and leave me here like this, I’ll—”

  It didn’t matter what she said she’d do. She couldn’t think of anything anyway. Splinters of white light crackled across Leandras’ hands, like he was nothing more than a worn ceramic plate put under too much pressure and h
eat and ready to burst apart at any second.

  “Tell me what to do.” She reached out toward him again, but he slapped her hand away. Maybe it was just a reaction. But the desperate hand he clawed against his own throat was probably a good indication.

  Christ, if he’d choked on his own tongue or something, how was she was supposed to fix that?

  “I don’t...” Jessica looked him over, breathing heavily now because she literally had no idea how to handle this. “I can’t heal you. That’s the exact opposite of what I do!”

  Leandras snatched her hand and jerked her forward to press her palm down against his chest and cover it both trembling hands. They both pulsed with cracks of glowing white light now. The pressure of his hands and the heat growing alarmingly intense beneath them made her panic.

  “I don’t know what to do!” She tried to jerk her hand away, but he held fast.

  It was impossible to tell if he looked at her—really saw her—when he turned his head and his all-silver eyes were mostly aimed at her face. Probably. But there was no time to figure that out before a final, strangled croak issues from Leandras’ lips.

  Then his eyes closed.

  He stopped thrashing.

  The light blazing inside his body and beneath his very flesh only grew brighter, and the same mind-numbing buzz of Ati’ol’s last spell now came from the fae man’s chest.

  The only thing racing through Jessica’s head was that the crazy witch controlling crystal trees in the underworld had turned her only ally in Xahar’áhsh into a fucking fae bomb.

  Maybe it was too late for Leandras, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let herself be blown up by him on accident.

  With a shout of effort—and a healthy portion of last-minute terror—Jessica slapped her other hand down on Leandras’ chest and fought back against the magic inside him threatening to detonate.

  His body bucked beneath her hands when thin tendrils of smoke burst away from them both before instantly diving back down into the fae man’s flesh. Jessica’s magic stabbed him in a dozen different places, throwing off black sparks and hissing as she searched for what sure as hell didn’t belong inside of him.

  She let go of everything—her fear and desperation in this moment, her rage at Leandras for having dragged her into this mess, her complete cluelessness in a world that seemed literally held together by secrets and deadly rivalry.

  The darkest parts of her magic took over, flowing through the body of the fae man that hadn’t even had time to grow cold yet. If she’d thought to check for a pulse, she probably wouldn’t have found one anyway.

  It didn’t matter.

  She didn’t need to check for a pulse, because nothing could have hidden the complete absence of Leandras’ life energy within his flesh. All Jessica felt was the rampant hunger of her magic flowing through him, searching, seeking out to consume what already existed and rebuild it into pure chaos.

  Only when she felt the last spark of what was inside him fade beneath the strength of her own magic did she realize his hands no longer glowed like they were about to shatter from the inside out. His hair had returned to its normal deep brown, his skin pale once more instead of the blue-black that had overtaken him. And despite everything she knew about who she wanted to be—who she was trying so hard to be despite her unbelievable circumstances—the essence of the Naruli witch’s magic struggling beneath her hands like a terrified bird fluttering its wings for the last time made Jessica Northwood smile.

  This was who she was.

  She destroyed. She obliterated. She took whatever was left and ensured it never had the chance to—

  A tremendous jolt of power knocked back into her hands and sent her flying away from Leandras’ body. With a snarl, Jessica skidded backward across the loose dirt, preparing to reach out again to take the life still obviously inside the fae. A life for a life, some might say. Only his was already gone, and Ati’ol’s magic remained.

  She started to push herself to her feet and nearly fell flat on her face again when Leandras sat bolt-upright and drew in a searing gasp. His eyes flew open, still swirling like molten silver without their usual glow, and he scrambled desperately to his feet before taking off across the desecrated land in front of them.

  “What the fuck?” Jessica’s shoes slipped on the loose dirt before she finally got her footing and raced off after him. “Leandras!”

  Jesus, she’d thought he was dead. She’d literally speared him with her magic and rooted around inside his empty shell of a body. How the hell was he doing this?

  His head whipped back as if someone had socked him in the face, and a strangled cry gurgled from his throat before he fell to his knees in the dirt again. When he clawed at the ground with desperate hands and opened his mouth to either scream or breathe, the same white light Jessica had thought she’d eradicated rose up his throat and into his mouth. Then it burst free and shot up into the dark, roiling clouds of the perpetual green storm blotting out the sky.

  Jessica forgot all about checking to see if he was okay—if he was even really alive and not some golem created from Ati’ol’s messed-up revenge magic.

  Something about that white light streaking up into the storm clouds pulled all her attention away from the present moment.

  Something that felt so right as she staggered to a halt and craned her neck to watch its ascent.

  And at the same time, it felt so incredibly, profoundly, world-shatteringly wrong.

  The light hit the churning storm clouds with a crack and did what it was most likely intended to do inside Leandras—it exploded. A staggeringly bright blaze like real lightning exposed all the shadowy corners of this open expanse of dead land where Jessica stood and Leandras now lay face down in the dirt. Another thunderous crack rent the sky, vibrating through her bones, and the green glow peeking between the noxious cracks in the storm swiftly swept back in to obliterate the foreign light from the sky.

  Like it wanted to block out that light forever.

  Like it was consuming the last of the magic Jessica had wanted to consume herself but couldn’t.

  Then it was over. The thunder’s echo rolled across the wasteland, and the eerie, oppressive silence returned in its place.

  Jessica sucked in a ragged breath and felt her own awareness returning completely to her body.

  That light should never have been allowed to reach the sky. She had no idea how she knew, but it was a certainty as deep and overwhelming as the very first use of her magic in the wrong place and the wrong time to reveal what she truly was.

  Leandras’ strangled groan stripped her back into the present, and she looked down to see him stirring slowly in the dirt.

  “Leandras?”

  He slid his hands under his shoulders, tried to lift himself up, but thumped back to the ground with a spray of dust.

  “I’m not screwing around.” Jessica took an unsteady step toward him, unable to see anything more than his hunched shoulders and the minute trembling racing through his limbs. “If you’re trying to go for round two, I don’t think either one of us is gonna walk away—”

  “No.” With a grunt, he apparently opted for rolling over onto his back instead and lay there with his arms spread out at his sides, blinking harshly at the roiling green sky overhead. “If that happens again, you have my full permission to kill me. Quickly.”

  “Holy shit.” Another shuddering exhale escaped her, and she staggered toward him, her pulse chugging through her like a steam engine. In no way did Jessica feel strong enough or big enough to contain that racing heartbeat or the incomprehensible flood of emotions tearing through her. “Or I could just kill you now.”

  “Whatever for—”

  She dropped to her knees beside him and whipped her hand up to his throat. “Who are you?”

  He tried to pull her hand away but quickly gave up and decided to let out a weak laugh instead. “Leandras Vilafor. You know my name. Unless I am completely mistaken and that motherwitch’s magic has grown fa
r beyond anything I thought possible. In which case, we’re all—”

  “Shut up.” Jessica tightened her grip on his throat just enough to make her warning perfectly clear.

  This couldn’t be Leandras. She’d just watched him breathe his last before she thought she’d be breathing hers. She’d just seen the light go out of him completely—not with her eyes but with her magic. She’d felt all the way inside him and through him to reach Ati’ol’s spell, and there had been absolutely nothing there. Whoever this was, it couldn’t possibly be the same fae man who’d stepped through the Gateway with her.

  When he swallowed, another tight gurgle rose from his throat. He tried to smile, closed his eyes, then looked up at her with complete seriousness. “It’s me. I promise.”

  “What’s my name?”

  “You can’t be serious—”

  “I felt him die!” she screamed in his face. “Who are you?”

  Holding her gaze with eyes now returned to their dark irises illuminated with silver light, the fae man slowly lifted his hand to settle it over hers around his throat. “Jessica. Your name is Jessica.”

  She couldn’t help but ease the pressure a little, though he didn’t try to remove her hand.

  “You are the Guardian and an astonishingly stubborn vestrohím with a knack for attracting almost more trouble than you’re worth. Almost.”

  It was a convincing statement. But it wasn’t enough. There was no way Leandras could come back from something like that.

  There was no way for her to really test who now controlled his body and spoke exactly as he did, either.

  “Tell me what I drank before we came here.”

  Yeah, it was a stupid question, but no one else knew that.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “I don’t keep tabs on your everyday—”

  “You made it for me.” Another warning squeeze against his throat.

  Leandras slid his other hand up between them to join the whole party of three hands clamped down on his neck.

  Jessica would have laughed if it didn’t feel like everything she knew about life and death were being pulled inside out and shredded into scraps.