Magic Lost: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Touched By Magic: Dragon Book 3)

by Ashley Meira

  “That’s better.” I smirked. “For a minute, I thought we were talking about two different people.”

  She laughed. “He’s brusque, but he means well. He’d do anything for his family.”

  “Must be genetic,” I said.

  Her gaze met mine. She seemed more at peace than before. “I can barely make eye contact with Adam. I’m not sure how to approach him.”

  “We good?” Adam called, stepping out of the house with a loud yawn. His hair was still slightly messy, telling me he’d been too tired to fix it. Which meant he was probably too tired to come with us.

  “No,” Fiona huffed, arms on her hips. “We are not good. Lord Pushy-Face over here—”

  “What did you just call me?” Bane asked, his eyes widening. He looked so abashed I had to bite back a laugh.

  “You’ve got to really piss her off to make her insults fall flat,” I said, walking up to them. “Normally, she’s like a razor.”

  “A dull one, I imagine.”

  “Hey,” she huffed. “I’m not the one being unreasonable.”

  “No, you’re the one being slow.” Bane frowned. “With your power—”

  Fiona crossed her arms. “You don’t know a thing about my power.”

  Something flashed in Bane’s eyes, but I couldn’t read what. Fiona might have identified it if she hadn’t been looking away, her petulant stare directed at the colorful plants to her right.

  “I’ve taught you all I can,” he said after a long pause. “Go practice over there.”

  Her eyes narrowed once more. I knew she no longer intended on holding her tongue, but fortunately, her rage had wiped away all her pre-planned insults. If she tried to think of one now, it’d go over as well as calling him Lord Pushy-Face. Then again, it certainly seemed to rattle him, so maybe it didn’t matter what the rest of us thought.

  Pout in place, she stomped off toward a private corner and continued practicing. I watched the green light around her hands darken before sizzling out. The frustrated groan she let out told me that wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “And what are you doing?” Bane nodded toward Adam. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

  Adam frowned. “I’m getting ready to go to Arcadia.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he said firmly. “As bad as it is having a member of the Council in my home, it would ruin the point of this entire enterprise if you came along.”

  “I’m not a member of the Council.”

  “Future member.”

  “Does that mean you’re coming with us?” I asked him.

  “Apparently, while Mr. Pierce was ignoring my comment about leaving politics out of this, you—”

  “I know,” I said. “You and the fae aren’t on good terms, but the way you phrased—”

  “I’m not going. Charlotte is not going.” Bane pointed a long finger toward Adam. “He’s not going.”

  “The hell I’m not,” Adam growled, stepping forward.

  “You’re Liam Pierce’s son, his heir, next in line to succeed him. You may as well send an entire armed guard to the Heartwood.” He nodded toward me and Fiona, who was stomping up and down in frustration. “A fairy is required, and there’s only one other mage here.”

  Charlotte cleared her throat, shooting him a pointed look.

  “One mage who isn’t hated by the fae, and one who can do more than make flowers grow with their magic,” he said dryly.

  “Making flowers grow is good,” she said. “Flowers help bees, and bees are important.”

  I pulled Adam away from them as they descended into petty bickering. How did Fiona not realize who they reminded her of? It was like looking into a mirror.

  “Now you have no excuse not to get some rest,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and nuzzling his chest.

  He pressed me closer against him and buried his face in my hair. “I won’t be able to sleep if I’m worried about you.”

  “Please, a mysterious and probably incredibly dangerous foreign world is nothing compared to wrangling angry unicorns. I’ll be fine.”

  He pulled back with that petulant look that only appeared when he was tired. “I still want to come along. You have no idea what’s in Arcadia.”

  “True. I also don’t know where Gadot is. So, if you can’t sleep, feel free to track down which summit he’s on.”

  “That’s a good idea.” He groaned. “Why’d you have to have a good idea?”

  “Because I’m super smart.” I fought the urge to roll my eyes and reached up to cup his cheeks. My lips brushed against his a few times before he let out a growl and grabbed the back of my head. Our lips pressed together firmly, filling me with a heat that put even my Fire at peace.

  “You know how you said I took care of you?” I asked against his lips.

  His eyes fluttered open to meet mine. “That feels like a loaded question.”

  “I’m a girl. Of course it’s a loaded question.” I scoffed before giving him a serious look. “I know it’s not my place, but I’m going to butt in anyway, because I want you to be happy.”

  He frowned. “I am happy. Less happy that you’re going alone—”

  “I’ll have Fiona,” I interrupted. “Take some time to speak with Charlotte.” I pressed a finger to his lips before he could reply. “It tears me up to see you so upset about this. I want to do everything I can to help, but all I can do is push you two together. She’s not mad at you.”

  “How the hell is she not mad at me?” he whispered harshly. “Look at what I did! She’s—”

  “Still beautiful. And so very kind. She knows it was an accident, Adam. She just wants to get to know you. She wants a family.”

  His grip tightened around me almost painfully, and I watched his jaw work in overtime. “You’re wrong.”

  “She told me.”

  “She lied,” he insisted, glaring at the ground.

  I rolled my eyes. “Or maybe she’s like me and can see how wonderful you are.”

  He gave me a hard look, but his lips twitched. “You wanted to get away from me the moment we met.”

  “Yeah, but once I wanted to get to know you, you were pretty much screwed.”

  “Being screwed is a good thing, I guess. Wait.” He wrinkled his nose. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows. “I don’t think we have time for that.”

  He chuckled and kissed me again, tangling his fingers in my hair like it was a lifeline. “You’re amazing.”

  “An amazing pain in your ass.”

  “That, too.” He smiled warmly. “I’ll try. It’s hard even looking at her, to see the reminder of what I did.”

  I placed a kiss to his chest. “You’re strong. You can do it. I have faith in you. And hey, if you can’t and need something else to do, go kill Nicholas.”

  He snorted. “I should do that, anyway.”

  “Does Pierce Incorporated create nuclear weapons? Because one bomb is all we’d need.”

  “We have to find him first.”

  I raised a brow. “That wasn’t a ‘no’ to the weapons manufacturing.”

  His lips quirked up. “I know.”

  “Finally!” Fiona cried, causing us to jump apart.

  “For such a small person, she’s very loud,” Adam said, wrapping an arm around my waist as we walked back to her.

  “That’s what you should be saying about me. Fiona is five seven.”

  “She looks small.”

  “That’s how she tricks you.”

  It was his turn to raise a brow. “Shouldn’t I be saying that about you?”

  I pinched him, then stepped forward to see the portal Fiona had created. Unlike the bright green portals she normally made, this portal was a blue so dark it could have been black. Sparks of purple floated around it like stars, reminding me of a galaxy.

  “I have no idea if this will actually work,” Fiona said, gripping her knees. She was hunched over, her chest heaving.

  “Is she goi
ng to be okay?” I asked Bane.

  “Hello! I’m right here,” she huffed.

  “She’ll recover once she enters Arcadia,” he said. “And yes, that portal will open into Arcadia. How close to the Heartwood it takes you will depend on how well Miss….”

  “Sinclair,” she said, standing up and wiping the sweat from her brow.

  Bane arched a brow.

  “We’re sisters,” she said.

  His brow lifted higher. “How well Ms. Sinclair follows instructions.”

  She glared at him, but I spoke before she could pounce. “How will we know we’re in the Heartwood?”

  “The giant tree with all the bridges leading to it.”

  “Like the Mother tree in Goliki?” I asked.

  “Bigger, but yes,” he said. “The Heartwood’s buildings are comprised entirely of trees. You can’t miss it.”

  “What if the Court isn’t there?” Fiona asked, coming to take my hand. She squeezed it nervously. “What do we do then?”

  Bane’s eyes dropped to our hands before he looked at her, then past her. “Speak to the guards. Tell them you have a message of great importance for the Court.” He pursed his lips. “No. Tell them the message is for Roman, Lord of Nightfall Glen. He may help you.”

  I nodded along to his words, committing them to memory. “Should we mention your name to Roman?”

  “Lord Roman. And absolutely not.” Bane gestured to the portal. “Enough dilly-dallying. Time is of the essence.”

  Fiona pursed her lips but didn’t argue. We said our goodbyes, and I resisted the urge to punch Adam for making me promise to be careful three times. I’d only hurt my hand, anyway.

  “Ready?” she asked me as we stood before the dark portal.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I squeezed her hand. “We’ll be okay. Whatever comes our way, we can handle it, because—”

  She looked at me. “We’ll be together.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  We were surrounded by trees when we stepped through. Hopefully, there were no spriggans hiding within. The portal snapped shut behind us, and Fiona collapsed the moment her feet hit the ground.

  I caught her, easing our descent onto the loamy earth. The scent of moss and magic was everywhere. Tall trees surrounded us in lush green hues. I thought they were pine trees, but within their bark shone a yellow light, as if the trees had swallowed a colony of fireflies. The pale glow illuminated the woods and cast dark shadows on the paths ahead.

  “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I muttered. “Or the Heartwood.”

  Fiona replied with a low groan and buried her head against my neck. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto my skin, and I brought a hand up to make sure she wasn’t feverish. I felt better having someone with me, but if she was so exhausted she couldn’t even walk, we were going to have bigger problems than being lost in Arcadia’s woods.

  “Do we really need to save the world?” Fiona slurred. “Couldn’t we just nap?”

  “For a few seconds,” I said, placing her head in my lap and leaning against a nearby tree.

  The thought of touching such a foreign entity had my hair standing on end. Who knew what a tree could do in Arcadia? After my run-in with those distressed spriggans, I wasn’t keen on finding out.

  “Do you think that’s why they were so upset?” I asked. “Because Gadot was there, affecting the earth?”

  “What?” Fiona’s eyes were still closed, but the tense grooves of her forehead had softened. “Bane was probably upset because he wants to be left alone.”

  “No, the spriggans.”

  “Those peaceful tree spirits?”

  I tapped my forehead, remembering Fiona hadn’t been there for that fight. As we lay there resting, I recounted what happened after she’d called me, from making up with Adam to finding Charlotte. I left out the part about their family ties, however. Fiona might have been my family, but that didn’t mean I could spill everyone else’s secrets to her.

  “I thought you two looked happier. Sorry for not asking earlier, but the spit you two were swapping before we left kind of clued me in.”

  I shifted, bumping her head with my knee. “Ass.”

  “I get it from you,” she said, rubbing her temples. “At least now you know Nicholas isn’t your father.”

  “He could be.”

  “But he probably isn’t,” she insisted, knowing arguing with me further was an exercise in futility. We were both too stubborn. “As for the spriggans, it’s possible. Gadot needs to break whatever wards the fairies have up there, and from what Bane said, they’re pretty heavy duty. He could be syphoning off the earth to break them.”

  “If his magic is affecting somewhere as far as Goliki, he might have already broken through,” I said, worry coating my words. Things seemed fine when we left, but that could change in a second. What if we were too late?

  “The ritual will take at least two days,” Fiona said, finally opening her eyes and shrugging. “And if it does fail, we can always live here.”

  “Trixie can find us here,” I said before furrowing my brow. “Wait, what? Two days?”

  “Bane told me,” she said. “Told us, really. When you were upstairs sleeping. The ritual has to be cast over a forty-eight hour period. I thought you knew.”

  “I didn’t,” I ground out, cursing when my communication ring wouldn’t work.

  Fiona eyed the plain silver band on my pinky. “Bane told us those don’t work across worlds.”

  “I know. But I still want to chew Adam out for not mentioning this to me.”

  She snorted. “Poor guy. Though I guess he kind of deserves it after being such a butthead yesterday.”

  I sighed. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Softy.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Them’s fighting words, big sis.”

  I rolled my eyes and gently pushed her off me. “If you have the energy to be a pain in my ass, you can start walking.”

  “Yeah, because it takes so much to annoy you.” She stood, dusted herself off, and took in our surroundings. “Weird.”

  “You’re a fairy. Shouldn’t this be normal to you?”

  “Maybe if I’d grown up here.” She shrugged. “Or if I remembered anything. Right now, these look alien. In a good way. No offense.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, eyeing the plant life. For all we knew, these things could be sentient. “Do you remember anything helpful about this place? Now that I think back on it, we’ve never really heard a lot about Arcadia. I mean, even less than I imagined.”

  “Right?” Fiona said as we began walking down the path. I wasn’t sure it was the right one, but we’d both turned to it at the same time, and it wasn’t like we could stay here. “We’ve heard things during jobs — little rumors and the like, but I never realized how vague those tidbits were.”

  “I guess not all fairies gossip like you do.”

  She elbowed me. “Ass. Let’s find something or someone to help us. Maybe the Heartwood is just around the corner.”

  “That’s as likely as finding someone to help us,” I said, catching her uneasy nod.

  The fairies in our world were fine. For the most part, anyway. Sure, there were always a few jerks in the bunch, but that was normal for every race. Still, they were familiar, normal. They’d come to Earth for a new life and chose to join our societies. These fae didn’t. Who knew what kind of beings we’d run into here?

  The rumors didn’t help. Stories about the older, more powerful fae and their proclivities — things that wouldn’t be considered appropriate in “polite society.” And I wasn’t talking about the kinky stuff Symeon did at his parties. More along the lines of stealing babies to serve as appetizers or indentured slaves.

  One particularly disconcerting story I’d heard was of “The Chef,” a gluttonous fairy who would pick homeless off the street and spirit them away to his manse in Arcadia, where he’d fatten them up and force them to fight to the death. Then, the winner was l
ocked in the room with his dead opponent and only granted freedom after he’d eaten the corpse. This would go on for several rounds before a true winner was decided — and The Chef could have his own, fattened up feast.

  I grimaced at the thought. I’d been told the tale by a particularly inebriated fellow during a brief stint in Vegas. The story had seemed so obscenely macabre that I’d thought it a drunken fae’s wild ramblings, but it always stuck with me, and now that I was actually in Arcadia, I found it harder to forget than ever.

  “What do you think the Court is like?” I asked, trying to distract myself.

  “The Council,” Fiona said, reaching for my hand. “Somewhat civil on the outside and filled with dark, dirty secrets on the inside. Probably not the same kind as Symeon’s, though. At least, not just.”

  I grinned at our similar way of thinking and squeezed her hand. “I guess. You really think they’re like normal politicians?”

  She rolled her shoulder. “No idea. But I’d rather they be like normal politicians than scary and inhuman, for lack of a better word.”

  “Do you think they know their wards are being breached by Gadot?”

  “If they do, I doubt they think it’s by him — or that whoever is doing it wants to free Trixie — but I hope it’ll make them more open to our claims.”

  “Careful,” I teased. “You sound almost grown up.”

  She squeezed my hand tightly, her face scrunching up. “Watch it, Sinclair. You’re still older.”

  “Hey, we might learn a thing or two about you on this trip. Like that you’re actually four hundred.”

  She snorted and pulled her hand away. “Sucks for you that I still look younger.”

  “For all I know, even your ‘un-glamoured’ face is a glamour, and you’re all wrinkled under there.”

  A red flush coated her puffed out cheeks as she turned to glare at me. “I hope The Chef eats you.”

  I gasped, my eyes widening. “How do you know that story?”

  Fiona rolled her eyes. “I was right next to you. Who do you think dragged your drunk ass home that night?”

  “A waiter,” I said dryly. “You came home next afternoon in the same outfit you had on the night before with a centurion helmet on.”