Kissing Magic

by Day Leitao

  He walked away. Away from Cayla, away from this castle, away from everything.

  Karina guessed that things hadn’t gone well, as Darian stormed out of the room. She didn’t understand why he was shirtless, though, and wondered if it had been an unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation.

  Since Cayla didn’t walk out for a while, Karina entered the room and found her friend sitting down, staring at the necklace in her hand.

  Cayla kept looking down. “It wasn’t what I wanted. It was… as if I wasn’t myself.”

  “You were angry. It happens.”

  Cayla raised her eyes to meet Karina’s. “You know, the worst is he kept treating me like a useless imbecile. Even now! Even when I told him how wrong he was.”

  “Well, you’re not useless, and not an imbecile.”

  “I know.”

  Karina could perhaps encourage Cayla to use her anger for something useful. “Show him, show everyone. There are two threats hanging over Whyland. You can protect your kingdom, I know you can.”

  Cayla’s eyes met Karina’s and opened wider, as if she was snapping out. “True. I’m not the useless imbecile like he thinks I am.”

  “Indeed. And you can deal with this kingdom’s possible threat and Sian.”

  Cayla extended a hand as if telling her to wait. “I have the war room to deal with, then we’ll discuss Sian and that horrible castle. Come. I’ll try to make it quick.”

  Cayla tied the necklace on her neck again. Well, at least she could still contact Darian once heads cooled off. But Karina wasn’t interested in Cayla and Darian drama right now.

  They walked out the door, and Cayla turned to the guards. “Do not follow me.”

  She walked fast, and they came to the same room Darian had been before. There were no guards at the door and the girls entered.

  Cayla addressed the people on the table. “So you are what’s left of the War Council, right? I don’t even know your names, but I don’t think it matters now.”

  “Where’s Darian?” a young man asked.

  “He left. Quit. Now I think you had something planned here. Would you mind sharing?”

  They looked at each other and hesitated.

  “Well?” Cayla asked.

  An older woman said, “We were planning another mission to the Arlenia border.”

  “Really?” Cayla asked. “Want to lose how many more lifts? Everyone we’ve sent hasn’t come back. Maybe I’m stupid and I don’t know anything about war, but I do know that when something doesn’t work, you don’t keep doing it.”

  The woman sat back. “It’s different. We were planning different routes and brainstorming a way not to be intercepted.”

  Cayla shook her head. “If we disperse our army, we lose strength at our core. For all we know, that’s exactly what they want. They could be coming by the ocean.”

  “They aren’t, we’re watching,” the woman replied.

  “Either way, I don’t care, dispersing is not a good idea. We stay put and wait.”

  “Wait?” the young man asked. “That’s not a plan. Our fellow soldiers are there, who knows what’s happening to them—”

  “And we want to send more people?” Cayla asked. “No. It doesn’t make sense.”

  The people in the war council looked at each other. “There’s another matter,” the woman said. “We were planning an expedition. To locate your mother.”

  “Cancel it,” Cayla said. “It’s pointless. She’s the most powerful person in Whyland. Perhaps in the world. If we haven’t heard from her, it’s one of three things: one, she’s dead—and I sure hope she isn’t; two, she’s alive and has no way to communicate with us; three, she’s being kept by something or someone so powerful there’s nothing a bunch of regular soldiers can do about it. Sending people to find her is a useless endeavor.”

  “It’s about investigating—and not abandoning her,” the woman pleaded.

  “Not now,” Cayla said. “Whyland is being threatened and we need to protect Siphoria and the castle.”

  “See,” the woman insisted, “finding your mother was our priority number two.”

  “Not anymore. What was priority number one?”

  They again looked at each other, seeming uncomfortable. The woman said “Keeping you safe.”

  Cayla rolled her eyes. “Well, scratch that. Also, I don’t want the same people following me. It would be too easy to target them. We have enemies within this castle and within this army, and you know it. Trust no one.”

  The young man said, “So your order is for us to stay put. You know, Darian always listened to us, and we voted.”

  Cayla squinted. “Voting in the army? Are you for real? If you were in a war and were attacked, would you stop and vote while the enemy came down on you?”

  The young man rolled his eyes. “It would be different.”

  “Fine, then,” Cayla said. “Sending more people there is pointless and will weaken us. We can’t disperse. Not any more than we’ve already done. A person would take ten days to arrive here by foot from the Arlenia border. For all we know, Arlenia might be just destroying lifts and disrupting our communication, and maybe they’ll be back in a few days.”

  Another man then said, “The thing is, can we really abandon our fellow soldiers? Who knows what’s happening to them?”

  Cayla shook her head. “If they’re hostages, whoever is keeping them wants something. We’ll hear from them. If they are dead, there’s nothing to be done. If they are free and coming back, we’ll hear from them soon.”

  The man insisted, “We’d need to help them in this case. There are also the people in the north. It’s our duty to protect them.”

  “Really? The Lost People? The ones my father never found? They have hidden villages. They’ll be fine. We can’t disperse our forces. How do you vote?”

  “We raise hands,” the woman said.

  “Hands up for staying put and watching out for anyone returning or any attack from any direction.”

  The woman and another man raised their hands.

  Cayla also raised her hand. She turned to Karina. “You vote too.” Karina raised her hand. Cayla said, “Four against three. Stay put.” She turned to the woman. “I count on you. Plan whatever you want to plan. What’s your name?”

  “Armeen.”

  “I nominate you Whyland’s Grand General. Do what you have to do.”

  She cleared her throat. “I already was Grand General.”

  Cayla shrugged. “You know I agree with the idea then.”

  She turned around and left the room. Karina followed.

  As they were away from the room, Cayla whispered, “Protecting me priority number one! What a fool he is!”

  “I think royals usually have protection, no?”

  “Maybe. But the way it was said, as if I were some kind of object or child. Ugh. Also… There’s something odd. I don’t trust everyone who was there, but I’m not sure who is who. Darian’s problem is that he believes in the best in people. I feel there’s something weird in this story.”

  Indeed. Karina had been thinking how convenient it was that the army was dispersed right when Sian was planning on attacking, when she remembered something important. “Sian has connections in the army, and allies in Siphoria. Maybe it’s all related.” She then remembered Liam’s offer to tell what was happening in Arlenia, but she wasn’t sure she trusted him.

  “Maybe. I know who to ask. Can’t believe I didn’t think about it before.”

  “Your uncle?” Karina whispered.

  “He’s overseas. So is Nia. It all happened so fast. Either way, my uncle doesn’t know much.”

  They climbed regular staircases, then spiral staircases, as Karina wondered who they were going to see. They came to a room with many bookshelves. In an armchair, reading, was Ayanna, Cayla’s younger sister, well, half-sister, as they only had the same father. She didn’t look like a child anymore, but like a young teenager, with a pleasant round face, and big, bright eyes.


  She raised her eyes from the book, noticed Karina, and beamed. “What confusion brought you this time?”

  “Well…” She didn’t even know from where to start.

  Cayla said, “Arlenia threatening us isn’t confusion enough?”

  Ayanna frowned. “What? They’re our allies, aren’t they?”

  Cayla sat by her sister. “Goodness, how long have you been in this tower reading?”

  “A couple days? Uh, maybe more?”

  Cayla told her sister about the threat from Arlenia, and then about Darian asking help for Sian. She turned to Karina “You broke Sian’s spell, right?”

  “Pretty much,” Karina confirmed.

  “What spell?” Ayanna asked.

  Karina sighed. “He was in the garden of the Darloom castle, turned into stone.”

  Ayanna tilted her head. “Do you love him?”

  Karina froze.

  Thank goodness Cayla said something. “Of course not. It was some ridiculous story he came up with.” She turned to Karina. “Right?”

  “Yeah.” Karina felt as if frost was coming from her stomach to her entire body. “They said I didn’t need to feel anything to break his spell with a true-love kiss. I broke his spell with a kiss on the cheek, of, you know, love for humanity, compassion, something like that.”

  Ayanna was thoughtful. “Interesting. And you said Darloom. That name hadn’t been used in years.”

  “Yeah,” Cayla said. “I know it as the Lost Castle or Dark Castle.”

  “Sian calls it Darloom,” Karina said. “But there’s something important. That castle has kyons. Do you know what they are?”

  Ayanna nodded.

  Cayla stared at her sister. “I spent days trying to figure that out. How do you know that stuff?”

  Ayanna gestured around her as if pointing to the books.

  “Well,” Karina continued. “Sian got a staff from the castle and—”

  “The Darloom staff?” Ayanna frowned. “That’s impossible.”

  “Not sure if it’s the Darloom staff, but he got a staff from the Darloom castle, and the kyons changed. They became fully formed. He said they could leave the area of the castle then, and he was going to attack Whyland with an army of kyons and take the Queen’s Castle.”

  Cayla asked, “He can’t do that, can he? I mean, it’s not possible, is it?”

  Ayanna was silent for a moment, then asked, “What did the staff look like? Do you know where he got it?”

  Karina didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to confess all she’d done either. “The staff had a roundish head, as if it were made of glass or resin, but it was strong. It had been locked away in a room with many mirrors and a well in the middle.”

  Ayanna shook her head. “It can’t be. Were there more people in the castle?”

  Weird question. “Some of his friends. Three girls and two guys.”

  “That’s it, then,” Ayanna said. “One of them is quite a powerful magician. We can’t know from which tradition, or even if they’re from Whyland, but he has someone very powerful with him, who took that staff.”

  Karina shuddered.

  Cayla squinted. “You think it’s possible then? He could come here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ayanna said. “If that power is unlocked… I mean, he could raise an army of kyons, and that’s not even the worst. Whoever is this powerful person with him, they could do lots of things. They could open holes to other dimensions and bring, well, anything.”

  Thankfully that the powerful person was no longer with Sian, not that she was going to tell Ayanna that. At least not right then. Karina had to get to the part that mattered. “Is there a way to stop him?”

  “Where’s Lylah?” Ayanna asked.

  Cayla shook her head. “I just told you. Gone. Disappeared. We don’t know if she’s just in official business, unaware that the communications have gone down, or…”

  “She should be fine,” Ayanna said.

  “How can we stop him?” Karina insisted.

  Ayanna shrugged. “A regular army could stop kyons.” She turned to Cayla. “I mean stop, not defeat, and there’s a difference here, by shooting them. They'll regenerate, but they’ll be contained. At some point, he might give up, or you can negotiate, something.”

  Cayla snorted. “Isn’t it a shame a lot of our forces have been displaced north, though? And plus, there’s the Arlenia threat.”

  “Perhaps there’s no threat,” Karina said. “Not from Arlenia. Everything is happening at the same time. Maybe he plotted it all. The idea was just to weaken you and invade here unopposed.”

  Cayla squinted. “It’s just Sian. I mean, he can’t plan that well, and he can’t have that much influence to affect another kingdom.”

  “He’s pretty good at planning, Cayla. I think he’s been plotting all this for months. And he has friends. He is influential.”

  “Maybe he’s just seizing the opportunity,” Cayla said.

  Ayanna said, “There’s a treaty on the study of coincidences. We would need to position the variables—”

  “Right?” Cayla rolled her eyes. “How long would it take? Hours? Days?”

  Ayanna grunted. “All I’m saying is that it’s stupid to ignore coincidences.”

  “I’m not ignoring. I’m saying he could just be seizing the opportunity. He could have waited for us to be weak to attack us, or he could even want to pose as the hero and savior of Whyland as Arlenia attacks. Maybe he knew about Arlenia’s plans in advance. It makes sense. Or would he really have connections in Arlenia and in our north, be able to disrupt communications, and prepare a big sham just so most of our army is gone when he comes?”

  That sounded exactly like Sian. “Not impossible.”

  Ayanna was serious. “He’s got to be pretty good to have gotten that staff.” She turned around and made her way back to her seat.

  “Hey,” Cayla called her sister. “I need your help. How do I defeat them? You said lifts, but that doesn’t make sense. I shot them and nothing happened. They seem not to be affected by heat or energy, just by something physical. We were cutting them in pieces. It didn’t help much, but it slowed them down.”

  Ayanna was opening up her book, then lifted her eyes. “Get lifts that shoot projectiles, and bring ground soldiers with cutting weapons.”

  Cayla nodded. “Fine then. Thanks for your help.”

  Karina then took her small disk from her pocket. “Do you know what this is?”

  Cayla examined it. “Very old com. Where did you get this?”

  “A friend of Sian’s brought me here. He said he could tell me what’s happening in Arlenia.”

  Cayla squinted. “Who was that? We need to know if there are Sian’s friends infiltrated here.”

  “Liam. He got me out of jail.”

  “Jail?”

  “It’s a long story. But… do you think this can be tracked?”

  Cayla took it again and examined it. “In theory no, but anything could have a sensor. Maybe inside it.”

  Karina puffed. “Great.”

  Ayanna called, “Guys, lower your volume. I’m trying to read here.”

  Cayla shook her head in annoyance. Ayanna didn’t raise her eyes from the book. Yeah, Karina had bookaholic friends, but she didn’t think any of them would go back to a book with a war threatening them.

  Karina whispered, “Should I try to contact him and ask for the information?”

  “Do you trust him?”

  The answer was easy. “No.”

  “Just leave it here. If they come after you, all they’ll find is Ayanna buried in books.” She chuckled. “And I’ll try to see who this Liam person is.”

  “What about Sian, what are we going to do?”

  “I know where to get him. There’s a bridge he’ll have to cross to come from the south. I’ll deploy a battalion there and hope to detain them long enough.”

  Long enough for her mother to arrive were the unspoken words. Karina understood. As they
were about to leave, someone knocked on the door. Cayla opened it. A servant had a tray with dinner which Cayla put on a table on a corner. Ayanna glanced at it and then back at her book. Cayla walked to the door, and Karina followed. As they were almost at the door, the princess halted and gestured for Karina to stop, then walked back to the table and gestured for her sister to come closer.

  She pointed at the tray, and whispered so softly she almost mouthed, “See this?”

  It was just food, and smelled delicious, by the way. There was a plate with golden decorations in the border and four golden containers with lids and spoons. There was also an apple and a glass of juice.

  Ayanna looked at it, frowned, and whispered, “Mina knows I’m allergic to apples. Everyone in the kitchen knows it. What do you think this means?”

  “An impostor,” Karina blurted.

  “It could also be a poorly trained servant. Maybe,” Ayanna said.

  Cayla pointed to Karina as if agreeing. “They don’t suddenly change servants without warning and training, not at a time when we might be attacked. Is there another exit here?”

  Ayanna sighed, then nodded. She walked to a corner, pulled a bookcase, and revealed a very small door behind it.

  “Wait,” Cayla said. She walked to another door, which led to another room, closed it, then snapped the handle. She returned to them and whispered, “They'll think we're there. It will give us more time.”

  Good thinking. Cayla was quite a resourceful girl and it was indeed a shame that Darian had overprotected her. They walked through the door Ayanna had opened. She closed the door then pulled a chain tied to a pulley, probably to put the bookcase back in place. The passage led to a very narrow staircase, so narrow that it was barely enough for them to walk through.

  “I don’t think you need to come, Ayanna,” Cayla said. “For all I know, we might be overreacting.”

  “You think I want to leave my books?” Ayanna said. “But in the slim chance we aren’t overreacting, I’d better not stay there like easy prey.”

  Cayla nodded. “That makes sense.”