by Lucia Ashta
Marcelo stared, captivated.
Our eyes locked and held.
My back was turned to Marcelo’s young version. I’d seen only fear and hatred within his bottomless eyes; they welled with all sorts of ill feelings. Yet, I knew that could never be more powerful than what swelled within me.
I forgot to consider him a threat.
But Marcelo’s eyes flung to him, alarmed and alert. I didn’t turn in time to see why.
Marcelo launched his counter spell. It met our foe’s magic in mid-flight, at the precise mid-point of the bottomless pit that separated us physically. The beams of magic, of light and of dark, connected with each other. As opposites, they sought to nullify each other in an explosion of light and its void, sparking and sputtering at the contradiction. The dark attempted to suck all light into it as it crashed in on itself like the blackest of holes. Still, it couldn’t, and flashing light and darkness tumbled down into the depths below us, entangled in an uncommon dance.
I watched Marcelo draw back to launch another attack on the man he considered an enemy that was trying to murder the woman he loved, that wanted to take from him the one element of hope after decades of loss.
Marcelo threw a bolt of light to the side of me and across the way.
Urgently, I spoke, but the effect of my words was the same as if I’d yelled at the top of my lungs.
“Don’t kill him. He’s Clarissa’s son.”
Startled panic crossed Marcelo’s face like a flash of lightning. I watched him furiously work to reel in the powerful magic he’d sent to destroy his opponent.
Marcelo was only partially successful in recalling it. Magic created to destroy was particularly difficult to control, for its purpose was inherent to its being.
Marcelo worked to recover it with all his will. It didn’t matter how dark his enemy had become. If there was even a chance that he was really Clarissa’s child, that he’d survived all these years, then Marcelo had a duty to protect him. He couldn’t be the one to hurt him. He couldn’t become one more member of his family to hurt someone that blood obligated to love.
In the seconds Marcelo had, he couldn’t complete the work needed to counteract his spell. However, he was able to undermine it enough that, when it reached his nephew, it was devoid of the power to kill. Instead, it stunned its target.
The air swept from the lungs of Marcelo’s nephew. He fell back hard, landing painfully on his tailbone. But he wasn’t dead, nor was he truly harmed.
Marcelo was visibly shaken. I watched emotions wrack across his body, unearthing past scars. Confusion, loss, and pain brought more variance to the blue of his eyes than I’d seen before. His body began to shake at how close he’d come to killing the nephew he didn’t realize he had.
The moment continued to hold immediate danger, but Marcelo no longer saw it.
He didn’t realize that the young man that stood across the precipice meant to kill us. He didn’t know that he was his nephew only in nomenclature, but not in heart. The young man’s heart had been claimed by darkness long ago. Dark magic didn’t honor the ties of blood. Dark magic didn’t honor anything in its thirst for power.
I felt the threat rising. I felt it as tangibly as if an arrow of death pointed into the space behind my heart.
Marcelo couldn’t defend us now. It would take too much out of his soul. He couldn’t attack his sister’s son without sacrificing too much goodness.
I turned on the heel of my elf shoe in time to watch Marcelo’s nephew form a ball of black magic as big as his chest and direct it my way.
He didn’t aim for his uncle. He understood that my death would hurt his uncle far more than his own.
The ball of magic furled toward me like a comet of gray light, like a ball of fire that had lost its color. But I knew it could end my life just the same.
I hadn’t had the chance to practice for something like this while at Irele. I wasn’t ready for any of what I was facing. Nothing in my life prepared me for staring down a fireball of death, knowing I was its only target.
The last time this man attacked me, I froze and left myself vulnerable to the kidnapping.
So I did the only thing I could in the seconds I had. I let go of thoughts of limitations. I hadn’t prepared for this. So what? I didn’t know exactly what to do. What was new about that?
I was a witch.
And I wasn’t just any witch. I was an extraordinary one.
The elements of all magic and all life existed within me. I needed nothing more than that.
With the simple knowledge that my life was meant to continue, that there was a purpose for it, I closed my eyes.
My last sight was of the shock in Marcelo’s nephew that I’d close my eyes as his weapon hurtled toward me with furious speed. He thought I’d accepted my fate.
But I hadn’t accepted death by darkness. I never would.
I didn’t need to see the ball of dark fire coming toward me with my eyes to know where it was. In fact, with my eyes closed, I saw it more clearly. I discerned its composition, the dark spells that formed it.
And I saw all of it—the ball of fire, the dark spells, the hatred—halt in mid-air.
Magic was no more than desire made manifest. Magic was capable of everything once we accepted its full potential.
The ball of gray fire hovered over the chasm for one long second.
Then, as if the gray fire were shocked to discover it no longer contained the energy of forward motion, it fell. It plummeted into a void of nothingness that would eagerly swallow it up.
In that same moment that drew out and elongated in one of time’s many games, I watched a beam of red light fly past me, heading across the gap.
Marcelo gathered his wits enough to identify that his nephew was again attempting to kill me. No matter what the consequences to his soul, Marcelo wouldn’t allow that. He hurled magic meant to disarm and stun—not kill—toward his nephew.
It reached its unsuspecting target squarely.
From the shocked look on his face, I gathered that Marcelo’s nephew didn’t expect me to survive his fiery ball of death. He was likely wondering who I was and how I’d been able to repel his attack instead of noticing the stream of red light beaming toward him.
He couldn’t formulate a defense in time. Marcelo’s magic hit him straight in the chest and made him bang his head hard against the cold stone when he fell.
The impact knocked him out.
Moments later, he came to and was able to open his eyes.
He wasn’t dead. But he was no match for his opponents, not with a throbbing head.
With a quick sideways glance toward a man that may or may not be his uncle, the young man slunk back the way he’d come, holding his head as he went.
His head connected with a sharp stalactite and he cursed. Clutching his head in two places now, with a slight trickle of blood emanating from the icicle of stone, he crouched as low as he could and ran as fast as he could.
Over my shoulder, Marcelo watched his nephew leave. Marcelo made an attempt to pursue him—maybe to ask how it could be that he was alive or to explain how much Clarissa meant to him. However, Marcelo was wise enough to stop. Would his nephew ever be able to hear the truth in his words amid the echoes of all that darkness?
Besides, he wouldn’t leave me unprotected, not when he’d come so close to losing me.
Marcelo didn’t use words. He didn’t ask me if I was all right. He didn’t tell me that he loved me and was relieved that I was alive and unharmed.
He closed the short distance between us and held me. I leaned into his chest and closed my eyes.
I didn’t see images of magic within the infinite canvas that stretched behind my closed eyelids. This time, I only relished the comfort and safety of his embrace.
In that moment, he was all I wanted.
Chapter 49
We weren’t surprised to discover Marcelo’s nephew gone with the two elephants when we emerged from the cave. We were simila
rly unsurprised to find the young dark magician had taken the horse Marcelo rode as well.
It’s what Marcelo would have done. By taking his uncle’s horse, Marcelo’s nephew ensured we wouldn’t catch up. The dark magician would be long gone by the time we organized ourselves to follow. His trail would grow cold, any telling signs of his travel merging with the faint teases of moonlight.
Regardless, Marcelo and I wouldn’t have pursued his nephew even if he’d left us the horse. The night had been too long already and too filled with loss to extend it into the unknown.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to learn what happened since his nephew kidnapped me. Marcelo’s face and shoulders were heavy with sorrow. I feared how far the loss might extend.
A devastating, bone-chilling cold settled within me, one I couldn’t shake, as I asked, “What happened? Since your nephew took me?” My words were faint, barely audible in the still night.
But Marcelo heard me. Grief twisted his already mournful features.
He swallowed hard. “I— They—” He swallowed again. “I killed— The dark magician killed—”
I stopped walking and brought my hands to his upper arms. “Hey. It’s all right,” I cooed, even though I had no idea who killed whom, and I was terrified to discover who was dead.
He shook his head, his black hair swinging across his forehead. “It’s not all right.”
I rubbed a hand across his chest, trying to comfort him while ignoring my awareness of how close his body was to mine. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, if it’s too hard.”
“No, I have to tell you, so Mordecai…”
The breath caught in my chest. Not Mordecai, please don’t let Mordecai be dead.
I embraced him, to feel his support as much as to offer him mine. He brought his cheek to the crown of my head and ran a hand across the surface of my tangled hair.
“Perhaps there’s a better way,” he said. “Do you think you could look into my memories of tonight? Like you did before, with your witch’s gaze?”
“My ‘witch’s gaze’?”
“What you used to look into me in the courtyard, when I asked you to marry me, when we held each other much as we do now.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t mentioned it, and I’d since questioned whether I truly was capable of viewing someone else’s memories via a projection of my mind’s eye.
“Do you think you could do it?” he asked while continuing to run a fervent hand across my hair, as if holding me close could help him forget everything we’d lived this night.
I held him tighter. “I suppose I could try.”
He stilled his hand and grew silent, holding me as tightly as I held him.
“You mean now?” I asked.
I think he would have smiled if he weren’t so sad. “Yes, now.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
But I went beyond trying. The moment I closed my eyes and reached for him, he was there, in the space behind my eyes, ready for me, ready to bare all of himself to me.
Even in that bodiless space, I hesitated, certain I didn’t want to face what he had this night.
Finally, I borrowed his strength, clutched my arms around his waist, and delved into the thoughts and emotions he’d experienced since his nephew kidnapped me.
It was awful, and a part of me wanted to withdraw immediately. But there was a greater part of me that was mesmerized by the power of battle to end life in an instant.
I took it all in.
Chapter 50
Marcelo stared into eyes he thought he’d never see again. The man that stared back at him had changed significantly since Marcelo last saw him over sixteen years ago. Silver lined his temples and sprinkled his crown, and deep lines etched the contours of his face. It was now more angular and his look less forgiving, if it was ever forgiving at all.
But there was no mistaking it. This man was the Count of Bundry. He was Marcelo’s father, resurrected from rumors of death.
A father shouldn’t come looking for his son with an army, nor should he allow his partners to kill his son’s friends.
The Count of Bundry hadn’t changed. As usual, murder and cruelty followed in his wake.
If Marcelo had entertained any remaining doubts as to his father’s intentions, the Count of Bundry dashed them. He drew his sword and held it aloft, the dull moonlight revealing the metal surface already caked with blood. Marcelo’s father intended to mix the blood of his son with that of his previous victim.
Marcelo unsheathed his sword too. The Count would kill him whether or not his son was ready for his attack.
Marcelo advanced on his father as his father advanced on him.
Only one of them would live.
The pain the Count of Bundry had caused Marcelo and those he loved for decades would end, one way or the other.
With one final stride, the two men who looked so much alike on the outside, but who were so radically different on the inside, reached each other.
Normally, Marcelo would have hesitated. He would have studied his father’s eyes, searching for any signs of hope. His father counted on this. His arrogance led him to believe he still intimidated his son, just as he always had, and that his son hadn’t grown into himself over these many years.
When the Count drew his sword up high to attack, he didn’t expect to see his son’s already low and swinging. Marcelo’s sword connected with its target first, slashing across the Count’s midsection.
The Count’s eyes bulged with shock, and he faltered. He took a step backward before raising his sword up again to strike, then bringing it down hard on his son.
But his son wasn’t where he’d been only moments before. The Count’s sword crashed into the courtyard’s cobblestones, throwing him off balance. By the time he went to raise his sword again, Marcelo plunged his sword into his father’s chest. The Count looked down, incredulous. It never occurred to him that his son might prevail in this confrontation.
Marcelo stepped to the side and averted his gaze from his father’s hideous eyes. They were eyes that looked much like Marcelo’s, but in the end, there was nothing more important to the eyes than what lay behind them. These sets of otherwise identical blue eyes belonged to two men that couldn’t have been more different.
The Count gurgled. Blood pooled and dripped in a steady trickle from his mouth.
Marcelo neither touched nor looked at him.
A son should never have to kill his father.
When the Count croaked out one word, had it not been one that Marcelo never heard from the Count’s lips before, he might not have turned. But that one word was “Son,” and his father never called him that before.
“Son,” the Count croaked again with kindness in his eyes, and Marcelo jumped to his side. Marcelo looked around and saw that his father’s comrades were apart from them and otherwise engaged. Carefully, he lifted the Count and turned him onto his side, so he wouldn’t lay on either side of the sword. There was no point in removing it. The older man couldn’t recover from the fatal blow; removing the sword now would only cause pain.
Once on his side, the Count adjusted until he found the fetal position that would minimize the pain so he could do what he needed to do before he died. He knew he was dying; he was motivated by something more important to him than his own survival.
The heaviness that had lifted from his eyes had also lifted from his soul. If only for the few moments before death, the Count could be the man he’d once been, so long ago.
“Son, come close,” the Count said. “I promise,” he continued, his voice no more than a rasp.
Marcelo inched closer. His father had never promised him anything before.
“I promise I won’t hurt you. I need you to understand.”
Marcelo drew near. Would he regret this last act of faith in an undeserving man?
The Count reached out a twisted hand and clasped Marcelo’s wrist. Marcelo tried to pull away. But the Count stilled him again with anoth
er word he’d never uttered before. “Please.”
It was ironic that this word of kindness would be the last word of such an unkind man.
But it was.
Marcelo sat perfectly still, near the man that made him who he was for all the wrong reasons, as his father’s last breath trailed out of his body in a ragged rasp.
Then images began to materialize in the air above the Count’s limp body.
Marcelo didn’t move, didn’t blink, did nothing at all but allow his father’s final spell to unfold.
There, in front of him, scenes from the Count’s distant past came to life. The Count had used what little life was left to him to form this magic, and it was worth every breath of life he traded for this opportunity.
Clipped scenes knit together with magical threads.
The Count is young and married to a pretty woman. They’re happy together, a blessing in an arranged marriage.
After several years, they have a son, Patrice.
Clarissa comes next.
Then, Marcelo’s birth. The Count paces outside the bedchamber, waiting for his wife to deliver the baby. His wife screams, then a baby cries. The Count begins to feel relief, until his wife screams again. And again. He pounds on the door. No one opens it. He lets himself in to hold his wife in his arms, thinking she’ll die. She’s losing too much blood. When the worst of the danger passes, the midwife offers the Count his son, but he won’t even look at the infant. He resents the boy. Marcelo almost killed his wife.
The funeral of his firstborn son and heir, Patrice, the perfect son. The Count is distraught. He ignores Clarissa and Marcelo. Neither of them will ever be able to replace Patrice. He also sees his wife as little as possible, but when he does, he’s angry and violent toward her. He tries to forget about his misery in books of magic.
A man of fair skin and hair calls on the Count at the Castle of Bundry. The visitor enchants the Count with advanced magic. The Count’s enthralled. It’s the first thing to interest him since his son’s death.
The Count shows the pale magician to his study, where the visitor pulls out a book from beneath his cloak. The Elementes of Darke Magyke. The Count can’t resist it.
