Hidden Hearts

by Eva Chase

  The gloom crept along the wall. When I breathed in deep, its presence prickled at the back of my mouth. Just one couldn’t do much damage—and wouldn’t bother trying to damage any ordinary human being—but set a whole crowd on the attack and no one would laugh. I’d witnessed swarms like that more times than I cared to remember.

  They were the vermin of the dark fae, so I dealt with them the way I’d deal with a cockroach or a rat—extermination.

  I sat up in the bed and snapped a twig off the weeping fig in its pot beside the window. A whisper of the living energy nestled inside the wood tingled against my fingers. It would fade by the end of the day, but in the meantime, it held power.

  I raised my hand and pointed it at the gloom. My fingers clenched around the twig. “Darkness begone,” I murmured in the archaic English of my first existence.

  A spark lit within the patch of shadow and spread across its body. In less than a second, it ate away my unwelcome visitor.

  The twig had gone dry and dead against my palm. I tossed it into the base of the pot. Technically, I didn’t have to be up for another hour, but there was no way I could relax now.

  I paced the room and grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweater from a basket of folded laundry. My hair resisted the ponytail I finger-combed it into. Several brown strands slipped free to drift across my face as I ducked to retrieve my sneakers from under the bed.

  So what? I was going to see my king today.

  No, I wasn’t as ready as I wanted to be. I still hadn’t figured out how to fix this mess I’d gotten us into—this repeated cycle of lives lived and cut short. I wasn’t even sure I could avoid my past mistakes, escape what had happened last time—

  My throat constricted. Catching that thought before it could blossom, I balled it up and tossed it away. I’d never been completely ready. But we were both still living. At least I’d accomplished that much.

  I knelt to pluck several more twigs off the fig’s outer branches, stuffed the handfuls into my pockets, and opened my closet.

  My wands waited in a shoebox I’d stuffed under winter boots and a spare blanket. I ran my fingers over the smooth sticks. The magic I’d worked on them had sealed their life inside—if I’d left them out in the sun, they’d have started sprouting leaves. I tucked the birch one into my backpack.

  To find a pair of gloves, I had to dig through my remaining moving boxes. But it wasn’t just glooms and other dark rabble my king would need protection from.

  It was also me.

  I jammed a thin cotton pair into my back pocket and stepped out of my bedroom, my pulse still jittering.

  Priya, my roommate, stood in the kitchen. She was spreading jam on a piece of toast. Her head of sleep-rumpled black hair bobbed up at the sound of my door, and a smile leapt to her face.

  “Good morning, Emmaline!” She waved the knife at me with her usual frenetic grace. “Want eggs? I was just thinking I’d fry some up to go with my toast.”

  No one else called me “Emmaline” except my mom—I always told acquaintances and teachers to stick to “Emma.” But Priya had seen my given name when we’d been filling out the lease and declared it one of the most beautiful names she’d ever heard. Somehow I hadn’t had the heart to tell her I found it incredibly stuffy. In her cheery voice, it did sound kind of pretty.

  I was already smiling back at her despite the twist of impatience inside me. Priya’s boundless enthusiasm made it difficult to be irritated at her, which was probably why we were tentatively becoming friends. I hadn’t been in the habit of making many of those—in this life or those prior.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to toast,” I said. “Leave the jam out?” Food derived from animals didn’t always sit well in my stomach. No need to add to my supernatural indigestion.

  Priya chattered about an article she’d read for her politics course and her theories about the latest episode of a TV show we’d been watching while I gulped down my quick breakfast. Normally, I’d have contributed more. As I swallowed my last bite, Priya tilted her head.

  “Something’s bothering you,” she said. “What’s up?”

  I might not have been perfect at hiding my emotions, but I had centuries of practice at lying. After all, there weren’t many situations in which I could be truthful about being the reincarnation of a legendary sorcerer. People tended to get twitchy about even one part of that equation.

  Downplaying worked better than flat-out denial. “It’s nothing major,” I said with a shrug. “Lab report due for a prof who seems like a tough one.”

  Priya nodded, accepting my explanation unquestioningly. No amount of practice stopped the little jab of guilt I felt at seeing that.

  “I’m sure you’ve got it in the bag. You work too hard.”

  “New school, new expectations,” I said. “I’ll worry less once I’m into the swing of things.”

  I tugged on my gloves as soon as I stepped out onto the street. Thank the light the October weather was just nippy enough that wearing them didn’t look totally bizarre. My gaze flitted over the streets the whole way to campus, my skin prickling at every shift in the breeze. I couldn’t be sure of anything about him except he’d be the same age as me. He might not even be a he in this incarnation. Unlike me, with my regular flipping back and forth, he usually arrived male, but I could never be sure.

  When my eyes hit him, I’d know him, no matter what.

  At the edge of campus, a broad lawn stretched toward the sprawl of three- and four-story buildings, the older old-fashioned brick ones skirted by modern concrete additions. The view sent a jolt through my chest, even though I’d seen it dozens of times now.

  It was the same image that had swam into my head and prompted me to transfer here for junior year—after skimming through page after page of internet search results before figuring out where my capricious psychic ability was pointing me.

  My nerves jumped every time someone new walked by me, but I went through classes, lunch, and more classes without any revelations. I ducked into the change room to prepare for fencing practice with more than a little relief. Feinting and parrying would burn off some of my tension.

  “Advanced learners, split off into pairs to spar,” Coach ordered after the warm-up exercises. I nodded to the guy standing next to me. We stepped to the side and began a conversation between our training blades. With each tap and dodge, a grin crept farther across my face behind the dark mesh of my protective mask.

  Once upon a time, I could have been called clumsy, especially when asked to handle a weapon. That was exactly why I’d decided to take up fencing when I had the chance. After many lives worth of drills, the moves were starting to come naturally to me. I was stronger and more coordinated than I’d ever been.

  Which didn’t mean I was infallible. My partner lunged, I swung to block his strike, and a low, rolling laugh carried from the doorway several feet behind me. The sound smacked into me, knocking the breath from my lungs. My arm wavered, and my opponent’s saber caught my hand. My fingers twitched apart as I yanked them out of the way. My own saber flipped through the air and nearly speared the guy standing in the doorway.

  He stepped back without a flinch. My weapon clattered to the floor. The guy raised his eyes. They were a blue so striking I could identify it even at a distance, so deep it was almost indigo. He gave me a cocky smile and ran his hand over his sun-streaked blond hair. The muscles in his arm flexed against the sleeve of his fitted raglan shirt.

  Every muscle in my body had frozen. Recognition sang through my every cell on a level beneath thought, beneath memory.

  A level the guy in front of me clearly wasn’t aware of yet. No hint of shock crossed his face. I looked no different to him than any of the other fencers in our training gear. While I was born knowing who we were, my spell kept my king’s memories locked inside his mind… for now.

  “I hope you’re normally more coordinated than that.” He nudged the saber back toward me with his foot. “I don’t want to have to
worry about being impaled every time I come into the room.”

  An echo of his voice from our first lives rang through my head. Gods, you’re more likely to impale me than the enemy. Those words had been spoken in affectionate jest, not this guy’s distant cool. The quiver of excitement that had been racing through me dimmed.

  This incarnation of my king was a jackass.

  The difference was so jarring I couldn’t help bristling. “My coordination is infinitely improved when people aren’t making sudden loud sounds in the training area,” I said. “And you could simply not come in.”

  He hesitated, blinking at me. Before I’d spoken I bet he hadn’t even realized he was talking to a girl. I took advantage of his silence to stride over and retrieve my saber.

  Two other figures were peering into the room beside the new guy—the friends he’d been laughing with. A lanky black guy, who had a couple inches on my critic’s already-formidable height, elbowed him with a rakish grin. A willowy girl with pale auburn tresses stood at Mr. Blond’s other side, hugging her cardigan over her gauzy maxi dress. She squeezed his forearm in apparent reassurance, and something wrenched in my chest.

  She was his girlfriend, no doubt. Well, why wouldn’t he have a girlfriend with those looks? That was a good thing. His off-putting attitude was a good thing. Every reminder I could get to keep my distance, emotionally and physically, was a gift.

  I existed to be his mage, to get him out of the snarl I’d created with my magic. Anything more risked us both, as I’d had ample opportunity to discover before.

  That pinching in my chest was not jealousy. Not even a little bit.

  “Have fun, Darton,” the rakish friend said with a playful salute. “Return to us with all your parts intact.” The girlfriend shook her head at him, and they headed off. The new guy—my king who didn’t yet know he was my king—strode in to talk to Coach. I studied his shadow to confirm no glooms were tailing him and rejoined my sparring partner after Coach ambled over.

  Darton. Funny how in every life something of our essence wove even into the names each set of parents granted us. A sound or a syllable carried from our origins.

  At least by all appearances, he hadn’t started to wake up on his own. As long as I could keep it that way, I had time to finally set things right.

  My blade rapped against my opponent’s, and Coach’s voice traveled to my ears. “You’re here to become a better quarterback?” His tone was skeptical and amused.

  “I want to up my game,” Darton said. “Coach Michner says my weakest area is dexterity. Fencing sounded like an enjoyable way to work on that. Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Coach said. “We don’t have any requirement that you’re devoted to the art. I will expect you to respect it—and to show up for practices on time.”

  A smile curled my lips behind my mask. Darton sounded a tad chastened in his reply.

  “Right. Of course.”

  Coach believed in fencers staying fully suited up for practice so we were as comfortable as possible with the equipment we’d wear in competition, so they walked off to get Darton prepared. I felt his movements through the room with a faint tickling over my skin. My sparring partner disarmed me twice. I’d just paused to take a breath and regroup when Coach headed back our way, Darton in tow.

  “Emma is one of our most experienced members,” Coach was saying. “Since you two have already ‘met,’ I’ll have her lead you through the basic warm-up.”

  My back stiffened. He often asked senior members to teach the junior ones, but it hadn’t occurred to me he’d come to me, now, with this. Sodding hell. Darton was already eyeing me. If I acted cagey for no obvious reason, I’d draw his attention even more.

  If I was careful, the risk of skin-to-skin physical contact was minimal. The other risks, which had to do with the heart pounding away in my chest, I’d just have to deal with.

  I drew myself up straighter and tucked my one bare hand deeper into my sleeve. “Sure, I can take him through the paces.”

  Darton raised his eyebrow at me. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep up.”

  He did, which was a relief because it meant I didn’t need to get close to adjust his position. It was also an annoyance, because I could hear him getting smugger with each comment he tossed out. He’d been a master with a broadsword way back when. It wasn’t surprising he’d pick up fencing quickly. But that didn’t mean I had to like how this unaware incarnation talked about it.

  “So why do people get into this as a hobby anyway?” he asked when we paused after the first set of exercises.

  “You mean if they’re not just using it to make them better at some other sport?” I said. “Fencing is a sport too, FYI.”

  He’d pulled his mask up, so I saw the disbelieving face he made. “You can’t say it’s the same. And it’s not as if you’re likely to end up in a sword fight outside this room.”

  I restrained myself from asking how often he got into tackling fights with people off the football field and motioned for him to turn so we could start a two-person drill. “Some of us find the practice enjoyable regardless of how ‘useful’ it is. If you commit, you’ll find it’s intensive training for the body and the mind. You’re not going to feel the full effect if you come at it like a tourist.”

  To give the guy credit, he took that critique in stride. He followed my instructions through several parrying sequences in silent concentration.

  “Maybe I will get more into the training for its own sake,” he remarked. “Now that we’re on to the actual fighting, I can see the fun factor.”

  He chuckled and picked up his pace. Did he really think ten minutes of practice was enough to justify pushing a senior student’s limits? My king might have always been talented, but he’d also had some humility.

  I matched Darton beat for beat. Back and forth, back and forth—

  He broke the pattern. His saber swiped at my padded shoulder.

  My pulse stuttered, but I kept my footing as I sidestepped. I whipped my blade around his and flicked it up. His saber slipped from his grasp. It clanged to the floor at his feet much as mine had half an hour ago.

  “Hey,” he protested. I lowered my blade, leaving my mask on. Coach was already sending some of the other members off to the change room. We were done here.

  “You never start sparring without getting your training partner’s okay first,” I said. “And if you don’t want to make a fool of yourself, get the basics down before you start escalating.”

  I stalked away before Darton could say anything in response. My legs had gone shaky.

  How was I going to keep enough distance with him hanging around fencing practice three days a week? I’d found my king all right, and he was already proving more trouble than glooms and visions combined.

  Want to read more of Emma and Darton’s story? It’s free with Kindle Unlimited! Grab Magic Waking here.

  About the Author

  Eva Chase lives in Canada with her family. She loves stories both swoony and supernatural, and strong women and the men who appreciate them. Along with the Alpha Project Psychic Romance series, she is the author of the Their Dark Valkyrie series, the Witch’s Consorts series, the Dragon Shifter’s Mates series, Demons of Fame Romance series, and the Legends Reborn trilogy.

  Connect with Eva online:

  www.evachase.com

  eva@evachase.com