There was one she could try. Look into the past.
Sophie had mentioned the Light and Dark abilities that affected time. The Light version was called prophecy and let a mage look into the future. The Dark version let a mage look into the past. She knew little more about them than that.
It was hard to know where to begin. Every use of the magic involved manipulating the reservoir of energy in different ways.
With a hesitant touch, she tapped into the Darkness. She may accidentally use another one of the Dark abilities, but so long as there wasn’t anyone in the room with her, it shouldn’t harm anyone else.
She envisioned herself peering into the past, giving the thought a thread of Dark energy.
Nothing happened, so she pushed a little more into the effort.
That won’t do it.
Zara sprang to her feet, pacing around the room as she manipulated the ball of Darkness in different ways, stretching it out, pulling it apart, hoping to strike on something useful.
Nothing worked, and her frustration grew.
Show me what to do!
Her mental shout provoked an odd reaction in the Darkness. It froze, then formed into a dial. Without thinking, she reached into her mind and twisted it counterclockwise.
A shadow moved in front of her face, and Zara jumped backward. What she saw made her jaw drop. It was a translucent version of herself, pacing backward around her room. Zara reached out and her hand passed through herself.
Interesting.
She spun the knob back more, and the pace of time sped up. Shadow Zara sped backward in circles and then backed out of the room. A ghost version of the door opened, but the real one was still there, itself translucent.
It looked like the present was just a little bit more there, but they both added up to a solid object if the present and past were aligned.
Zara walked to the window and looked out. There were several mages sitting at a table playing cards, moving forward in time. The table and benches underneath them were solid, but they were see through. Their past selves were not in the same spot.
Shades of people marched backward with great speed through the courtyard and gardens, the magic turning what had been a leisurely stroll into a frantic reverse dash.
Curious, she turned back to the bedroom and instinctively slowed the dial until time was paused. Grace stood leaning against the wall, and Zara was sitting on her bed.
Zara turned the dial forward and watched as the past version of her and her friend began moving forward and speaking to each other.
“So how did you end up here?” Zara’s past version asked. She winced at the sound of her voice. It was unnatural to her, different from what she heard in her head when she spoke.
“You mean America?” Grace answered. “My parents wanted me to learn more about Light mages in other parts of the world, so they sent me here. To be honest, I think they hoped that I would find a nice, strong Light mage boy to marry. There aren’t a lot of options back home, and I know they want to get some more magic back in the family.”
Zara paused the vision again. She turned the dial just the slightest bit forward and watched as her own lips stretched in slow motion as she spoke.
“This is very cool,” she said, walking around Grace, peering at her from every angle. “And it’s also kind of creepy. It’s strange that this is a Dark ability. It doesn’t seem like it’s automatically evil.”
Wondering at the limits of the ability, she cranked the dial back even further than she had. The doorway and most of the bedroom became a blur as weeks and months, and maybe even years, passed by in a flash. She couldn’t make out any people, but that’s what the constant blur in the room must be. Occasionally, the furniture would jump around to different places in the room or be replaced by different pieces.
She turned the dial of Dark energy back forward until time was at a regular pace again.
A woman in an old-fashioned dress sat in the corner, knitting. Deep wrinkles wreathed her face, but her hands looked strong. The rocking chair underneath her was moving in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The bed sat against the opposite wall from the present. A young boy lay in the bed, his forehead sweaty, tossing fitfully.
The door cracked open. It was painted a subdued blue, different from the current rich burgundy.
Another woman poked her head into the room, this one younger, not any older than Zara.
“Any improvement?” she asked.
The older woman in the rocker shook her head. “This flu is devastating. For this to happen at the same time as the war is a cruel trick by the Darkness.”
She put aside her knitting and rose to take a spot beside the bed. The younger woman joined, a mournful expression on her face.
“I wish Gerald were back from the war. He could heal Thomas in seconds if he were here. And then he wouldn’t be putting himself in danger every day.” She sniffed, tears coming to her eyes. “If I lose both of them…”
The older woman put her hand on the other’s shoulder. “The Light will look after them.”
A horrible, phlegmy cough wracked the boy’s body.
Zara couldn’t take it anymore. It was too sad.
She turned the dial, forging further into the past, turning it as far as she dared.
The furniture in the room vibrated, jumping around as if possessed. Soon, the walls tore down, opening Zara’s view to the sky. She gasped as the floor fell away underneath her, but her footing remained solid.
She had a view of the city now, but it didn’t last for long. Not because something obstructed her gaze, but because the city itself disassembled. First, all buildings taller than a few stories disappeared, then the rest followed.
In awe, Zara paused the vision. Manhattan was a pristine wilderness. Large oak and hickory trees rose around her, leaves brilliant—she’d paused in the autumn.
“This is unbelievable,” she said. “This must be hundreds of years ago. Is there no limit to this ability?”
She hadn’t been paying attention to the ebb of her Dark energy reservoir. The further back she went, the faster it drained. So far from the present, the energy disappeared astonishingly fast.
Once it was all gone, the present snapped back to stark reality. Instead of being overlaid with a forested paradise, she was firmly back in the small room she’d been given at Lighthaven.
Zara lifted her palm and attempted to call the Darkness to it, but nothing happened.
After not being spotted for weeks except for the brief appearance to show his true nature to the elders, Drake returned and made an immediate impact.
Reginald was teaching Zara how to use Farsight. Or rather, he was lecturing her on how incompetent she was at following his next-to-useless instructions.
The next thing she knew, the angel stood beside her and Reginald’s mouth hung agape.
“Leave,” Drake said. “I’m taking over as Zara’s tutor.”
Reginald straightened and shook his head. “She’s my pupil. Changing teachers now would just muddy the waters and confuse her further. Zara’s not a very… quick student, and any disruptions to her learning should be avoided.”
The angel stared at the man until Reginald began to sweat. He walked through the table until he was only a few inches away.
“Do you really think I don’t know what I’m doing?” he asked, his voice quiet. Somehow, that made it more intimidating.
To her surprise, Reginald stood his ground. “You know magic, but I’ve been teaching the youth at Lighthaven for twenty-five years.”
Not for the first time, Zara wondered why he cared so much about teaching her when he constantly belittled her.
“I don’t care about your ego,” Drake said. “You want to be mentor to the greatest mage in perhaps the history of the world. I don’t care. I won’t ask again. If you refuse to comply, then you’ll be dealt with another way.”
Did an angel just threaten someone?
Are they allowed to do that?
Regin
ald gulped and turned away, gathering his things and scurrying out of the courtyard.
“Now,” Drake said, turning back to the table and sitting down, resting his elbows on it. He’d walked through it mere seconds ago. “What do you know?”
Put on the spot, Zara stuttered. “Um, well, I can call Light, and I have enough control now that I don’t blast the entire courtyard with Light every time it comes.”
Drake shook his head. “That’s it? What has that idiot been doing all this time? The most important thing you need to know about the Light is that it is the most basic but the most useful form of magic. It can interfere with Dark magic and sever the connection between a Dark mage and his spells, and the same goes for the Darkness. Now, I can only directly teach you the Light abilities, but I will coach you in the Dark ones as best I can.”
“Isn’t that counter to your whole… existence?”
He waved it off. “All mortals except for Light mages have a balance of Light and Darkness within them. It’s the choices they make that matter. I have a hunch you can still use the Darkness for good if you carry the Light inside you. Dark mages have no Light, so they never would.”
That kicked off the most intense couple of weeks of Zara’s life. Reginald had been a hard teacher because he was petty, dismissive, and antagonistic. Drake was a hard teacher because he demanded perfection and all of the effort she could summon.
It made all the difference in the world. Her command of her abilities, both Light and Dark, flourished under the angel’s tutelage. Ten days after he took over her training, she was practicing the sort of projections that Reginald had waved off as years away.
He took her through each of the abilities and made her practice them daily. She barely had time to talk with Grace and Sophie other than meal times. Almost all of their conversations had devolved to girl advice on how to talk to Alex. It mortified her, but it was information she sucked up like a dry sponge—if only it helped.
As for Alex, she made time for him, usually by sacrificing sleep. He remained accessible yet distant. One second would be warmth and laughing and a knowing sparkle in his eye, and the next he would realize that he was being too forward with her and bid her goodnight with a kiss on the forehead.
She felt like a stew of teenage hormones that had arrived ten years too late. In her mid-twenties and lacking any seduction skills whatsoever, all she wanted was to kiss Alex and she couldn’t figure out how to make it happen.
It was infuriating.
Luckily, her lessons provided a glorious distraction to keep her from fixating on it for all her waking hours.
“Charming is a delicate art,” Drake said. “Since there’s no guarantee of success, a mage has to become superb at determining which outcomes are worth trying to influence and how. They also must decide exactly what level of energy will give the best odds of success without being wasteful. Layer in how most uses of charming involve snap decisions, and it can be the most challenging ability for Beacons to use well. Many Beacons would neglect practicing charming, preferring to rely on methods that guarantee results.”
The more she learned about it, the more impressed Zara was with how Grace charmed herself every day. It may have been instinctive, but Zara rarely saw her friend stumble irrecoverably.
Drake had her practice by flipping quarters on the table, sending little bursts of Light to influence which side landed up. At first it was easy to pretend like the magic wasn’t really doing anything, but after she got heads twenty flips in a row, she had to admit that something was afoot.
“Now, I want you to make the quarter land on its edge,” Drake said.
She stared at him. “That’s impossible.”
He shook his head. “Not impossible. It’s highly unlikely. There’s a small but very important difference there. It’s in that space that charming works.”
It took a few days of mind-numbing attempts before she got it right. The first day of practice ended when, frustrated after dozens of failed attempts in a row, she poured her entire reservoir into the flip.
The coin bounced on its edge several times before coming to a rest there.
“Yes!” Zara jumped to her feet, celebrating. The movement disturbed the table and the coin fell over, but that barely dampened her enthusiasm.
Drake frowned at her, and she faltered at the look he gave her. “Sloppy.”
“What do you mean? I did it!”
“Call a ball of Light in your palm like I taught you.”
She put out her hand and concentrated. A wisp of Light fluttered into existence for the briefest of moments before it faded.
“You used all of your Light for that one task. Now you have to wait for your reservoir to refill. Luckily, in Lighthaven, the balance is so heavily tilted toward the Light that it won’t take as long. Should be back to normal in the morning. What if you’d done that in the middle of a battle with Dark mages? You’d be unable to call the Light and you’d be helpless.”
She sat back down, sobered. “I can see why the old Beacons didn’t bother with it.”
A small smile crept onto his face. “It can be useful. It’s just hard to use it appropriately, especially in the middle of tense situations like a battle.”
“I can see that.”
“The opposite ability for charming is cursing, and we’ll move onto practicing that since your Dark reservoir is still full.”
She’d groaned, but Drake allowed her few breaks. It was empowering to learn to use her powers properly.
A day later, he showed her how to tap into her Farsight.
“This can only be used in certain ways. You’ll only ever be able to see the immediate scene around the person you’re looking for. They have to have an aura dominated by the Light to give the magic a focus.”
He showed her the specifics of how to manipulate the energy to activate the ability and tasked her to check in on her friends.
Unlike Reginald’s fragmented instructions, Drake seemed to know exactly how to describe the mental maneuvers required to bend the Light to her will. In only seconds, her vision hovered above Sophie as she washed dishes in the kitchen with Grace.
“I think we need to just shove them in a room together,” Grace said. “Push a couch against the door and refuse to move it until they sort it out.”
Sophie laughed and flicked suds at the Scottish girl. “You always have the bluntest solutions to everything, Gracie. Although this time, you might be right. Zara just needs to storm into his room and not budge until he kisses her.”
Zara blushed. Her friends were talking about her and Alex!
It shouldn’t have been a surprise—it was a favorite topic of theirs when they spent any time together. It still shocked her to hear them talking about her.
She let the magic go, hating the feeling of eavesdropping on girls who had only ever been good to her.
Drake went on about how Dark mages called their version scrying and the similarities between the two, but her mind was still on the conversation her friends had been having.
Alex perched on the windowsill that had become a second home to him.
Now that Draconel had taken over Zara’s lessons, he could have joined in and been a part of teaching the young mage, sharing his perspective. The archangel was a brilliant instructor, though, and Alex knew that he would just be a distraction.
He had an entire mortal life to spend basking in the radiance of her presence. The most important thing was for Zara to learn how to be a proper mage and control her magic.
She was making frighteningly quick progress. She grew more powerful every day, and it was hard to tell where it would stop. The mastery she gained over an ability in a single day defied explanation, except for the one thing that had become abundantly clear—Zara was unique, unlike anything that had ever come before. She was the balance, personified.
No, he was content to spend his days watching the young woman reach her potential from the window overlooking the courtyard.
His nights,
however, were a different story.
Zara had blossomed in Lighthaven. Taken out of the social and intellectual drought of her previous life and given confidence through her growing mastery of the Light and the Dark, she’d become vivacious and assured. When Alex had first met her, he didn’t think she could attract him more.
He’d been poorly mistaken.
It had taken time to come to terms with the depths of his infatuation, but there was no doubt in his mind any longer. He wanted her, and he needed her. He’d fallen for her. It didn’t matter if the Council would think it was wrong or if Draconel objected—he would have her.
They spent at least an hour together every night, and often more, talking about anything and everything. He tried as hard as he could to hide how much of that time was spent restraining himself.
She was inexperienced. He knew that. And he didn’t want to push her or rush her. No matter what signals he thought she was giving, it had to be her choice. That was the compromise he’d made with himself. His entire being yearned for her, and he wouldn’t deny himself so long as it was what she wanted too.
But the moment she made that move, she was his.
Drake taught her the particulars of healing someone, running her through what to expect. Zara had already healed Alex from incredible injuries, but that had been instinctive.
“You need to be touching the patient directly. The closer to their head and their heart, the better, but close to the wound is just as good while treating something specific. Then you create a bridge between them and your Light through your hands and let the Light fill them.”
She concentrated on his words. It seemed straightforward.
“Okay, time to practice.”
He produced a knife from somewhere in his sleeve and ran the blade across his forearm, the steel biting deep.
“Drake!”
Crimson welled forth from the cut. It was even deeper than the ones she’d seen on Alex, and the blood ran so freely that it splashed onto the table, scattering droplets across the surface.
“Please do hurry a little,” he said, his voice dry.
“Of course.” She may have panicked a few weeks ago, but she didn’t feel like the same person any longer. “Give me your arm.”
Fallen: An Angel Romance Page 15
