by Jamie Magee
Reveca was playing with fire and she knew it.
She didn’t care how lucid King thought he was. As soon as he left the Edge, as soon as he was within the realm of life his memories would be hazed again. She had time to understand him, maybe even time to lead him to believe it was lifetimes after he left her that she found Talon. Of course there was no way to explain away the lifetimes she had since then, no way for her to ever claim not to have deep-rooted emotions for Talon. And she shouldn’t have to; clearly both Reveca and her first love had long ago moved on.
For all she knew, the lost love she had grieved for all her life really was dead and gone. If anything he’d morphed into someone she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Too much time, too much guilt was building within her right then. She needed rest. She needed to bless out her sister, she needed to do a million things. But before she could do any of that, she was going to have to face the one man that could read her like a book.
She calmly stepped toward Talon. He was giving orders to the other guys, telling them exactly what cover story King had, precisely how to get him home to the Beauregard Boneyard.
In the mix of words she understood that Holden was already arrested, that thus far their quick fix had worked.
She leaned into Talon as he walked her back to the passage, feeling each of her boys behind her.
“We’ve been through bigger hells, Vec,” Talon said quietly.
She held him tighter, felt herself quiver.
He glanced down.
“What?” she breathed.
“Your energy—it’s never been this strong. What happened in there?”
“Cashton told you.”
His dark eyes narrowed on her. He hesitated, telling the others to pass. Carefully, Talon reached to pull her closer to him. “Then maybe I should make it a point to have my way with you for hours each time you leave for The Edge.” He tilted his head slightly. “There has to be a reason that you’re more powerful right now than I have ever known you to be.”
“You’re taking credit for this?” she said with the sly smile she always gave him.
“Maybe I’m just looking for an excuse,” he said as his hands gripped her sides. “I’ve missed this glow in your eyes. That’s a good sign…an omen that whatever rut you’ve been in is fading.” He grinned. “A good war always did get you pumped up.”
When he leaned in to kiss her, she let her lips meet his, did her best to hide her out of control mind.
Good omen her ass…she’d just brought hell on earth back into existence.
Episode Two: Chapter One, The Very Beginning
War always looms, and it does so because change is constantly on the horizon. Whether people claim to love or hate change, deep down it’s always the latter.
The Dominarum Coven was always at the forefront of change. The earlier generations were nomadic to say the least. They were always moving from land to land in search of a deep spiritual connection, a way to harvest the powers they felt in the world at large. Powers they feared, adored, and worshipped.
Reveca had long since reached the stage of womanhood, but she was still a child in the eyes of her coven. Twenty years was infancy. Most of the coven, without the help of magic, could easily reach the ripe age of two hundred if they were lucky enough to die of natural causes.
The length of their lifespan gave each member of the coven an immense amount of time to practice their crafts, to reach further, to beckon souls from other realms of life and death. Immortality—they were on the brink of unveiling that gift, or curse, depending on how one perceived it to be.
The coven was divided. Some felt that gift was the highest anyone could ask to receive; others saw it as a prison. They wanted to move through the stages of death, they wanted to find life again, new lessons. They felt that would enhance the power of their souls far more thoroughly than living in one existence indefinitely.
At twenty years old, Reveca already felt immortal. Life was new; it was a dare, full of possibilities. She did her best to take in every lesson her coven gave her. She practiced her arts daily and with vigor. But the lessons brought more boredom than pleasure. She mastered them too quickly, naturally. Her twin, Saige, was more cautious when it came to the arts, would study every risk before she toyed with them, even if the coven assured her they were safe passages.
Saige was the debutant. The princess who was always prim and proper. Reveca was anything but. She’d rather be in the stables, in some field, connected with the one true magic of the living world: nature.
From the moment Reveca and her sister were born, as their father’s only heirs, he had done nothing but plot for their coupling. He knew his daughters were powerful, and he knew if he did not find proper mates that were just as powerful, or more so, they would live tormented, lonely lives. It was imperative to him that his bloodline, the bloodline that began the Dominarum Coven, reached a new greatness—that his daughters would have the balance they needed in order for them to guide the next generations through the turbulent waters the seers had predicted. The Holy Wars.
With that fear, he had reached out to the spirits that spoke to him often. He had allowed others into their village, entertained their knowledge.
That open-armed mentality had allowed a young man, that the coven named Jamison, within its village; a soul that anyone could sense had immense power, yet was coupled with humbleness. He was a lost soul that the inner circle was certain had fallen from the heavens above. They were sure he had lost a battle with one of the darkest Gods above. That didn’t make him weak in their eyes, but all the more powerful for he was still alive. Who he was, where he came from, what was meant for him to do in their lives was something that was kept from the rest of the coven. For good reason. Jamison needed time to heal, to be one of them.
At first it was rumored he was a suitor for one or both of the girls. Reveca knew better. Though the boy had great power, the kind of power the coven had never crossed, the last thing he had was a mating mind.
Instead, he studied right alongside the girls, became a brother of sorts. Reveca enjoyed teasing him, finding ways to make him smile now and again, but that was as far as her affections went. In her mind, he agreed too much with her sister, making him hard to trust.
It wasn’t until the soldiers came to her village that Reveca even thought to put her girlish ways aside, somewhat act like the proper lady her sister was.
And that was because of the leader, Kenson.
The day Kenson’s forces marched into her village she was far outside of its boundaries, on the bank of the river. Before her there was a bouquet of pink dying swamp lilies. Her sister had plucked several of them to have at the banquet dinner the night before, the night the soldiers were supposed to arrive. The flowers were rare, and one Reveca’s favorites. It killed her to see them dying without reason, which gave her an excuse to practice magic that was forbidden.
She was crouched on the bank, the flowers before her. For this resurrection spell, she was pulling from a source within. She was the solitary, vital, presence of nature. There were no herbs, no crystals, or the moon. Only her…her heart…a selfless request.
She had been trying for hours. Each time she opened her squinted eyes she found the sun had done nothing more than further slaughter the lilies.
She pulled in a deep breath and focused once more. All at once, she felt a hum. It started at the crown of her head, and slowly it spilled over her, sliding down her face, kissing her lips then her shoulders. When it crossed her chest she let out a gasp, felt her body respond to that sensation like the virgin she was. That hum moved down her sides and when it reached the core of her, it was all she could do to not moan. She had never once tapped into energy that deep, that powerful. No one had ever even alluded to the fact that it would feel like that.
Slowly she opened her eyes. A gasping smile came to her as she glanced down at her lilies; they were not only alive but also firmly rooted once more.
“Now,
they can only hope to be as alluring as you,” she heard a deep, charismatic voice say. It was like velvet and eased over her just as seductively as that power she had just felt. In fact, she was in doubt that what she had felt was magic at all.
She looked just behind her. Mounted on a stallion was the most breathtaking man she’d ever seen. It had nothing to do with his mount, or his uniform. It wasn’t his enthralling image or those eyes. No, it was this surge of energy that emanated from him.
“You did this?” she asked, letting her temper flare in her cheeks. The rush of mastering that spell was now squashed, and she felt like a child.
“No…” he said as that stare moved down her body nice and slow, so slow that she was sure she felt his glance feather against her flesh. Felt it awaken something inside of her, a warm humming current. It stirred her all at once. The entire world seemed different, more in focus, yet vast and unexplored at the same time.
“You’re lying,” she said as she stood. Numb feeling or not, she was not one to blush and bow to a man’s power. She had proven that over and over with each suitor that came her way. Hell, one time she nearly killed Zale, another witch whose family stemmed from one of the most powerful bloodlines in the coven.
Kenson’s army was in the distance marching toward her village, each glancing her way as they passed. She didn’t care though. Didn’t care that they surely found it amusing that she had left the dress her mother insisted she wore paces back and was in her slip, one that was stained from the bank of the river. Didn’t care that her long hair was down and windblown. She didn’t care that she was glaring up at someone that these men clearly had respect for, someone that she already knew had more power than all the elders in the village combined, including her own father.
Kenson leaned forward in his saddle and bit his bottom lip just before he spoke. “Lying to you would be impossible.”
Reveca jutted her chin up. “Why is that?”
Those otherworldly eyes moved all around her then met her gaze. “You can’t lie to someone who sees past the vessel…who sees your soul.”
His words vibrated the very core of her—her very body and soul wanted to lurch forward and touch this boy, own him. Her mind was the hold back. Her mind was telling her to hold fast to the fierceness that had always kept boys at bay—ones that saw her as a way to rule, ones that only wanted the supremacy her family had. “Who said I could see past that with you?”
“I see you, love. That act is not a one way passage.” And with that he winked then galloped away.
The further he moved away from her, the fainter that hum Reveca felt became. She glanced down at her flowers, and then walked with haste back to her village.
Kenson was a glorious man, or rather a boy that was lingering on the edge of manhood. His warrior body made every girl in the coven blush when he passed. His dark hair, which reached his shoulders in gentle waves, begged to be touched. His eyes—a crystal clear blue that would rival any ocean—seemed to look right through your soul. Downright ghostly, those eyes were framed in thick, dark, long lashes.
It was a holy war he was leading, and he was good at it. His skill as a warrior helped that along, but his knowledge, his gift with the arts, made him nearly impossible to stop.
Reveca knew he was the last man on earth her father would ever want her to be with. A man like him had enemies; a man like him would stretch every safe boundary. He would not stay stagnant for long. He wouldn’t grow the empire her father wanted her to oversee one day.
Reveca didn’t care though. He was the first boy that didn’t tease her about the dirt under her nails or snicker when he found her in the stables in boy pants. He didn’t see any of that; he saw her.
Everyone that Reveca had ever known in her life made her feel restrained, they held her back. They’d tell her that no girl as young as her should have that much dare to her. Ever.
Kenson didn’t.
At first it was only glances, sweet smiles, a wayward wink here or there. But then they began to meet each night as the coven slept. He told her of the wars he’d fought, told her how the world was growing darker, that this was the beginning of the end. He told her of magic that her father had warned her to never approach, even showed her how to use it.
Using that power, casting any spell, was simplistic in his presence. Even when she wasn’t near him, when she had just left him or was due to see him soon it was easy as well. Reveca became so skilled that each of the elders would watch her in her studies and whisper in haste as they left. She had mastered skills that were decades beyond where she should be.
This boy, Kenson, he could speak of hell on earth and still smile, not because he was cold or enjoyed it but because he knew how to enjoy the moments of bliss.
He once told Reveca, “Even if you only have a second to be happy each day, one second to feel a rush, you take it because it’s not promised to come again. That’s where the power is, love. It’s in exalting moments, no doubt there. ”
And they stole those moments. There was an adventure every day. It could have been as simple as riding a stallion across an open field in the midst of a thunderstorm, or as complicated as a spell that taught Reveca how to bring back to life a dying plant, or move her energy, use her energy as a weapon.
That went on for months. It was a deep-rooted friendship that was only a breath away from becoming something so much more. For the first time in Reveca’s life she felt understood, enthralled with life.
She became so enchanted that she barely noticed the man named Lorecan that came to the coven. How her sister, who was always proper, was giggling like a fool at the dinners held each night in the great hall. No, she didn’t notice because she was too focused on when she could catch Kenson’s gaze, catch the cues he would drop for her to meet him.
As the weeks moved forward war was the constant topic of conversation. That and the rumor that very soon Lorecan would choose his bride. Which twin he would choose seemed to be in question among those that partook in gossip. Those rumors never bothered Reveca. To that day, their parents had never denied Saige a request. It was clear that even if Lorecan didn’t want Saige, and Reveca was sure he did, her parents would only offer Saige’s hand.
None of that rambling conversation troubled Reveca as much as the idea that Kenson was taking his sweet time with her. Each time they snuck away they would practice the forbidden magic, speak of how they saw the world, and he would pull her to him, melt her with slow sweet kisses that seemed to savor the sensation, that hum on each of their lips.
Each and every time they found a rush, would dare to push forward, that his hands would begin to explore, something would happen to stop them. More times than not it was the likes of Zale sneaking up on them, even Reveca’s other friends, Evanthe and Windsome. Something or someone always stopped them.
It was so frustrating that she was determined that the next time she slipped away with him that the talk of magic and sweet whispers were going to have to wait. She wanted him. Couldn’t handle it anymore. And if he didn’t want her that way he needed to say that so she could get over him. Even though the very idea of him rejecting her, of him not seeing and feeling what they were the way she did made her sick to her stomach. She simply had to know one way or the other.
One night she waited for hours just outside the council room doors. Kenson was in there, along with Jamison, and Lorecan, all the elders. She could hear the arguments, and she whole-heartedly agreed with Kenson, and it wasn’t because she was in love with him.
He was stating that the battle the coven wanted to engage in was fruitless. The coven had nothing to gain but enemies from such an endeavor. The others thought they needed to stake their claim on the land they were on. They said the coven needed this land, that it was rich with spirits, that and if they didn’t stand up now, others would come.
When the meeting adjourned Reveca stayed in the shadows of the second floor, stared down at all the men, watched Jamison, Kenson, and Lorecan conference with he
r father. Though Kenson kept to his argument his glance found Reveca. She smiled and nodded her head. The glint in his eyes was his silent yes.
Reveca felt her heart flutter as she ducked into her room.
Saige moved in her sleep, so Reveca waited for her to settle. Then went to the window, climbed out and ran, ran as fast as she could across the field to a distant river, one that tended to pond in shallow ponds.
Bold. Kenson had always told her she had to be bold. Always told her that any fool could see how powerful she was, that if she tried to hide it or refused to acknowledge it that it would be a show of weakness.
She’d tried to be bold with him, but in most cases her nerves would get the best of her, and she’d let him guide them, which led them to where they were—her with an aching want and no way to know if he saw her the same way, or if he was just humoring her while his armies were camped within her village.
A man as bold as Kenson would have no issues asking for something he wanted. Or needed. That’s how she saw it, why her mind toyed with her the way it did, gave her doubt.
In the shadows of the brush, Reveca let her gown fall. She waited until she heard his distant approach before she waded into the water, let it cover her to the point of her shoulders.
She watched as he scanned the bank looking for her, grinned when she saw the look of disappointment in his eyes.
“Are you looking for me?” she said with a sly grin dangling on her lips.
Kenson returned that smile the second he saw her. He’d never admit it aloud, he just wasn’t made that way, but Reveca had stopped his heart the first time he laid eyes on her. Miles before he reached her village he had felt an insane pull on him. It stirred him so deeply that he rode far ahead of his navigators, needing only that pull to guide him. The closer he got to her the more invincible he felt…the more vulnerable he felt.
She was a walking fantasy. A woman that was not afraid to speak her mind. One that was comfortable in her own skin and drop dead gorgeous. Her eyes would be the death of any man. They had a lure to them, and when he managed to get past that point, let his stare travel down her body, he thanked every God he knew in his life that at the very least he was able to cross that enigmatic beauty’s path.
