Hidden Magic

by Melinda Kucsera

  They stumbled to a halt before he reached them, faces slack with horror. Simith slowed in confusion, following the direction of their gaze. Jessa was beside the side entrance. The door had been thrown open and Relle stood on the threshold. She wore no glamour; her Fae features spectral in the jagged illumination. There was murder in her silver eyes.

  She shot out a hand. Simith barely rolled out of the way before a cyclone blasted from her fingertips. It flung Firo and his soldiers across the room like butterflies on a sudden draft. Jessa must have called out her name, for Relle turned her head slowly to regard her friend, squinting as if she didn’t fully see her. Worry clutched him. The magic he sensed rolling off Relle was like nothing he’d ever felt. Wild. Ruthless. A lightning bolt of pure brutality. It was as though she herself had been spelled.

  Jessa pointed, and he caught Katie’s name on her voice as he hastened toward them. Without a word, Relle moved the direction she’d indicated. The door slammed shut behind her, causing Jessa to jump back. She grasped the door handle, tugging furiously. It didn’t open.

  “It’s not locked,” she yelled when he reached her. She put her shoulder into it. “It’s jammed or something.”

  Shouts of alarm threaded the wind. Simith turned. At the front entrance, silhouetted by shadow and storm, a single figure sat in her wheeled chair of metal. Power blazed in a platinum aura around her. Firo and his soldiers had recovered. They stood shoulder to shoulder facing her, magic cascading from their drawn blades. The Helm shouted orders Simith had once followed into battle. “Stand firm.” “Courage before despair.” But they would find no victory here. A pang of regret swept through him, but he set it aside. They had chosen their course and must each meet the consequences of that path.

  He pulled Jessa away from the door. “We must take cover.”

  “But…” She caught sight of Ionia and lurched sideways into him. He steadied her with an arm around her shoulders, scanning the debris-strewn landscape. Where could they hide from what was coming?

  There. Behind the barricade he’d made for her earlier. Some of the buckets had been tipped over, but the corner walls might protect them from the worst. He led Jessa that direction, wind thwarting his speed.

  “What about Katie?” she hollered.

  Simith caught sight of Relle bending down next to a prone figure beneath the table where he’d left Katie. She gestured with one hand and the wind vanished from her hair and clothes. A shield. Simith sucked in a breath. They were out of time.

  It began with a howling. A vaporous shrieking that filled his ears. The flickering lights went out. Firo and his soldiers roared as they charged Ionia, hurling blasts of magic ahead of them. Their power split harmlessly around her, dissolved with a blink of her wrath-filled eyes. The gale blowing in changed, twisting itself into a spin that threw the fairies from their feet. It lifted them into the air.

  Jessa cried out as the wind pulled her legs from under her. If not for Simith’s arm around her shoulders, she’d have been swept away. He crushed her against him, beating his wings furiously to combat the currents, boots sliding over the ground as if on ice. He spied an overturned table on its side, the top wedged against a support beam, and managed to drag them to it as Ionia began to chant. Flames threaded the cyclone, embers of amber and gold that reminded him of the fireflies in the marshes of home. When they reached the fairies, their skin smoldered and charred. They screamed.

  “Don’t look.” Simith blocked Jessa’s view when she tried to turn, pushing her down behind the table. She curled herself around the support beam at her middle, gripping it tight just as every window exploded.

  He threw his body over hers. Glass shattered around them, bouncing off the table and off of him. A pinprick of pain awoke on his hand. Dots of blood splashed the ground in front of Jessa’s face.

  “Simith,” she said.

  “Stay down.”

  He folded himself closer and ducked his head, the sound of her quick breath in his ear. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way, clinging to the beam and to each other. The fairies’ screams went silent. Then the wind quieted and the wild sense of magic lifting his hairs dimmed.

  Simith risked a look skyward, careful not to let the glass sheeting from his shoulders fall onto Jessa. The night sky glimmered once more with stars; the storm clouds burned away like mist beneath a high sun. The sudden quiet left his ears ringing.

  “Is it over?” Jessa asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Jessa?” someone called from nearby, a touch of panic in their voice. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “Katie,” she whispered, shifting beneath him to rise.

  He crawled out from behind the table and offered Jessa a hand. She accepted it, and he took the moment to scan her for injury. A few scratches on her arms and legs, but otherwise unharmed. Relief coursed through him.

  Jessa, spotting her friend by the front entrance, dashed off, skirting tables and hopping over debris. Simith followed behind slowly. He saw no sign of the fairies, though a charred scent lingered on the air. Relle knelt beside her grandmother’s chair. The elder Fae sat slumped, her head tipped back, her eyes closed. Overexerted, perhaps. Both of them, he thought, noting that neither wore any glamour now, their Fae features and long limbs revealed in the moonlight.

  He paused with a glance at the side door. Might it be open now? There would come no better moment than this to escape. Even if the Helms wanted him dead, he stood a chance at evading them in his realm where he could regain his magic. Here, he had none, and the Fae made it clear they didn’t trust him with their secret. He highly doubted they meant him to live out his days in this world.

  “Stay where you are, pixie,” Relle said.

  Simith closed his eyes, cursed his hesitancy, and turned. She’d stepped away from her grandmother and approached, his crystal sword in her hand, his bandolier of knives slung over one arm. When she reached him, he blinked in surprise as she held both out to him in offering. He took them immediately, settling his blade into in its scabbard. The weight at his side balanced him in a way little else did.

  “Go quickly,” Relle told him. “Before Granny wakes. She won’t let you go, but I will.”

  He had no words for a moment. “Why?”

  Her gaze settled on Jessa and Katie where they stood locked in an embrace.

  “Fairy trickery would’ve taken someone precious from me if not for your clever thinking. The fairies are dead, burned up along with the Sorrow Blade.” She touched her face almost self-consciously. “It took everything we had, but it’s gone. Only you know we live here, now.”

  She left a question in those words. Simith answered it.

  “I will tell no one.” He extended his hand. “I swear it.”

  She returned the clasp, exhaling slowly, silver eyes searching his. “I believe you. Now, go. I can’t promise your freedom if Granny comes to before you’re gone.”

  He nodded once, casting a final look toward Jessa—only to find her coming toward him. Her friend trailed behind, her stare riveted on Relle, who staunchly avoided meeting it.

  “I must say goodbye,” he told Jessa, feeling a strange pressure in his chest.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Where will you go?” Jessa asked as they ambled down the lanes of sunflowers to the tree line where the insanity of the night began. Dawn wasn’t far off, but so much had happened she found it difficult to believe only hours had passed and not days.

  They’d split off from the others at Relle’s house. Ionia slept on, utterly spent after the battle. As Relle explained before, magic stressed the body. Relle had looked ready to lie down herself, but had asked Katie to stay. To explain everything, she’d said. Jessa supposed that was only fair given all that her friend had been through. Katie was remarkably quiet the entire time, though she didn’t seem able to take her eyes off of Relle. Understandable. Finding out your long-time crush wasn’t fu
lly human would make even someone as boisterous as Katie a bit contemplative.

  “The fairies have made my return to the legion impossible,” Simith replied to her question. “They’ll be looking for me, or those they sent to kill me.” He sighed. “I may travel home to Drifthorn whilst I determine what must be done. If they’ll have me.”

  The last came on a low murmur, sadness leaking through his stoic demeanor. She wished she knew how to comfort someone. Not a healer and not a soother, though he didn’t seem the sort to appreciate coddling. So, she didn’t.

  “That sounds like a terrible idea.”

  He looked at her, brows darting upward.

  “It’s a retreat,” she said firmly. “The fairies did all this because you arranged peace talks with the trolls and they wanted to stop them, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means the trolls never double crossed you. They wanted those peace talks. You outsmarted the fairies here, but if you give up now, they still win.”

  “Firo did not lie. I don’t have the backing of the Thistle Court to negotiate peace.”

  “But they use your people to fight their battles. What about the other pixies? Would they back you?”

  He didn’t respond, his gaze turning inward. Mulling over her words? Probably offended by her presumptuousness. She shouldn’t give him advice on matters she knew close to nothing about. It surprised her she had bothered. That was more like the old her, the one who once expressed her thoughts with enthusiasm. The one who had enthusiasm for anything at all, channeling her fever for life into verse capable of describing the indescribable.

  Was it the pregnancy lending her this zeal? The near death experience? She eyed Simith where he strode beside her. Maybe it was that someone had saved her life twice tonight, endangering himself to do it. She thought of his weight coming down atop her, how his hands had shielded her head, leaving his own vulnerable while the glass crumbled around them. It had shaken something loose in her. She wasn’t quite sure what, but she felt it in her chest, shining through the fog like a lighthouse.

  They reached the woods in silence, heading to the tree where the soil was still churned and scattered at the base of the trunk. He paused there, brushing his fingertips against the bark.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I must not retreat. If I can face the slaughter of lives without stepping backward, then I can do the same for the sake of peace. I will try again.”

  Worry gnawed at her. What if something happened to him because she’d goaded him into it?

  “Please, be careful. Don’t—Don’t go about it recklessly based on what I said.” She swallowed thickly. “I don’t know anything about your world.”

  “You may not know the details, but your sight is clear.”

  “It’s not. Really.” She turned her gaze toward the west where darkness hung heaviest on the horizon. “How can I accuse you of retreating when I’ve been doing exactly that for months?”

  He moved closer. “What is it you flee from?”

  Her throat tightened. “Their absence.”

  The tattoos on her back pressed into her skin.

  Flight 276

  They whispered. Letters, numbers. A poetry award ceremony. A plane that never arrived. She hadn’t even wanted them to come, but they never listened.

  “We love you. We want to support you.”

  Grandma. Mom. Dad. Her older sisters.

  She hadn’t wanted them to come. “You’ll embarrass me,” she’d said. “I don’t need anybody there.” Had those been the last words between them?

  Now, there was no one. Now, she was always alone, the silence devastating. The emptiness where their voices had been like a hole she’d fallen down and couldn’t crawl out from.

  A brief touch on her shoulder brought her mind back. The trees. The fading scent of night on the air. Simith watched her, his face solemn with understanding. To her great relief, he said nothing. No platitudes. No attempt to cross the breach with examples of his own pain. Everyone suffered on their own, yet his brown eyes held hers with the warmth of solidarity, and she felt less alone.

  “I must go,” he said, reluctantly.

  “I wish I had something to give you,” she said. “Some little memento from my world. We haven’t known each other long, but…”

  “It’s strange to think we’ll never meet again.” He nodded. “Perhaps you could—” He flushed. “No. Forgive me.”

  “What?”

  “It’s too great a boon to ask.”

  “Simith,” she said, amused by his formality and deference. “Just tell me.”

  He hesitated, almost shy. “Will you speak a poem? I should like your words to accompany me.”

  Touched by his request, her mouth curved in the first smile she could remember in ages. “I’ll give you one of my favorites. It’s not by me, but a poet named Emily Dickinson. Is that all right?”

  She wasn’t ready to say any of her own work aloud, the sound of it still too much to bear.

  “It would be an honor,” he said.

  Jessa stepped forward and took his hands. It didn’t feel right to have any distance between them. He sought something from this. She wanted him to find it. Closing her eyes, she readied her mind, voice, and mouth. Then, she opened them and began.

  “‘Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in the soul,

  And sings the tune without the words,

  And never stops at all,

  And sweetest in the gale is heard;

  And sore must be the storm

  That could abash the little bird

  That kept so many warm.

  I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

  And on the strangest sea;

  Yet, never, in extremity,

  It asked a crumb of me.’”

  The rhythm emerged soft as a secret while the sunflowers watched on and the night sky brightened toward dawn. Her heart thudded wildly. The words…She hadn’t just recited them like she’d done so often in her class. She’d felt them. They danced in her chest, little sparks of light and life. For the first time since the plane crash, a wisp of hope reached through the numbing grief. If a shard of her broken heart had survived, maybe she did have something to offer the tiny ember growing within her.

  “‘Sweetest in the gale is heard.’” Simith stared at the ground, his face so still it gave no hint at the thoughts behind it. He released her and pulled free a knife from his bandolier. Slender with a silver luster, it was beautiful. An intricate leafy scrollwork, stained in green, twined the metal from blade point to hilt. He kissed it once, then closed her fingers around the grip.

  “A token,” he said softly, both hands encasing hers. “Take this and flee no more, Jessa of Skylark.”

  They stared at each other, something unspoken shifting in the air between them. Then he strode to the cavity of earth at the base of the tree. With a flutter of his dragonfly wings, he positioned himself above it, casting her one final glance before plunging down and disappearing from sight.

  The world tilted violently. Jessa toppled over with a gasp. Clutching her belly, she rolled to her side, but couldn’t get up. Her strength drained away. The new scar on her leg burned and unnatural fatigue towed her under. She tried to call for help, but her eyes slipped closed before she could utter a sound.

  Continue the story with the next installment, “When Day Fades into Night.”

  After Simith returns to his world, Jessa discovers the magic he used to heal her had the wayward effect of fusing their life forces. If they aren’t reunited to untangle them in time, both will die. Pick up Wayward Magic, book two in the trilogy, today!

  About the Author

  A child of two cultures, Anela Deen, a hapa haole Hawaiian girl, is currently landlocked in the Midwest. After exploring the world for a chunk of years, she hunkered down in Minnesota and now fills her days with family, fiction, and the occasional snowstorm. With a house full of lovable toddlers, a three-legged cat, and one h
andsome Dutchman, she prowls the keyboard late at night while the minions sleep. Coffee? Nah, she prefers tea with a generous spoonful of sarcasm.

  For more information about the author, please visit: https://amidtheimaginary.wordpress.com/my-books and don’t forget to 1-click Wayward Magic now to read more by Anela Deen!

  The Greatest Sin

  A Sacrifice of Blood

  Lee French & Erik Kort

  Illusions can hide anything. Those crafted by a master can even hide themselves. Algie, first introduced in The Greatest Sin 2: Harbinger, comes to life as never before in “A Sacrifice of Blood.” His past illuminates his present with a crack of thunder and the slash of a knife.

  Lee French & Erik Kort

  In the world of The Greatest Sin epic fantasy series, a teenage boy and his grandmother face a home invasion on a stormy afternoon by the sea. With neither capable of fighting toe-to-toe, they'll have to use their wits and their knowledge of the house to defeat a band of murderous thieves.

  Bright, fleeting splashes of white light threw sharp shadows across the board of the strategy game between Algernon and his grandmother. Rain lashed the single, small-paned window in an unceasing clatter. The boom of thunder rattled art pieces hanging on the walls, clinking tiny pieces of colored glass together.

  Algernon stared at the game pieces, looking for the move his grandmother wouldn’t expect. He saw several options, some more predictable than others.

  Grandma Katona sipped mint tea from her cup decorated with geometric designs in purple. She sat closer to the crackling fireplace than Algernon with a plush purple blanket over her legs. As ever, pearl-tipped pins held her white hair in an immaculate bun. More pearls graced her neck on an elegant string of golden knots.

  “You know what to do, Algie, you just don’t want to do it. That’s your elf blood holding you back.”