The Book of Spells and Such

by Jacquie Underdown

  Tuti smiles reassuringly and leaves the room.

  Ariana takes a deep breath for courage and focuses on her magic. Power sparkles in her cells, so vibrantly. She focuses on all that is within the palace, village, surrounding grasslands, and farms.

  “Take away the mask and see what’s inside. True thoughts and feelings no longer will hide.” Like a silent but deadly pulse from an explosion, the spell casts outward, echoing across the immense distance to all the locations intended to receive it. Ariana’s head dizzies for a second, two, but she breathes deeply, reeling consciousness back in. Her body has fatigued, but she feels well and is fairly lucid.

  Hadeon watches her intently for a moment. “You okay?”

  She nods, eyelids drooping with a sudden rush of need for sleep. “A little sleepy, but okay.”

  Marseon pushes Hadeon along and sits on the bed in front of him, beside Ariana. She rubs her hands together and begins her check-up. Again the horrible pain as Marseon’s palms float over her chest.

  Tuti rushes in with a cup filled with the green liquid Ariana was forced to drink earlier that morning. Ariana grips the cup, but strains to hold it, her muscles in her arm shaking. Tuti helps her bring the cup to her lips until she has swallowed the entire contents. It vibrates through her veins, bringing some aliveness and strength on its journey.

  “Thank you,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Thank you both. Do you mind if I have a quiet word with Hadeon alone please?”

  Marseon stands, nodding.

  “I’ll start my search for imposters,” says Tuti, addressing Hadeon.

  Hadeon nods. “Yes. Please. Father will help you.”

  And they leave the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Hadeon kisses Ariana’s forehead, pressing warmth and love into her flesh. “What is it, flower?”

  She wants to sleep so badly, but she needs to tell Hadeon what she found in the spell book. “There’s a spell that can heal me. One that is cast when the original healing spell hasn’t taken completely.”

  Hadeon grins. “Then do it.”

  She purses her lips together and grimaces.

  “What?” he asks.

  “There’s a catch. A chance that it may reverse the original spell and kill me.”

  Hadeon jumps to his feet. “Not an option then. We simply wait until you get better naturally.”

  “I don’t know how much of a chance. The spell didn’t specify.”

  “Any chance is too much. I can’t protect you when it comes to spells. I can’t run in with my sword and slice someone’s head off. I won’t take that chance.”

  Ariana nods. “I thought that’s what you’d say.”

  “Of course I would. Surely you didn’t consider it?”

  She shakes her head as she yawns, her mind desperately seeking sleep.

  He sits down again and kisses her forehead. “You need to rest.”

  “Yes,” she says, tongue thick. “I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  Chapter 35

  “What’s going on here?” Ariana says after bursting through the door and seeing Hadeon, Gideon, and a handful of Warriors sitting somberly around a large table in the meeting room. A map is in the middle and bullet-point notes have been made with black ink on a big, square pad.

  Gideon stands. “Your Highness.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Gideon holds her gaze as he breathes in deeply. “Yes. A rather large problem.”

  Her gaze flickers to meet Hadeon’s wary stare. “Well? What is it?”

  Hadeon stands, his chair scraping against the smooth white floor.

  Gideon answers, “She’s penetrated the barrier on the southern perimeter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ariana asks. In her peripheral vision, she sees Hadeon take a tentative step toward her, then another. She peers at him, noting his rigid stance and expectant expression. He’s anticipating…something.

  “We were advised that you were not well. Not physically strong enough to deal with this,” says Gideon.

  “Bullshit! No one, other than me, advises you of anything. Do you hear me?” The words burst from her throat like a charging bull.

  Gideon nods.

  “I made the decision to leave you to rest,” says Hadeon. Another step closer.

  “So what are the consequences of this breach?” she asks.

  Gideon clears his throat. “None as of yet. We have a team of Enchantresses putting up impenetrable wall spells, but as soon as they are up, the Sun Queen tears them down. We don’t know how long we can hold her off—”

  “How long have we got?”

  Gideon hesitates. “I’d say no more than an hour or two if we’re lucky.”

  Ariana nods then spins and walks out the door, pulling it closed behind her. Hadeon’s quick, heavy footsteps follow.

  Heart thumping fast, she whispers, “This door does lock now, those inside can’t get out.”

  The door clicks, followed by a heavy thud and Hadeon’s cry, “Ariana! Don’t you dare! It’s not an option.”

  Panting, she turns up the hallway, but her legs are weakening beneath her. All the walls are slanting and outlined in black. She rests a palm on the wall to steady herself and takes some deep breaths. Damned heart.

  An enormous thud at the door behind her. Another. Another. Another. The timber splinters outward.

  “Shit,” she hisses, back resting against the wall to keep her from falling.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  Face inclined to the far away ceiling, her voice trembling, she whispers, “Stitch, repair, and glue until I am like new.”

  There’s a thud followed by a crash as the door shatters on the floor. Hadeon charges through, his eyes wide.

  Ariana turns to him.

  “No!” he screams, running to her.

  His face is twisting with anguish and she doesn’t realize why. But then the scent of salty iron leaches into the air around her. Warm wetness spreads over her chest. She glances down at her white nightdress and gasps to see thick crimson staining it. She looks up at Hadeon as he reaches her.

  “Flower. No. No,” he cries.

  She opens her mouth to speak, to explain that she would do anything to protect her people and to protect him, but a choking surge rockets up her throat. Dark red warmth projects from her mouth onto Hadeon’s chest, sputters across his face and the white floor like red paint on a blank canvas. Ariana’s body trembles as though she has plummeted into Arctic water.

  Her legs crumble beneath her as the pain she thought she would never feel again cracks her ribcage. The sensation is blinding, terrifying.

  “No. No. No. Someone help me,” Hadeon moans as he takes her in his arms and sinks to his knees. He feels fiery in contrast to her.

  As they find the floor, she looks up at his face, into his frightened eyes. Such guilt twists in her stomach, for not being able to do all she needs to, for being too weak when she must be her strongest.

  “Help me,” he roars again as Ariana tries to groan from the pain, but instead vomits blood over her chin and throat. If only she can draw a breath in, or stop the flow of blood. He rolls her on her side so she doesn’t choke.

  “We are futile against a spell, King,” comes Gideon’s voice.

  So cold. Her limbs quake violently, then a calm sweeps across her. Acceptance. Peace. A final, bubbling breath wheezes from her saturated lungs. Ariana stares blankly at the wall, her body as still as stone. A brush paints her skin white, a shocking contrast to the deep red blood covering her clothes, the floor, and Hadeon.

  Hadeon shakes her stiffening frame. “No. No. No. No,” he says, words desperate, torment twisting his features. “Come on, flower. Come onnn!” he screams, his body trembling. The others watch on in regretful silence.

  Ariana’s soul heaves for her husband at witnessing the sorrow on his face, the deep unrelenting grief and disbelief billowing from him in pitiful waves.


  This startles her.

  If she’s dead, how can she see all this?

  Despite her body, dead and cooling in Hadeon’s arms, she has witnessed every ticking second from above, as though she is a bird skimming along the ceiling, peering down at the floor below.

  A soft pink glow shines and whirls around her. The love that emanates from that protective energy is only matched by Hadeon’s. She wants to get swept up in it, cradled within it forever. The same sensation she feels when she touches her necklace.

  “Mom?”

  All air, color, sound, twists and curls in on each other and gurgles like water vacuumed away down a drain until there are silence and blackness. A piercing crackle of electricity sounds, a sharp pang of pain, a thud deep in her chest as though her heart is striking a bass drum. Her body lurches upward in Hadeon’s arms.

  Her eyes snap open to receive the impression of colors and the sight of Hadeon’s miserable face. All noise returns—mumbles of shock, the shifting of shoes against the floor—and the rich scent of iron floods her nostrils.

  Ariana gasps, loud and harsh, sucking a desperate breath into her blood-filled lungs. All the pain before she left her body washes away so fast her head spins. The passages of her throat and lungs clear until she can suck in pristine gulps of Fioren air. Vibrant tingles scatter under her skin, stitching, soldering, and repairing.

  “Hadeon,” she whispers.

  Desperate relief streams from his mouth as a long, anguished moan. “Oh, flower,” he says, pulling her against his chest. He pulls her away so he can look at her face and kiss her blood-stained lips. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were gone.”

  “I can’t leave you,” she says as tears fall onto her cheeks to leave watery trails all the way to her lips.

  “No, you can’t. I won’t let you. Ever.”

  Ariana attempts to sit up on her own, without help from Hadeon.

  “Don’t!” he barks.

  She shakes her head, reclining back in his arms. “I feel…fine. In fact, I feel…” She lifts up until she is seated. No pain. No weakness. No fatigue. Only tingly, erratic bursts of energy pulse across her skin as though she is immersed in a pool of tiny, popping bubbles. “I feel…incredible,” she says, shock and reverence both present in her tone.

  She presses to her feet and glances at Gideon and the other Warriors behind him watching her with gaping mouths. She must look a sight in her white dress soaked in her own blood.

  She addresses Gideon. “I’m reinforcing the barrier spell. As soon as possible, I want word sent to my room about the effects.”

  Gideon nods. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Did we find any imposters?”

  “No. All clear.”

  “Good. I need an evacuation plan for the palace and surrounding village for when this situation arises again. I then want every possible person informed of the plan, what they need to do, and what the warning signal will be. I think the Sealusters will be our point of refuge, with the villagers safely out at sea.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  With a hand on her shoulder, Hadeon says, “I think you should slow down a bit.”

  “I don’t have time to slow down.” She spins and strides toward her bedroom.

  Hadeon marches beside her, his shoulders shaking from almost delirious laughter. “How did I know you’d say that?”

  “The same way you knew I’d do the post healing spell when I found out about the wall—a queen always protects her people.”

  “Yes, she most certainly does.”

  “You know you had no right to keep that information from me.”

  “Ah, yes, but you’re forgetting something.”

  She stops and looks at him, her hands pressed to her hips. “What’s that?”

  “A king will always protect his queen.”

  Chapter 36

  Inside her bedroom, Ariana washes her face and hands using a wet cloth sitting on the rim of the huge copper bathtub. While Hadeon works on his own blood-spattered face and hands, Ariana heads to the niche in the wall and retrieves her spell book. She rests it on the desk near the reading nook and takes a seat. Hadeon strides to her and sits back against the desk top, his arms crossed over his blood-crusted chest.

  She smiles at him sheepishly. “We really should fully clean up first, but we don’t have time.”

  He nods. “So you keep reminding me.”

  Ariana concentrates.

  Barrier spell.

  The book cover snaps open and the pages shoot up on end, fluttering from left to right until they settle. Ariana grins as she peers up at Hadeon. “The book is so much more cooperative now that I’m officially queen.”

  She can barely sit still as magic blisters a path through her bones and ignites all her blood vessels. Not in all her twenty-one years can she remember feeling this alive, this strong… Needing to move, she stands and looks down at the spell opened before her. All her muscles are twitching, and her veins are ignited.

  “Do you need space?” asks Hadeon.

  “Nope,” she says.

  She stares at the spell, letting the words slide inside her mind and become a part of her. This spell requires more energy, more essence, and more potency than anything she has ever done before if she stands a chance of inhibiting the Sun Queen’s attempts to intrude on her most sacred land. She lets that thought burn in her mind, caress her insides and mingle with that blazing supply of magic bubbling in her blood.

  She calls on all the energy outside herself, possessed in every single living thing on this planet, and centers it. The floor shakes beneath her feet, or is it her own feet vibrating above the floor? A sensation, much like a chilled gust of air, whirls around her, extending its reach further and further out.

  “Do build a wall around my land, of solid love that will withstand, attempts to break into my home and destroy the seeds that I have sown, to keep my people safe from harm, so they can live with peace and calm. Do make that wall relentlessly strong, up to the clouds and ever so long, so not one thing can penetrate the love I build to keep out hate. For I’m the true Blossom Queen, in my house evil will not be seen.” A brilliant pulse of light explodes outward from her like the shockwaves from a nuclear explosion, and then silence and calm settles on her mind and body. She is panting, tingling, twitching.

  Hadeon is watching her, his gaze unflinching on hers.

  “Now we wait for word that it has worked,” she says.

  Hadeon doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare.

  “What?” she asks after some time, smiling coyly.

  He shakes his head, lips subtly parted. “I didn’t realize how much seeing you do that would be such a fucking turn on.”

  Ariana pulses with need and steps closer to Hadeon, pressing her lips to his.

  A knock sounds at her door. “Hold that thought,” she says.

  “Oh, I will.”

  She jogs to the door and yanks it open. Gideon is standing there.

  “Did we get a result?” she asks.

  He nods. “It’s worked.”

  Ariana sighs as relief lifts from her shoulders. “For now,” she says.

  “For now. We’re about to start working on the evacuation plan.”

  “Good.” She glances at Hadeon and then back to Gideon. “We’ll clean up and meet you in the meeting room in an hour.”

  “Make that two hours,” says Hadeon, voice raspy.

  Gideon bites back a grin. “Will do.”

  Ariana shuts the door quietly and turns to find Hadeon striding toward her. His eyes are glazed with lust.

  “How do you feel?” he asks, stopping in front of her.

  “Amazing.”

  “So no pain?”

  She shakes her head.

  He takes a step closer. “No dizziness?”

  Again she shakes her head.

  His chest now presses against hers. He edges her back toward the door and runs a finger along her lips. The touch fans blissful sh
ivers over Ariana’s body. Her gaze drops to his luscious lips. She aches at the memory of their velvet touch as they are pressed fiercely to her own in a moment of passion.

  Face so close, he asks, “No fatigue?”

  She shakes her head, breaths coming shorter. “None. I feel better than I ever—”

  His mouth smothers the rest of her sentence with firm, frantic heat. She sinks into his enormous frame and wraps her arms around him, pulling him tighter to her. But he steps back, only to reach for her dress and tear it from her body. It falls to the floor in a heap.

  He grips her underwear and yanks hard, shredding them between his hands. For a moment he stares at her naked body, attention roving over her breasts, along the length of her blossoms and downward. His breaths grow heavier, his eyes burn with fervor, and that ever-hard length of his protrudes from under his kilt. Obviously, quite obviously, he’s not wearing underwear beneath that.

  Pulling his tunic shirt off and pushing his kilt down, he says with a voice coarse with arousal, “Here’s how it’s going to happen.”

  Ariana’s gaze drops to his erection, so solid and ready, the tight pink head pearling with pre-come, and her tummy pangs with such need it shakes her body.

  He takes her waist and pulls her to him, warm flesh on flesh colliding; his Mira against her blossoms meeting after so much time apart. The mere sensation splashes prickling pleasure into her flesh and slides between her legs like an eager, wet tongue.

  Wrapping his hands under her thighs, he lifts her into his arms. She straddles his waist as he presses her back to the wall. “I’m going to make you come quickly because I’m already about to explode.”

  Groaning hot breath against her ear, he raises her ass up a fraction and slides her down onto his long length. She clamps around him, her body remembering and memorizing anew how full he makes her feel. Her nerve endings fire as he pulls out and then plunges in again, her back bumping the door.

  Lips lightly touching hers—the scent of innate violence, unrestrained passion, and devotion swarming around her—he growls, “And then we’ll do it again, nice and slow until the entire land knows the queen has found her king.”