by K. E. Drake
“Love? Is that what you think you feel for that girl?” Contessa scoffed in contempt. “Why would you want her when you could have me?”
The anger burning within Samuel’s chest flared at the duchess’ cold words, but Contessa persisted.
“Furthermore, my family has money. Why, I could help you get out of those pesky debts you owe. Now, isn’t that what you’ve wanted since you and your parents got yourselves into this little mess?” she mocked, arching a perfect brow.
Samuel’s eyes narrowed into a hard glare. “Leave, Duchess Sinclaire, or I will have the guards escort you out.”
The prince turned away from the seething woman and strode away from her, making his way past the crowd of shocked and silent guests.
Duchess Sinclaire clenches her hands into tight fists, her long nails digging into her palms through her gloves. “If I can’t have you,” she muttered darkly, “then no one can.”
As she unlocked her magic, glowing wisps of light, the same brilliant shade of gold as Contessa’s eyes, encircled her wrists and quickly twined around her gloved hands. The duchess’ long fingers flew up and the golden magic shot out of her palms straight at the prince’s back.
The entire room erupted in shocked exclamations and terrified screams. The closest soldiers posted along the walls of the ballroom leapt into action to try to protect their prince from harm, but the attack of magic didn’t touch the prince.
A silver shield suddenly burst up from the marble dance floor between the prince and the woman.
The blast of gold magic hit the silver magic and exploded with a crackle into sparks of light that crumbled in the air.
Screams and exclamations echoed through the crowds, and Samuel spun back around at the same moment the soldiers reached him and positioned themselves in front of him with weapons raised. He saw the golden glimmers as they vanished, and he turned to Contessa, mouth agape. She has magic?
The sparkling shield faded, falling to the floor as individual silver stars and disappearing as soon as they hit the marble surface.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot let you do that.”
At the sound of a musical voice, all eyes turned towards the center of the room.
Samuel looked as well and saw mage Grimm standing in the center of the ballroom. “You!” He pushed past the guards and moved with quick strides to the magic user. “Where is she? What did you do to her?”
The mage’s hand shot up. His fingers glowed with the same silver light as the shield and the prince was frozen mid-stride a few paces away.
Samuel struggled and tried to free himself of the mage’s magic holding him securely in place, but to no avail.
“Worry not, Your Highness, my Spark is back at her home, safe,” Grimm assured calmly. “I will explain everything to you later, but for now we have a greater problem at hand that must be dealt with first.” He cast a pointed look to the duchess.
Contessa Sinclaire looked from the prince to the magic user and warily drew back a step.
Grimm dropped his hold on his magic, allowing the force of the magic holding the prince to instantly evaporate.
Samuel stumbled forward at the sudden ability to move freely again and righted himself. “Guards, seize that woman!” he ordered, and a half a dozen guards rushed to capture the duchess.
Contessa’s irises flashed gold. She stamped down and a wall of glittering yellow suddenly appeared around her, throwing the advancing guards back with the force of her magic.
Grimm dipped forward and swiped his hand through the air. The soldiers were caught by a silvery-white globe of magic that enveloped them before they could collide with the wall. The mage lightly set the shaken guards safely back on their feet and then allowed the spell to fade.
While the magic user and the prince were distracted, Contessa gathered another charge of her magic and blasted it at Samuel. The force of the attack caused the ball of magic to tilt off its course and it flew toward a group of young ladies instead.
The ladies screamed and Samuel saw the duchess’ attack. He leapt in front of the women, between them and Contessa’s magic, but an orb of silvery-white collided with the magic and knocked the golden light away before it could strike either target.
The ballroom erupted in a sudden uproar, and Grimm called to the royals over the noise. “Get them out of here!”
The king and queen heeded the command and assisted the guards as the men guided the throng of guests up the stairs and out of the ballroom.
Samuel ushered the group of young ladies out of the ballroom, looking after them until they reached the stairs.
Contessa threw another blast of dark-golden magic, this time at the mage. “Samuel should be mine!”
Grimm caught the magic before it could hit him and enveloped it with his own, smothering it. “I heard the prince say otherwise.” As the last of the guests flooded out of the room under the direction of the royals and the guards, the mage summoned another portion of his power and strengthened it. “If I heard correctly, he also ordered you to leave.”
Contessa screamed and hurtled another blast of magic at him that was stronger than the last.
Grimm called the strengthened portion of his magic and deflected the duchess’ attack, but she was stronger than he anticipated and he was pushed back with the force of the blast. He staggered forward, dizzy and shaken by a hollow feeling within his chest. He had spent the rest of the power he had on hand.
Grimm reached deep down inside of himself and unlocked the part of the magic he had hidden away. His stomach turned as an overwhelming wave of nausea came over him, and he fell to his knees on the marble floor, the entire ballroom spinning before his blurring vision.
Every being gifted with magic had limits on their power and held the ability to lock part or all of their magic away inside themselves. This was his price for keeping most of his magic locked up inside of him, sickness and weakness that left him dangerously vulnerable until the feelings passed, and he regained the ability to use the larger part of his power he always kept locked up.
Grimm blinked and drew in a few shallow, ragged breaths, trying to settle his rebelling stomach as the spinning of the room finally began to slow.
Contessa approached the mage and came to a stop only inches from him. The toes of her heeled shoes grazed his fingertips as she stood over him. “Is that all that you had in you? That was hardly a fight,” she scoffed.
Grimm looked up at Contessa. The dizziness faded to clarity and his pent-up magic now flowed freely through his veins. “I assure you, Duchess Sinclaire, I’m just getting started.” His hands flew up from the floor with a blinding flash of silver light, and Contessa was hurled backwards by the sudden power of the silver mage’s magic.
Contessa spun through the air, but she brought out her magic and caught herself just before she would have slammed into the wall, much like the mage had caught the soldiers before.
Across the ballroom, the last of the guests and servants rushed from the room, and only a few soldiers remained behind to stand near their king. The prince stood with his mother, but he kept his eyes on Grimm and the duchess, watching in helpless frustration.
His strength fully recovered, Grimm pushed himself back up to his feet as he drew his magic to the surface and centered it.
Contessa raised her gloved hands as they began to glow and spark with her magic, taking on a darker hue of gold than before as she reached for the last of her power as well.
Grimm powered a large strike of his magic to overpower the duchess’ coming attack, but the dark magic she built tore from her hands before his could. The beam streaked across the distance in a flash of dark-golden light and struck Grimm, striking his left arm before he had a chance to deflect it.
He clenched his jaw to keep from grimacing at the searing pain that coursed through his arm. He shortly glanced away from the duchess down to where her magic hit him. It had sliced the sleeve of his black shirt open, revealing a gaping, bleeding gash across his upper arm
just below his shoulder.
“This needs to end. Now,” he muttered darkly to himself.
The magic user placed his open palms together, quickly bringing up another silvery-white shield as Contessa used his diverted state to launch another pulse of dark magic at him. Grimm slowly pulled his hands apart from each other and they began to shake with the strength of the power he had built up.
The spell would most likely take the rest of the magic he had left, but he had to use it now, before he spent too much of his power and strength to complete the complicated spell.
The mage’s shield rippled like the surface of water when Contessa moved closer and blasted another beam of magic at him. The half bubble shuddered and disappeared for a moment when Grimm lost focus on it as he poured his strength into the spell.
His power coursed through his body to his hands and poured out of his palms, feeding silver strands of power into the light shining between his hands. The magic faded from a pure silver to a pale shade resembling a freshly fallen snow as faint traces of the color sparkled and glimmered like diamonds on the surface.
The individual threads of the spell easily unraveled from the complex sphere, the ends of the strands twining up Grimm’s arms, the silver magic sparkling white against the black cloth of his shirt. He angled his arms straight down and extended his fingers out. The transparent wisps of the spell tore from his arms and struck the ballroom floor. The magic exploded in a flash of light and surged toward the duchess in a blaze, shattering the shield she conjured to protect herself into a thousand shards.
Contessa attempted to strike at the magic, but the light enveloped her and froze her in place. “No!” she shrieked and struggled against the solid force of the magic as it pinned her arms to her side.
At the front of the room, Samuel stepped forward, but his father held out an arm, stopping him. “Don’t, Samuel. Let him take care of this.”
The prince tore his gaze away from the magical combat happening before him and looked to his father. Seeing the king’s steadfast resolve, Samuel reluctantly nodded and stepped back.
“You made a grave mistake, Duchess Sinclaire,” Grimm said as he took a few steps up to the struggling duchess, holding his hands out in front of him as he fed even more into the spell. A sheen of sweat glistened on his brow as the power and strength poured out of him. “You never should have tried to harm my Spark.”
Grimm’s magic lifted Contessa’s feet from the floor, and the silver light swirling around her picked up speed. She screamed in fury as the glow fully enveloped her, closing in around her and growing until the gleam filled the room and lit it up brighter than the light from the candles.
Contessa’s screams were muffled and the magic flashed with rays of light before it exploded. It burst into silver glimmers and fell to the blue-marble floor in a tender snowfall of pale stars. A rose lay on the surface of pale-blue amongst the magic as it rained down around the flower.
The rose was as full and fresh as if it had just been plucked, and it had lush petals of black as dark as the starless sky. The edges of each of the velvet petals were tinged with pure gold, the shade as dark and striking as the color Contessa’s eyes and magic had been.
His magic and strength now spent, Grimm weakly knelt down beside the gilded rose that was Duchess Contessa Sinclaire. He lightly picked up the rose between two fingers, cautious of the long, wickedly-sharp thorns that covered the dark-gold stem.
“What just happened?” an incredulous voice asked, breaking the heavy silence of the empty ballroom.
“The Duchess had dark magic,” Grimm began. His head spun from the amount of blood he had already lost, and his chest was hollow, void of the familiar sense of his magic. He slowly stood and turned to the prince of Avon. “Your Highness, the duchess was a threat and had to be stopped. I used a rare spell which allowed me to contain her and her dark magic.” The mage tiredly explained as the king and queen came up to him and the prince, standing at their son’s side.
Samuel pushed his fingers through his sandy-blond hair and glanced down to the black rose in the mage’s hand. “Is she dead?”
“No, she still lives. Although, with the spell I used, only the counter spell can undo this magic and return her to her former self.”
Ruth looked confused. “And your spell turned Duchess Sinclaire into a black rose?”
“It’s a part of the spell,” the young mage answered. “The color of the rose’s petals reveals the true intent of the person’s soul. The red rose stands for a kind or romantic soul, white for purity and innocence, and so forth. The gold on the petals and the golden stem, however, represents the Duchess’ magic.”
Preston rubbed a hand over his jaw, troubled. “And Duchess Sinclaire...?”
“Cruel, selfish, and wicked at heart,” the magic user soberly finished for the king. He thoughtfully glanced down to the gilded rose within his grasp. “If you wish me to, Your Highnesses, I will send the duchess to her elder brother and his family in Rona. She’ll be safe there.”
Samuel thoughtfully nodded at the magic user’s offer. His gaze dropped and he looked to the glass slipper still in his hands, trying to allow the numerous events of the evening to sink in.
“You’re worried about Miss Trent.”
The frustration and the sense of urgency from earlier threatened to return at the mage’s correct observation. Instead, Samuel’s heart became heavy and weary concern lined his features. “What happened to Ruby? Please. I need to know.”
Grimm contemplated the royal. “You have questions, I understand. I see you care for her. However, she was desperate to be away from you. Tell me, what would make her run from you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Samuel snapped, then exhaled a heavy sigh. “That’s why I need to find her. I need to know she’s all right. To see her again.” A frown tugged at his lips. “Why do you care about her? You’ve only just met her.”
“On the contrary. I have known Lady Trent almost my entire life, since I first began learning magic,” the mage began. “I care about her because I am her guardian.”
Preston and Ruth exchanged a look.
Samuel’s brow creased. “Her guardian?”
Grimm nodded once. “Some magic users are entrusted with Sparks and are given the task of protecting them with our magic. We watch over our Sparks, protect them, and assist in keeping their belief in magic alive. We’re not allowed to interfere with their personal lives or affairs, although that rule is one I am willing to break to ensure my Spark is safe and happy.”
Grimm finished. One side of his mouth quirked up into a half smile as he recalled the sweet expression of surprise on his own Spark’s face after he had kissed her.
He knew that it had been wrong to do. Romance between a Spark and a guardian was strictly forbidden, but this had been the first time that Grimm had met his Spark face to face, although he had seen her many times before.
Samuel shook his head to clear it. “Why Ruby? What makes her different that has a guardian and some don’t? Or does everyone have a guardian?”
“Only a rare few people throughout the kingdoms have magical guardians to protect them. Anyone can believe in magic, yet the ones that have a guardian are those who believe in the magic of their dreams and never let go of the hope that someday they will come true.”
Something in Samuel’s heart warmed. “And Ruby? She believes in the magic of her dreams?”
The mage nodded soberly. “It’s a rare and special thing when people are able to hold onto hope and faith through the hardest, darkest times of their lives. She did, and her belief in her dreams only grew stronger after she met you,” he elaborated. “Her dreams were great, and she held onto them, even through the death of her mother and then her father, and through the mistreatment from her stepmother and stepsister.”
Samuel’s chest constricted at the thought of all that his sweet girl had endured, and yet she still had a heart of joyful optimism and sweet love. He adored that
about her.
Grimm sincerely continued. “You, Your Highness, made her dreams possible when you allowed her to join you on your journey. If you had turned her down when she asked you, she could have lost that hope, given up on her dream, because she lost her only chance.” The young mage pressed his lips together. “When I found her in the courtyard, she expressed her need to return to her home. I obliged and used a transportation spell to send her back to Omrie. That’s where she is now, back safe at her home. ”
Samuel became hopeful. “If you transported Ruby, you could do it for me too. Send me to her.”
Grimm shook his head solemnly. “I’m sorry. I cannot. That spell requires a greater piece of magic than some, and I used all I had left on the Duchess.” He briefly glanced to the gilded flower. “My powers are emptied, and they won’t be fully restored for two or three days yet.”
Samuel’s expression fell. He considered the mage and noticed with concern that his skin was even paler than it was before. It was ashen now. Blood still quickly dripped from the open gash on his arm, seeping into the black cloth of his torn sleeve. He looked exhausted and weak, as if he was using what little strength he had left just to stand.
The prince blew out a deep breath, though he nodded gratefully to Grimm. “Thank you, Mage Grimm, for your help. You saved my life and kept Ruby safe. I’m in your debt,” Samuel offered sincerely
“I was only doing my duty,” Grimm assured. The mage looked down to the glimmering glass slipper the prince still held. “I cannot send you to her, but I wove a spell into those slippers. The magic in even one of them will lead whoever holds the slipper to their heart’s truest desire. If she’s yours, the magic will lead you straight to her.”
Samuel examined the slipper in a new light, his brow creasing as he considered the mage’s words. He waved over one of the remaining soldiers, who approached them and bowed. “Escort this man to one of the guestrooms and tend to his wounds. See he has everything he needs.”
Grimm inclined his head slightly, making his jagged, silver locks fall forward. His lips lifted into a charming smile despite the exhaustion clearly written on his features. “Thank you, Your Highness.” He departed after the guard up the stairs and out the ballroom doors.
