The Waking Magic (Winter's Blight Book 3)

by M. C. Aquila

  “Fine.” She rolled her chair away after a wave of her hand and a flash of her smile.

  As he walked, Iain considered that Mum had never told James and him stories of Delphina when their aunt was older or after Mum met Dad. He had known that Mum’s family did not approve of her marrying a gazho, and that was why they had refused to meet her sons. But he had not considered that this exile mentality extended to Delphina, her big sister: the person who was supposed to look out for her.

  There was a rift between the sisters. Years and years had passed, and still Delphina refused to forgive her sister. The thought made Iain’s stomach feel cold and empty, and he decided a rift like that would never form between James and him. He would not hold his brother’s mistakes against him, and maybe with time, James could learn to do the same for him.

  * * *

  Cai sat under a small, elevated grove of trees not far from the central tree; strung above him was a canopy covering the temporary benches beneath. From there he watched as people took their seats for the wedding. While there were several areas in the seating that were covered, many people were stuck with just their umbrellas. The umbrellas were many colors and sizes, cast light gray in the rain, making them look from the distance like an impressionist watercolor painting.

  For the first time in a while, Cai had the feeling of looking at the world from the outside. This feeling had been present occasionally after he’d left his father’s lands and house, and ever since he began living in this new age, it had occurred more often. Unlike in the past where his brother looked to him for support and advice (which he usually didn’t follow), there was no one looking to him now.

  There were people who knew him, especially at this festival, but no one who relied on or truly trusted him.

  Not that I’m particularly trustworthy, he thought, his hand floating over his still slightly sore side. While small wounds—like the Red Cap’s blow two nights ago—healed quickly, old, grievous ones took longer, often never fully healing. He could not always push through the pain. Not when it mattered the most.

  I wouldn’t last long dealing with the faery courts. He sat hunched over, hands on his knees. That Iain boy… He thought back to their conversation that morning, shaking his head. He’s no fool. But he just doesn’t understand.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cai spotted someone break from the streams of people toward him. Speak of the devil…

  “I found a replacement flask,” Cai said to Iain as the young man walked over and ducked under the shelter of the canopy. “If you’re true to your word, you’ll pay for it.”

  Iain was silent, right hand twitching restlessly at his side. With a steadying breath, he reached into his shirt and pulled out the amulet. Then, after unclasping it from around his neck, he held it out to Cai.

  “This is yours,” Iain said. “And I don’t know why or even if it wanted me to pick it up, but I shouldn’t have kept it from you. That was wrong of me.”

  Cai stared at the amulet in Iain’s hand, narrowing his eyes. “What’s the catch?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “You’re just giving it up now after all the trouble you’ve gone through to keep it?” Cai looked up at him, smiling mirthlessly. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “The only lead we had to find our mum was a dead end, and we’re no closer to finding her now than we were six years ago,” Iain said. His voice and face were steady, but Cai recognized the dull, tired look of disappointment in his eyes as the young man continued, “Yeah, we could use your help, but I need to focus on my brother right now. I can’t do that if I’m focused on you and keeping this amulet.”

  Is this for real? Cai knew Iain wasn’t lying, but it felt wrong to be handed something he’d spent decades fighting and searching for.

  And it felt equally wrong to be given it by someone he’d been trying to trick and outmatch who was ultimately pushed to the edge by something else.

  When Cai didn’t move, Iain continued, “What’s going on in the country right now, it’s important. I’ll make it to the Court and warn them on my own if I have to. Though I think you’re more qualified in every way to do it.”

  Cai straightened, his mouth a thin line. “I only saved you from the Red Cap because I was there. I tried to steal from you. I’m not always a paragon of sobriety or even basic modern manners. Do you think I’m qualified just because I’m a knight?”

  “Initially, yeah. When I saw you slay that Red Cap and after the amulet showed you were a knight, that was all I saw. Your title.” Iain let out a breath. “I know you can read people well, but so can I, and I recognized something familiar in you. Maybe people have never expected much of you either. And maybe having one person believe in you can push you to act.”

  “Think so?” Cai replied, not meeting Iain’s eyes.

  “I do. See, there was this bloke, and he was my commanding officer in the Iron Guard. His name was Philip Prance, and he decided to trust me with information about this war that’s coming—he believed in me.”

  Iain shook his head, chuckling wryly. “He was a good soldier, skilled in combat, and eloquent when he needed to be. And he was good at getting people to like him, to listen to him, to trust him. I’m rubbish at that. But he could get even the meanest, roughest bulldog of a person I know to listen to him, so he probably could have gotten you on his side easily. And he wouldn’t have stolen your amulet or kept it from you or punched you in the face or anything like that. But he’s dead.”

  Iain stretched out his hand farther until the amulet was right in front of Cai’s chest. “So I’ve got to do what he would have done, because someone, anyone, has to do it. But if you won’t, then for my brother’s sake, I won’t keep you around. See, I can’t let him down again, and he doesn’t think you’ll help even if I disagree.”

  Cai hesitated, his fingers twitching, before he took the amulet from Iain’s hand. He closed his fist around it; it was heavy and dead in his hands, not cool or strangely alive as it should be. Suddenly clammy, he placed the amulet into his pocket.

  Hoping the empty feeling that had fallen on him would disappear if he ended the conversation, he stood up with a groan and shouldered his pack, turning away. “Well, I’ll wish you luck at least. You’re crazy, so it probably won’t help you much. And forget about the flask.”

  He didn’t know what he expected as he walked away, but the silence of no one calling or shouting at him was worse than anything. As he walked into the crowds, Cai dimly realized he had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and nothing to search for.

  For a moment he thought of turning around but shook his head. There’s no point. He sighed, running his hand over his eyes, feeling sick with himself. I need a drink, a big one.

  * * *

  Iain expected to feel more disappointed when Cai turned his back with a wave and walked away, but he didn’t. He was just glad he’d said what he needed to say and that he’d given Cai his amulet back.

  Deirdre was right. I guess it’s a good thing to believe in people sometimes… I gave him another chance, and now it’s on him to do with it what he will. If he does anything now, it’ll be because he wanted to and not because I was keeping the amulet.

  However, Iain had not shouldered through the crowd for long until he overheard bits of conversation. The wedding had started, and the festival’s crowd in the booth areas had thinned out, making the murmuring and gossiping around him easier to pick up. A few words stood out to him.

  “—the Iron Guard really coming here?”

  Iain froze in his tracks, his pulse quickening. When he turned to ask the person what he was talking about and where he got his information, he could not pinpoint who had said it. He felt the absence of the soothing, cooling amulet and of Cai then.

  If the Iron Guard is coming, then everyone here is in danger. We need to warn them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Magic is about intent,” Cecil said. “It’s about control.”

  Cecil sat cross-legge
d on the ground in front of James. They had found a dry patch of dirt under the shelter of a tree. Between them, Cecil had placed a plain wooden bowl he’d bought from one of the stalls and dropped a single, clear crystal inside. The rest of the crystals were in a pile around them.

  Vera sat in the tree above them on a low branch, swinging her legs. She hummed and looked at the swirling clouds in the darkening sky that were threatening to spill over again.

  “Right.” James inhaled, tasting rain in the air. “So how do we restore the book?”

  Cecil wagged a finger at him. “You’re not ready for that yet. First we’ll try something that doesn’t require quite as much accuracy and finesse.”

  Scooting closer to the bowl, James peered down at the crystal. “What kind of magic are we trying then?”

  “If I recall correctly”—Cecil raised his eyebrow—“I believe you said something about a fire crystal?”

  James grinned, and then, after thinking a moment, scooted back from the bowl again, eyeing it like it would burst into flames without cause.

  Laughing, Cecil picked through their items on the ground until he found the flint.

  He held it up to James, showing him, and said, “Each movement and thought must be precise, intentional.” Taking another crystal, Cecil struck a piece of flint hard against it until it sparked. “If you want fire, you get what energy you put into it.”

  The spark landed on the crystal in the bowl. James expected the spark to die instantly, but it seeped into the clear crystal like burning coal melting through a sheet of ice, smoke rising from it. The spark buried itself inside, a pinpoint of light inside making the crystal glow orange.

  “Is that all it takes?” James practically vibrated in his seat with excitement. “Just fire and… and stone?”

  Cecil looked at him through the fingers of rising smoke. “Not quite.” He took the blackthorn branch, snapped it in half, and tossed some of the needlelike twigs into the bowl.

  “This type of tree is special because it contains magic innately within,” Cecil said. “The Frost faeries protect that tree and the berries it produces by imbuing it with magic. Hence, why we use it for spells.”

  James jotted all that down as fast as he could manage. “So faeries can give their magic for us to use? So if I had, um, a faery friend… she could lend me some of her magic, right?”

  “It’s more of a taking than a giving, I’m afraid,” Cecil scoffed. “Faeries seldom share willingly. They like to hog their magic even though they have plenty for others to use.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.” James shook his head, shaking off an uncomfortable chill, and said quickly, “So how do we start?”

  “With each movement, I pour my intent until it smothers the intent of the object. It paralyzes the will of the magic already there, replacing it with mine. A hungry, angry spark, a vicious snap, and thoughts of burning flames.”

  Cecil took the crystal from the basin and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it skittering across the ground. For a moment it did nothing. Then with a pop, the crystal burst like fractured glass, a licking flame rising up from it with sparks. It burned continuously without catching anything else on fire. Then Cecil breathed out slowly, concentrating, and the flame was snuffed out.

  “Now.” Cecil held out a fresh crystal to him. “You try it.”

  James pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and carefully arranged the objects he needed. He was hesitant at first with the flint, his gestures jerky and shaky. Cecil’s gaze was on him through the entire process, watching his every movement.

  “Come on,” he snapped, striking the flint again. After it finally sparked, he held the crystal and flint over the bowl just as Cecil had done. But there was no orange pinpoint inside it.

  When he threw the crystal with a grunt, it thudded on the ground dully. A long minute passed. Nothing happened. And then the crystal blackened to a lump of coal.

  “You did it!” Vera cheered, throwing her arms in the air. Then she amended after seeing James’s sour expression, “Did you not want coal?”

  “Well,” Cecil said airily after retrieving the rock, holding it in his palm, “it’s a little warm at least.”

  James’s face heated as if he might burst into flames instead.

  “I do make it look easy and glamorous, but magic takes time to master, James,” Cecil said. “And forgive me, but you’re so… gentle with the objects. It’s rather precious, actually.”

  “Gentle?” James’s voice cracked.

  “I do not mean offense.” Cecil held up his hands in surrender but could not hide the amusement in his face. “I told you magic was about intent and control. I saw none of that when I watched you.”

  If Cecil’s intention was to rile him, then he succeeded. James scoured the supplies he’d picked out, his mind whirring and buzzing with possibilities. Then, without another word, he got to work.

  He knew the ingredients he needed were all there in front of him—he only had to, in theory, will them to behave as he wanted them to. But James’s kind of magic was more than intent—it was what he had learned from years of being a bookworm with nothing to do but read.

  As he arranged and struck each object with the flint, he listed what they were: “pyrite, containing sulfur; cave crystal, containing potassium nitrate, and”—James snatched the coal from Cecil’s hand with a cheeky grin—“charcoal, containing, uh, coal.”

  He struck the flint a final time with as much force as he could muster, a spark of fierce determination filling him.

  The heat blossomed there until the spark sank into the crystal. Instead of glowing orange and bright like the fire crystal had, this crystal was denser and heavier, like it had shadow instead of light inside it.

  “What do all these chemicals produce when mixed together properly?” James asked, holding it in the air and rearing his arm back to throw it. “Black powder!”

  When he chucked the crystal into the air away from them, it did not even land before it exploded in a burst of fire, the roaring Boom of it reaching them before the flash of it did. James jolted as comet tails of fire rained down from the sky.

  “Oh my gods!” Vera shrieked. She caught herself from falling out of the tree in time by clinging to the branch.

  Cecil was staring at James rather than the streams of fire. He clapped his hands, and there was no mocking in the gesture.

  “That was fantastic, James. Clever, clever!” Cecil kept shaking his head and laughing like he couldn’t believe it. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone take to magic so quickly, so inventively. I give you extra praise for theatricality. That was intent at work.”

  Breathless, James picked up the Unseelie book beside him and flipped through the pages. “So,” he said, chin raised, “can we try restoring these pages next?”

  “Hold on a moment.” Cecil took the book from him. “I remember being just as eager as you are to learn magic. It’s such a thrill, isn’t it?”

  He opened the book to the missing pages, holding it up for James to see; smiling, he ran his black-tipped fingers over the parchment. “Did you find the book in this state of defacement? I’m curious.”

  James ran a hand over his face, pushing his hair back. “It was… the,, um, pages were torn out after I bought it. By my dad. So…”

  Cecil chuckled, then said quickly when James looked up, “Forgive me, it’s just an odd thing to do, to deface a book so specifically. But there is nothing amusing about it. It sounds like a rather cruel thing to do, honestly.”

  Nodding once, James glanced away and picked at blades of grass beneath him, yanking them up and snapping them.

  “Can’t you just tell me the information I’m missing?” James asked. Though he wanted to learn a new spell, he wasn’t sure he had time to spare after the crystals had taken so long. “It’s about a creature called Cait Sidhe. Do you know anything about it?”

  A gust of wind blew across the field, shaking the tree above them. Rain began to fall again, the drops becomin
g more frequent by the second.

  “Cecil.” Vera had leaped down from the tree and came to stand beside him. She placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “You should tell him.”

  Cecil snapped his head around to look at her. “Not yet.”

  They were speaking as if James was not sitting right there. They knew something he did not. He reached for one of the other black powder crystals he had prepared and clutched it.

  “But he already knows so much,” Vera went on, her voice rising like a gleeful melody. “He is so close to figuring it out, and—”

  “Vera, be silent!”

  Instantly the girl’s mouth shut, her teeth clicking together like her jaw had been forced closed. She flinched like she’d been struck, and her chin quivered as tears formed in her eyes. James frowned, not sure why she would cry over such a small spat.

  Cecil’s eyes widened, and he stood. “Oh, my sweet pet,” he said, reaching for her. “I release you.”

  As if on cue, Vera’s mouth opened again. She rubbed her jaw with one hand as if it ached. “How could you?” She let out a sob.

  “Darling, you know I did not mean to hurt you. I could never.”

  Scrunching up her reddened face, she wiped messily at her nose. “I will not be silent. I shall walk in the forest and talk as much as I want.”

  With that, she headed toward the forest, the sounds of her shuddering sobs dwindling.

  Rising, James began to collect his belongings that were scattered on the ground and shove them into his backpack. When he went to grab the book, Cecil reached it at the same time.

  “You’re not leaving before you have all your answers, are you?” he asked, not letting go. “That isn’t what a good researcher does, James.”

  James tugged on the book, but it didn’t budge. The wind was beginning to whip the rain toward them. In a matter of seconds, he was wet and shivering.

  “If… if you don’t want to give me the information, then fine, but don’t pretend you don’t know it,” James ground out.