2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
My favorite place to go when the world turned terrible was the top of Eudoria’s tower. Lying flat on the stones with my curly hair loose around my head, I rolled my knuckles back and forth against my jaw and stared at the shimmer of the Ward above me.
Three hundred and twenty-seven years ago the Sorrowing Lord, who ruled the fae lands just outside our isles, demanded a human woman to become his wife. But the woman had been the lover of the faerie Tarelay Sorrowsworn. Tarelay could not outright deny his Lord’s commands, but could only circumvent them. So before the Sorrowing Lord could collect her, Tarelay crafted the great Ward around our island kingdoms.
Rather than see her in another’s arms, Tarelay had sealed her off behind a barrier that nobody with fae blood could cross, in either direction—himself included. He’d cast the full-blooded fae from the isles, but some of those with mixed blood—witches—remained inside. After three hundred and twenty-seven years without new fae blood, not counting the tragedy of Kalcedon’s existence, there weren’t many strong bloodlines left inside the Ward. One day magic here might just be a memory.
But it was beautiful. Far above me Tarelay’s spell glittered across the sky, like the side of a massive pearlescent bubble of soap. Three hundred and twenty-seven years of self-sustaining perfection, suspended between the seven Ward-stones surrounding the Protectorate, one for each country that had existed when Tarelay wove the enchantment. The greatest spell of our age, and to this day nobody had the slightest idea how it worked.
Well, nobody inside of it. I watched a flock of small black birds soar overhead, little shadows against the streaks of pink and purple flashing in the sky above. My skin felt sore from where my knuckles jammed into it.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs heralded a visitor. I didn’t look to see who it was. I already knew, as the heat of his power roiled off Kalcedon. I could feel him even though he was a good twenty feet away from me. It was nothing like standing close to him, or having him touch me, but he was that powerful.
The footsteps stopped as he reached the top, spilling his tall shadow across my face.
“The warship is headed to the Temple in peace,” Kalcedon told me flatly. “They’re turning that general over. Zaraen.”
I stared up at the Ward, then blinked. My hands stayed pressed against my jaw.
“The one who killed all those people?”
“I thought you’d want to know. Since you didn’t get to see it.”
“To trade for that prince?”
Kalcedon nodded, drawing a deep breath. “Yes, they’ll bring their prince home. Seems odd to care now, after leaving him there so long.”
Kalcedon had been Eudoria’s apprentice for practically his whole life, all thirty-eight years of it. He’d been there during the Doregall killings, and when the Cachian Temple took the boy-prince hostage. I expect Kalcedon had seen all the horrors spill, in that great big scrying bowl.
“…Did you already send the message?” I asked tentatively, wondering if there might be more magic to perform.
“Me, all on my own? Without your help?” Kalcedon said caustically. “Yes, idiot. Of course I did.”
He was in one of his moods.
“I was only asking,” I muttered, and turned my head away from him. I rocked my knuckles against my jaw again.
Kalcedon sighed loudly, then approached me. His long legs crossed as he settled to the ground.
“Meda. You shouldn’t have said that. About me.”
“What?”
I turned slowly and looked at him, dropping my hand away from my face. Kalcedon shook his head a little, shaggy dark hair blowing in the salt breeze. I could smell the rosemary soap he’d used to wash his hands.
“You made it sound like I needed help, holding onto spells.” His voice was gruff.
“Sometimes you do. You dropped that one.”
“I get bored.” He glared at me, mouth turning down at the edges. “It’s not the same. ‘Even Kalcedon won’t have trouble holding it in place,’” he quoted in a high mockery of my voice. “As if you could begin to match me.”
I was almost inclined to agree, with his heat weighing down on my body. But I’d seen his fingers tremble sometimes, even when he concentrated. It took work to hold spells, and precise body control. It was why I spent hours curling my fingers into the shapes, holding them as I read or studied or walked. Why I stretched carefully. If Kalcedon bothered to do the same, I’d never seen it. Instead, he spent all his time bent over the garden beds.
I didn’t understand him. If I had power like Kalcedon’s, I’d be unstoppable. He could have ruled the world, if he had half a brain.
“Maybe if you practiced…” I suggested.
He leaned forward on his hands, legs still crossed, and my mind shuddered in a panic at the blaze of his magic. It seared through me, a weight as hot and oppressive as it was tantalizing. My whole body answered, melted, reached for the power. It only pinned me down harder. Kalcedon’s dark eyes bore into me, holding my mind from scattering entirely. His face was too symmetrical, pretty and terrifying all at once, with his full lips, high cheeks, teeth a little too white.
“Don’t say scat like that around Eudoria. Ever.”
He leaned back. The weight of magic lifted, but my heart kept racing. I frowned at him, lips pressed tight.
“Do you hear me?” he growled, when I didn’t answer.
“I heard. Why?”
“Just don’t.”
“She’s not going to replace you.”
“You don’t know that,” I heard him mutter, under his breath. Kalcedon looked away from me off to the left, where the long cliff sloped down to Missaniech village and the sea.
“You’re too powerful to let go of,” I admitted. “Even if you don’t practice and you say cruel things. I bet just about any witch would take you. Especially if you tried.”
Kalcedon stood, unfolding his lanky body.
“I don’t need your help, Meda. Just leave my name out of your mouth. And get up. It’s time to make supper.”
“In a moment.”
Going back inside meant seeing Eudoria. I didn’t want to hear her say anything about the spell I’d crafted; the one she’d refused to even consider.
I stared up at the gleaming colors of the Ward again. My heart was just returning to normal when Kalcedon’s magic shifted. His hands spun through the air, sketching shapes and coiling power. Still on my back, it was hard to make out the sigils he drew above me. I wasn’t used to seeing them from below.
“What are you doing?” I asked, quickly sitting up to get a better view.
“Proving I don’t have to try to beat you .” He took a step back, then another, towards the edge of the tower’s roof. I scrambled to my feet, hurriedly scanning the pale, near-invisible lines that warbled around the storm-gray man. Trying to put it together without knowing what sigils he’d used was almost impossible.
But the volume of it. This was no normal casting. This was more power than I’d ever seen anybody use. This was more power than I’d ever seen anybody have , except for Kalcedon.
His eyes met mine. His raised hand stayed crabbed, fingers hooked into the glittering web of spell to hold its shape from fluttering apart in the breeze. His lips split into a grin. And then—
He leaned back, and surrendered himself to gravity’s pull. I screamed so loudly my throat burned.
As Kalcedon tumbled over the edge, I ran forward and tried to grab him. I was too slow. The isle sprawled out beneath us, a fifty-foot drop to the overgrown garden and the arid, hungry soil beyond; the cliffs to the sea, the path to Missaniech.
The air fizzled and he tucked into himself, colors melding, shape shifting faster than the eye could track, until there was no Kalcedon. There was only a massive osprey. Bigger than a sea hawk had any right to be. The not-bird flicked out his wings and skimmed low over the garden, then wheeled up on the air.
I fell backwards onto my rear, too close to the dangerous edge. All at once I felt dizzy and sick.
I had witnessed a triumph. A spell the likes of which the Protectorate hadn’t seen since the Ward was raised three centuries ago.
But I couldn’t get the taste of loss out of my mouth. It lingered, just like the burn in my throat.