Chapter 29
Aterna’s main armory lay near the Celestian Palace, but the armory Maeve stood in was part of the palace, just off of Reeve’s own private quarters.
The smooth crystal walls held an assortment of weapons, mostly swords.
They were all unique, with hilts and ornamentations each their own, no two matching.
Some had engravings she could read, like a smaller, thin blade that had a date carved in it.
A date from nearly three hundred years prior.
Some had carvings and markings that pulsed with Magic Maeve could understand.
This was no average royalty’s stash of weapons. This was an arsenal that reflected time, wealth, and divine rule.
“What’s the significance of this date?” she asked, pointing at the skinny sword as she walked along the display.
“My seventh birthday,” replied Reeve.
Maeve observed the weapons a moment longer. “These are all yours?”
When no reply came, she looked over her shoulder. He stood at the center of the room, his eyes on her. He nodded.
She placed the wall of weapons to her back and faced him fully. “I am going to assume these swords bear purpose in today’s lesson.”
Reeve’s eyes trailed down the wall behind her.
“It’s likely your control came from your Magic,” said Reeve.
“It offered strength and stability for the lightning to flow through you, just as your Magic did. Now those currents are empty, and conducting such power isn’t easy.
But lucky for you, I’m an expert at such things, having once been without inherent Magic myself. ”
She’d never considered that. Before Reeve Inherited the power of Aterna from his father, he’d only used weapons forged with Magic. Just as all the Senshi Warriors did. Her eyes drifted to the wall of the armory.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “My Magic is imbued in the weapon, and the body must learn to use it.”
“That sounds easy enough,” she said, feeling confident and hopeful as she turned back towards the wall.
“Why don’t you pick one up and see?” he asked, smiling softly. Encouragingly.
Maeve wrapped her fingers around the hilt of one in reach, noticing they all had varying-sized stones in them that glowed like violet fire. The sword she grabbed had a small stone inside its hilt, barely larger than a small pea. She pulled up on the blade, removing it from its display on the wall.
All hope and confidence faded as she faltered beneath the sword’s power, swaying sideways as the steel blade made contact with the floor with a bang.
Reeve moved in silent swiftness and appeared at her side, correcting her wobble as the sword brought her to the floor with its magnetic pull.
Magic swarmed from the hilt, wrapping her arm possessively in a dizzying way.
“What kind of Magic is this?” she asked, blinking a few times beneath the blanket of power.
“That is the minimum amount of Aterna Magic required to be a Senshi Warrior.”
Maeve’s mouth fell open.
“If one cannot wield that by age nine,” he continued, “they cannot enlist.”
It occurred to Maeve that perhaps she hadn’t fully understood just how devastatingly different the Senshi Warriors were from that of another Magical army.
A roll of power whipped through her, radiating from the sword.
Reeve laughed through his nose as his fingers wrapped the hilt of the blade she was still clinging to.
“Though,” he began, taking the sword from her grip as she let loose a strained exhale, “nine-year-old Immortals are still very different from you. An Immortal is designed to carry Aterna Magic. You are not.”
He effortlessly placed the sword back in its proper place on the wall and turned towards her, their shoulders squared with one another.
“How’d your Dread Magic flow?” he asked.
Maeve inhaled deeply, as if she were about to use said Magic she no longer had at her disposal, and exhaled to see what feelings she anticipated.
“It moves from my center, up my spine, then back down my arms.”
Reeve made a quiet sound of interest. “And the lightning always felt the same?”
She shook her head. “No. The lightning backflows to my center, then shoots back down the path it came up, and out my fingers.”
Reeve’s head tilted. “From the hand,” he said, both a question and a statement. “That is different, then.”
Maeve held out her right hand, her dominant one, the one that earned her a Supreme title, and the hand where lightning could be conjured. She turned over her palm, acutely aware of Reeve’s eyes on the line of raised tissue scarring her palm.
“Arianna can produce it too,” said Maeve, more question in her tone than Reeve’s.
“Arianna has a more potent amount of Dread Magic than you.”
Maeve’s eyes lifted to him at the comment.
“That wasn’t an insult. She’s—”
“A Pureblood,” finished Maeve. “I know.”
“Your Magic is very different than hers, though. Your ability to manipulate it, bend it to your will, is far greater.”
Her eyes returned to her scarred palm. “Is understanding why I can produce it critical for learning to control it?”
Reeve made a pleased sound deep in his throat. “Now you’re thinking like a clever girl with little time.”
She let her hand fall back to her side and lifted her chin.
His hand slid into his pocket, and he retrieved a smooth, round ball, made of solid crystal, barely larger than a marble. He extended his arm to her and dropped it into Maeve’s outstretched open palm. She anticipated the pulse of warm Aterna Magic, but it never came.
“What is it?”
“For our purposes, it’s a siphon. One for you to channel your lightning through. It’s small, so it can’t handle much. Which is perfect because the last time you pumped out a bunch of uncontrolled lightning, I had to replace thousand-year-old glass.”
Maeve chewed the inside of her lip.
“This will help you understand the energy. It’s how our swords and arrows are imbued with Magic. Crystals like these.”
Maeve looked back at the wall of swords, each one with a glowing amethyst stone set inside the hilt. She looked back down at the dull crystal in her palm.
“But this one looks dead.”
“They would all look dead,” corrected Reeve as he placed a single finger on the small marble, “if my Magic wasn’t in them.”
The crystal marble shot to life, spreading warmth through her hand and up her wrist as it illuminated just like the rest. Reeve’s finger withdrew, taking his Magic and warmth with him, and the crystal turned flat and dull once more.
“Care to try?” he asked.
“With the lightning?”
Reeve nodded. Maeve curled her fingers around the marble.
“Maybe you should step back,” she said.
Reeve’s head lowered in pity as he fought that cocky grin. “Kitten.”
Maeve’s fist tightened around the crystal marble. “Don’t,” she hissed, “call me that.”
“Or what?” he said smoothly, flashing his teeth. “You don’t stand a chance against me. I could will it, and you’d be a pile of ash.”
Heat burned in her stomach, the meal she’d enjoyed turning over in acid. Her brows pulled together as a flicker of electric energy pulsed beneath her skin, coiling down the white knuckles that curled into a tight fist.
Reeve’s grin only widened. “There’s that pretty hatred.”
Maeve inhaled slowly and with agonizing control, tightening every muscle in her core as Magic from her hand back flowed up her arm.
“Into the crystal,” he reminded her, his eyes tracking her fist.
Fine. If he wanted her to force her Magic into that stupid little ball, she’d do it.
But the swell inside her wasn’t electric as she released the energy running through her.
No, it was a feeling she was quite familiar with.
The sensation of being submerged in water crashed over her.
All the weight, distortion, and pressure in her head, with the wetness against her skin.
Suddenly, Maeve kneeled before the occupied throne at Castle Morana. Crimson red caught her vision. Her front was stained with red blood, dripping from a sizeable wound at the base of her neck. Her head hung low as her breathing tried to maintain a steady pace.
She looked up.
Mal sat on the throne with his legs spread enough to make room for a barely clothed Shadow to lounge between them. Shadow hummed quietly in the otherwise vacant hall with her head kicked back against Mal’s shoulder. Her humming stopped abruptly.
Mal’s face was vacant. Void of any emotion she could see.
Shadow’s head lifted from his shoulder and slowly placed her gaze on Maeve.
“I asked you a question, Emerie,” said Shadow, her eyes narrowing more with each word.
Maeve’s stomach plummeted. She was in Emerie’s mind. Emerie, who was alone on the Throne Room floor, wounded, and being questioned by Mal and Shadow without an audience.
“Have you gone deaf?” asked Shadow icily.
Shadow’s eyes widened with a dangerous realization, in synch with Maeve’s own sudden understanding. “She is learning to move through minds without jumping.”
Maeve had to retreat. She had to pull back, for Emerie’s safety. Maeve yanked herself out of Emerie’s mind, as she had done in many minds while jumping. It was so small, so fractional, but Maeve could have sworn something like fear split across Shadow’s face.
Reeve’s armory in Aterna slammed back into Maeve’s view.
Reeve’s face, hovering just above her, held a firm expression of shock, a look she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him wear.
“I jumped,” she said, but judging by the look on his face, he knew that.
Her eyes fixated on a spot on the floor as the weight of her words took root. But jumped wasn’t the right word for it, not for what she had just done. In the past, she’d used others to travel through paths of the mind, connections, and memories.
She had moved from her mind to occupying Emeries. And that was it.
She looked back up at Reeve. “How is that possible? I jumped into Emerie’s mind. She was with Mal and Shadow.”
Reeve’s lips turned under in a thin line, and he stepped away from her, giving her his back. “Holy shit,” he muttered to himself more than her.
Her jumping abilities were her own. Truly her own. Not part of her Dread Magic, as she always assumed and was told. No, this, like the lightning running freely in her arm, was special.
Reeve laughed. “Yet another ability that makes you just that much more of a pain in my ass.”
“I always figured I’d reach that eventually,” she said defensively.
Black Magic swirled like fire around him, creeping higher and higher in solid form, expanding like wings—
“Oh,” he turned back on her, “did you? You didn’t even mean to do that. You were suppose to put lightning in the fucking crystal.” The Vexkari running the side of his face and neck flared, pulsing with ancient Magic she didn’t understand.
Rage.
She did understand.
That beast takes rage kitten. Do I look enraged to you?
His old words slammed across her mind. From when, she couldn’t particularly remember.
But he said it all the same. And gods, did that rage call to her.
She desired to touch those markings, to see what it would show her.
It pulsed again, louder this time, drawing an audible breath through her. She desired to feel that rage.
Firm fingers pressed against her wrist, forcing her eyes away from the Magical scarring on Reeve’s face. Her gaze slid to where he held her wrist in the space between them, just inches from his face. She tensed, not even realizing she had reached towards him.
His eyes were already on hers when she looked up at him, an apology on the tip of her tongue. It was swallowed by his grip, remaining one moment longer than truly necessary.
Two moments, and the pulsing from his Vexkari lessened. His eyes remained steadily on hers.
Three moments, and it retreated further.
Four moments, and it was gone completely.
But as five, six, and seven silent moments passed between them, Maeve’s shoulders relaxed and her fingers uncoiled from her fist in his tight grip. A small relent.
His attention became too much. Too close to forcing her to face the emotions she worked each day to repress. Guilt, above them all. Guilt that she could possibly crave his protection when she deserved nothing close to it.
She swallowed hard as his eyes tracked the movement. Twice now he’d done that. His pupils dilated slightly.
And he let her go. She yielded a small step back, desperate for space she should have demanded as soon as he grabbed her.
“Practice with the crystal today,” he said.
“And if I accidentally jump again?” she asked, her mind flashing to Emerie’s bloodied chest and wondering if her previous visions of Mal and Shadow were accidental jumps as well. But reason fought that argument, for there had been no one else there.
“Then practice that too,” he said. He smiled softly. “I’ll make Eryx volunteer to help you.”
Maeve grimaced.
Reeve chuckled. “That’ll be the same face he’ll make.”
She bit back the urge to ask him why he was abandoning training her himself, but as a rough sigh slipped from him, she didn’t need to. And she realized she, too, wanted space from the man before her, who was breaking past barriers that only one other had managed before.
“I noticed Shadow Slayer is not among these weapons you display so proudly,” she said, hoping he understood the question.
Reeve contemplated her words a moment, his eyes on the wall of weapons fit for a king. But he wasn’t a king. He had refused that title hundreds of years ago, when, according to her father, he had been forced to Inherit his father’s power. To take.
To drain his life force.
What a cruel world.
“No,” said Reeve after a moment, “that sword isn’t worthy to hang alongside these.”
“And yet, that is the sword you keep at your side,” said Maeve.
Reeve smiled, but it hardly touched his eyes. “I haven’t been worthy to wield a blade on these walls in centuries.”
Maeve’s eyes grew large at the raw honesty in his voice, but Reeve’s playful smile appeared on his face before she could push him any further.
“Best of luck with Eryx. It’s more a punishment for him than you,” he said with a grin as he turned to leave the armory. “I hope you understand.”
Maeve laughed softly. “A punishment for him?”
Reeve nodded. “I told him not to talk to you if I wasn’t present.”
He turned the corner of the doors, and Maeve’s mouth fell open as she rushed after him. But on the other side of the armory doors, the dragon-shifting High Lord was nowhere to be seen.