I COULDN’T TELL IF I was lying down or floating. Then I started to spin.
Is this a dream?
I thought you couldn’t feel pain in dreams. I dreamed of light and darkness, and I felt heat and pain.
My heartbeat pounded in my head. I tried to open my eyes, but they were crusted shut.
Where am I? What’s happening to me? How long have I been here?
Finally, I managed to open my eyes, and I had to squint to make out anything. My world spun and tilted. I felt nauseated. I closed my eyes again and waited until the nausea passed.
I reached out and gripped the sides of something soft. Yes. A bed. I was in a bed.
I pulled myself upright, and after a few moments my eyesight had adjusted to the light.
I was in a room with wood paneled walls that smelled of pine. I was still in the castle. Thank the Goddess.
But how did I get here?
My memories were jumbled together like dreams that fade away when you wake. I couldn’t remember.
I remembered that the witch king’s magecraft glowed, as he was about to strike me…
But then something occurred to me. I lifted the soft bed cover and looked down at myself. My clothes were gone, and I was wearing a simple white shift and clean undergarments.
My boots!
“Shit.”
I swung my legs off the bed, and a spell of dizziness nearly sent me to the ground. I steadied myself with the bed. Bile rose in the back of my throat, and I waited for the nausea to pass.
I moved more slowly as I made my way over to the dresser. I yanked open the drawers and rummaged through them looking for my clothes, but all I could find were stacks of neatly piled linens.
I spotted a closet, and I lunged unsteadily towards it. I swung open the door. Spare robes and trousers hung on wooden hangers, but they were not my clothes. A basket on the floor was piled full with multicolored slippers. My heart sank. No boots. No magecraft.
“Looking for this?”
I spun around.
Ada stood in the doorway, and my magecraft was hanging from her index finger.
“That’s mine,” I said.
The anger in my voice surprised me, and I reached out to grab my magecraft. But with a swift flick of her hand, Ada secreted it in one of her many hidden pockets.
“I don’t think it ever belonged to you,” said Ada sternly. “No magic stones belong to anyone.”
“Give it back,” I said.
My head throbbed, but I ignored the pain. “It’s mine. I won it.”
“I think you’ve had it long enough.” Ada’s tone was final. Her skin sparked with white power, and although she was shorter than me, I felt as though she were the tallest woman in the world.
I didn’t shrink back from her, despite her height. Instead I look a tentative step forward and reached for the stone again.
“You knew better,” she said.
She shook her head, “I’d warned you before about any magic stones. You knew that while you could touch them, you could never wield them. And yet you doubted me. You had felt the wild and dangerous magic of the Heart of Arcania stone, and yet you took one for yourself?”
I was furious, and I lunged for the stone. “Thief! Give it back!”
Ada flicked her fingers, and an invisible force pushed me back. I felt like I was underwater, fighting a strong current, and I couldn’t break to the surface. I tried to twist away from her, but it was hopeless. I could feel my own magic countering hers, but it was ineffective. Finally I stopped fighting. The fury in Ada’s eyes matched my own.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” she bellowed. “Control yourself. Control it. Or I will put you in a cage.”
Before I realized it, I was moving towards her again with my arms outstretched—
Ada slapped me hard across the face. “Snap out of it!”
It worked. I staggered back. The impact sobered me right up.
What was I doing?
The darkness lifted, and I could think again. The true meaning of her words really hit me. It was as though my head had been full of water, and now it was clear.
My anger had clouded my thoughts until I had become someone else. I had become someone angry, someone who wanted to kill for the pure pleasure of it. I knew then that I was different, that I had some black magic in me, but it had been made a hundred times worse by the stone. I was going through some kind of withdrawal. I yearned for the rush of my magecraft. And I didn’t like the emptiness I felt without it.
I craved that magic power.
I felt sick to my stomach when I realized what I’d become. I was embarrassed that Ada had seen me behave so badly. I couldn’t control my tears. But Ada continued to lecture me.
“Haven’t you seen what the stone has done to the witch king?” she asked. “He believed he was strong enough to control it. But every time he uses it, he loses a piece of himself. He has become unrecognizable as our king. Look at how he nearly killed one of his oldest friends. That’s what the stones do. They corrupt the mind, and then the stone controls you.”
She sighed heavily.
“As a steel maiden, you are more prone to turn to that dark path because dark blood magic flows in your veins. You would be seduced by that darkness willingly and completely, and we would never be able to get you back. You would be lost to it, forever.”
Ada’s shoulders slumped a little, and for the first time she looked drained.
“You disappoint me, Elena.”
Her words stabbed my heart. Shame colored to my cheeks, and I swallowed hard, trying to control my emotions.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
My voice was still strong in spite of the tightness in my chest.
“It can help me, help us win this war. I can do amazing things with it. It makes me stronger, better.”
“No, Elena,” said the high witch. “Not better. Never better.”
“But you saw what I did—”
“What about Rose?” said Ada. “What do you think she’d feel about what you’ve become?”
My eyes filled with tears.
How could I have forgotten about Rose? I hadn’t thought about her once since I had woken up. This wasn’t me. I didn’t want to be like this. Rose…
I blinked the moisture from my eyes. I felt ill.
“Is Rose…have they…” I couldn’t say it.
“Rose’s body was taken care of,” said Ada gently. “We have prepared her funeral ceremony for tonight. I wanted to make sure you were well enough to attend.”
The memory of Rose’s mutilated body caused the room to spin again. My stomach tightened into a knot. I couldn’t breathe. Rose was gone.
And then the memories came flooding back.
My blood went cold. I swayed and shifted on my feet, and I had to stick out my arms to balance myself, for fear I might tumble over. My stomach twisted as I clenched my fists. I had lost a mother and a protector. Rose had kept me fed and clothed and warm. She had kept me hidden and safe.
She had been brutally murdered because of me.
I remembered the words that had been carved into her flesh, the gag in her mouth, the blood. There had been so much blood. I fought against the nausea that stirred within me.
And then I remembered the coven guards. I had killed them all with my bare hands.
I was a monster.
Perhaps I was a monster, a killer. Maybe the Goddess had intended that her soldier should be a killer. Even so, I felt nothing. I didn’t feel any remorse for the witches I’d killed.
The assassin who had killed Rose had denied me the chance even to say goodbye, to apologize for being a stubborn ass, but mostly I lost my chance to thank her properly. To tell her how much she had meant to me. How much I loved her.
Just thinking about it, even now, caused my furious blood to pound in my ears.
“We’ve kept you under a sleeping spell to help your body heal from some of the damage done by the stone. And by the bump Fawkes gave you.”
“That was him?”
I remembered something hitting me in the back of the head. I would have to pay him back when I had the chance.
Ada appeared to perk up a bit.
“With a little push from our witches in the White Witches clan to speed up the healing process, your own blood magic did the rest.”
Her face turned solemn. “The stone had made you sick, Elena.”
I gaped at the old witch and shook my head.
“I’m not sick, honestly. I feel perfectly fine. Better even.”
I wasn’t about to tell her about the dizziness I had felt just moments ago. Besides I felt steadier on my feet now that I was fully awake.
Ada took me into her confidence a little more.
“I felt a change in you. The darkness has been growing in you ever since you were touched by the necromancer’s black magic. It has been dormant perhaps, but it was still in you, in your blood magic. And now I’m afraid it has nearly taken control of you.”
“It hasn’t, I swear,” I argued.
I knew quite well that something had been brewing inside me, but I had always thought it had been malnutrition, exhaustion, and the stress of searching for Jon.
Ada raised a quizzical brow. “Your headaches? They are the manifestations of the awakening of the black magic.”
Instinctively I reached out and brushed my fingers against the scar tissue at the base of my neck. The wound the red monk had given me with his poisoned talons felt rough and angry. It still throbbed constantly and had never truly healed.
Ada saw that I was rubbing my scar.
“You said it would never heal,” I said.
Despite their efforts, the witches had not been successful in removing all the black magic.
“Yes, I did. But if you had been left alone, you probably could have lived a life without it taking control. Your blood magic is strong, and it would have protected you. But things have changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The stone you carried with you didn’t make you better, it made you worse. It magnified the power of the black magic that was awakening inside you. It sped up the process and changed you.”
Ada cocked her head.
“And if you don’t relinquish the stone, it will consume you. If the darkness takes you over, you will no longer be Elena. You will have become a creature of darkness.”
Ada looked at me sympathetically.
“Your headaches and the darkness you felt are both black magic. Rotten and evil. It’s seducing you. It’s the worst kind of magic, and it doesn’t belong in this world. That’s why everything it touches withers and dies. The more black magic seeps through the portals, the more our world will die. And it will happen one piece at a time. One witch, one human, at a time.”
I thought of the demons with a cold shiver. It scared me to death that I could lose control. I was a witch and a human. I didn’t want to become something dead.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
Ada regarded me purposefully.
“You won’t turn into a creature, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Well, at least that’s a small comfort.”
But was it? Was it really? I was lying to myself because what little comfort I’d been able to feel had been derived from that damn magecraft.
How was I supposed to defeat the necromancers now?
The magecraft had been the aide I had so desperately needed and wanted. With it, I was an unstoppable force, a dark force maybe, but at least a strong and powerful one. It had given me the power to beat the necromancers. Now, I was back to being just me, a half-witch with no real magic, not the kind that mattered.
I stared at my toes.
Ada would never give back the magecraft, and I doubted I’d get my hands on another. I had the chance to kill the high priest back at the inn. But I had saved Jon instead.
Had I made a mistake?
Before I had taken the stone I’d sworn to avenge the deaths of my friends. I was resourceful. I would just have to find a way to kill the necromancers without magic…
“I believe we removed the stone from you just in time,” said Ada.
She crossed the room and stood next to me. I believed she had mistaken my silence for fear.
I heard the rattling of a metal chain somewhere beneath her robes. She caught me staring at a spot below her right elbow, and she moved her arm behind her back.
“If you had spent any more time under the influence of the stone’s wild and untamable power, we would have been unable to rescue you. Breaking the link between you and that stone was the first step on your way to recovery. In a way, your headaches helped.”
“Helped? Apart from making me feel like my head was splitting open, I don’t see how they could have helped. They just hurt like hell, most of the time.”
“I’m sure they did, but the headaches were a sign. They helped me see how much the black magic had awakened. You were suffering, my dear, because your blood magic was trying to protect you from the black magic. You are a steel maiden, and your blood magic was telling you that something was very wrong.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “But it’s still there. Isn’t it?”
“I think…” She eyed me carefully. “I think your blood magic is very strong, Elena. It’s why the stone affected you so effectively. I imagine it was having a feast on your blood magic.”
“Sounds disgusting.”
Ada’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Well, you’ll have to control your urges. When you can control your mind, your own blood magic will do the rest. But you will need training.”
I shook my head. “Maybe after this war. There’s no time for any kind of training now.”
“Training of the mind is essential to suppress the black magic. You’re no good to us in this state.”
I frowned at her, and she continued. “Your black magic is wild and unpredictable. Until you can control it, there’s no telling what you can do or what you will do. So first, you must learn to control it. Then we’ll see if you’re fit to help.”
I was about to object that this training would be a waste of precious time, but I knew the old witch wouldn’t have it. So I just played along, for the time being.
And then something occurred to me.
“The prince wears a magecraft. The stone is set in his ring, but he’s not like his father or that horrible witch queen,” I began. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not making excuses. I’m just saying that the prince doesn’t seem to be controlled by his ring. And I’m sure there are others like him.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Ada. “Not all magic stones are created equal. The king has had his for more than three centuries, and you can see how much damage it has done to him. The prince only started to wear one thirty years ago.”
Ada smiled when she realized I was trying to figure out how old the prince actually was.
“The prince’s blood is mixed. He has less dark magic in him than you might think because he takes after his mother. It will take longer for the magic in the stone to take hold of him. And the stone he wears is quite small. I have reason to believe he doesn’t use it. Still, in the end, it will consume him, just as it has his father.”
“I hope not.” I didn’t like to think that Aurion might become as vile as the king. While I didn’t know him that well, his actions had led me to believe that he was the opposite of his father.
“It’s something else entirely in your case,” said Ada. “When the black magic in you mixes with a magic stone, the combination is dangerous and deadly. The events of that night cannot happen again. You must understand.”
I didn’t, but I decided to leave it for now.
I asked instead, “What are you going to do with it?”
I couldn’t help myself. I still felt attached to that little stone. I tried to act calmly, and to be normal, but I couldn’t deny the addictive power of the stone. It still pulsed in me. It made me want to reach out and rip off the old witch’s robe just to look for it.
A tiny smile formed on Ada’s lips. “That, my dear, you’ll never know.”
“Figures.” I sighed.
I felt naked without the stone and the extra power it provided me.
What was worse, I still felt a yearning hole in my soul where Rose had once been. My heart ached for her, and I felt as if I might cry again. I couldn’t break down now. I had to keep my tears in check and my wits together. I needed to find her killer. Nothing else mattered.
“How long have I been in here?” I asked coldly.
“Two days.”
“Two days!” My stomach turned over. Two days was an enormous amount of time. The murderers would have had plenty of time to cover their tracks. They were probably long gone by now.
Maybe they’d left something behind.
“Have you found any leads on her murderer?” I knew Ada would have told me first thing if they’d caught Rose’s murderer.
For the first time Ada looked away from me. “No. Fawkes and the prince gathered a search party. They searched everywhere and interrogated everyone who had access to the castle. They even questioned some of the humans. But they couldn’t find any evidence of her killers anywhere inside the castle. The witchlings were the only ones who had been allowed in Rose’s room. And they’re just girls. It’s not in their nature to do something so atrocious.”
“So they stopped looking?” My anger rushed back.
Ada looked back at me.
“I’m sorry, Elena. I know this is difficult for you to understand. But there is no more we can do right now. I’m afraid the culprits have disappeared.”
Ada rested her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t feel that you are responsible. Her death wasn’t your fault.”
“Like hell it wasn’t,” I snapped. “The necromancer priests killed Rose to get at me. It was deliberate and cowardly, but her blood is on my hands nonetheless. I’m the only one responsible for her death. Me.”
“Elena, listen to me—”
“I need to go.” I rushed past her, but the old witch stopped me with a grip like iron.
“You need to rest,” she ordered.
I yanked my arm away.
“I need to see the room again.” My voice broke. “There’s got to be something there. Some evidence of who did this. There has to be.”
“I’m afraid you’ll find nothing,” she said. “The room’s been thoroughly cleaned.”
“It doesn’t matter. I still need to see it.”
I slipped out the door before she could stop me.