Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2)

by Nicolette Jinks

  The black dragon rose before me, in the clutches of his claws he held a small ball of light, illuminating his scales so a faint red glow reflected back. Light played between us like flickers and sputters of an oil lantern through a crystal prism.

  I took a breath and said, “Sisto—”

  “Quid pro quo,” he said, cutting me off with his rapid words.

  I didn't think it would have worked as a spell, but I felt it work, and that was a bit of a dilemma. Quid pro quo was Latin. Terribly clever of him to do. I snorted. “Something for something?”

  “What you do to me, happens to you. And whatever I feel, you will, too. Do not think you can cause me pain without consequence.”

  I would have to remember that one if I was ever up against a non-suicidal opponent.

  At an impasse, I could only imagine what would happen, what it was that he wanted.

  Gray with purple slits, the eyes that stared back at me might have been darker versions of my own.

  And we faced one another, sworn enemies, born of one another, yet doing nothing.

  The ward vibrated with a physical blow, but this time there was no damage. Mordon's angry roar made my scales lift in a shiver. The Immortal spoke:

  “I am honored to meet the one who brought me to life.”

  “Brought you to life?”

  “You do not know, do you? I would not know it, myself, except I lived through it. Centuries of existence, of harboring the sacrifices of black magic, of subduing the unwilling and contesting the enthusiasts, wanting nothing more than to be rid of them, but forced to obey the commands of those who had splattered muck on a wall and fed it with blood and bone.”

  “You…you were not one of the souls who was sacrificed to bring it to be?”

  “Little do men think that the actions of a moment can create life. How few know that power of words can change the world. And fewer still understand their work is permanent. Yes, I was created. I was not one of those fed to me, to be enslaved. I was the chain, to do the bidding of the master, to restrain the others.”

  “You were the spell itself. But does this mean—all spells are like you?”

  “Such as this ward here? No. These spells, and all spells like them, are an exertion of energy, a physical embodiment of the power which makes our hearts tick. Do you feel this?” His tail skidded up and down mine, sending white-hot electric thrills through my body. “These spells we cast are made of the same material which has told you that you were touched by me. Do you feel it? Do you feel the life? A reminder of what it is to live! To have the free will to choose what it is you will do. Feel it through your skin, through your veins…”

  The Immortal reached a long neck forward and rubbed his head across my neck, scraping nerves to cloud my mind. I watched, breathless, as a claw raked across my soft belly, not daring to move a muscle.

  It wasn't that I couldn't move, that I couldn't struggle—it was that I chose to remain still. And I denied the sickening, miserable reason that I didn't pull back so much as a millimeter or an inch.

  “You feel that, the same as I do. Why must we fight one another? Why, when we are bound, in fate, in past, in future.”

  “No. Not like this.”

  “You make your own fate, as do I, as do we all! Have your struggles worn you down to accepting the pressures of others? Where is your free spirit? Join with me.”

  “No, I can't.”

  “You can.”

  “What is the meaning behind this, behind all of it? What is it that you want?”

  His neck, still rubbing up and down mine, tensed and drew me against him in an embrace which matched wing beats and heart beats. Every sinew in my body went rigid, every nerve tingled. Tiny shocks ran through me in waves. My eyelids drooped, not closing entirely. I wanted to cry out for Mordon, but couldn't. All I could do was be glad the ward was holding. What was happening between us was too smutty, too secret, too … too … guilty. No one must know, no one must ever find out.

  I felt his tail tighten about mine as it pulled us flush against each other. The wing beats became discordant, causing a friction which undulated a caressing desire through my ribcage.

  I pulled back from the embrace and said, “No, this isn't my place, my place is out there, not—”

  “Come with me!” he said, commanding, powerful.

  “We couldn't.”

  “We couldn't? The two of us, you and I, we could pick this world to pieces and stitch it back together again! We could go to the beginning, we could find the Unwrittens, all of them, and uncover what makes them different. We could stop Death, end the heartache and suffering for ever! Imagine a world where no one has to die, where there are no good-byes, only hellos. Imagine a world where the only tears to shed are those of joy. You'd want to be part of that work, I know you do. You, who have grieved too much too young, you, who have been to Death yourself, tasted of his wine. Imagine to never survive those you wish you wouldn't. You can lie about anything else, but don't lie about what it is you want …”

  And our necks entwined with unchecked desire, a primal need, his breath quick and harsh against my cheek. Claws clasped and I drew in a gasping breath. Words raced through my mind, unbidden, unwished.

  I broke away. “This isn't right.”

  “What is right about the world we live in? Can't you see that you and I can rip asounder the things which are wrong, and make them right? Or do you speak of that man you have seen? I care nothing about him, and as he hasn't done this with you, he must not care as much for you as you think he does. Otherwise, why deny you? Why put you through heartache and frustration, when he could choose to give you what you want, now? I'd not hesitate. Now, make your choice: if you want to change the world, to stop the pain and dying, come with me.”

  I wavered; my eyes shut, I swayed as if a great storm wind were rocking me; but I kept my place and opened my eyes again, resolve kindled in a place deep within me.

  “No,” I said.

  The Immortal struck twice the air between us, backing away, his tail still curled about my own. I forced my wings to fan me apart from him, tugging at a tail unwilling to relax its hold. He froze in place, offering a final chance to return back to his hold, to see what it was the two of us could do together.

  Then I felt the resonance of the spell match my will, and I ripped it out from under him with the jerk of my tail.

  The ward wrenched apart with the breaking of the clouds, and with the glistening of the sun came the slicing of the strings which bound the husks to their master, and they fell down with the breaking of the immortal's will to my own.

  I watched as he turned his back and disappeared under an illusion without another word.

  Then I looked down at the world below.

  The forest was a place of wonders such as I had never seen. The woods stood there, so healthy, so strong, just still, as though in a sleep, waiting to be awoken. The sun warming my back was pouring into the canopy, making my scales shimmer, melting the frost of the leaves in the distance, turning the land from white to green, bringing them to life.

  I could have stayed there stunned, blinking and taking it all in. Had it all been illusion? What had been real? What had been a test? If I could know, I'd have ripped off my own nail. Had this been done by the immortal—or by the Wildwoods herself?

  I was still hanging there midair. Mordon was beside me, saying something, but my mind was awhirl, and I didn't hear a thing until he nipped his long front teeth into the scales of my neck. I shook my head.

  “What? What is it?”

  “They've died. Fallen into nothing. The Wildwoods has control again. You're losing altitude, it's your shoulder. Land before it fails and you fall.”

  I said, breathless, “They're dead? The Wildwoods is back? And all of this, the fire, the infection, it all happened?”

  I looked at Mordon and saw the urgent command to do as he said. I felt dizzy, as if the land were tilting beneath me.

  That's because it was. My should
er, which had borne up so well, was weaker than the other, and I could feel the damage each pound of the air was costing me.

  “Show me where to land.”

  When we touched ground and I shifted, Mordon came to my side. I told him what I dared to tell him. That I was omitting things was obvious, but he didn't press. It was the wrong time.

  We met with the others and decided to go meet with the village.

  “What is this?” I asked, even though it was obvious where the Wildwoods had taken us after we'd met with the others and taken a head count before deciding to return to the village. Except the Wildwoods had taken Mordon and me on a detour.

  It was a cottage, one with a roof like a straw hat and a garden like a romance painting. Beneath the brand-new buds, like spring had decided to happen midsummer, soot from the fire was being forgotten. No one lived there, I sensed it, the same way I sensed that it had been made expressly for me. My parents came out of the door and greeted me with wide arms, laughing.

  Over Father's vise-like embrace, I asked again, “What is this?”

  “This,” Mother said, “is the Fey Council's decision on your case.”

  I stopped on the pebble-lined walkway, seeing a glimpse of a bright interior hallway. “They chose to give me a house?”

  “It means you're forgiven of any misdeeds and that you have a place of honor within the village,” Mother said, talking excitedly. “This is yours, and as soon as the evacuees are home, you'll be part of the battalion, a seeker, like you were before, but this not not auxiliary. We have it all worked out, we planned it in the time while waiting for the husks to attack. Your whole life can be right here. You'll never be without family or friends ever again. I'd always hoped you'd find your place here.”

  Disbelief mixed with regret as I watched the joy on Mother's face. Though Mother wanted to show me the inside, I was rooted in place. “I had never been wanted by the battalion. Why do they want me now?”

  “They've always wanted you, they just didn't want you to do too much and get hurt.”

  “They didn't give me that impression.” I cleared my throat. “Mother, I am glad, very glad, of the Fey Council's decision, and of the generous offer they are extending to me.”

  “Fera, you're not going to do something you will regret in a few years, are you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like walking away.”

  Mother was getting upset now. This, I knew, was the time when I could either shake my head and say that of course I wasn't going to walk away, of course I'd take the cottage and all that went with it. But I couldn't do it. As the seconds stretched thin between us, I knew that she knew it, too.

  “Mother, I enjoy seeing you and Father and everything, but I can't. They rejected me. They didn't want me to be there, not seriously.”

  Mother looked ready to object.

  “Hear me through, please. The fact is that they never, ever expressed much of anything for me until now. Now that I have magic again. If they aren't there for me when I needed it…I don't know, maybe if I was a better person, I could join them now.”

  “It's in the past. And you misunderstand, they simply couldn't use you, out of consideration for your limitations.”

  I put my hand to my mouth and kept quiet.

  Mordon said, “I'm starting the portal to Merlyn's Market.”

  “So, what, are you just going to leave me?” I spat, hurt. “Or are you just so arrogant you think you know my answer?”

  “I don't,” he said, “but you do.”

  Mordon walked a few paces away, to where there was good, flat ground, and started taking measurements. My legs locked in place, thinking nothing, not sure what I was even feeling.

  Father laid a hand on my shoulder. “It's for the best, Fera. All of it.”

  I shrugged out from under his hand. “You want me to stay here.”

  “You've always wanted to be part of this.” Father scowled. “There's no reason to give it up for the sake of some man who hardly knows you.”

  “You think I'm giving up what I want so I can be with him?”

  “I think that if you go, you'll be lying to yourself. You have always wanted to be part of the battalion.”

  It was true, I had, but ever since I had my magic back, I hadn't spared the battalion so much as a thought. I hadn't forgotten about them, but I had come close to it.

  Father continued, “This is what you've always wanted, Feraline. Don't throw it away for a fling.”

  I gritted my teeth, not sure who I was angry with, no longer sure of anything. Mother stepped forward. I stalked away, away from all of them, away from Father, from Mother, from Mordon. I wanted in that instant to have all of them disappear and to just be by myself. The Wildwoods was not so accommodating. We all remained, with me just a little ways apart from the rest.

  I reviewed the facts. I had two choices.

  To remain in the Wildwoods, to take a place as a seeker within the battalion, to be with family and serve the woods the way Lyall did. Mordon wouldn't be welcome except as an occasional guest, and he had his own colony to serve besides. It'd be life without him.

  The second choice was less certain. It meant leaving this behind, leaving the house and the job and my family and everything which had become familiar. It meant facing a future that might or might not include Mordon and the colonies as a permanent fixture. It meant a risk. A lot of risks. I'd gone so long seeking safety and stability, and now I had a viable chance for it—if I stayed here. Looking at it logically, a lot of things stacked in favor of remaining in the woods.

  “The Fey Council planned all this?” I asked.

  “The entire village did—or those of us who remained,” Mother said, smiling. “We had no doubts. We thought of everything.”

  “You didn't think to ask my opinion.”

  “We didn't need to. We know you, Fera.”

  “I can't believe it. I can't believe how little you respect me, how little you value my choices.”

  “Fera—”

  “No,” I said. “I don't want to stay in the woods. There' s a whole world out there to explore. I don't want to join the battalion, and I don't want to break up with Mordon in order to live the life you want me to live.”

  “Fera!”

  But I was too heated to talk with them anymore. I joined Mordon in the center of the spell, careful to not step on any of the symbols. “Get me out of here,” I said.

  “It may be better to speak with them, not to part like this,” Mordon said.

  “If I have to speak one more word to them, I'm going to start breaking things. Now, let's leave, Mordon.”

  My parents didn't try to step into the circle with us. I didn't know if that made me glad or sad.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  When the Wildwoods and the spell faded away to nothing, I found myself standing in the living room, surrounded with a door in every wall. It was stable, everlasting. I knew where these doors would go, I knew that when we took something out of the cabinet, it wouldn't restock itself. I knew that I'd have to walk and walk and walk to reach the far reaches of Merlyn's Market. I knew that time marched onwards at a steady pace and that I'd get where I wanted to go—and if I got lost, I would really be lost.

  I sagged against a wall, putting my head in my hand.

  “Oh, Fera,” Mordon murmured and pulled me against his chest. From the stairs came the sound of someone running a vacuum, hiding our presence for a few more seconds. He stroked my back as I did not cry. He said, “I'm sure we can find a way to reconcile with your parents.”

  I was not crying.

  I would not be like that.

  So I cleared my throat, nodded, and stiffened my back. And none too soon.

  “Fera, Mordon!” Barnes got to his feet, rising from the breakfast nook with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Welcome back.”

  “That was fast,” Leif said, evidently relieved, emerging from the kitchen.

  The vacuum turned off and Lilly said, “They're
back? It's not even noon.”

  “And not a minute too soon,” Barnes said. “Another thing to celebrate. We were just going to the Mermaid's Tale.”

  “They'll have to tell us all about the Wildwoods. I'll treat us to a cheeseburger and fries,” Leif said.

  My emotional turmoil soothed, seeing the warmth of my friends, the comfort of being amongst them again. “What do you have to celebrate?”