by Erin Hayes
https://normahinkens.com/
NYT and USA Today bestselling author Norma Hinkens grew up among rich storytelling traditions in her native Ireland, land of make-believe and the original little green man. A globetrotter at heart, she settled in California and began scribbling down the yarns that have been brewing in her head for years. In her spare time she retreats to rural Idaho to hike, bike and boat, but mostly to eavesdrop on mountain men and prepare for the apocalypse. If you like dystopian sagas, gritty heroines, and twists you won’t see coming, then you’ll love her turbo-paced thrill-rides! .
Cursed Magic
Margo Bond Collins and Rebecca Hamilton
Cursed Magic
Margo Bond Collins and Rebecca Hamilton
Cursed Magic © copyright 2017 Margo Bond Collins and Rebecca Hamilton
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cursed Magic
Her magic could save the world—if she can save herself first.
Harper always knew she'd be cast off the witches' island when she turned nineteen. After her parents' betrayal of their people, the elders were always suspicious of Harper, no matter how hard she tried to fit in. She didn't realize how horrible exile would be, though—and she certainly never expected to be saved from the brink of death by a Fae lord. Or taken to his castle and nursed back to health.
Truth be told, she almost wished Lord Kaedon had let her die, because now that she's well, this Fae lord doesn’t seem so terrible—and when he begs for her help to stop the war between their people, she can’t say no.
But when their plans lead to Kaedon’s collapse, Harper is left alone in enemy territory with a dying Fae lord, and if she can’t save him from the cursed magic infecting him, her fate might end up even worse than his.
Chapter One
Breathe.
In through the mouth, out through the nose? Or the other way around?
Either way, breathing was supposed to ease my anxiety. Except it didn’t. I must’ve been doing it wrong. Every inhale felt as though I were moving under water. Which would have been fine if I were a mermaid.
But I wasn’t.
I was a witch.
And I was about to find out my fate.
“Come on, Harper. We’re going to be late.” Lacey grabbed my hand and pulled me up from the tall grass. Of course she was excited about today. No one in her family had ever failed the Choosing. “And we have to be on time to the Convocation Circle.”
I brushed the soil from the back of my black dress and forced a smile. “Oh, goody,” I said, unenthusiastically. “I can’t wait.”
“It’ll be fine. Just breathe.”
Oh, Mother, not her, too. “In and out,” I said through my teeth. “All day long.” And it’s not working. “Any other tips?”
“Yeah.” She strode across the clearing and started on the path to the Convocation Circle, the gathering place the witches had used for the annual Choosing for hundreds of years. “Don’t be a smart-ass.”
I tipped my head back to stare up at the Mother’s sky as I followed her. Great advice. Why didn’t I think of that?
I rolled my eyes, certain Lacey wouldn’t notice if I didn’t keep up with her. She—along with every other witch on the island—was rushing to the Circle for the most important day of the year.
The words echoed in my mind, taking on an ominous cast and interfering with my breathing. Convocation. Choosing.
Witches from my crèche swirled around me on the path, their voices bright as they rushed forward, chattering in the chill autumn air.
I could barely concentrate on what any of them were saying. As I trudged toward the clearing, dread settled into the pit of my stomach, as if I had eaten a cursed apple. One of the kind the youngest witches practiced trying to slip by the magic monitors—not rough enough to truly hurt anyone, but not pleasant if a nausea-free day was what one preferred.
“Harper.” Lacey’s voice was even more impatient than before. Apparently, she wasn’t going to forget me. Not this time.
Not today.
Despite her concerns, we were far from the last ones to arrive. It was a short hike to the gathering. When we arrived, half the girls from the island were already there, with more flowing in after us. The older girls from the wild, unruly third crèche came stumbling and tumbling into the clearing with seconds to spare before Mother Jonas began the ritual.
Lacey and I sat side by side on one of the split-log benches around the central clearing—the space that held the stone altar for most gatherings. Dusk was rolling in; it wouldn’t be long before the elders arrived and we began.
“Don’t listen to them,” Lacey said, taking my hand and smiling at me.
I figured she meant the whispering going on around us. I’d already blocked them out. I didn’t need to listen to them as I already knew what they were saying.
Will she pass? Or will she be marked and banished from the island the way her parents were?
And always, the whispers that accused me of following in my parents’ footsteps.
Fae-lover.
Traitor.
Five elders moved into the clearing, wearing full robes and carrying the traditional fire starters. Oak, elm, aspen, apple, and the final stick, not yet glowing like the others. The one nobody talked about—the one we were supposed to find out about only about after our formal initiation. After the Choosing.
For those who got to stay, anyway.
I was fairly certain there wasn’t much of a chance for me.
I remembered the last full Convocation I’d attended. It was the night my parents had been banished from the Circle forever.
The elders let me stay when my parents were banished because I was so young. Mother Jonas let me only because it would look bad to the other elders if she banished a child. I was sure of it.
Oh yeah, and the rest of the coven would have revolted, rebelled if she’d sent a child out into the wilderness.
“She should remain here. Just in case,” the elders had said. “It’ll be a better life for her, so long as—”
As long as I didn’t turn out like my parents. That was how the story went. Really, we all knew my banishment was inevitable. I didn’t fit in. Never had. So instead of feeling hope, I felt a looming dread. I wasn’t waiting to find out my fate so much as waiting to find out how they were going to implement it.
I still dreamed about my mother as she gave me one last kiss. Her tears had streamed down her face, swamping her blue eyes.
Sometimes in the dreams, I felt the way she’d shoved her raw power into me, filling up my chest and head so I could barely inhale, and then her whispered, “Don’t tell them you have this.”
As I thought about that, my magic—now an odd mix of hers and mine—swirled in my gut, sharp flickers of fire questing upward, looking for a way out. I clenched my jaw and shoved it back down, imagining cooling water hitting it, quenching the flames with a hiss and plume of smoke.
But the fire wasn’t out. It never entirely went out. It retreated deep into the heart of itself and smoldered, waiting for the next chance to flash outward.
Once I had my power under control, I raised my gaze to the center of the clearing, where the ceremony was beginning. T
he youngest witches performed the opening chant.
As my eyes flickered across the crowd, I realized Mother Jonas was watching me—not the events in the center circle.
This time, the only thing that shot through me was fear.
Our coven leader had wanted to get rid of me since that night with my parents. If she could have found a way to do it without raising the wrath of the rest of the coven, I knew she would have.
Tonight, she would finally get her wish.
The High Council elders fanned out to circle the bonfire the committee had spent the last three days building. It had to burn all night, so it was carefully constructed to require a minimum of effort to keep it going.
Holding the fire-starter tapers vertically in their hands like candles, four of the five elders stepped forward at precisely the same moment. Raising their voices in a chant, they set the carefully placed twists of paper alight.
A group of handpicked children moved in solemnly to light the remaining kindling. It wouldn’t do for the ceremonial bonfire to sputter out before it even caught. As usual, a cheer went up seconds after the fire whooshed toward the sky.
“What assignment do you think I’ll get?” Lacey asked, using the cheer as cover for her hissed question. “How will I be Chosen?”
I shook my head. Leave it to Lacey to focus entirely on herself, when I was certain I wouldn’t even be here the next day.
That’s not fair, Harper, I scolded myself. Of course Lacey was anxious about her own future, too. I leaned in close and breathed into her ear, “You’ll get Battle Circle duty.”
Lacey glanced at me with wide eyes and clenched her fists in a gesture of hope. The Battle Circle was the most prestigious Choosing possible. If I was right, she would spend her days crafting the spells that kept us safe from the evil elves on the mainland, keeping them from using what little magic they had to steal ours and turn it against us.
I’d forgotten for a second that I wasn’t going to be part of “us” much longer.
In the circle, the monitors were gathering up the young witches and herding them off toward their crèches, where they would have their own celebrations.
The fifth High Council elder waited until the chattering voices of the children could no longer be heard, and then she moved forward with her taper. She held it to the flames, and the end of it flared. Pulling it back, she blew out the tiny fire, leaving only a glowing ember and a trailing cloud of smoke.
Slowly, she began pacing around the Circle. Those eligible for the Choosing sat in the front row, leaning forward eagerly—except me. The council member, I realized as she drew closer, was Sister Susana Lawson. Gently, she blew the smoke from the taper into the initiates’ faces. When she got to me, I made eye contact. She nodded encouragingly, so I inhaled the smoke deeply—Sister Susana had always been kind to me, and I trusted her.
The world began to swirl around me, and I found myself staring more and more deeply into the heart of the bonfire. Sounds lengthened, deepened, and I seemed to withdraw into myself while I floated free above the Circle.
I glanced at Lacey next to me—and somehow, also far below me, sitting on the split log. Her face—both our faces—softened into blissful expressions. The High Council elders, all five of them this time, paced around the bonfire. Their chanting voices retreated into a buzzing drone, even as their figures, backlit by the leaping flames, grew larger, darker, and more ominous.
Minutes passed, then maybe hours, and I heard whispers from the woods behind us—from all around—and from the other initiates, though when I looked at them, their mouths didn’t move. The hissing voices froze me in place. I was too terrified to even twitch.
After a long interval, I realized the elders had paused in their pacing chant to gather around an initiate, murmur a spell, and then whisper a few words.
That was what I heard. Not hissing. Choosing.
When they finished with one girl, the elders moved back to pacing and chanting. One circuit of the fire, then on to the next initiate.
Coven members were moving into the light of the bonfire and taking the newly Chosen witches by the hand, leading them along the paths to their new Circles, where they would live and work for the greater good of all witches.
Whatever that fifth taper had been, the effects of its smoke began to wear off. I could see clearly again. When I glanced at Lacey, though, she still sported the same stupefied expression, so I did my best to emulate her.
I watched as one by one, the initiates left the Choosing as full-fledged witches. As the number of initiates dwindled, my stomach clenched again, the nausea exacerbated by the smoke and the late hour.
Before too long, Lacey and I were the only two initiates left in the circle.
When they gathered around us, it was all I could do to maintain my serene expression.
They started with Lacey.
I was to be the last initiate examined?
The better to exile me.
No. That didn’t make sense. Exile was performed in front of the entire coven. Was I to be allowed to stay?
The spell they chanted over my friend was unfamiliar, but I knew some of its components. It used parts of incantations for truth-seeking and divination, along with several others. A piece of one phrase came from a charm to communicate with someone far away. The spell used some sort of herbal mixture as well, but the only thing I recognized by smell was peppermint.
Wherever I might end up, it would never be the Herbal Circle. I’d given up on tinctures and essential oils halfway through my first rotation within their crèche training and never gone back.
All five elders laid their hands upon Lacey, and the magic glowed a dull red color. After a quick consultation, too quiet for me to hear, Sister Susana turned to Lacey and said, “Battle Circle.”
I knew it!
I wanted to catch Lacey’s eye, to let her see how happy I was for her, but she didn’t even glance at me as one of the last two waiting witches came to guide her to her new room.
Without me.
My chest constricted as I realized it was finally my turn. It was all I could do to keep from wheezing with anxiety. But by the time the elders turned to me, I’d managed to adopt a blank, slack expression.
They focused their attention on me and spoke their spell in unison as Susana used a single swipe of her thumb to anoint my forehead with the scented oil.
Their magic sank into my body like a mist settling into my skin. Once it made its way into me, it spread out, finding its way into my bloodstream, hitching a ride through my veins to every part of me. I felt it searching, questing for… for whatever it was looking for. My own magic?
Yes. That was it. The spell found its way to my core, that place where I held everything I wanted to hide. The part of me where I kept my own power, and where that magic had become intermingled with my mother’s gift—the last thing she had given me—that she had passed on with her kiss.
Over the years, her gift had become a part of me, almost indistinguishable from what I’d been born with.
Almost.
But in the face of council magics, I learned just how independent it could still be. With a jarring wrench, the power that was not really my own unwound itself from what I had been born with and retracted into a tiny ball as heavy as lead. That metallic thud into the pit of my stomach sent a shiver trembling all the way through me, from my head to my toes and out to the ends of my fingertips.
The unexpected movement caught the elders’ eyes. I had dropped my eyelids to half-mast in an attempt to maintain my drugged demeanor. But I still saw them glance at one another. Mother Jonas narrowed her eyes and held her hand out. It almost touched my skin as she directed the spell to keep looking. And it did, following the reverberations of that densely packed wad of power.
But I’d had years to learn to protect the only inheritance my parents had left me. With a single thought, I sank into myself, holding out the mental equivalent of a calming hand to a skittish pet.
I didn’t know if I was the only one who had ever considered my power to be in me, but not of me, or if that kind of visualization was a side effect of what my mother had left behind within me when she’d been banished. I did know from my coven training that thoughts became tangible, that the way we conceived our world became our reality. So, when I began to imagine holding my magic and stroking it, it responded by winding itself around me and purring, becoming the living thing I imagined it to be. And when I told my living magic to protect that frightened, leaden ball, it flowed away to drape itself over the other power, then melted across it in a firm coating.
So, when the council spell surrounded my own power, it found nothing but the quiet, apparently content magical ability of an unremarkable nineteen-year-old girl—the same initiate who had been unable to complete Herbals, too squeamish to direct killing spells, and too anxious about her place in the coven to ever really fit in.
“I told you there was nothing there,” Susana said in the tone of someone continuing a long, tiresome argument.
Mother Jonas grunted. “In that case, we will implement our original plan.”
The other elders murmured their agreement, but Susana said, “Please note that I am voicing my dissent one more time. Officially. If this goes awry, I will explain to the entire coven what happened here.”
“So noted.” Mother Jonas’s voice was sharp, dismissive.
Wait. What kind of plan could leave one elder so at odds with the others?
I started to open my eyes, to abandon my pose of acquiescence in the face of these comments.
But then, their second spell hit me, digging into my body like pointed barbs burrowing deeper and deeper. Until that moment, I had managed to at least appear mostly relaxed and loose. With the sudden, sharp pain of this mystical intrusion, though, I stiffened, unable to hide my physical reaction.