Magic Fire: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 1)

by Catherine Vale

  While I knew Zayne’s sanctuary extended outward from the hive area—into what, I had no idea: the ground?—there was still plenty to take in here. I appreciated the openness now that I was away from all those winding levels. From the tower, I couldn’t see a soul, though I felt the hum of nighttime activity all around me. It was a contemplative, strong sort of busyness that you get when everyone is working in tandem.

  My gaze wandered lower, to the base level of the hive, upon which the castle—the headquarters of Zayne’s militia—sat. While the castle itself was a sprawling, reaching piece of black gothic architecture, like a building straight out of a freakin’ Tim Burton movie, its grounds were rather beautiful. Street lamps emitting a soft yellow glow dotted the cobblestone paths, paired with a series of lush green hedge mazes that seemed to breathe and shiver out of the corner of my eye whenever I wasn’t looking directly at them. The lamps continued into the green passages, and I blinked hard, wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me when I swore I saw the maze rearrange itself.

  Right. Definitely not going in there anytime soon.

  Distant voices carried up to me as I continued my somewhat lazy observation of the world within a world, the stress I’d felt after a restless sleep easing away since I’d found a Darius-less rooftop some fifteen minutes earlier. The stress levels spiked up again, however, when I realized those voices belonged to two figures I knew—two male figures strolling around in front of the castle’s courtyard just in front of the entrance to the maze.

  “Fuckers,” I whispered, leaning forward and squinting somewhat. Here I’d spent the whole day alone, wondering where both my boys had scampered off to, and there they were, going for a midnight walk and having a casual chat while they were at it.

  Like two old friends.

  My brows furrowed. Did Zayne and Darius know each other?

  I shook my head. No. No, there wasn’t some grand conspiracy theory unraveling around me—they were just going for a walk together.

  Yeah, because they’d seemed like the best of pals earlier, the negative Nancy of my inner voices protested.

  So, while I hated to snoop on two people I cared about—spying on Ravena and Darius had just seemed like smart practice, honestly—I called upon my more heightened hearing. You know, just to confirm that my worst fears were nothing more than products of a tired mind and an overactive imagination.

  “…don’t understand why you had to just leave her,” I heard Darius say—grumble, more like. The distance between us was too great for me to get a perfect read, but I could make out the words with what I assumed was a decent level of accuracy. There was a slight pause, and I caught the two staring at each other, expressions hard, as Darius added, “Why not just tell her the truth? Kaye deserves that much.”

  I almost hopped out right then and there. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe it was better I just let it go and grill Darius about it later.

  Or…

  I refocused my listening in and cushioned my mid-section with my arms as I leaned over the railing, honing in on the pair as they meandered around an otherwise empty courtyard. Although I had missed what my brother had said to Darius’s last question, I was able to catch the end of another one.

  “Why leave at all?”

  “My father summoned me to Alfheim,” Zayne told him, and maybe I was just looking for something that wasn’t there, but I swore I heard a pang of regret in his voice. “I couldn’t refuse him. He wanted to teach me everything he knew, everything he hadn’t told me while I was growing up. I didn’t want to leave Kaye, but I had to. If I hadn’t, I’d be nowhere near ready to fight Abramelin today.”

  My eyes narrowed slightly, the knot in my stomach looping around itself once more. It was uncomfortable listening to two people you cared about talking about you, and my cheeks prickled with color—embarrassed, guilty color.

  No. I shook my head. I had a right to know all this stuff, all this information my own flesh and blood had kept from me since I was a teenager. If this was the only way to learn it, then I could forgive myself for eavesdropping.

  “This Abramelin guy sounds like a real gem,” Darius said through what sounded like gritted teeth. I couldn’t blame him. I obviously hated the ArchMage because he had tried to kill me—twice—but now that we knew he was after shifters and their sympathizers? I was surprised Darius hadn’t flipped his lid and gone rogue.

  “He wants to annihilate your kind,” Zayne told him, “but I suspect he always knew he couldn’t do that without outraging a very large part of the supernatural community.”

  Darius offered a cold chuckle. “Nice to know you guys do give a shit about us.”

  “The minority opinion has to scream the loudest to be heard,” Zayne said, and I swore I caught him rolling his eyes. “Bigots are found in all communities, shifters too. But now they have a sword at the helm of their prejudices, and if we don’t act fast, he’ll continue his rampage of terror and destruction until there is nothing left.”

  “So why go after people like Kaye?”

  “If supernatural sympathizers are out of the way,” my brother explained after a brief pause, his momentary silence making me uneasy, “then he can attack shifters without anyone there to stop him.”

  “Hey.” The pair stopped walking, and I caught Darius planting a hand on my brother’s chest. While they were both tall men, Zayne had stayed a beanpole well into his adult years. Wiry and slender—it was a frame that worked well for fae speed. Darius’s massive hand nearly covered the breadth of his chest. “Shifters have power too, you know. We aren’t just a bunch of animals. We have strength, speed, healing abilities—”

  “But no magic,” Zayne countered, “and magic is what will save us from Abramelin and his minions. Unfortunately, as mighty as many shifter clans are, your Sanctius clan included, you cannot wield magic.”

  “It’s what makes us second-class citizens,” my dragon said, his voice a half-snarl that made the hairs on my arms stand up. I rubbed them quickly, willing the goosebumps to disappear.

  “It’s what makes the fight unfair,” Zayne stressed with a sigh. “It’s why we need each other if we want to survive this.”

  Both had a point, of course. It wasn’t fair for a supernatural race to attack shifters simply to avenge the unfortunate murders of a few people. Not that I approved of innocents being slaughtered, but Abramelin was taking his vendetta above and beyond. If what Zayne said was correct, the ArchMage was gearing up for a full-on genocide, and my brother’s militia, all the creatures working in the beehive around me, was the only thing standing in the way.

  Fleetingly, I wondered if Abramelin had any idea that I was Zayne’s sister. Because apparently, my brother was a huge thorn in the guy’s side, and if Abramelin wanted to hurt him, assassinating his family—those that were still alive, that is—this would probably be a pretty good way to go about it.

  I bit my lip, wondering if Zayne was the real reason I had been dragged into all of this. Maybe it wasn’t that I sympathized with shifters at all. Maybe it was just because we’d been in the same womb for nine months of our lives.

  “So why do this for us?” Darius asked, his voice dragging me out of my thoughts. “You can’t be doing all this, endangering your life, just because you aren’t some asshole who thinks shifters are dogs.”

  “No, of course not.” Zayne sniffed as if the very question insulted him. I didn’t recognize that part of him—this uppity, somewhat regal war general he had become. I missed the goofy, silly Zayne, the one who built blanket forts with me and glared down guys in high school when they wouldn’t take a hint.

  “So? What is it? What’s pushing you to help us?”

  “My loyalties to shifters run as deep as my heart beats strong.”

  I frowned. Since when? I grew up with the opinions that I had of the other supernatural and shifter races because my brother and aunt had instilled a strong sense of tolerance and acceptance within me. That being said, I hadn’t ever known Zayne
to have any special affiliations with shifters beyond not being a horrendous ass to them: that was the case with most of the fairies I knew when I was young.

  “She’s always been different from you,” Darius started, but my brother cut him off curtly.

  “And I’ve never loved her any less for it,” he insisted. “I’m many things, but I’m not my father. Not entirely, anyway.”

  What the hell…?

  I wiggled a finger in my ear, just to see if maybe I was hearing things wrong, but my heightened senses seldom failed me. Was Darius referring to me? That I was different?

  How? My chest tightened, and I suddenly found myself blinking furiously to keep the tears at bay. I wasn’t someone to burst into tears over nothing, either. But listening in on this conversation… It had tapped something buried within me, something I hadn’t even realized I’d care about at this stage in my life. Of course, Zayne’s abandonment screwed me up, but no worse than my fathers did. And here they were, my two guys, talking about it so casually, like it was nothing.

  “I wasn’t sure how to tell her why she couldn’t come with me,” Zayne admitted solemnly, and I swiped the back of my hand under my nose, sniffling. “How do you break that to someone? She was just a kid. It seemed easier at the time to just go.”

  Easier for you… No amount of blinking would stop the floodgates from bursting anymore, and I just let the tears flow. I’d always wondered how Zayne would rationalize what he did to me—how he left his little sister behind, on her own, after our dad had done the exact same thing years earlier. And to hear that he just figured it was easier to ghost out on me, to disappear one day without a trace—it really hurt.

  And that was putting it mildly. Each word was like a knife to the heart, and by the time he fell quiet, there were too many knives, too many serrated edges, to the point where I could barely hold myself up. I wanted nothing more than to collapse and hide away behind the balcony ledge, to sit there and bawl my eyes out until there was nothing left. I’d done it once before, after all. I was due for a good sobbing, given all the bullshit that had rained down on me over the last few weeks.

  But I stayed strong. Barely holding myself up, sure, but I kept listening.

  “I’ll tell her everything,” Zayne said, and I watched him turn back when he undoubtedly realized Darius was no longer strolling along beside him. They’d been walking in a large loop around the courtyard for the whole conversation, clearly out there, far from council chambers and castle bedrooms, so they could have this very personal, very cutting, conversation about me without anyone else hearing.

  “When?” my dragon demanded.

  “When the fighting’s over,” Zayne told him. “There’s too much going on for me to pick at those scars.”

  They weren’t scars. I hadn’t ever fully healed. They were gaping sores, blistering wounds, that had temporarily closed over the years, ones that were ready to pop open at the slightest provocation.

  “That’s not good enough,” I heard Darius say through the hazy fog of a full-on emotional meltdown clouding my senses. It was coming. I could feel it. Darius’s voice sounded muffled as I slowly lost control on my heightened senses, struggling to stay with the pair below. “You owe Kaye more than that.”

  “What do you want from me?” Zayne snapped, his voice fading, fading, fading from me as I started to fold in on myself. “I’m trying to fight a madman here. I’m trying to manage all these people. I’m trying…”

  Not hard enough. He might have had a million things going on in his life, but if I didn’t get the truth—whatever that might be, a truth that apparently even Darius knew—then I would never forgive him.

  “Fuck this.” Pushing myself away from the balcony railing, I stalked through my bedroom and rushed through the castle with a push of fae speed. To those I passed on the way, I was a blur, just another shadow in a building full of them, captured in the torchlight and built-in electronic pod lights alike. I pushed myself hard, not wanting Zayne and Darius to get away, not wanting them to forget this rather devastating conversation that I’d forced myself to endure.

  Because I needed answers. I needed them now—not when the fighting was over, not when Abramelin was dead, not when his band of horrible cronies was defeated.

  Right. Fucking. Now.

  “Hey!” I shouted, feeling a grim sense of satisfaction when both men jumped at the sound of my voice cracking across the otherwise silent courtyard. They both stopped and turned toward me as I approached, my slippered feet pounding the cobblestone. All around, the street lamps flickered, my emotion leaving my personal magic unchecked—to the point, it was playing with the lights. I took a deep breath before stopping in front of them, my hands clenched in tight fists, and tried to steady myself with deep breathing.

  It was not effective. This was why I didn’t do yoga.

  “Kaye, is everything okay—”

  “Don’t start with me,” I snapped as I cut Darius off, raising a finger to him. “You and I are going to have a serious talk. But first. You,” I faced my big brother, glaring, “have a lot of explaining to do, and I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”

  His red eyebrows knitted together, but the flush of color in his cheeks was an obvious giveaway; I’d all but caught him in the act.

  “Kaye, what are you talking about?” He reached out to touch my arm. I stiffened at the contact and he hastily retracted his hand, almost as if I’d burned him. “Did you have a nightmare? Do you still get those?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” I snapped, positively bristling. “I heard you two talking.” My head bobbed up and down feverishly at the slight eye-widening from both of them. “Yeah, that’s right. I listened in. I couldn’t sleep, so I was out on the balcony and I saw you two….”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” Zayne told me. He sounded more defensive than I would have liked, which only turned my stare steelier. “If you just caught snippets… Kaye, listening in on people’s conversations is rude.”

  “Don’t lecture me. You’re not my father. You and him both bailed on me, and now I’ve learned it was so you could hang out together.” I gestured to the immense cavern around us, the walls seeming so vast and sprawling from the very base level of the hive. “Was it here? Did he bring you here all those years ago? Is that why you both left me alone to fend for my fucking self? What truth do I need to know?”

  As I sucked in a strangled gasp, I suddenly realized I was crying again. Not a full-tilt sob-fest, but my voice quivered with emotion and my vision blurred with tears. I hoped neither of the two men staring at me could tell, but from the way Zayne’s expression softened—and Darius’s darkened as though he wanted to cradle me to him and fend off the world with his bare hands—I knew that was just a pipe dream. If either suggested I go inside to calm down, however, I was going to inflict some serious damage.

  “I need to know,” I said, forcing my voice to quiet in an effort to hide the fact that it was quivering. The tactic sort of worked, though I sounded breathier now. My eyes closed briefly when Darius placed a hand on my upper back, spreading it wide, its warmth soothing. Slowly, I drew in a breath and lifted my gaze to Zayne, who studied me with that same pained expression he’d worn earlier when we were first reunited. I didn’t like seeing it, but if it meant he would tell me what I needed to hear, I’d take it. Swallowing hard, I held his gaze steadily and cleared my throat. “I think I deserve to know. Zayne. This is my life. My whole life. You owe me after…”

  After totally abandoning me to go hang out with the man who had abandoned us both years earlier.

  “You know she’s right,” Darius added gruffly. I resisted the urge to pin him with a glare.

  “I can speak for myself,” I said over my shoulder. His hand fell away from my back as he added a bit of distance between our bodies. Despite everything going on in my mind, I found myself missing the heat of his touch.

  “Kaye, there’s so much going on—”

  “I’m you
r sister,” I argued. I then blinked hard so the gathering tears would fall. While I didn’t enjoy watching him suffer, it was almost as if there was this little creature inside of me who did. Zayne might have felt guilty for leaving me behind, for keeping all these secrets from me, but this was my first and possibly only opportunity to actually see it. I didn’t want to be cruel, but for my own sanity, I almost needed to know he hurt just as badly as I had all those years ago.

  Zayne cursed under his breath, then looked away, face momentarily twisted with a blend of frustration and sadness. I moved in, sliding my hand into his—so much cooler than Darius’s—and squeezing hard.

  “Please?”

  He looked away a moment longer, and though I couldn’t see his whole face, I could see enough to watch the internal struggle, the back-and-forth debate. Finally, he shook his head and sighed, then stared me dead in the eye.

  “You want the whole truth?”

  I nodded and pulled my hand back. “And nothing but the truth.”

  “So help you, God,” Darius finished for us. He smirked when I shot him an exasperated look over my shoulder. The twist of his lips and the glimmer in his eye forced a half-smile out of me, try as I might to stop it.

  “Fine,” Zayne said, rolling up his sleeves and throwing his neck side to side—like he was getting ready for a fight. I winced at the crackling sound, then realized I had a habit of cracking my neck like that too. When he was through, my brother met my gaze again, eyebrows lifted, and asked, “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it’s a lot to handle right now,” he stated. “I’ve tried like hell to keep this from you because I know it’ll hurt. Just remember that.”

  “I deal with this kind of stuff every single day with clients. I’m due for a bit of it in my own life.” Or so I hoped. Helping clients manage crisis after crisis was one thing, but we psychologists were always terrible at handling breakdowns within our own lives. It was why so many in my field were clueless when it came to their own flaws.