by Diana Nixon
Diamond Sky
By Diana Nixon
Published by Nevermore Press
Cincinnati, OH 45224. 2014
Text Copyright © 2014 Diana Nixon
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Copyright © 2014 Nevermore Press
All rights reserved
Published by
Nevermore Press.
Cincinnati, OH 45224
Edited by: Dawn White
For Nevermore Press
Cover by: J.M. Rising Horse Creations
Formatting by: Brandy Dull
Diamond Sky
(Summary)
A new page of the Love Lines story that will reveal new secrets and mysteries buried in the walls of Dever. Eileen, Christian and Evan need to find an old spell to protect themselves and those they love from being killed. There is only one problem – no one knows where the spell is hidden….
A mysterious student comes to Dever. A boy whose eyes are always watching. Who is he? What secrets are hidden behind his smiles? Is he a friend or an enemy?
When they thought they knew everything about the super powers they possessed, they could have never imagined that in reality they didn’t know a thing. The wind can turn into the worst hurricane they have ever seen. The water can destroy everything. The earth can swallow them alive. And the fire can burn them to ashes….
The illusions — the only thing they tried to run away from, will come back to ruin the world they live in, taking away everything they ever cherished and loved.
When you think you are so close to getting what you want, think twice about your every step. Because what you think is the right thing to do may take away your life….
To my grandfather Kazimir,
A high example of virtue for every man.
Thank you for everything, Grandpa.
No matter how far away you are now,
I still feel your love and support.
I miss you every day and will always remember you….
A Guide to the Love Lines Series
The events of the story take place in modern Britain.
There are people who possess various supernatural powers. They live in the world of humans, but there is one special place, where they come for their education and to develop their talents. It’s a closed university called Dever.
The Education in Dever
People are invited to become Dever’s students when they reach their eighteenth birthday.
Their gifts determine their attachment to a certain faculty, named after one of the founding families of the university.
Dever's Departments
Fairey: faculty for the future Keepers — people whose main job is to protect the world of supernatural from the world of human beings. Its students possess the powers of fire and spirit.
Feta: faculty for those who read people's fates. Its students use a palm-reading method to see someone’s fate. They possess the power of water.
Meridin: faculty for the oneiromancers — people who interpret dreams. They know everything about prophetic dreams and its significance. Its students possess the power of wind.
Ventura: faculty for those who can see into the future that has already been decided by someone. This distinguishes Venturas from Fetas, who read only fate, but a person can change it, and this decision will be seen by any Ventura. Its students possess the power of water.
Vero: faculty teaching those who are able to distinguish truth from falsehood. Its students possess the power of earth.
Embry: faculty for those who have the gift to heal people. Its students know everything about all the plants and especially flowers, knowing the meaning of which, they can speak without words, using different combinations of flowers. They possess the power of wind.
Wizardy: its students are taught to rule over magic. This department is a highest level of education in Dever. Only the best graduates from the previous faculties are allowed to enter this one.
The education in the main departments takes four years and at the department of Wizardy – three years. All the graduates pass their final exams showing an individual performance using one of the nature powers they possess. These performances are the part of the program of the Festival of Arts that takes place every October.
The main judicial authority for the wizards and those who possess other supernatural powers is the League of Keepers with the Council as its main body.
When the night absorbs the daylight,
Covering the earth with a blanket of stars,
You hear the wind, singing in the silence,
A song of a lost and lonely heart.
You close your eyes and you hear the whisper,
“Don’t leave me alone, please don’t go.”
And when you start crying with tears of crystals,
It says softly, “Don’t cry, my beautiful angel, my soul.”
You feel a palm on your shoulder,
And a smile appears on your lips.
But the touch is too cold to bear,
And the air’s too hot to breath.
And you feel like something’s missing,
And your heart is beating too fast.
But the wind keeps singing,
Taking away your worries, healing your burning scars.
Though you know you’re still dreaming,
And nothing is perfect about your past.
You still want the familiar embrace to hold you,
You still want the magical song to last.
Because you know that tomorrow is coming,
Bringing new pain and regrets,
And you will have to wake up and face it,
Meeting new challenges and paying the debts….
Part 1
Eileen
Chapter 1. Amulets
“For God’s sake, Eileen! He’s my brother!” Amanda shouted, scaring the hell out of me.
I turned around abruptly. “What did I do?”
“You THINK!”
“Oh … oh! I’m sorry, Honey.” My cheeks turned pink. “I didn’t mean it. I keep forgetting about the bond.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Amanda shot me another angry glance, and got back to packing her suitcase.
She and I had been best friends for ages. We graduated from the same school, and entered the same University. Not that we had much choice about the last one.
Being born gifted, we had to go to Dever — a closed university for people like us. Its students possess different supernatural powers from seeing the future, to healing people. There are also those whose specialty is magic. And I am one of them. But in addition to the magical powers inherited from my father, I can control all the natural elements. It’s a rare and a very dangerous combination that I have to live with every day.
Apart from being my best friend, Amanda is my boyfriend’s sister. And her unique talent is reading minds. Or to be exact, she can read only two minds — Evan’s and mine.
Evan Murray is our friend from Dever who sacrificed a lot to save us from all those troubles we got ourselves into because of our powers. Amanda, Evan a
nd I were bound by the ties of friendship. So now we can feel each other’s worries and mood changes, and we hate it a lot.
The story with magical ties started with Christian and me being bound by the spell of eternal love, many years ago. Our parents tried to protect us from people whose main goal was to become almighty. And I was supposed to become the most powerful magician they would have ever met. I was their target. So Christian has become my personal Keeper, whose main duty is to protect me.
He and I fell in love at first sight, and now we couldn’t imagine our life without each other. All my thoughts were wrapped around him, and the love we shared. I couldn’t help myself, and kept recalling our moments together. That’s why Amanda was so angry at me — most of my memories about Christian were too intimate to share them with anyone, especially his own sister.
“You know how hard it is to block your thoughts,” Amanda said, coming up to me.
“I know.” I nodded. She sat on the edge of my bed, and I sat next to her, and put my arm around her shoulders. “Does it ever get easier?”
“Yes, it does. Though sometimes when Evan and you are so close to me, it’s really hard to block them.”
“Do Evan’s thoughts bother you a lot?” We all knew that Evan was far from being shy or modest. He actually could be a real pain in everyone’s neck, but we still loved him.
Amanda giggled. “Sometimes I’m ashamed of reading his mind, because trust me, your thoughts about Christian would look like babies’ dreams compared to Evan’s love fantasies.” Amanda hesitated for a moment and then she added, “But sometimes they are so sad and painful, I want to hug him and take his sorrows away.”
I knew exactly what my friend was talking about. Evan had a dark side. Not that he was a bad guy or anything, no. He was one of the most amazing men I had ever met. But his past wasn’t happy at all. Despite the fact that he tried not to let it ruin his future, there were moments when the past won, and he had to face the consequences of what his life used to be.
Evan’s parents died six years ago. It happened on Christmas Eve. That’s why he hated it so much. But this time I made him spend Christmas with us in Norfield, where Amanda, Christian and I were born.
Today we were going back to Dever. That’s why Amanda and I woke up early to pack our things and spend some time with my grandma, whom I didn’t see very often because of my studies and her passion for travelling.
A sweet chocolate smell wafted from downstairs, and I recognized the smell of my favorite cookies that Stephanie Mitchell liked to make for breakfast.
“Mmm, I miss breakfasts at your grandma’s,” Amanda said, as if reading my mind. When we were kids it was our favorite time of the day. My friend always came to our house to enjoy cookies and strawberry jam that my grandmother was so good at making.
“Yeah, me too. Let’s see what she has come up with this time,” I said, heading for the door.
To our surprise, Stephanie wasn’t alone in the kitchen, but in the company of Christian and Evan.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked the guys, who were staying at Christian’s parents' house. Amanda’s boyfriend, Lucas Stanton, left right after Christmas to visit his own parents, so she preferred to stay at my place, and have an all-girl party, staying away from Evan’s thoughts and his sharp comments.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Evan said, sipping his coffee.
“Yeah, and somehow he thought it was time for me to wake up too,” Christian added, suppressing a yawn.
I put my arms around his neck and placed a kiss on his cheek. “You will have plenty of time to sleep on the way to Dever.”
“I hope so. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Couldn’t stop thinking about the spell.” Christian’s embrace tightened, and I leaned closer, melting in the waves of his aura. He was nervous, and I could feel it. The mentioned spell used to be one of the protection measures the founding families of Dever invented to protect the surroundings. Many years passed, and almost everyone forgot about the spell, lost somewhere in the walls of Dever. But there were those who still remembered it. The Dragons brotherhood, the organization that Evan’s father used to head, the people who wanted my death. They knew about the other meaning of the spell — it could take away powers, and they wanted to take away mine.
Suddenly I remembered something I didn’t have time to share with my friends. “Speaking of the spell, Darcy called me last night, and she’s back from London. She said she found some of her grandmother’s records mentioning the symbols we are looking for.”
Just a few weeks ago we found an old map that according to our assumptions, showed where the spell was hidden. The only problem was that the map was written in a language we didn’t understand. It was a list of symbols only a part of which we managed to decipher.
“Looks like we are ready for a new adventure,” Evan said, winking at me. There were times when he and I had to go through a lot to save Christian from the magical dream he was taken to by one of our enemies. And now I knew that my friend would always be there for me no matter what crazy and dangerous things I was about to do.
Unlike Amanda, my bond with Evan was based on imaginary love that we abandoned to lessen the consequences of taking Christian back to reality. The illusion he was entrapped in was created by a very powerful magician, Eric Lanster, who also used to work for the Dragons brotherhood.
Evan’s feelings for me didn’t involve anything romantic, but the bond we shared was very special, and we always knew when one of us was in danger.
I smiled sadly to myself. “Looks like this time we will be fighting to the last drop of our blood.”
“Personally I’m not going to give a drop of my precious blood to anyone,” Evan said. “And I will never let any of you die. Period.” Sometimes he looked so much like his father — serious and damn scary. “But I can’t wait to kick some of the Dragons members’ asses,” he added, rubbing his hands gleefully.
“Watch your language, young man,” my grandma warned, giving Evan a plate with pancakes and jam. “No ass-kicking before you eat!” We all laughed and got down to our breakfast.
There were a few more things I needed to do before going back to Dever, so I finished my coffee and went upstairs, leaving everyone else in the kitchen.
Last night, when I was getting ready to go to bed, I stopped at the picture painted on my bedroom door. It was a beautiful drawing of a golden horseshoe surrounded by red roses, and lace. It was the size of my palm, but there was one thing I’d never noticed before. A small dark-brown symbol was drawn close to one of the roses. It looked just like those we saw on the maps. But I didn’t know what it meant. That’s why I wanted to take a few pictures of the drawing to take with me to Dever. When I asked my grandmother about it, she said it was designed by my grandpa. He was the owner of a shipbuilding company, and created it especially for the ship he named after Stephanie, changing the letter ‘A’ to the golden horseshoe with roses. He said he wanted her to remember him forever, and he also put the drawing on their bedroom door. But later the room was given to me. And now I was wondering if my grandfather could somehow know about the world of the supernatural I was predestined to live in….
When I entered the living room fifteen minutes later, I saw Evan, Amanda and Christian standing in front of the wall with multicolored plates. My grandma had brought them from different countries and places she had visited.
“Planning to go on a world tour?” I asked them. But no one answered.
Amanda turned around slowly, and I saw a small plate she was holding in her hands.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, surprised. I’d never seen that plate before.
“Actually, we wanted to ask you the same question,” Evan said. Something about his voice said that my reply was very important.
“I … I don’t know. This is the first time I have seen this. Why?”
“It’s not just a plate, Eileen. It’s one of my grandfather’s art works. Apart from being a hereditary Wi
zardry, Cameron liked painting. But he never sold his works. He decorated plates, cups and other porcelain things, and gave them to his friends, and to people who needed protection. All of his works were charmed, like amulets. So the question remains … who brought this plate here?”
Chapter 2. Following the Light
“Mrs. Mitchell, can you tell us where you got this plate?” Evan asked my grandma. She was one of a few people outside Dever who knew about the existence of our world of the supernatural.
Her eyes immediately found mine. “What’s going on, Eileen?”
I didn’t want to give her any more reasons to be worried about me. So I put on my best smile and said, “Everything’s fine. Evan saw this plate on the wall and recognized his grandfather’s work in it. And we wanted to know … how this thing happened to be here.” I was an awful liar. Stephanie always said that she could smell my lies.
“Steward got this plate as a gift from a man he met in Scotland. It was in Aberdeen, I guess. I didn’t know the plate was still here, until last week, when I was cleaning the attic and found a box with my husband’s old stuff in. It’s beautiful, isn’t?”
“Yes, it is,” Evan replied absently, looking out of the window. Amanda’s eyes never left him. I couldn’t read her mind, but the fear was written all over her face. She gasped quietly, and her eyes widened. Unlike us, she knew what Evan was thinking about at the moment. And I could swear it was something bad.
“Well, I think it’s time to go guys,” I said, looking at my watch. First, I needed to break the silence. And second, we really needed to hurry up, as we didn’t want to miss our plane.
There were a lot of things we needed to discuss, but I thought it would be better to do it somewhere else. So Christian and Evan left to take their baggage, and Amanda and I stayed with my grandma. She never asked anything else about the plate or our strange behavior, but I knew that she was still watching me out of the corner of her eye, trying to measure the seriousness of the problems I got myself into. She knew my father would never let anything bad happen to me, but now he wasn’t there with us, and she was worried about my friends and me.