by Lucia Ashta
Mermagic
The Witching World book 6
Lucía Ashta
Awaken to Peace Press
Copyright 2018 Lucía Ashta
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Cover design by Lou Harper of Harper by Design
Awaken to Peace Press
Sedona, Arizona
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For Catia,
who understood the power of her magic from the start
Leap in faith, and you will find your wings.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
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Acknowledgments
Books by Lucía Ashta
About the Author
Planet Origins
Planet Origins Preview
Chapter 1
We had a plan we’d all agreed to, but I also had my own plan. No one up in the castle, dark with sleep, would like it. My fiancé, Marcelo, would be terrified by it.
Still, I had no choice. I wasn’t one for stealth or deceit. But if my rogue powers, which none of us fully understood, could potentially save the lives of everyone I cared for, didn’t I have the obligation to try?
I extended one bare toe to the frigid water, knowing no one would agree with my actions. But I couldn’t allow that to stop me from doing what I believed I must.
My dream had been precise. A sign. I could do this. I had to do this. My dream had revealed that I’d be able to breathe underwater, and that beneath the sea, which bordered the Castle of Bundry, lay a secret that would lead me to understanding my full potential.
This secret—whatever it was—finally lay within my grasp. I could reach it. I could become who I was meant to become.
When something greater than us reveals the next step in our path, aren’t we obligated to take that step? If not, don’t we risk interfering with our destiny?
I stilled to feel the comforting thrumming of the five-petal knot. I accepted its reassurance and its knowing that love and loss were part of life, and of death, and that it was ultimately perfect—how it was meant to be.
I shed my clothes. Clothing would only impede my efficiency in the water. My time in the merworld as Mirvela’s captive had taught me this, and I wished fervently for the return of my mermaid tail, though I understood it wouldn’t come.
I left the burdensome pile of clothes required of a maiden of the aristocracy next to my elven shoes—definitely not a usual accessory of the nobility that chose appearances over practicality—like a beacon on the craggy shore.
I looked behind me, up the cliff, but I couldn’t see the Castle of Bundry from there, nor could I see the inevitable looks of betrayal that would come with the first light of morning. It was just as well. It had taken me much of the night to steel my resolve.
I took the deepest breath I could. It wouldn’t last me more than a minute underwater.
But now I knew that I could breathe without air. My dream had been clear. I could breathe within the water. All that was needed from me was to trust.
I could trust. I had to trust. I had to do this.
My entry into the water wouldn’t be as dramatic as it was in my dream, when I’d flown from above and dived straight into the water’s depths without hesitation. I could have done the same, simulating flight from the parapet that crowned the castle. But awake, my mind fought with my heart in spurts, arguing whether I should do it.
I willed my mind to listen to my heart—for it’s always true—and stepped into the water.
Immediately, the cold of it sped up my body, clamoring the alarm. My skin contracted, my nipples turned to stone, and my stomach clenched. I made myself take one step further into the inky well of promise and despair. I banished the desperate pleas for reason that followed.
I closed my eyes to the eternity of water that stretched out before me. I made myself breathe slower than I ever had before—for there is real magic within the breath, even for those that don’t possess magic within their blood—calming the pulse that attempted to race away from me like a wild, stampeding horse.
I called out to the water. Here I am. I’m ready for whatever is meant to be. Envelope me. Guide me. Take me. I’m ready to become.
Almost as a quiet afterthought, Protect me, for there was still a part of me that was a frightened young woman, raised in the House of Norland, an infinity ago. Nothing early in life had prepared me for this, the biggest of any step I’d yet taken.
I glanced once at Marcelo’s promise ring upon my finger. The serpent of knowledge and the dragon of magic slept peacefully, as I hoped the man who’d given it to me did far above from where I now stood.
The ring, which at times glowed with the combined strength of Marcelo’s power and my own, made stronger by the intensity of our connection, lay dormant too. There was no reassuring glow telling me that, together, Marcelo and I were greater than one. That reassurance called out from my heart, telling me the man I loved was always with me.
It was for him that I was doing this. And for Gertrude. To protect her from Count Washur and any future harm he could inflict on her. He’d be free to do as he wished with my little sister. After all, by law she was his wife, and the laws protected men, not women. She’d be obligated to do what Count Washur wished of her—every foul bit. And Grand-mère, and Mordecai, and Brave, and Sir Lancelot, Sylvia, Mathieu, and for Anna and Carlton, and the many, many others Mirvela and Count Washur had harmed and would continue to harm if we did nothing to prevent it.
Those with the knowledge and the power to do something to correct grave injustice have the obligation to do so. I’ve always believed this. I just never thought I’d be the one doing the correcting.
My dream showed me the way. My heart purred its reassurance, telling me with each beat that there was no better way than to follow the guidance of the heart, even if that guidance delivered you straight into the jaws of death.
Protect me, I called out once more, not knowing anymore whom or what exactly I was requesting protection from, in the language in which all the elements speak: silence.
Immediately, the water answered through its sister. A cold breeze whispered the water’s reassurances. Red hair undulated behind me like the water that rose to greet me, tickling at my toes, beckoning me into its abyss, with promises of success. Did I dare believe these reassurances?
I did. I had to.
I looked behind once more, up to the top of the cliff, where Castle Bundry hid behind forbidding slate gray.
Then, I stepped further into the water until all that remained was a trail of red, a vestige of the last traces of my humanity.
I’d become something greater than just human. I now embodied more tha
n the heartbeat of one human being.
Within me, the five elements beat just as loudly as my heart. I couldn’t go back to the life I’d once had. I’d passed the point of no return long ago.
It was just as well. There was nothing I wanted to go back to.
There was only forward—and the opportunity to spare all those I loved from the torment of two magicians whose hearts had deformed and twisted into something no longer recognizable as a heart.
With one more step, even the trail of red disappeared from sight, swallowed fully by the eager water and its plummeting depths. The Clara that I knew, and everyone that loved me knew, was swallowed whole too.
As in my dream, I began to sink quickly, and as in my dream, I faced the depths of the sea head-on.
If I was going to confront Mirvela and Count Washur, I’d do so fully in my power. I’d do so with every bit of strength I possessed. And if it was death that I sank to, a death that I’d have to face and ultimately learn to embrace, then I’d do so.
Either way, I’d do what I had to do. My heart and I thrummed as one.
Chapter 2
Every second that passed pulled me farther down into the greatest loneliness I’d ever experienced. It pressed in on me from all sides, pushing against my bare flesh—hard—making me feel like I was suffocating even though, as my dream had foretold, I was breathing underwater.
A novice magician should never attempt to take on two of the most fearsome and powerful magicians in the underworld of magic on her own—or at all.
But I had to, and even if I was a beginner witch, I was unique. I had a power within me that the magicians around me had never seen before. That had to count for something, right?
Even if it didn’t count for enough, I had to try. My dream had shown me this was what I needed to do, and I might not know much about the spells, rules, and ways of magic, but I knew better than to ignore my inner guidance. Even if my intuition led me toward death, it was the path I was meant to walk.
And it wasn’t just for the ones I loved.
It was for me. I sank into the dark unknown because I was finished hiding from who and what I was.
I was in the sea, terrified and alone, because it was the one true path open to me, and it was only when we listen to the guidance of our hearts that we have any chance at all of true growth.
I’d lived enough of my life ignoring who I truly was. For better or worse, I’d do no more of it.
I allowed myself a peek below. Finally, I saw something.
From the darkness, I saw a gleam of light. Like a moth drawn to flame, I aimed my head down and swam toward it.
Chapter 3
Since Marcelo entered my life, little had been as I’d previously believed, so it should have been little surprise when the uplifting gleam of light turned out to be something terrifying.
I was unprepared, and even though I’d entered this water to take on our enemies, I froze, feeling myself very much the stupid girl I hoped I wasn’t.
I ceased swimming, but the currents of the water led me right to the source of light.
Mirvela was beautiful. A beam of light with no evident source illuminated her smooth, ageless face and turquoise eyes. Long black hair billowed behind her, framing a turquoise tail that sparkled in the light.
The merqueen appeared immeasurably beautiful and serene, but my heartbeat jumped to my throat. She was a spider queen confident that her web would trap me. I was headed straight toward her, my thoughts useless, panic overcoming them.
Twenty feet. Then ten.
I managed to snap myself out of it. I tore myself from her mesmerizing eyes and their lies, which promised me the realization of my dreams.
I resisted, moving my arms and legs so as to break the current that pulled me. But I managed only to slow it down.
Eight feet. I pumped my arms, I kicked my legs vehemently.
It made no difference. Six feet.
Mirvela stretched out her arms in a gesture of welcome. I turned my head from it, kicking at the fingers that already reached for me.
What have I done? Why did I come into the water alone and unprepared? I’d been foolish, and I’d pay the ultimate price for my error in judgment.
I’d been prepared to die, but not without saving my family and friends first.
This wasn’t a fight, this was suicide, and I’d played right into Mirvela’s hands.
As the distance between us dissolved into nothing, her face dissolved as well. The harmonious and attractive features of her face distorted, revealing her true nature. Her eyes gleamed with greed while her face took on an edge of wickedness. When she drew open her mouth, impossibly wide, she revealed rows of spiky teeth that could only be meant for one thing.
Oh god, is she going to eat me? That was a fate I couldn’t accept, at least not without the sort of fight that would leave her forever scarred with its memory, just as her trident had left a crisscrossed reminder permanently etched across Marcelo’s chest.
At least she doesn’t have her trident now. But she was still about to (def)eat me, and I had nothing to make her pay for her cruelty.
I wouldn’t go out without taking at least some of the darkness with me.
Mirvela opened her mouth wider. Sparkling light reflected off the sharpest of her teeth. Her eyes widened, her cheeks sunk in, and her fingers extended toward me like tentacles.
She was a monster. And I was about to become dinner.
I pumped my arms and legs in front of me to halt my momentum. While it didn’t work completely, it was enough to buy me a few more seconds.
Within my mind, I reached for the five-petal knot at my center. I found it right away, rearing and ready to come to my defense, waiting for me to remember that I wasn’t a foolish, defenseless girl—well, I might have been foolish by entering the water on my own, but I wasn’t defenseless. Even if I had no idea what my magic might look like once I unleashed it, I’d manage to do something before Mirvela gnawed on me like I was some snack.
I wanted to feel into the five-petal knot, to experience some of the magic that brewed inside it. But there wasn’t time. There wasn’t time for anything but immediate attack, and even then it might prove too late. I had to trust that I’d do the right thing. That by following my instincts, I could do magic the way other magicians performed it with spells. That the magic that brewed within was such a part of me that all I had to was project my thoughts outside of myself, and my magic would rise to fulfill my intentions.
Defense. I needed to defend myself, and that’s all I thought about, my body carrying out the orders of that deep-seeded instinctual part of myself that was difficult to dissect.
I opened my hands, palms wide, and aimed them at Mirvela. I looked at her, but I didn’t see her the way I had just moments before. I no longer saw her strong shoulders and round breasts, nor the navel just above the start of her tail that suggested merwomen gave birth to children on land. I saw a blur of creamy flesh, turquoise tail, and black hair, but mostly I saw her energy. What had just been physical form revealed itself as a glow of light, and even though she stole the life from others to extend her own, her glow was bright. A dark grayish light illuminated the ocean bottom around her, exposing a school of fish with monstrously large eyes. Were they there to finish what she started and eat her leftovers? Were they there with the intention of eating me?
I lost my focus, and along with it, one of the last two feet between the merqueen and me.
I pumped my arms again, with all the strength I had, and managed to retreat half a foot. Mirvela’s tentacle hands extended farther, nearly touching my skin.
I shot my hands back out in front of me, allowed my gaze to lose focus again. Just like when you burnt yourself with the fire, I thought. Move beyond the physical form, beyond the container of the body, to the elements that are a part of me and everything around me.
I continued to look toward Mirvela, but I no longer saw a terrifying merwitch. I felt rather than saw her individual componen
ts. I sensed the water, which composed so great a part of her, and the fire that kept it in balance, preventing the water from consuming her and rejecting everything else. I sensed the air that circulated within her and prevented her from sinking, like dead weight, to the earth beneath her, in the ocean floor.
And I experienced the fullness of the fifth element as an etheric substance that bound the four elements together, promoting their balance and function.
I doubted Mirvela knew about it, however. Not even Mordecai or his brother, Albacus, or Marcelo, all accomplished wizards, had known of the fifth element. It wasn’t a part of academic thaumaturgy, but it existed.
I experienced my own personal energy, composed of the five elements, building. Like the heat of a fire as it explodes and reaches for more, or a billowing wind that gains speed and strength, warmth heated my core and traveled down my extremities. When the tingling sensation reached my fingertips, I didn’t stop to think or process, I nudged a surge of my power outward.
It was as if I’d blown on a kindling flame. My power emitted through my hands in a burst, crossed the distance to Mirvela in visible waves, and knocked her so far back that her beam of light was left only to illuminate the trails of my magic, which continued reaching toward her in diminishing waves.