Pain Seeker (The New Orleans Shade Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  It happened again.

  The pain was so sudden, so intense, it woke me in the middle of my sleep. My eyes were closed, but I didn’t need them to see. My magic had already spread through to every corner of the room, and it had found the source long before it demanded I wake up.

  It was coming from the prince’s bed. From the prince’s body.

  My eyes squeezed shut, and I wrapped my arms around my head. I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to want that pain. I had already healed him earlier today. Now, I just wanted to sleep.

  The sun had yet to rise. The floor I slept on was warm, the pillow soft, the blanket over me softer. It hadn’t been there when I’d fallen asleep. The prince hadn’t been in his bed, either. Had he covered me when he came into his room?

  Anger, confusion, need, made me dizzy. I kicked the white blanket away with my feet until it no longer touched me, as if it were to blame for all my troubles. I tried to sleep again, just forget about the outside world and surrender to unconsciousness, but my magic wouldn’t have it. It thrashed in my chest like an ocean wave, shaking me to my core. It would not be ignored. It wanted the pain, and until it got it, it wouldn’t rest.

  I raised my head, the need to let out a scream so great, I almost did it. The prince was in his bed, sleeping, but the pain that plagued his body was wide awake. It was the same kind as it had been the second night I’d healed him. His magic had spread out in the air around him, like it wanted to attack him, like he was punishing himself for something. It was nothing physical. Its roots were deep inside his soul. How could it be that my magic hadn’t healed him that first time?

  There were times when my magic couldn’t heal. When the damage was too great, when the body already gave up on itself, even I couldn’t bring it back. But that happened when the damage was physical, and the prince’s wasn’t.

  Becoming more curious than angry by the second, I stood up and went closer to the bed. He slept on his back, like always, his own blanket in a bundle by his feet. He wore nothing but black shorts, and his smooth skin was covered in a layer of sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. It was cold—so cold my teeth chattered and my fingers shook now that I was away from the warmth the Shade had given me.

  His magic overwhelmed my senses. Why was it trying to attack him? I had never seen anything like it. Magic belonged to its host. They were one, not separate. They protected; they didn’t hurt.

  But the prince’s magic still tried, like a rabid dog trying to bite off his own tail. I moved a little closer and reached out my shaking hands toward his chest. Direct, skin-to-skin contact was always better. The connection happened faster, and it was stronger, like it had been today while he’d been in the tub, but I didn’t want to touch him now. I didn’t want him to wake up. I just wanted his magic, his pain, to shut up and leave me be.

  The magic that slipped out of me met resistance before it touched his skin. Curious. That hadn’t happened the last time. I pushed through harder, deeper, faster. It was easier now because I’d eaten properly. Meat and cheese and bread that the prince had brought to me before nightfall. Before leaving again, without a word that time.

  But even so, it took me a good while to reach his body and start searching for damage. His skin glistened with sweat, stretched tight over his muscles. There were at least seven scars on his torso alone that I could see, like the work of an artist on a beautiful, smooth canvas. The need to touch him and trace every line of muscle, every scar, and every inch of skin was ridiculous, but it didn’t go away, even when my magic was inside his body.

  The pain came from everywhere, which was the second thing that told me something was wrong. Pain was focused. It had a starting point and a range around it, but it was never everywhere on the body. And the resistance was still there. The first time I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t looked. This time, curiosity got the best of me, and I lingered, holding my magic from taking pain and healing, forcing it to keep searching instead.

  Minutes later, my own skin was covered in sweat. Cold no longer reached me. My teeth gritted as I pushed, deeper and deeper, to find where that resistance was coming from.

  Eventually, I found it.

  It rose from the shape of the prince’s body like a ghost, and it pulled on itself, becoming smaller, darker, until it was nothing but a shapeless cloud over the prince’s face. A long sigh left me as my eyes closed.

  A spell.

  Of course.

  The prince’s magic wasn’t trying to attack him or itself. It was trying to attack the foreign magic that was deep within the prince’s body, consuming him little by little, and I doubted he could even realize it.

  But I could see it now. It was a dark cloud of smoke hovering in the air, floating, reshaping, trying to slip back into the prince. Witch magic. I didn’t know more about terran magic other than what the books I’d read told me. There were witches and sorcerers, and their magic was different from the fae, from mine, but its foundation remained the same. It created something out of nothing. It altered reality like fresh colors repainting an old canvas. I felt it in the texture of the smoke—it was not fae nor elf. And because it wasn’t visible, colorful, the spell belonged to a terran witch or wizard, not sorcerer.

  I gathered more magic in my hands. I had never used it on terran magic before, but I saw no reason why it wouldn’t work. My magic took pain and healed. This spell was causing pain. It was a disease, and diseases could be healed. Pulling my hands into fists, I held onto the cloud of smoke that wanted to escape my grip and slip into the prince again.

  Then, I attacked it.

  My magic ricocheted off it. The power threw me back a couple of feet, but my focus didn’t waver. The spell didn’t slip away from my hold. I walked back to the bed again, as if the prince wasn’t lying there at all. How was I going to break that barrier? How was I going to take the pain it was causing?

  By breaking through its defenses first.

  To the side of the bed were five knives that the prince always left there when he slept. Under his pillow was the sword, and although its blade was stronger, a lot better to serve my purpose, it was too big. One of the knives would have to do.

  I slowly moved to the side, leaned down and grabbed a handle, my eyes never leaving the black cloud of smoke. I couldn’t let my focus waver, and it was best directed when I used my hands, but I was going to need my hands for the knife this time. I was going to have to keep control of the spell with my mind only.

  It was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. My magic was always the strongest magic in any place I’d been, especially among my people. Right now, that spell rivaled it. Terrans measured their power in levels. Level One witches would have weak magic, while Level Four ones, what they called Primes, would have a lot of it. There was no doubt in my mind that I was looking at a Prime spell here.

  One wrong move and I could lose it.

  I needed to get closer. How? The bed wouldn’t let me—and the prince lying in it.

  The spell pushed harder against my grip, almost breaking free. I was running out of time. That was why I stopped thinking. I started acting.

  I put one knee on the bed and the other around the prince’s stomach to his other side. Nothing mattered but that spell, that smoke hovering over his face. I held onto it with my mind, and I raised the knife in my hands over my head. One strike was all I was going to get. I was going to break through its barrier with my magic focused on the tip of the knife’s blade, before I destroyed it.

  One second…

  Below the smoke, something moved.

  The fae prince opened his eyes. He looked up at me, completely still, not even breathing. If he moved now, it would be over. I would lose the spell and who knew when it would show itself again?

  Sweat dripped down my temples. No, I had to finish this now. It was right there, inches away from the knife. All I had to do was go through with it.

  The prince moved his arm. The spell hovering over him pushed to
the sides. Could he see it? Could he see the smoke?

  It didn’t look like it.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered, and I didn’t realize how ridiculous I must have sounded to him in those moments. I was sitting on his chest, a knife in my hands, aimed at his face, and I was asking him not to move.

  More ridiculous still was the fact that the prince stopped moving. I didn’t allow myself to get distracted by it. Pushing my magic into the knife, I brought it down into the cloud of smoke. The blade went right through it, stopping less than an inch from the prince’s forehead.

  Then, my magic began to consume.

  It was too much. The magic of the spell slammed onto me, crashing in my chest. I saw the prince’s face, eyes wide with confusion and fear, and the world turned dark.

  My body let go of me, and I fell, but not before I felt the heavy weight of my magic settling inside me, content.

  Chapter 18

  Mace

  “Don’t move.”

  The elf was on my bed, her legs around my body, one of my knives in her hands. She squeezed the handle tightly and held it over her head, the tip of the blade glistening in the moonlight streaming in through the windows. Her white hair shone blue, spread around her shoulders, some of it in front of her face as she looked down at me, completely focused. Sweat covered every inch of her skin, her full lips parted as she breathed deeply. The skin of her thighs burned mine as she pressed against me.

  I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. She looked like death’s very own angel, come to serve me justice. I couldn’t move if I tried. Just the sound of her voice had made sure of that.

  I held still.

  She brought the knife down to my face. Death had never tasted sweeter.

  But the tip of the knife stopped a touch away from the middle of my forehead. I looked at it, then at the elf, confused. Why had she stopped?

  A cry escaped her lips, and her wide eyes begged me—for what, I don’t know. Then, they closed, and she fell to the side, on the bed, unconscious.

  The knife was still in her hand. I sat up and watched her, still breathing heavily, but she wasn’t conscious. Her hair stuck to her sweaty cheeks and her body didn’t move a single inch.

  What was going on?

  I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. But the elf hadn’t moved from her place, sprawled over my bed, her leg over mine.

  I looked at the knife, the tip of the blade now darker than the rest, as if it had been sprayed with black ink. My mind couldn’t even begin to make sense of any of it, but my body moved. I got out of bed and straightened the elf’s body on it. I put my cover over her, then went to fill the tub with water. It was cold, just like I liked it, but the elf wouldn’t. She was no Winter fae. I put my hand in the water and released my magic. It turned the water to ice before the Shade took it.

  The Shade knew what it needed to do. By the time I stood up, the water in the tub was already heating.

  The elf looked so peaceful. Her breathing had evened out, and she no longer looked in pain. The lines on her face were smooth, her body relaxed. Would she wake up if I touched her?

  Would it matter if she did?

  I pushed the blanket away and pulled her in my arms, not daring to look at her face. I grabbed the dress that had hiked up to her hips and pulled it off her as gently as I could. Her eyes remained closed.

  Taking her in my arms, I carried her to the tub and lowered her inside it. I didn’t need to check the water temperature—the Shade had my full trust.

  I sat her down in the tub and held her up by the shoulders with one arm so she wouldn’t slip all the way inside. A second lasted an eternity as I waited for her to wake up.

  She didn’t.

  Slowly, I began to bathe her. My hands slid on her soft skin, as white as her hair that floated in the water like spiderwebs, making her look more unreal than ever. I washed every speck of dirt on her skin and her hair, then I rinsed her, until the sun began to rise. Her cheeks had turned pink from the heat of the water, her full lips as red as the strawberries she so loved. I could look at her for days.

  Wrapping her in a towel, I brought her back to my bed and dried her as best I could. She never woke up. She never moved, just continued to breathe and let me take care of her like even I didn’t know I needed to.

  I washed the dirt and sweat from her dress, too, until it turned to a pearl white. I hung it near the window so the wind could dry it. Until I brought her new clothes that didn’t belong to the fae women living here, I put one of my black shirts on her thin frame. It was bigger than the dress she’d had on, but it took nothing away from her beauty.

  Then, I lay on the bed by her side and watched her.

  Only after I left the room and the elf sleeping in my bed did I begin to notice the change.

  I was different. I felt different. How?

  She was a healer. Out of all the magics in the world, she possessed healing. To watch her work the day before, when I was in the tub, her hand on my chest, had been a miracle. I was lucky to have witnessed it, to be part of it. The way the pain had left my body and my wounds had healed, my body regenerating faster than it ever had before…it still had me speechless.

  And it wasn’t the first time she’d done it, either.

  She’d healed me when I came back wounded from the battle at the Autumn border. I was there, waiting, hoping that she would somehow manage to get out of her chains and kill me, end my life for good.

  She’d given me life instead.

  Now more than ever, I wanted to know who she was, where she came from, what all her smiles looked like.

  What had she done to me this time? Because the change in my body was evident. More so—it was in my mind, too, and I noticed it clearly when I stepped out of the castle. I looked at the Shade and at the dry land ahead of it that marked the Winter border with the faelands, and I saw clearer than I had since I came here. It was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes.

  And my ears heard a lot more. My nose smelled deeper, and my magic…

  I raised my hand in front of me and released it into the air. Winter wouldn’t be over for another few days, and we were connected to it, so it made sense that my magic would be quick to respond to my call. It had been for the past four months—just not like this. Not as eager or as bright or as fast to freeze the air around my hand until a thin layer of ice covered my fingertips.

  I fisted my hand and closed my eyes for a second, trying to remember.

  This was how it always had been. This was my magic, my whole life. How had I not noticed that it wasn’t the same since I came to the Shade?

  “Commander,” Chastin called as he came toward me from the side of the castle. I started walking there myself. I’d needed to go to the glasshouse, anyway, to collect some strawberries. The elf would be hungry when she woke up.

  “Walk with me,” I said to Chastin, and he spun on his heels to follow me.

  “The third row of the barracks is barely standing. There’s only so much we can do to keep the roof up. The mice have eaten through everything,” he said, pointing his arm to the left.

  Behind the castle, the Shade stretched for over fifty miles. My battalion used all of it. We were free here to train in broad daylight, without worrying about prying eyes, because the Shade would keep us shielded from elf eyes when we asked it to. To my right were the barns, the livestock, the glasshouse, and a small, dry field behind them that would come alive in springtime.

  In the middle was the square—an open field set with white sand, rings, and weapons, where my men and I trained daily.

  The barracks Chastin was talking about were on the right. Three rows of wooden barracks, two stories high, served as living quarters for my soldiers and staff. We had plenty of space for everything. It was a medium-sized town here, and as the Shade continued to grow with our magic feeding it, it was going to become bigger.

  Unless I returned home.

  I looked at
the mountains on the other side of the castle. I could barely see the snow-covered tips. My father’s castle was close to it. My home.

  I had wanted to go back there for as long as I’d been in this place—every single day.

  “Commander?” said Chastin when he realized I was no longer walking beside him.

  Why had I wanted to go back there for as long as I’d been in this place?

  “Burn them all to the ground,” I told Chastin and continued walking toward the greenhouse. “Send men to my father’s castle for materials. The Shade isn’t strong enough yet to build them up itself. It will need wood. Good, strong wood.”

  “Beg your pardon?” Chastin said, a suspicious look in his small eyes. Soldiers and staff going about their business made way for me as I passed, nodding their heads, never looking at my face.

  “You heard me, Chastin. Get to work,” I said. “Make arrangements before you start your training session. I won’t be joining you today.”

  “But, Commander, we don’t ask the King for help,” he said when we walked into the greenhouse. It was only a quarter of the size of the one in my father’s castle, but it served me and my people well.

  “Why wouldn’t we? We need sleeping quarters. The King’s duty is to this battalion just as much as it is to the rest of his army.” We were part of the Winter army, too.

  “But you said we would make do ourselves. We—”

  “Merry, fetch me a basket, please,” I said to one of the women who tended to the greenhouse. With a smile, she ran to the other side, and I continued left to where the strawberries grew. “Did I really say that, Chastin? I can’t seem to recall.”

  I had probably said that, but right now, it felt foolish. Why would I further punish myself and my people when the fact that we were here was already punishment enough?

  “You did, Commander. You specifically said—”

  “A man can change his mind, can’t he? Thank you, Merry.” I took the basket that Merry had brought me without a word, and with a curtsy, she hurried back to the pumpkins where she’d been working. “Send men to the castle. And prepare to burn down the barracks by dawn.”