Shadow Magic
DAPHNE
“Try again, blast it all. You are not concentrating properly!” Magda snaps out, frustrated when again the only things I am able to cloak are myself and the cup I was using to drink from. She wacks my head with the back of her staff and I very nearly lose my cool.
“Careful old woman,” I snarl. “Before I ask the book to turn you into a chamber pot.”
Instead of being offended, Magda grins. “So that you might pee on me, I presume? What a disheartening thought.” She loses her smile, wacks me again, “Focus! We’ve not the time for jokes, however clever they might be.”
The book warms in my hand and a whisper sounds in my head, laced with breathy laughter, ”She has a point, child. But she knows not that it is your concentration that is the problem. You are too focused on the particular. Might I suggest, not concentrating so hard, instead? Free your reach, instead of disappearing items, use her. For lifeforce is much easier for magic to flow through than dead stone.
“Okay,” I say to the book, causing Magda to hike up an eyebrow. With a happy little smile I look toward Magda and say, “I shall try again.”
“I’m not getting any younger,” the witch replies, deadpan.
Well, that's the bloody truth.
This time I do not close my eyes and instead of focusing, I open the book in my hand to a random page, a blank page. They are all blank, apparently. Until I decide to read from them, that is. I decide to now, thinking of what I want to appear and keeping the words secret.
Hide me from my enemies -
Cloak me from their gaze.
Keep every life that fights for me -
Beneath this shadowed haze.
The words scribble in a flash of gold onto the page, causing Magda to gasp and me to smile as the book writes from my mind and not from her own.
”Clever girl,” the book says, impressed.
I know that it worked when I look toward Magda and see that she has all but disappeared, becoming naught but a phantom of herself.
A cacophony of sound riots on the other side of the cave wall, cries of confusion and joy, telling me at once that the witch is not the only being I’ve shrouded in phantom.
And when Klyesque bursts into the room with a wide grin upon her face, one that I can see right through, one that even now is becoming a ghost of itself, I feel magic blossom in my chest.
“The riders and fliers are ready, Daphne,” Klyesque informs with a smile. “It is time.”
It is the appearance of Klyesque in a half state that has Magda gasping in surprise. “Oh! Well! Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I suppose shadow magic will do for now.”
“Shadow magic?” I quip. “As in my father’s magic?”
“The one and the same,” Magda chortles, regarding herself in a mounted looking glass. “We will work on the rest of what I wanted to cover on our way to the stairwell.”
The book groans between my ears, ” Tell the good witch you are finished with the crack of her stick and let us be on our way. Your throne awaits.”
But all I do is smile.
ASH
“Azrael,” I say, magic sparking at my fingertips as he gracefully drops from a Marrow branch and onto the ground. “Prince of Cinder Fae,” I announce to Bregda and Laksha. “A pain in the brain.”
There, you see, I can rhyme too.
“Ash,” Azrael hisses, arching an eyebrow when he takes stock of my new comrades. “Not the usual cavalry, but much improved,” he mumbles, spinning around in a full circle. “Where are the rest of your company. Surely you do not make for the Winter Court with a woodland goblin and a lochness monster.”
With a roll of my eyes, I dismount, dropping onto the ground so that we are eye to eye. “Why are you here, Azrael? For now it is you who trespasses.”
Azrael’s golden eyes fire with yellow light. “Truly? Is that the way of it? For I’ve always been told these lands were unclaimed. The Marrow Woods and The Pit do not belong to the Court of Ash and Fury. They are not part of Rekyr.”
Not yet.
“If you came for politics, you might as well go now, for I have places to be,” I tell him, not wanting to give up my peasant for all she is even though I am almost certain he already knows.
Azrael smiles coldly. “So you’re off to see the Winter bitch after all, are you? To broker a deal with her for your… peasant’s kin? Is that it?”
“Something like that,” I remark carefully.
Azrael grins from ear to ear. “So then, no second thoughts of an alliance with Cinder? Even though the queen prepares to march on your throne?”