Page 111 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
I didn’t wait for them to reply but started telling them what I’d read from the first journal Teddy had ever written in about the mages from long ago. How their prophecy had foreseen their genocide. To save their race, they hid triplets at a nearby village. They’d somehow managed to hide their essence from the fae so they’d overlook the two infant boys named Blaise and Alastor, and one infant girl they called Leanora. While many of the ensuing entries were irrelevant and only spoke about their upbringing as normal, fae-like children, I’d read each entry with care. Interestingly, the three children grew up reading a living book written by the mages, and they learned magic from its pages. From what I gathered, the book only revealed what they needed to know at the time and nothing else.
The mages had been careful with how they taught the children so they could grow up without others realizing what they were.
Through the years, they kept their magic hidden from our realm, with Leanora’s growing the strongest. While her brothers eagerly read from the living book, Leanora spent every free second scouring the book, looking for things she may have missed the first few times she’d read it. Pleased with her tenacity, the book opened more for her, giving her secrets and lessons it kept hidden from her brothers.
The last entry of the second book I’d read was the most disturbing. When the triplets had reached adulthood at 119 years of age, which was the same age fae were considered adults, Blaise told Leanora how he wanted her to use soul magic to absorb his magic indefinitely. Although he’d end up without magic, it was a consequence he was willing to pay so she’d be more powerful and could potentially destroy the fae. Their brother, Alastor, hadn’t agreed with Blaise and refused Leanora his magic.
As magic so often did when its vessels were not properly trained, things went wrong while Leanora absorbed Blaise’s magic. Wrong in the most horrid of ways. Leanora had pulled too hard, too much from Blaise. Even after she’d accidentally killed him, she continued to pull from his essence until she robbed him of his soul too.
There was no mention of her mourning her brother, who’d sacrificed everything to avenge their people. Instead, she obsessed over the text she’d already read, and months passed before the living book revealed more about the soul magic so that Leanora could use Alastor as a power source. While she read through the new text, she kept her remaining brother chained in iron so he couldn’t escape.
Only when she knew she wouldn’t kill him did she begin to drain him. As long as she kept him alive, she could use himas a battery, only absorbing some of his magic while also taking pieces of his soul.
Nalari hissed when I finished talking. Her anger coiled around me like a vise.
“Allowing one to absorb your magic is the purest form of magic. It’s a sign of respect and trust,”she said. “Thismagedefiled our magic. She’s ridiculed everything we stand for.”
Magic, in its simplest form, was a balance of energy. It couldn’t be destroyed but only changed or channeled. It was why I was willing to allow my friends to absorb some of my magic, why I was able to push my magic into the ground to keep Teddy’s place warm.
It was why Leanora was able to kill Blaise but not his magic. And it was why keeping Alastor alive to use him over and over again cheapened the very essence of magic.
“I don’t understand,” Everly said. “If what you read was true, it’s vastly different from how the mages met their end in our realm. Could she be from a different realm?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It makes sense she’d be from a different realm, but why would she be targeting Teddy? Is it a coincidence she’s my mate, or is she speaking to her because she’s my mate?”
“But why would she tell Teddy, a human, anything about her past?” Everly added.
I didn’t know that either.
George rubbed a hand over his face. “How do we find this mage?”
“She could be in our realm,” Everly said. “It makes sense if she’s from ours. I mean, there’s a reason she’s talking specifically to your mate.”
That word.Mate.It sliced through me and leftme raw.
“None of this makes sense.” Frustrated, I pulled at the roots of my hair.
“I think we should consider her being in our realm,” George said. “It gives us somewhere to start.”
“So what?” Brenton asked. “We go back home, you know, the realm we were banished from, and do what exactly? Where would we start looking?”
“If she’s the one controlling the creatures that have crossed into this realm, she could be living with them outside Niev’s borders,” George said.
“So we go there?” Everly asked.
“No,”Nalari said, opening a connection between all of us.“Let me get answers and permission from the Elders before we step back into Niev.”
“To what end, Nalari?” I asked. “Wait for her to come here and kill Teddy?”
“From what you’ve read, I don’t think she wants to kill Teddy,” Everly said.
“There’s no way to know that,” I argued. “She’s been talking to Teddy for years. Why? Why is she talking to her? The mage attacked me during the thunderbird battle. She’s talking to Teddy and tried to kill me. Why?”
Desperation tore through me with this driving need to keep Teddy safe. But how could I do that when I didn’t know what we were dealing with? When the journals Teddy had written had left me with more questions I didn’t have the answers to.
“I won’t take the risk,” I said on a snarl. “Not with Teddy.”
Already, I’d failed with her on every level. This, at least, I could do. I could keep her safe.
