Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Follow the magic, Tarian said, twisting at the last moment. Claws barely missed his arm. Feel the thread of the magic and follow it. You don’t need sight for this. You need to feel the threads of Faerie. They’re everywhere—in everything. Someone conjured these creatures and gave them life. That is what you need to null—the root.
The contraptions never said anything about threads and roots and conjuring. What sort of half-assed training did they have in this place?
She worked harder, limping, breathing heavily. Her stomach was on fire, pulsing in pain. Her legs throbbed, one barely holding her up. Still she pushed, fighting through the creatures. They weren’t hard to kill, given the magical knife parted their flesh like silk, but there were just so damn many of them. They kept coming, on and on, no break in the onslaught.
The root. Feel the root.
No, wait—the threads. Feel the threads…
Images flickered through Daisy’s mind, from Tarian and then from Gorlan, pictures of the magic weaving within itself. Of it shimmering and dancing and beautiful. She didn’t see any of that through her dull, sad-sack human vision.
Emotions rolled through her now, Faelynn feeding her a different perspective. She felt the threads around her, the magic washing against her, the writhing forms of the creatures.
Okay, that made more sense.
We all connect with Faerie differently, Faelynn said, her mind like a flowing river within a vibrant green field. She was like a meditation session just by opening her mind. Find the way you connect, and you will find the magic.
Yelling and battle calls erupted over the din of their efforts. Weapons swung through the air, and creatures started to drop at the outer periphery. The Fallen had arrived.
We’ll be good, Tarian told her. Figure out your magic.
She limped back into their protective circle, tight now and pressed from all sides. She stood, most of her weight on her better foot, dagger in hand, and closed her eyes. They’d tell her if she was in danger.
She didn’t immediately feel for the magic. No, she remembered when Lexi was trying to learn hers. It was a magic that lent best to one’s ability to feel it. They’d tried to teach Lexi how, but she’d been a visual learner. They’d had to change their style of teaching.
Those early lessons, though, had stuck in Daisy’s head. She’d watched from the sides, curious and wary, concerned for her caregiver and ready to help with remembering the tough stuff if Lexi needed it. Lexi hadn’t, but now Daisy called up what had been said then and after, when Lexi could describe different aspects of spirit.
Spirit made up the framework of the human world. It was the support system for souls, both in the world with the living and beyond, in the afterlife. It existed everywhere and outlined everything. A body came and went, but a soul was forever, or so Lexi believed.
This magic was in everything and existed everywhere, right? Take it away, and a fae died. Mess with it, and a fae panicked and went nuts, doing everything they could to protect that part of themself. Spirit could do that to people.
The similarities ended there, but that might be enough.
She pored over the teachings, years old but still seeming so fresh. She didn’t tend to lose sight of extremely dangerous magic. She had a lot of notes on Dylan and Thane, too. Even Jerry. They’d never want to turn into her bad guys.
Eyes closed, feeling the soothing river in Faelynn’s mind still streaming through hers, Daisy clued in. She felt around. She touched Tarian, with whom she was comfortable, and Gorlan, whom she knew. Then she branched out, finding the Fallen cutting their way closer, almost to them now. Each of them registered. Niall added to Faelynn’s lovely scene, wildflowers popping up in brilliant colors and the breeze ruffling her hair. So did two more, adding details that felt like a weave of magic. Between them all, rotting magic flowed. In and around, pulsing one moment and dying away the next, most flowing back into the area surrounding it. Some of it headed back to its maker, though.
Feeling like she was floating, and not afraid of it because of all the times Lexi had described to Kieran or Bria how she moved through spirit, she followed. She drifted, feeling the push and pull of magic, the playful dance, the nightmarish, dangerous pull. It weaved within each other in some places, fought in others, separated and came together. It was a perfectly composed mess, like Eldric’s library.
Like Eldric’s library. Huh. He existed in his information gathering like a fae existed in Faerie.
Suddenly, everything made sense. It crystalized in her mind, like the ever-changing landscape the Fallen were showing her mentally. The wildflowers that wilted, died, and popped up again in the spring. The water moving through and away, always replaced with something similar but not the same. And maybe it was because she had Lexi’s Demigod blood gift, could feel souls, and had a magical nudge toward spirit magic, but in the middle of all that chaos…she found balance. The light and the dark, the living and the dead. Complex but oh-so simple. Natural.