Song of Blood and Reign

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

In the days that followed Jai's appearance, Lyv didn't eat, barely slept, and didn't even move from her seated position on a pillow on the stone floor of her cell. Legs crossed, to anyone who passed by she would have looked like she was in a deep meditative state. She was, actually, but she wasn't going to admit it to whomever came to her cell door except for one person. Mik hardly came to her, though, which meant she couldn't practice with him.

So, she did it herself.

Lyv had embraced the quiet to fall into herself, completely disregarding the circumstances she was in. She was trying to remember how she had gained control over her raging magic months before after Mik's attack on the beach in Ayveri and she lost it. Jai had been there to help guide her, be the support she needed. He wasn't now, though. Physically, that is.

But he'd been there. He'd found her, told her he, Gideon, Thia, and Allel were on their way to find her, to fight for her, to get her back.

And there was no way in hell she was going to let them do all the work. She had to do her own part...and that included trying to get her own magic back and get the golden cuff controlling her off her wrist.

What stopped her from getting her magic was the fact that it was in tatters and in chains inside her. Even though she could feel it, she couldn't find just where that darkness was hiding it.

So, she followed it whenever she knew the darkness was going to check on it and make sure it was still the dominate magic in her.

Mik had warned her not to get close to the dark magic that was calling her body home, of course, but she couldn't exactly ignore it either.

She was going to learn it.

It started with the shadows that curled around her fingers when Guinevere had come to see her, trying to find out who she was talking to. It took no time at all to call them forth. The feeling of power that coursed through her as she watched them curl around her forearm and then weave in and out of her fingers was...different. Different from her own light magic, no matter how powerful she was with it either.

The first night, Lyv stayed locked within those shadows, memorizing how they moved and breathed, how the darkness used her...and how she could start using it, too.

She wanted to laugh when she finally got it to submit to her will, even though it didn't realize she wasn't doing it for its own gain. Instead, she allowed it to guide her, to show her everything she would be able to do in bits and pieces...until it unknowingly revealed where her own magic was hidden.

Lyv cursed herself for not realizing she should have looked where she was then – following her and Jai's mating bond, still there and slowly breaking free from the dark magic that smothered it. Her own magic, so much like Jai's and yet completely different, was there. Just a kernel of light with the rest in tatters around it.

But it recognized her, pulsed once brightly before being covered in darkness once more. The golden cuff around her wrist didn't help the matter either.

When she found it, though...she had already learned that darkness enough for her to will it to let her through. Somehow, she was able to convince it that she was the one being controlled and she wasn't using it to snap one of the chains on her light magic.

That was when Mik finally came back to her.

As soon as she opened her eyes, meeting his pitch-black ones through the shadows that swirled happily around her, a small burst of light magic was able to weave its way through.