Shattered Magic: Darkness Summons, #4

Chapter 1

Okay, Sophia said, running a hand through her shoulder-length hair. This is fine. This is totally okay.

Sophia.

No, no, this is normal, she insisted, waving her hand as if she could swipe my words away in thin air. I’m sure I can find something about this in my journal.

"Sophia."

Like, this has definitely happened before, I bet, Sophia nodded, mostly to herself. She started frantically flipping through the leather-bound notebook that she brought with her from Mettleshire.

Kai was quiet. In fact, he’d been quiet ever since we left the shore. Once the bodies of the dark sirens dissolved and were absorbed by the ocean, it seemed as though his ability to form full sentences went with them.

Part of me didn’t blame him. After all, he’d just watched me kill fifteen people with my brain. Well, not people. Monsters. The terrible, demonic beasts that dragged themselves up out of the depths of the sea with their sole intent being to destroy everything in their path for the sake of taking me prisoner.

Up until about an hour ago, I’d never seen more than a few dark sirens at once. No one really knew how many there were, but I’d just made sure that at least a dozen of them wouldn’t return home tonight.

Okay, so can you just describe to me again what you did? Sophia asked me, so focused on the handwritten pages in front of her that she could barely spare me a backward glance.

We’d been in this hotel room for less than an hour, stumbling into the first inn we could find on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Sophia had waited for me and Kai in the cafe across the street. She hadn’t sat down once since leaping up from the table by the windows and scrambling outside with wide eyes and a thousand questions on her lips.

I sat down on the end of the bed, too mentally and physically weak from the amount of power that my mass murder just required from me to do much more than stare blankly into space and offer halfhearted responses to Sophia and her nervous energy. Even though Kai didn’t have to do much during our altercation with the dark sirens, he appeared to be in a similar stupor.

Do I have to? I responded to Sophia.

Yes, please, Sophia nodded. If you say it out loud one more time, maybe it’ll jog my memory a little bit more.

I don’t know how to describe it in a way that will make sense to you, I shrugged. There’s a connection between sirens, light and dark. It’s tangible, like a thread. From what I’ve experienced, sirens can strengthen the threads and pool their power—that’s what they were doing. I could just tell their fates were knotted together—

But how could you tell? Sophia interrupted, her tone unemotional and purely academic as if we were discussing schoolwork.

I… I really don’t know, Sophia. It was obvious. The ocean was kind of encouraging me?

But could you see them? The threads?

I tried not to snap at her. Sophia was trying to help. Her curiosity, knowledge of siren lore, and thirst for answers was the entire reason that her presence was so important.

No, I couldn’t see them, I replied. It was more like a feeling.

Kai shifted where he was perched on the other bed, stiff and straight-backed.

I know what she means, Kai murmured. His voice was calm and measured despite his tense posture. It’s how I can tell when a siren is near me. There’s a connection between them and me, but it doesn’t feel good. It just feels instinctual.

Sophia pouted thoughtfully, paused for a few seconds to mull over the information, then nodded once more and ducked her head to scribble something in a second notebook that was sitting open on the desk.

I stared at Kai’s side profile, but he didn’t look at me. Was he disgusted with me? Was he—God forbid—afraid of me?

No… that couldn’t be. Sure, what I did left me shaken to my core, but Kai was a highly trained siren hunter. He’d witnessed and committed brutal acts throughout his nineteen years on earth, and dark sirens were more his enemy than uncorrupted sirens were. If anything, he should be impressed by me.

Maybe it wasn’t the killing that left him speechless.

Shortly before I ran to confront them on the beach, he did something that surprised me so much that it snapped me out of the dark spell that the monsters had smothered my mind with.

He kissed me.

And, as ridiculous as it sounded, I kissed him back. That wasn’t the kind of thing that was supposed to happen between us. We were sworn enemies, affected by a curse that had been in place for centuries. Just being in the same room as him was meant to be unbearable… yet, it wasn’t. I would be a fool if I didn’t admit that something had shifted between the two of us in the past week or so. Any other siren would call me delusional, but I didn’t think that Kai was my enemy.

And when you sensed the threads… you, what? Snapped them? Metaphorically? Sophia was still questioning me, the same inquiries over and over.

I inhaled slowly and closed my eyes. Sophia patiently waited for me to let out the sigh and then raised her eyebrows expectantly. At the present moment, she was neither my quirky friend nor my bubbly roommate. She was Sophia Michelson, a descendant of ancient druids and a future anthropologist.

No, I explained. The threads lead to a switch, sort of. It’s like a lever. If I put pressure on it, then I guess it shuts down the whole system. It kills them.

Sophia nodded. Can you sense that lever inside my head, too?

I cringed at her clinical tone. She was asking me if I could kill her with a blink of my eyes.

I’d rather not try right now, Sophia, I whispered.

I trust you—

Thankfully, the sound of my phone buzzing on the nightstand with a phone call cut off Sophia’s argument. No matter how much she asked, I would never dive into my friend’s head like that. Clearly, I didn’t know what I was capable of, and, given the reactions from her and Kai, this wasn’t a normal siren ability.

That’s what scared me the most.

With a shaking hand, I reached out for my phone and saw that it was Mira. She was holding down the fort in Mettleshire, waiting for any word from Laurel or the Holliday family so that she could report the updates to me. So far, we hadn’t spoken since we parted ways on the beach on the southern coast.

Hi, Mira, I answered. My voice was rough and uneven. I sounded terrible.

Cass? Are you okay? Is this a bad time? Her warm voice filled my ears. Mira was a siren like me, but she reminded me of Sophia. They were both sweet and soft in demeanor, representing the better part of humanity that I often feared I was losing my grip on.

I’m fine, I said into the phone, feeling two pairs of eyes on me. My head was spinning with exhaustion, and my chest felt hollow. It felt like someone reached inside me, ripped my heart out, wrung it out like a wet rag, and then hung it back up to dry on my ribcage.

Are you sure? What’s going on?

I let out a small exhale of breath as a wave of weakness washed over me. My hand was trembling so hard that I was certain I was about to drop the phone.

I can’t— I managed to gasp before Sophia rushed over to take my phone.

I’ll talk to her, Sophia murmured to me, patting my shoulder gently. Then she turned around and wandered into the narrow hallway that led toward the door and pressed the phone to her ear. Mira? It’s Sophia—yeah, Sophia Michelson.

My vision was getting blurry around the edges.

With Sophia temporarily distracted by providing updates to our ally back at school, Kai stood up and hurried over to me. My eyelids fluttered; my mouth went dry, and I felt a strange coldness come over me. I was about to faint

The mattress sank beside me as Kai sat down and placed two hands on my shoulders. I wished I could say that I was getting used to Kai being uncharacteristically kind to me, but our brief history was fraught with too much tension for me to move on that easily. Despite that, his touch was appreciated. It grounded me. It made me feel more stable. It gave me something to hang on to—that familiar jolt in the pit of my stomach that told me being this close to Kai was wrong.

Are you okay? he asked. His question was quiet, timid. Just as I wasn’t used to him checking on my wellbeing, he wasn’t used to asking about it.

I tried to nod, but I was so dizzy that I wasn’t sure if I was even moving my head.

Cass? Cass, you look really pale, he said.

I am… I tried to say I am pale, but another whoosh of lightheadedness struck me, and I collapsed back onto the duvet. I tried to say something so that he would know I didn’t completely pass out, but my voice came out as nothing more than a weak moan.

I guess you aren’t invincible, Kai remarked softly, shifting back and hovering over me. At least, that’s what it felt like he was doing. My eyes were shut tight against the spinning room.

Hmph, was all I managed in response. I wanted to tell him that it should’ve already been obvious that I wasn’t invincible. How many times had I been vulnerable in his arms now?

Do you need water? Maybe food? I think Sophia has a packet of crisps—

I shook my head, flinching at the way the movement made my stomach turn. In the background, Sophia’s chattering voice was muffled and distant, as if she was speaking to Mira from outside the room.

Listening to the steady murmur of my heart, I took comfort in the pull of the ocean. With the dark ones gone—or rather, that particular batch of them taken care of—the ocean was calm again. Its murmur nestled deep into my chest and hummed with a familiar coolness. I focused on that feeling for a few minutes until I felt steady enough to open my eyes.

Kai was watching me. He looked concerned but guarded as if the last thing he wanted was for me to know that he was worried about me in the slightest. For some reason, I found that impossibly endearing.

I cleared my throat gently.

Fair warning, I croaked out. Killing fifteen people with nothing but your brain takes a lot of energy.

Kai snorted. Noted.

A flicker of relief flashed in his bright green eyes, showing me that he was glad to know that I was at least well enough to be sarcastic.

We should talk about what happened, he said after a beat of silence.

I frowned. We’ve been talking about it for an hour.

No, not that, Kai replied, biting his lip and glancing away awkwardly. I meant what happened before.

Before?

Oh, come on—

Just as I realized what Kai was referring to, Sophia reappeared.

Cass, are you okay? she gasped when she caught sight of me lying on the bed weakly. Do you need water? A snack? I’ve got crisps.

Kai scooted away from me. Now was not the time for us to discuss the kiss we shared, and I was surprised that he even tried to do so in the first place. He struck me as the kind of guy who would rather sweep something like that under the rug and move on like it never happened.

No, Sophia. Thanks, but I’m alright, I said, placing my clammy palm against my forehead and trying to will myself into feeling more normal. How’s Mira?

She’s fine, Sophia replied. She said the twins still don’t really give a damn about Laurel, which is really a shame, isn’t it? I thought they were good friends.

I thought of Ara and Rose, the twin sirens with silky black hair and shrewd eyes. They were traditional like Laurel’s mother, choosing to believe that Laurel was already too far gone into the darkness to