Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,69
you though.”
Jayna nodded quickly. “She has helped me. That’s what I keep trying to tell her, especially when she gets lost . . .”
“What do you mean, ‘she gets lost’?”
“I’ve been struggling with trying to help her. She has gaps in her memory. It’s amazing some of the things she does recall, some of the ways she can—”
Char grinned at her. “You can go ahead and say it. The way she uses her magic.”
“Fine. The way she uses her magic. I don’t really understand all of the power she has, but I know it’s different from anything I’ve ever seen before—even since I’ve left the Academy.”
“She uses smoke and heat,” he said.
“Something like that.”
“It’s exactly that,” Char said. “I’ve seen the smoke, Jayna. I’ve seen the way she uses it. She can control it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how she calls on that magic, but . . .”
“Blood,” Jayna said softly.
“What?”
She nodded. “It’s her blood. She has enchantments, or something similar to them, that she uses to pierce her palms. When she does, she bleeds, and that blood drips on the ground, turns to smoke, and she controls it.”
“She’s bleeding for her magic?” Char shook his head. “And here we used to claim in the Academy that they worked us to the bone, trying to practically kill us so we could gain control of our power.”
“Keep working,” Jayna said.
Char turned back to the shelf. “Sorry. It’s just . . . I haven’t heard anything like that before.”
“I haven’t either, and I’ve seen some things since I left the Academy.”
“I’m sure you have,” he said.
“Stop,” she said.
“Stop with what?”
“With that implication. I haven’t gotten into dark magic.”
“I’ve seen the things you do, Jayna. I’ve seen the kind of people you’re around.”
“What you haven’t seen are the kinds of things I’ve stopped,” she said.
“I don’t think using dark magic to stop dark magic makes it any better,” he said.
“My brother would’ve said otherwise,” she said.
“Really? And now all of a sudden this is about Jonathan?”
“That’s what this has always been about,” she said.
“And how’s that going?” Char looked over to her, pausing as he pulled a book off the shelf, scanning the cover. “How has that helped you in your search for your brother? I don’t really know all of the reasons you’ve gone after this power, but if it’s just about Jonathan—”
“It’s not just about Jonathan. It’s about my parents and what happened to them.”
“You mean the accident.”
“I don’t even know if it was an accident. Not anymore.”
“So you’ve suddenly started to believe there was some sort of dark magic attack that killed your parents.”
“I’m doing what’s necessary to figure that out. Whether or not you believe it, I feel it’s true,” she said.
“You feel it’s true because you want it to be true. You don’t want to believe you’re drawing on dark magic without a good reason, and you don’t want to believe you’re doing something they warned us about when we were in the Academy.”
“They never warned us about the things I’ve seen,” Jayna said. “The things I see. They never taught us about the dangers of this power, about how seductive it could be.”
“They did,” Char said. “You just weren’t listening.”
“I was listening,” she insisted. “They just didn’t provide us with everything we needed in order to resist that kind of power.”
Without the background she had from the Academy, Jayna might not have been equipped for what she had encountered, but even with that, it still hadn’t been enough. There were dangers in the world she hadn’t been trained for, and the things she had seen since leaving the Academy had opened her eyes in ways that she never would’ve imagined before.
Perhaps that was what bothered her about what Char did, the way he seemed to refuse to look at the world, to keep his eyes open. Char was an incredibly smart man—one of the smartest she’d ever known—and she would’ve expected him to be willing to open his eyes, to see the world for what it was, and to look out and recognize the dangers that existed. She would’ve expected Char to try to understand more, especially given what Jayna had shown him.
“You were telling me about your friend,” Char said, looking over to her, his voice soft.
Jayna took a deep breath and pulled another book off the shelf, pushing it back in frustration after glancing at it for only a second. None of these were what she was looking for.