Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,67

to hastily dump out the few things she’d taken from Dornrise’s larder, the empty spellbook, and her quill. Flipping the spellbook open to the first available page, she lifted the quill . . .

And hesitated.

She’d promised Soran not to work magic while so close to Noxaur.

But spell writing wasn’t the same thing as spell conjuring. She could write down the spell without calling any magic to life and have it at the ready should need arise. What else could she do? She couldn’t venture into that darkness without a weapon. Not with lascivious fae lords, bloodthirsty Noswraiths, and who knew what else stalking the island.

She wrote quickly. Too quickly for precision. But she’d not been precise yesterday either when she called the spell-sword to life. Her desperation had driven her creativity, and the result had been most effective. She was just as desperate now, and she thought—she hoped—the spell taking shape under her pen would do the trick. Soran would sigh and lift his gaze to the heavens at the sight of her splashed ink droplets and shaky lettering. But this wasn’t Soran’s spell, was it?

She wrote on, ignoring her splotches, ignoring her misspellings. The deeper she went into the spell, the less she cared and the more she simply let her inner energy guide the pen. Her vision shimmered around the edges as though she peered into another world, a strange, glowing world full of possibilities. All she had to do was reach inside and capture those possibilities on the page. Not with accuracy, but with a sort of energetic clarity. Like passion, like poetry. Like the sensation of falling.

At the end of the third page she stopped, breathing hard, then sat back and looked at the messy scrawl she’d just created. With a little snort, she shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. Scattered throughout her crude sentences were occasional Old Araneli words—words she’d unconsciously picked up during her work with Soran. Strange that she would choose them. Yet, when she skimmed those raw, disastrous sentences, she was surprised to feel a compelling sense of truth. As though the foreign language had permitted her to express her thoughts more completely than her own language would.

Maybe she was picking up a little proper sorcery after all.

None of that mattered so much as the spell itself, however. She lifted the book and immediately felt a tingling in her fingertips. There was certainly magic here, just waiting to be set free. If the time came, she should be able to call it to life. If not . . .

She wouldn’t worry about that. Not yet.

Nelle closed the spellbook and tucked it and her quill back into her satchel. The wyvern, watching her from the hearth, uttered a questioning chortle. “I know,” she said, making a face at the little beast. “I know. But I don’t have a choice, do I?”

When it flared its crest and lowered its head back between its two wing-claws, red embers from the low-burning fire reflected in its overlarge pupils.

Nelle slung her satchel over her shoulder and drew her cloak tight. Casting a last glance the wyvern’s way, she warned, “You stay quiet now, you hear?” and stepped to the door.

Over the last week she’d become much more sensitive to magic, or at least more aware of what it was she sensed. Now she could feel how potent the protection spells on the lighthouse really were. And as the fae darkness closed in, the spells intensified.

What awaited her on the other side of that protection?

Steeling her resolve, Nelle reached for the latch, flung the door open, and stepped out into a darkening world with a strangely split sky overhead. Noxaur darkness now covered the lighthouse, as deep as nightfall. But not far off she could see the distinct line where the shadow had not yet reached, where daylight still held sway over Roseward.

Nelle pulled her hood up over her head, shut the door firmly, and set off at a run toward the nearest trees. At any moment Soran might look out his window; she must take cover as quickly as possible.

Once she gained the safety of the treeline, however, she began to regret this decision. Under the dense boughs it was intensely dark. Her eyes had always been unusually adept at absorbing whatever light was available and expanding on it to clarify her vision. Mother had told her she was fae-blessed in this way. Now she stumbled, staggered, and fumbled along, almost blind. Was