Page 126 of Enchanted Crown
Was she always this overly confident? Or was it a mask she was required to wear? I whispered gently, “Even if you are nervous, I would not hold it against you. I can’t say I would like to be covered in shadow magic either.”
“I think the longer we stand here thinking about it, the more likely I am to cover you in shadow magic,” she responded lightly.
I laughed and sent my magic out to her hand.
She moved her fingers back and forth as she got a feel for it, only inhaling sharply at the first touch.
“Ready for more?” I asked.
She gave Reyes a nod and told me, “Yes. Send it.”
As I willed my Enchantment to begin seeking out poison, it reminded me of the shifters stuck in their human forms. As if Kessara’s whole body was a shadow that I was fishing the poison from. It took minutes, my magic found her poison to be embedded deeply. There was something different about it in the princess, and I wasn’t sure if it was because the lakes weren’t healed or for a different reason. Every so often, Kessara would say something toReyes or one of them would ask if she was okay. She always calmly said she was.
And then when I finally thought I was getting somewhere, I doubled down and sent even more. We needed this to work. A show of good faith that Dra Skor and Wylan both would help Agria heal, not leaving them to their own devices.
I could not even see Kessara from around my magic, but I did will my magic to not weigh on her body, not cement her in. She could still breathe; she just couldn’t see anything other than my magic.
“Get ready to use your Enchantment,” I told her, feeling like I could finally tug on that mass of poison throughout her. Like little shards of iron which were in every cell of her being.
“I cannot,” she told me, “I’m no longer in or near the shadows.”
She had a point. How was I to do this if she was lit up from my Enchantment but needed the shadows to use hers?
“I am going to tug on the posion,” I told her, knowing I couldn’t hold it forever. “When you feel it free and come off part of your body, immediately try to call the shadows. I will try to get your hands free first.”
“Got it,” she responded back.
I tugged, feeling sweat on my brow. So much of my magic was surrounding her, pulling that poison from her.
With a groan and a hiss, I heaved harder.
Without asking for it, Dex gestured to Nyx, who was still in his dragon form but with his wings tucked in tight to fit among the trees. He shoved at my chest with his dragon snout. The smell of his dragon breath did not help matters but did help me move the poison slightly.
The weight of it was heavy enough to almost pull me to my knees. I let out a yell and pulled again, Nyx pushing at my chest, and I felt it move only a little. Getting it moving was the worstpart. Dex released his magic to tug on mine. I wasn’t even sure that would work, but all three of us pulled again.
That was when I heard Princess Kessara gasp.
I saw out of my peripheral Reyes step forward, but before he could get to the princess, I saw the inky mass that I knew was shadow magic pulling into her hands, like she could take the shadows and make them her own. An artist of the darkness.
With a final pull, the poison came free, falling to the forest floor. Emric did not delay shooting his red veins of power into it to obliterate it.
In the blink of an eye, Kessara was there one moment, gone the next, covered in her shadow magic. The black mass got thicker, larger, expanding.
She let out a breath which sounded like it’d been lodged in her for years. And it likely had.
The shadows kept moving outward toward us, Nyx spinning his dragon head and huffing out a smoke ring in warning.
“Princess,” Lorenzo called. “Dial it back before the dragon gets mad, would you?”
The shadows retreated slightly, then another inch or two, before they went away entirely and there she stood again. She had a heady look to her, but also like she was tired.
Well acquainted to this part, I moved quickly toward her, catching her as she stumbled. Surprisingly, she didn’t pass out, but she also didn’t shove me off.
“Thank you,” she told me.
I got the impression she didn’t use those words too often. “I’m just pleased it worked.”
She took a small step away from me.
