AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shook my head, agitated. I didn’t understand the woman’s kindness, yet refusal to truly help. If she was a prisoner here, then she had found her greatest ally.
“So, what I know of your isle is it is small but can fade into the mists.” I looked over my shoulder. Dark spires of a stone palace rose over the treetops. “You can take away spells through your magic?”
“Affinity,” she corrected. “I can take any physical matter. Stone, wood, flesh, if I truly focus.”
“But not blood spells.”
Her jaw flexed. “It is to the benefit of everyone if I avoid taking anything that brings the darker sides of the heart—greed, pain, hate—such things as those. Blood spells are crafted through dark desires, through death, through greedy motivations, after all.”
The way she spoke, so plainly as though everything was so damn obvious, was amusing. “Ah, well, I have not one bit of confusion any longer.”
“I’m not the greatest teacher of explaining affinities when I truly only ever speak to my folk.” A pinch to her mouth hid a smirk. “Think of my power as a summons. Shadow elven can use their gifts like me in most ways.”
“What do you mean,most ways?”
Her eyes went glassy. “I will tell you this, fae. There are gifts—perhaps more curses—the gods saw fit to bestow upon me that ought never be used.”
Hair lifted on my arms. I wanted to press her more, but she’d already shifted back to her lighthearted, deliberate tone, silencing my curiosity.
“Some elven do not darken what they take like me. Some gather light, and it is clearly written upon their palms as they use their gifts. Certain elven can even carve through gleams in a room and walk through them to other areas of light in a structure. Difficult and terriblyexhausting.”
“Seems odd for shadow elven to use light.”
“I did not say it was my folk who used the light. There are clans.” Her shoulders stiffened. “Light elven—or Ljosalfar—use light and fire. You will see for yourself soon enough.”
“Why does it feel like you keep alluding to things, yet you never speak plainly?”
“Why, indeed?”
Gods, she was irritating. I studied her. Lovely, a little mischievous whenever she grinned. It struck me in the next breath. I was bound here. What if she faced the same fate? It was possible she could not tell me much of anything.
Yet, if that were true, here she was, a stranger, subtly attempting to help. This was a way to help.
A burn of new hope took hold in my chest. “I have a heartbond, a connection with my king. Did the spell casts shield that in the same way?”
“The spell casts concealing us are strong enough to keep us locked away from the whole of the world if we wished,” she said almost dreamily, as though simply spouting off words from a bit of parchment.
“There must be a way to break them.”
She shook her head. “Not these blood spells. Only those marked may step foot on Natthaven now. And only the sea witch does the marking.”
“It’s possible to leave then.”
“They’ve only marked one other soul who steps foot off the isle. Larsson bears the ability to cross through the wards, but he will not leave. Not yet. You are connected to the witch, fae. However, if you were, let’s say,forcedfrom the isle, it would shatter the spell casts. But that would be wretchedly painful, and of course, deadly.”
I would risk death to be free of this damn place.
“Naturally, death of the spell caster brings the end of some magic.”
“So, kill Fione? Gladly.”
“You do not understand. There is no killing any who stand against you.” The elven’s expression twisted into something dark, almost fearful. She looked over her shoulder for a moment, then lowered her voice. “Forbidden spells made them your enemies, and once the forbidden has been tasted, it corrupts until it is no longer forbidden.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You cannot kill them,” she whispered. “Bonekeeper is shielded by the sea witch. He cannot die so long as that spell holds. And she has shielded herself so fiercely she cannot be ended without a white iron blade.”
“What is that?”
