Prologue
Once upon a time, there was a soul full of light. Kind and generous, living life as it came but not daring to step outside her circle of radiance.
Good. Safe. Protected.
Alas, one day the soul touched a shadow, a darkness so dim she couldn’t find her way back to the light. She mourned the loss of light, but found something brighter lived on the other side of her circle.
That thing was named Love.
Love and the soul matched, for the light the soul had left behind was made of love, formed in the mystics. The soul lived without light and was content.
Until the shadows came once again, haunting, stealing the bright thing away from the soul. And so, the soul fought the darkness that had taken her light, and now wanted her Love.
She fought it.
Outsmarted it…
And now we are.
This is the story of our creation.
Chapter One
The darkness was sweet and rich, like sugary wine. Or like Joseph Gordon Levitt was. She knew who he was now, because the app on her phone gave her all the gossip of the rich and famous right at the tip of her finger. Somehow that tiny box called iPhone could zoom the information of a million tomes right to her with only a few taps to its smooth, shiny face.
Technology was a sort of magic in and of itself.
Nastia the Wisest, Sorcera of light magic and sister to The Lightest and The Bravest, was no lover of dark power. But the deep, leathery scent washing over her and the warm, secure hold the darkness had on her was undeniably comforting. She knew she was betraying her beliefs, but… the darkness seemed less inky and more… burgundy. A sweet port, which she’d never tasted, yet could imagine by the descriptions she’d read.
Just like she had never before tasted the power she embraced to help the Ouachita cats be free. Not until this night.
Now she was lost in it, her vision black. As if she was sleeping, but couldn’t wake.
Lost until someone saved her.
Her sisters. They wouldn’t fail her. They would search high and low, find her Anchor so the darkness couldn’t pull her under its pretty spell any further. And if they could not, they would end her so she couldn’t hurt them or anyone else. They had made the pact long ago when their tiny coven became official, when they were barely in the double digits.
No, her sisters wouldn’t fail her. She trusted them fully.
The air grew cold and damp, but the darkness curled around her to keep her warm, and unable to help herself, she pressed closer in. Or maybe she only thought she did. There was no sense to be made of anything. Just blackness, and the cold and warmth warring, and the scents she didn’t recognize yet didn’t hate. And the feeling of fresh power swirling within her.
And the song. The seductive song that had no melody, yet beckoned her closer. A whisper almost, or maybe just a thought. So sweet. So satisfying. She didn’t want to fight it, so she wouldn’t. Not now.
Not now when nothing demanded she count her blasted stones, when nothing required her mind to learn.
Right now, she would trust her sisters to find the answers, and let herself go.
For just a little while.
And then there was nothing.
***
One, two, three, four, five…
Nastia looked around but she knew her eyes weren’t really open.
Six, seven, eight, nine…
Why was she counting, and was she doing it out loud? And why did she feel like she couldn’t wake?
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen…
Her lips weren’t moving, so that answered one question. And when misshapen stones began to form out of the darkness, she knew the rocks were from her imagination. Or her memory maybe.
The rocks from her childhood that she’d counted to help herself focus when she needed to use magic. She had collected five hundred and eight of them by the time she perfected her magic. Little had she known she’d be counting rocks for the rest of her days.
But lately it had gotten worse. She started seeing them behind her eyelids when she and the other Sorcera had arrived at Lake Haven, the vacation lodge ran by a clan of werecats.
Counting the rocks was her curse. Her personal vice that drove her toward her anchor. For she and her sisters, this was the year of their change, when their power would transfer from good to wicked. By September, their coven would either remain Sorcera of light or embrace the dark magic of the Magei. As the autumnal equinox approached, they each worsened as the light magic they absorbed from the stars and moon faded to make room for the darkness that would swallow it up.
Darkness and light cannot exist in a single vessel. Always one will outlive the other.
While Nastia’s counting had worsened since their arrival, Adira’s penchant for rhyming had all but vanished. She’d rhymed so little over the past few days, Nastia was beginning to feel she was a stranger. And Mirena’s compulsion to place dares with everyone around had even eased a bit.