A Glow of Stars & Dusk by Eve L. Mitchell

I wokeup to the sound of the rain. The wind was whistling through the cave, and I was shivering. The cave was in darkness, and I knew I was alone. I hadn’t expected to fall asleep, and as I got to my feet unsteadily, my brain finally made the connection with my body that travelling took my energy. I needed to build up my stamina. I wondered if that was the reason why I needed to learn how to fight.

A healthier me maybe meant a more energetic me? It was a wonder they hadn’t given me a meal plan yet. Maybe they didn’t know what that was. Mental note to self, do not mention meal plans.

Stumbling, I made my way over to the entrance of the cave and looked out. I hastily stepped back again as the wind was high, the rain almost horizontal as it fell, and the sea was stormy. Pale moonlight flickered on the cave walls, the thundery clouds chasing themselves across the sky.

I had no light in the cave. The others would make a fire, but there wasn’t one burning just now, which told me they hadn’t come back. Where were they? I reached for my power and felt its warm caress as I touched it softly. Did I have enough to travel? But then, I didn’t know where they were. I could go home? Fix my bedroom. See if Gran had any books in the cottage that may actually aid me with what I needed to do. Picking up a blanket, I folded it and held it close. I’d need an extra layer when I got to the cottage while I waited for the heating to warm the house up.

I closed my eyes and thought of home. Arriving in my kitchen, I screamed when the presence brushed against me. Quickly realising it was only Hound, I scolded the hellhound for a good minute before he got fed up and walked away from me.

“Bloody stupid mutt,” I muttered as I switched the light on and flicked on the timer for the heating. It was mid-October, and some days were still mild, so my heating didn’t go on its regular programmed settings until after the clocks changed and the temperature dropped.

I was home for two hours and was in my bedroom, grumbling as I cleaned it, when Zel found me.

“You know you’re a witch, right?” he asked me as he propped himself against the door.

“So you keep reminding me,” I answered glibly.

“Your magic can do this.”

I looked up at him in surprise and then at the room. “It can?”

“Why do you think we need you for the spell?”

“My charming personality?” I suggested. My grin grew as his scowl got worse. “You should try to smile more, Azazel. You’re a very attractive male, but you’re so grumpy all the time.”

“Are you flirting with me?” He looked so horrified at the thought that it made me giggle.

“No, dumbass, I’m trying to be nice to you; us fighting all the time wears me out,” I admitted with a sigh. “Okay, you need me for the spell, which I can’t read by the way, and you need me because of my blood.”

“Correct.” Zel nodded even as he frowned. “But you could be full of juicy blood and not be any use for the spell because you need to be a witch, a strong witch.”

“I tell you to be nicer, and you counter with full of juicy blood. I mean, seriously, can you see why I struggle?”

“I was being nice,” he grumbled as he frowned at me. “And as always, you missed the point.”

“No, I heard you. Forgive my sensibilities that my whole entire being felt repulsed at the blood reference.” I rolled my eyes at him before I looked around the bedroom. “Okay, so I have zero reference for this, I can’t read the spell, and I can’t really tap into my power, so how do I fix the room?”

Zel actually smiled at me. “This is why you’re a strong witch. You list all the reasons why you can’t do something, and instead of saying I can’t, you say let’s do it.”

“But you said I could do it,” I said self-consciously.

“Because you can,” he told me as he came further into the room, closing the door behind him. “You need to focus. Chaz and Pen are…good at some things, but I’m better.”

“Cocky much?” I jibed good-naturedly. He actually huffed out a laugh. Was this really Zel? I thought in wonder, and then remembering my incident with Yeqon, I felt a sliver of trepidation. “You are you,aren’t you? You aren’t someone else?”

“Do you think these scars can be replicated?” Zel asked me, his face hard.

“How did you get them?” I asked quietly. “If I’m allowed to ask.”

“Combat.” He beamed. Actually beamed. “In the great rebellion, I was captured, and these were given to me as a mark for my treason against our Father.”

“Who did that to you?” I asked as I looked at them more closely. They were deep, and although a scar was usually puckered and uneven, they ran in perfect synchronisation, deep grooves into his skin.

“Gabriel, he’s such a prick, you’d hate him,” Zel told me conversationally as he moved aside a piece of the dresser easily.

“Aren’t angels, um, good?”

“No, most of them are annoying, self-righteous zealots.”

Wow,I had no reply to that. “Did they hurt? Your scars.”

He touched his hands to his face. “I bled for twenty years,” he said as he glanced back at me. “Took another fifty years after that for my sight to return. But freedom comes at a price, and my pain was my price.”

“Christ, Zel, you’re really making me not want to go upstairs when I die.”

Zel laughed out loud. “You don’t get to go to heaven.” He shook his head as he chuckled.

“What? Why?”

“You’re a witch. Your blood marked your ticket downwards as soon as the first woman in your line picked up a book on magic.” Zel started to gather my clothes. “Now, do you want to learn this or not?”

“I’m hell bound?” I demanded angrily.

“Course you are, anything with extra abilities are. Why do you think all the fun stuff happens downstairs?”

“I don’t get to see the pearly gates?” It’s not every day you’re told you’re going to hell; he’d need to give me a minute to process.

“Overrated. Plus, they’re more bronze than pearl and break more often than not. We used to just prop them open,” Zel recalled before he gave me his full attention. “Are you honestly surprised?”

“A little,” I murmured.

“Oh.” He looked uncomfortable. “Should we do this later?”

“Are you considering my feelings?” I asked suspiciously. “Because I can’t be having that. You being nice is already a mind fuck.” I caught the narrowing of his eyes and hastily added. “I’m not complaining, I like it!”

“Do you want to learn the spell?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.” He made a come here motion, and I crossed over the room to him. “The spell you need to do for the blood curse is written in Enochian.”

“What’s that then?”

“The language of Angels,” he said, and I stared at him wide-eyed, causing him to smile slightly. “Are you so arrogant to think that English was the language of the first people?”

“I’ve never thought of it,” I admitted. “I mean, I know it wouldn’t be, because I remember reading something years ago that said all languages are merely dialects of the first spoken words, and as men moved and travelled over the continents, the dialects of that language became a new language of that new community or colony. Common English is basically a bastardisation of multiple languages all melded together.”

“Exactly.” Zel nodded in approval. “And even that English has been further butchered into this slang that you speak in now.”

“You seem pretty fluent in slang,” I mocked him gently.

“I have to make sure I don’t stand out.” He shrugged. I swallowed my snort when I saw he was serious. “You cannot read Enochian.” He waved his hand up and down my body as if my ineptness at reading the language of Angels was my fault, and he returned to his lesson. “But, as a witch, you can cheat.”

“There’s a cheat sheet for spells?”

“There’s a cheat for everything,” Zel told me with contempt. “Witches are the masters at cutting corners.”

“You really don’t like them,” I commented as his frown returned.

“Lazy and inherently cunning,” Zel said with a grimace. “Usually backstabbing and selfish too. Everything is about power, who has more, who has less, how to get more, their drive for power makes the worst tyrants in history seem humane.”

“My gran wasn’t like that,” I said softly. “My mum isn’t.”

“Not all are power hungry bitches,” Zel conceded, but it was obvious it pained him to do so.

“How do I cheat then?” I asked grudgingly. “And by doing so, aren’t you making me into the very thing you despise?”

“I am.” Zel nodded. “But I don’t like you much anyway, so once the spell is cast, we go our separate ways, and I’m sure I’ll never come across you downstairs.”

“Wow, Zel, what a salesman you are.”

“Are you going to complain?” Zel demanded impatiently.

“No,” I mumbled sullenly. “Cheat me.”

“Okay, you need to sit.”

“The floor’s got demon blood on it,” I protested.

“Just sit on the fucking floor and stop whining.”

“Fine!” I snapped as I thumped down onto the floor. Gracefully, he sank down across from me, crossing his legs as he did so.

As he sat across from me and closed his eyes, he held his hands out palm upward. “Hands.”

“Legs.”

One eye popped open, and a crystal blue eye looked back at me in annoyance. “Hands,” Zel growled.

It was so easy to push his buttons, but knowing not to push too far, I reached out towards him. Cool hands encircled mine. His rich, dark skin accentuated my pasty whiteness, and I envied his beautiful skin tone. His long graceful fingers held my hands gently. “You have beautiful hands, Zel,” I said as my fingers curled around his wrists.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and I saw the bronze flush of his cheeks. “Now concentrate.” Smiling inwardly that Zel and I were actually being nice to each other, I did as he said. “You can feel your power, yes?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s there.”

“Describe it.”

“I think of it as a pool,” I admitted self-consciously. “It’s as if it’s contained within a well within me, and the water usually lies still and out of reach, but then I’ve never reached for it before.”

“That’s very descriptive.” Zel sounded encouraged. “What happened to the water when you were angry or scared and you travelled?”

“Choppy times,” I answered firmly. “It was like the North Sea when I woke earlier, choppy, wild, surging.”

“Excellent,” Zel said, slightly enthusiastic. “Your eyes better still be closed.”

I hastily shut my eyes in case he caught me. “Yip.”

“Your heart rate increased, liar.”

“You’re such a freak,” I muttered. “Why are my eyes closed?”

“Because you’re concentrating,” Zel reprimanded me. “Now, I want you to find the well.”

I concentrated and reached the waters easily, their inky blackness almost welcoming me. “Done.”

“Now, step into it.”

My eyes flew open. “What?”

“Eyes closed.”

I shut my eyes. “What?”

“Witch, imagine you are standing beside the water, dip your foot in.”

“But I’m not standing beside it, it’s inside me,” I protested.

“It’s not a well filled with water either, yet you imagine it inside you so easily,” Zel rebuked me quietly.

Oh, well, when he put it like that. “What am I wearing?”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re naked, witch, dip your damn toe,” he growled.

Arsehole.I imagined myself in a full-length ballgown. I had never worn a ballgown in my life, but I was decked out in a blood red ballgown with a high neckline and backless. It came complete with tulle and crystal accents. My long blonde hair was in an elegant twist, and I just knew I had smoky eyeliner and ruby lips. Lifting my skirts, I dipped my toe into the black waters.

“Oh.”

“Cold or warm?” Zel asked me softly.

“Warm.” I smiled, stepping further in. “Soothing?”

“Don’t go further, witch, just your toe,” Zel warned.

“More foot than toe,” I admitted.

“Take your foot out.”

“But—”

Zel was beside me at my pool. He was in his black tunic and leathers, but they were more. Armoured shoulder plates accentuated muscles, as the tunic was stretched tightly over his chest and shoulders. A host of weapons decorated his body: knives, daggers, was that rope? I looked at him and met his clear blue eyes. “How?”

“We’re touching, so we are connected.” He looked down at his clothing. “Nice,” he complimented me. His eyes ran over me appreciatively. “More formal than I would have thought for you.”

“I don’t know where it came from,” I admitted. “I’ve never worn this in my life.”

“Suits you.”

“You just complimented me. Again.”

“No one else witnessed it.” He grinned at me. He looked around. “Why is it so dark? Make it lighter.”

“I can make it lighter?” I asked even as the area brightened. “Oh wow, look at that,” I said in wonder. “It’s not a well, it’s a proper pool.” I leaned forward and studied the water.

Zel looked around. “We can work with this.” He walked over to the “wall” that wasn’t a wall obviously, as this was happening in my head. “I’m going to draw a symbol on your hand, you will replicate it on this wall.”

“What is it?”

“It means Awakening,” Zel told me as I felt his finger trace a pattern on my hand. I felt the swirls, and when he did it again, my skin glowed lightly.

“My skin is blue?”

“Your magic is reaching for it, your tone is blue.” Zel’s eyes met mine. “Interesting.” He nodded down to the symbol glowing faintly but fading.

I drew it on the wall, but I got it wrong. “Missing the swirliness of the loops,” I murmured as I held my hand out impatiently. “Again.”

Zel drew the beautiful symbol again, and my skin flared blue. Instinctively, I stepped forward and placed the back of my hand to the wall. “Go.” A flash of blue, and the symbol was enlarged onto the wall. I heard the bubbling water behind me and turned. My pool was no longer black, but a beautiful turquoise blue. “Zel, look.”

“I see it, witch, I see.” He was staring at me, and I glanced at him in question.

“Will I dip back into the pool?”

“No, you’ve done enough. Time to go.” I felt a tug, and my eyes opened to meet Zel’s.

“That was awesome.” I beamed at him even as I noted I was in jeans and my cardigan.

“You did well.”

“Um, thank you.” I smiled at him shyly. “Now what?”

Zel stood fluidly as he studied me closely. “I reckon you have five minutes.”

“Five minutes for what?” I asked as I stood.

“Clean the room,” Zel instructed.

“How?”

“Don’t care.” He shrugged. “Reach for the pool, do not go into the water.”

I went back to my now pretty tranquil spot and looked around. The symbol that Zel had shown me pulsed slightly on the wall. Transfixed, I walked over to it, and my fingers traced lightly over the wall. A rush of words formed in my head, words I didn’t know but at the same time, I knew them.

“Restore.” I spoke loudly. When I opened my eyes, my room was repaired. “Zel? Did I do this?” I asked hopefully, feeling a rush of excitement.

“It was you,” he confirmed as he moved forward. “And there you go,” he said softly as he caught my fall just as I slipped into unconsciousness.