Enter a new dark fantasy world with 19-year-old Mayté Losada’s thrilling debut!
About the Author: Mayté Losada is the debut author of the A Darkness So Blessed and Wicked trilogy. Born in an Italian canton in Switzerland, she later moved to Canada and the US. Losada currently resides in Allison Park with her family while studying at the New York Film Academy. She is working on a BA in fine arts, focusing on cinema and acting.
Find out more about Mayté Losada at www.maytelosada.com or follow her on Instagram.
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From the Publisher: “Magic in Blood (published by KWE publishing) is a young adult dark fantasy, set in the magic realm of Rodessa. The enemy kingdoms of blood mages and soul mages, Meris and Lysmir, are unexpectedly on the brink of war after two mysterious royal murders. The two royal families quickly cast blame on each other. But suspecting that not everything is as it seems, princess Sivrehya of Meris and prince Ivar of Lysmir separately vow to find the truth. Unbeknownst to each other, the mortal enemies’ journey to the Twin Cities of the solar and lunar mages in search of a mythical and deadly monster that cannot lie and knows all. During their quest, Sivrehya and Ivar strive to uncover what really happened to their families while fighting the urge to kill each other along the way…”
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XXIII : SIVREHYA RITHLOREN
The Twin Cities
Sunsier, Outer City
What in the name of bloody Darkness happened between you two?” I asked, after retrieving the spears from the woman’s throat and the man’s left eye and all the other eyes of the nameless men piled on the floor. The blood floated in the air around me as I slowly willed it to return to me, but not before separating my own blood from theirs. I could feel his stare on me as I moved my fingers so slowly, as I let the blood return to my body, as I healed the cut on my arm.
Ivar, looking more princely than ever, looked at me lazily, coughing up blood in the process. “I killed,” he started, coughing again. “I killed three of her men, after stealing all their money in a game of Baccarat that was both enchanted and illegal, both of which you shouldn’t care, nor wouldn’t care about. She mostly did this to me because she lost money when those men lost to me. To top it all off, I crushed their souls entirely. Leaving her with three less henchmen to do her dirty work. Pity.” He scooched back, resting his back on the wall behind him, wincing from the pain but otherwise showing no other signs that all the bruises and cuts pained him.
So, he hid his pain. I could relate to that. Most of the family could, and perhaps any mage with dark powers living in a world where pain was everywhere would.
“You saved my life,” he looked at me, amused. But my face remained blank, my lethal smile gone. “How does it feel to save an enemy’s life?”
“I only saved you so I could kill you myself when the time comes.” I edged a feral grin on my face, for him this time. I flung their blood away from me and brought my own back inside me, quickly healing the wound with a healing spell, before turning towards the prince.
“After all, I couldn’t let her take away my prized kill, now could I?”
For the first time, the prince smiled, and said, “You seem so confident that you’re going to kill me. You don’t think that I could kill you first?”
“You’ll be the first person I kill on the battlefield.”
“I’m honored, Your Highness, truly. I guess you should know then that you are the first person I plan to kill.”
“Then when the time comes, may the best mage win then.” She undid the rope that bound my arms. “But for that to happen, you need to not die; all the fun of killing you should belong to me.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Ivar responded, still smiling despite his obvious pain.
“Good then,” I moved away, pushing the braid behind me. I nudged Mahin’s corpse with my foot. “She’s quite the feisty one?” I eyed him, curious.
The prince rolled my eyes, “She was rather lovely when we were playing Baccarat. I even seemed to charm her.”
“Ah of course, since you’re ever so charming. But seriously, illegal gambling Ivar? Seriously? Don’t you think you had more pressing things to do?”
“As if I would have done out of pure interest,” he scoffed. “I had to win the game in order to get back what three men stole from me. She,” Ivar motioned towards Mahin, “was unfortunately at the same table they were, so when I won, she lost a lot. And clearly, she wasn’t too happy about that.”
I looked once more at the woman, sprawled on the floor unnaturally, her dark skin stained a brilliant red, her magically glowing eyes, faded. Faded. Faded.
Colorless.
White.
Decaying.
I jerked my head away, the moment my vision became too clear. Looking away from her, I blinked, once, twice.
“How the hell did you find me?”
I jerked my head in the prince’s direction, clearing my throat. “I—well, I after I returned the key to Jun—”
“Right,” Ivar cut me off, I glared at him. “Why did you give that back? We need it to go to the library, which no doubt will be helpful.”
“It wasn’t.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t?”
“I mean, it wasn’t helpful. What else does that mean?”
The prince huffed, trying to unbind himself. “Wasn’t, being in the past tense implies you’ve already been to the library.”
I simply stared at him. “Correct.”
At that he laughed, coughing in between. As if he couldn’t quite believe my answer. “Correct, she says. Correct,” he shook his head, ripping himself out of the rope bindings. “Curse them,” he mumbled. He turned again to face me, our eyes meeting. “You went without me? You were the one who proposed the deal, Rithloren, don’t forget it.” He stared at me venomously.
“And you left me, don’t forget that.”
He looked down, becoming quiet. Suddenly, he seemed extremely interested in the rope that was still wrapped impossibly tight around his ankles. I thought, surely, they had bound him with their magic, allowing him to be free once they died. But clearly, I had thought wrong.
“Where did you even go?”
He remained silent.
“Iv—forget it,” I mumbled, clearing my throat. “Anyway, after I gave back the key to Junah, she promised to keep me informed should she find or learn anything useful. But I didn’t have the slightest clue where to continue looking. If the library proved to be no good, then what would? So, I was simply walking around and then I saw her,” I looked down at the woman again, this time, I centered myself, allowing my eyes to just sit on her body, “and a few men, carrying you into here. And I have to admit, at first, I didn’t question it, I me—”
“Well thank you anyway,” he blurted out. I stopped mid-sentence, my mouth still open. I looked at him suspiciously, wondering if his apology was genuine.
“You—you’re welcome.” I responded, “I have to… go.” I turned around, and made my way to the door.
“Help me untie these ropes?” His voice rang behind me.
I turned around, “And why should I do that? I have things to do.”
The prince scoffed, “As in what? You said you didn’t know where to start?”
I rolled my eyes, “People talk here, charming, about anything. There’s a chance they’ll talk about the Neithisis.”
“You’re calling me charming,” he said, as an evil twitch of a smirk grew on his face. “That’s rather nice in contrast to me calling you blood demon. I wasn’t aware you could be nice.”
“Oh, forgive me, I thought we were naming each other things that we aren’t. After all, I’m calling you charming precisely because you aren’t.”
“A misunderstanding then, because I call you blood demon precisely because you are. And besides, I can be charming. I am charming, just not around you.”
“Oh, lucky me,” I raised my arms in the air dramatically, “I get the cruel side.”
“What side did you expect?” He raised a brow. I raised mine.
“I didn’t expect you to even have sides.”
He looked past me, then above and around me, looking for an answer. “Well… I do.”
“That’s great, good for you.” I plastered a smile on my face, and twisted around, just stepping one foot out the door when the prince spoke again.
“You aren’t going to help me?”
“No,” I said bluntly.
“We’re partners, aren’t we? Partners would untie each other.” He scoffed, bending his knees, holding back his groan.
I turned my head to look back at him, his eyes focused on the thick rope that bound his ankles. Inside me were a whirl of emotions, red and blue, but none of them were pity. So, I spoke. “I’ve saved your life, now untie yourself.”
And then I walked out the door, and let it close behind me.
Once again, like every other day, the streets were saturated with people. I weaved in and out of the sea of mages and nonmages, threading through the tiny streets and larger ones, always keeping both my ears and eyes open.
But hours had gone by, and I was nowhere closer to uncovering anything about the Neithisis to tell me if Elfaed’s words were true. And in all honesty, I was seconds away from properly saying “screw it all” and making a portal to the mountains and just beginning the search right now.
My days here were numbered, slowly dwindling to zero, and while we had managed to find out where the beasts live, should the word be believed, we had uncovered nothing more.
Currently, I was walking through a darkened alleyway in the Merchants’ Quarter. The sun’s light was obstructed by thick dark pieces of fabric, hanging open from one building to the next. Here, there were less people, less noise, less floating aromas.
In the time that I had been walking, my mind had gone off in a million different directions, yet it found its way back to the two mysteries clouding my head. Two impossibly tangled messes, and despite me trying my best to forget about at least one of them, it always came back.
Perhaps it would still when we finally found a bloody Neithisis, and after we asked it the more pressing question. I could ask how the deaths, that are centuries apart, are so similar.
“Come one! Come all!” And heads turned as the voice boomed from further down the alleyway. But bodies didn’t, as if their voice captured their attention just a bit but not fully enough. I continued walking forwards until I reached the man who was hollering the infamous phrase. I looked past him and froze.
The man was standing in front of a store, shabby and darkened. But it was the window displays, as horrible as they were, that captured my attention. There, in the middle of a bunch of brown and black fabric, positioned and scrunched up to mirror the insides of a cave, was a sculpture. Of a beast. With ten too many heads, and nine too many eyes and mouths, filled with dangerously sharp teeth.
A Neithisis.
This excerpt from Magic in Blood by Mayté Losada is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reproduced without permission.
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