Sunset painted the dark wooden mansion with red and golden streaks. I swung down from my horse and tied the reins to one of the crooked posts. There was only one other horse there, meaning that only one other dark mage had arrived so far. Probably Sam Foster, since he was the one who had called the meeting.
I had been surprised when I returned from my assassination attempt at Callan’s house to find Sam waiting for me. Once he had explained what he wanted, I knew that he had been to see Callan as well, and that he had probably healed him too. Pity.
Brushing down my flowing dark skirt, I strode up the steps to the front door. As soon as I crossed the threshold, a strange feeling enveloped me. It felt like my whole body was wrapped in a thick wet blanket, smothering all my magic. I rolled my shoulders to shake off the feeling. Peter Essington had been a particularly troublesome dark mage to deal with since he could create places where we couldn’t use our magic. Good thing someone had managed to kill him in the end.
The mansion lay dark and deserted as I walked through the hallway, peering into a few different rooms. Cracked mirrors and fractured furniture still stood where their now deceased owner had left them. My fingers carved a line in the dust atop a side table as I trailed my hand over it. Wiping them off again, I turned the corner and stepped into what had once been Essington’s dining room.
Dark brown eyes met me.
I froze.
A vicious smile spread across Callan Blackwell’s lips. “Hello, Audrey.”
“Callan.” I let a mocking expression slide home on my face as I started forward again and sauntered farther into the room. “You’re looking spry for someone who was bleeding all over your own floors last night.”
“Yes.” He drew a long knife from the thigh holster of his dark leather armor. “I thought I might return the favor.”
A flash of alarm shot through me unbidden. In here, without my magic, I was at a severe disadvantage. I was both shorter and lighter than him. Not to mention that my skills with a blade were only mediocre at best. But running was out of the question. Dark mages never showed any fear or weakness. Those who did rarely lived very long, because our reputation was all we had.
So I buried the flash of worry deep and instead unsheathed my own dagger. Spinning it once in my hand, I let out a derisive snort. “Come try it.”
He shot across the floor. I leaped aside to evade the knife coming for my ribs. The blade whooshed through the air a mere inch from my body. Whirling around, I rammed my dagger towards Callan’s neck.
Metal clanged as he yanked his knife up and parried the strike. Before I could disengage our blades, he grabbed my wrist and twisted it up behind my back while his closed fist slammed into the spot between my shoulder blades. Air exploded from my lungs as the force of his moves made me crash down onto the table. With an iron grip forcing my knife hand up my back, Callan pushed my chest harder down against the wood where he had me bent over the tabletop. Cold steel kissed my throat.
I yanked against his grip, but the difference in strength was ridiculous. Instead of me gaining even an inch of space, Callan twisted my arm farther up my back. I had to bite my tongue to stop from crying out in pain.
“Now,” he began, “I believe I promised you the taste of a knife.”
Steel scraped against my skin as he trailed the tip of his blade from my neck and down my arm until he reached my hand. Panic crackled through me as he positioned the tip against the back of my hand and pushed down slightly.
“Unless you want to beg me for mercy?” Callan taunted.
Gritting my teeth, I yanked against his grip again, but he only forced my arm farther up. He leaned down over me so that his hard body pressed into mine.
Smug victory laced his voice as he placed his lips next to my ear and whispered, “Just one word. Mercy. And I will let you go with your hand intact.”
My heart thumped in my chest, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction so I kept my mouth firmly shut.
“Well…” He let out a dark laugh. “Have it your way.”
“Callan,” a sharp voice came from somewhere behind us. “Sam said no fighting during this meeting.”
“This doesn’t concern you, Malcolm,” Callan replied as he straightened slightly.
With my cheek pressed into the table, I could just barely make out a tall man with brown hair and eyes.
“Oh, come on,” another voice said. “Didn’t I say no fighting?”
Relief fluttered through me as Sam strolled into the room. Callan met his gaze for a second before shifting his attention back to me. A low growl rumbled from his throat but then he shoved me harder against the tabletop before finally letting me go. I rolled my shoulder to relieve the tension while straightening from the table. For a moment, I considered using the opportunity to stab Callan, but in the end, I just sheathed my dagger and drew a hand through my long black hair before sitting down in the nearest chair.
Golden light from the low-hanging sun illuminated the deserted dining room and made the dusty furniture look a bit grander. Pulling out a chair, Sam plopped down on the other side of the round table. Callan flashed me a sharp smile before sitting down as well. After brushing his hands down his impeccable dark suit, Malcolm Griffith took the seat between them, leaving the two chairs on either side of me empty.
“I don’t like the way my body feels in this house,” yet another voice said.
Turning my head, I watched a young woman with long red hair and beautiful citrine eyes stride into the dining room. She swept her gaze over the four of us before unceremoniously dropping into the chair on my right.
“It makes me feel like I’m being suffocated,” she finished.
“Everyone feels that way, Sienna,” Sam answered with a small smile. “It’s just a safety precaution.”
“Where’s Grant?” Malcolm grumbled as he looked towards the empty doorway.
“Right here,” said a very average-looking man with brown hair and blue eyes, as he strolled into the room.
Malcolm narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re late.”
A clock chimed from somewhere farther into the building, informing us that it was now six o’clock.
“I’d say I’m right on time,” Harvey Grant, who preferred to go by his last name, answered with a nonchalant shrug as he took the final seat on my left.
Malcolm let out an annoyed huff before turning to Sam. “Alright, Sam, we’re all here. What is it?”
Furniture creaked as the rest of us turned towards the healer as well. Golden light fell across his face and made the worry present there even more noticeable. I frowned at him. What in the world had made him this anxious?
“We’re all that’s left,” Sam said at last.
“Of what?” Sienna asked, her brows creased as well.
“The six of us are the only dark mages left in Eldar right now.”
Callan shot me a mocking look. “Which begs the question, how the hell are you one of them?”
“I wasn’t the one getting ambushed in my own dining room last night,” I sniped back.
“Enough,” Malcolm snapped, and cut a scathing look at the both of us. “Sam called this meeting, so let him speak.”
I held his gaze for a few seconds. Malcolm Griffith was a shadow mage, and he was the oldest one of us. The death rate among dark mages was rather high, which meant that at only thirty-five, Malcolm was the most senior one in Eldar. He was followed by Callan at age twenty-seven, Grant a year younger, and me at twenty-five. Sienna, who had only been a dark mage for a bit over two years, was the youngest at twenty-two, while Sam was two years older than her. I didn’t feel like starting a war with someone like Malcolm over something that Callan had goaded me into, so I just clicked my tongue and motioned for Sam to keep going.
“Thank you.” Sam swept his gaze around the room to see if anyone else planned to interrupt. When no one did, he went on. “Like I said, there are only six of us left. And that’s because we’ve both been fighting amongst ourselves as well as trying to fight off the rest of Eldar. It’s time to set our differences aside and stop killing each other.”
“Why now?” Sienna asked. She sounded genuinely curious.
“I have a contact who works at a low level in the parliament, and if we don’t work together to stop the threat that’s coming, we’re all going to get wiped out.”
“We?” Callan said. His dark brows were furrowed in skepticism. “We are going to get wiped out? By the heroes?”
A ripple of laughter came from both Malcolm and Sienna.
We mockingly called the leaders of Eldar heroes, because that was how they saw themselves. As heroes who fought against injustice and inequality and turned the world into glitter and rainbows. And they did that by forcing all the mages to share their magic.
Only a portion of the population was actually born with magic. The rest didn’t get anything. Those who were born mages were sent to a special school where they spent a decade developing their powers to make them as strong as possible. When the mages turned twenty, they graduated from the academy and went through the graduation ceremony. That ceremony was the most illogical thing I had ever heard of. After spending over a decade developing their powers, the students were expected to go through with the ceremony and share their magic with everyone.
The graduation ceremony draws the magic out of the mage and feeds it to something called the Great Current so that everyone can use it instead. People who are born without any powers are able to wield magic thanks to this Great Current, and the mage can also use its power because the ceremony links the student to it.
In the heroes’ mind, it sounds like the perfect dream. Magic is shared equally among all people so that no one has more than anyone else. The problem is that it also dilutes the magic.
Every mage is born with one power. The most common ones are fire, water, wind, and lightning mages. But there are also other powers that are much rarer. Like my poison magic.
The graduation ceremony adds that mage’s power to the shared pool, which means that everyone can use every type of magic in it. However, the strength of that magic is based on how many mages of that particular kind has added their power to the Great Current. While everyone might be able to wield fire or water magic to a relatively decent degree, no one can effectively use poison magic or healing magic because there are too few mages like that who have added their power to the shared pool.
Those of us who refused to share our powers, who escaped before we were forced to complete the graduation ceremony, have been dubbed dark mages. The leaders of Eldar are constantly trying to capture us and bring us back so that they can make us do the ceremony. But because we still have the undiluted power we were born with and were trained to develop for years, we are much stronger than them in terms of magical ability. Which is why it was unlikely that they would be able to wipe us all out.
“Yes, we are,” Sam said. His gray eyes had a panicked look to them as he swept his gaze over all of us. “Listen to me. My contact told me that there is a guy called Lance Carmichael at the academy. He’s got an incredibly rare power, and he turns twenty in a few months so his magic is really strong too because he has trained all this time but he hasn’t graduated yet.”
“What kind of power?” Grant asked.
“He’s a Binder.”
Shock rippled through the room as several of us sucked in a gasp.
