Page 5 of Leviathan's Song
“Elara,” he said, causing me to jerk my hand back. He was reading off my card. “I still think Empress is a better fit. I’m Levi,” he smiled.
“Levi… like the jeans?”
“Short for Leviathan.” He smirked like I was slow. I guess that did make more sense. I glanced down at the paper he’d been writing on, realizing it was sheet music. Which reminded me…
“I actually came over here because I wanted to apologize.” I pursed my lips and winced.
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow and leaned back, letting an arm hang limp over the back of his chair, the other hand reaching for his empty plastic cup. His long leg stretched forward into my space as he inspected the siren in the logo printed on the side.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about last week. I shouldn’t have judged you or accused you of stealing just for using your gifts.” I watched him out of the corner of my eye. My heart felt better just having said it, even though my cheeks felt hot with shame.
He considered me silently, his eyes shifting between mine. “We’re good,” he said with a secretive smile, my chest suddenly buffeted with a riot of butterflies.
My phone buzzed, startling me, and I dug it out of my purse to find a message from Sidney.
Sidney: I think I found a buyer for the daggers, but he needs a charisma and speed mod on them ASAP. Where are you anyway?
Charisma on a ceremonial dagger…Must be a performer. I rolled my eyes; I hated rush orders. “It was nice to meet you, Levi, but my empire needs me,” I said, rising from my chair.
He tapped my card on the table and smiled. “I’ll see you around, Empress.”
I grinned to myself as I walked away, wondering what he’d think when he noticed the quarter on the table. A muffled shout as I rounded the corner told me he’d taken the bait. It might not have been magical when he gave it to me, but it sure was now.
* * *
That eveningI locked up the shop and made my way home. As I passed the coffee shop, I found myself gazing at the empty tables, only to find that the siren, Levi, wasn’t there. I was slightly uncomfortable with the realization that I’d hoped to see him again. It obviously wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen an attractive man before, but for some reason, this one made me a mess.
Maybe I needed to figure out a way to strengthen my ward.
I was, by nature, an introverted, shy, and reserved person. An only child, I’d grown up on a large estate without any children my age to play with and had spent much of my time tinkering with scraps and cast offs in my father’s shop, under his watchful eye.
I’d attended the Golden Laurel Girl’s School of the Arcane growing up, only coming home on long weekends and holidays. When I did come home, if my father wasn’t explaining his latest idea for a project in his workshop, then I was either playing with our pack of mastiffs or exploring with Rafe.
Thinking about Rafe made my heart beat a little painfully. He was a dryad, and his people migrated often, though they’d made their home in the woods near my family’s estate for a number of years in between migrations. I’d first met him when I was six years old, and he’d been tickled by my assumption that he must be a golem like one of my father’s constructs. I smiled at the memory.
He was gracious with me, returning often to keep me company when he knew I’d be home from boarding school. Though he was about thirty or forty years old (they didn’t bother to keep track of time the way most people do), his people lived an average of around six hundred years, so he was about the equivalent of an eighteen-year-old. I laughed at the thought that I was now “older” than him.
Even though I would probably live much longer than the average pureblooded human (thanks to my mixed elvish bloodlines and the fact that I spent most of my time in the Boundlands), I was twenty-four and was treated like an adult by the rest of society. Poor Rafe had at least a decade left before his people would treat him like an autonomous adult.
It’d been a while since I’d last seen him, though we kept in touch through my parents very occasionally. Last I’d heard, he was out in the foothills of the Ardac mountains, where it wasn’t safe for me—or any creature made of flesh—to visit him. Sometimes I missed his gentle presence and his slow, thoughtful approach to life.
In college I’d been thoroughly absorbed in my studies and hadn’t had much time for friends. My teachers, upon learning of my talents and my parentage, had pushed mehardin my schooling. This had resulted in what Sidney refers to delightedly as “The Year of Destruction”. I’d gotten a little too big for my britches and tried to animate a golem that was alittlebeyond my abilities at the time. After that, most people—which included all the boys—steered clear of me.
Thankfully, Sidney wasn’t so easily frightened. She’d been impressed by all the carnage and had shoehorned herself into a friendship with me, which I quietly appreciated.
Looking back over all this, it made sense that I’d go all swoony over an absurdly handsome siren who gave flirty smiles and distracted me by trying to tug at my feelings. I sighed as the Golden Laurel Gate came into view. I’d have to do a better job of keeping my wits about myself in the future.
As I approached the Gate, I felt the magic of the guard on duty wash over me: vague impressions of crushing strength and brute force. I wondered idly if he was part orc, looking surreptitiously for a hint of tusks as I dug my ID out of my wallet and handed it to him.
The signs behind him looked like they would fit better along a highway than in a community park.Golden Laurel Gate:Magical creatures only. Enter at your own risk. The guard returned my ID without looking at it. He wasn’t here to keep non-magical people out of the Boundlands; the Gate did that on its own.
Pureblooded humans couldn’t pass through the Gate—a shimmering hazy plane surrounded by a stone archway. If they tried, they simply fell through the other side, dead. It wasn’t that wewantedto keep them out, they just weren’t capable of passing through.
The familiar painful prickling sensation swept through my body as I entered, and I shivered, my jewelry rattling as I shook the pins-and-needles out of my limbs. Dodging around a lumbering man reeking of decay and dark magic—a necromancer for sure—I made my way toward the skyscrapers ahead. After spending the day in the magical desert of the Void, it always took a few moments for my senses to come to grips with the magic inundating me in the Boundlands.
Not only did every person around me reach out to me without noticing, their magic curling around me and whispering its secrets, but the Boundlands itself carried its own special kind of magic, which every life here depended on.
It was an important part of the ecosystem, stronger in some areas than others. Places where the magic was strongest tended to be more densely populated with creatures that depended on it more urgently to survive: the purebred-races of the Boundlands, especially merfolk, dryads, fairies, and the like.
