Page 69 of Claim the Light
“What is this place?” I ask. “Who are you?”
She looks up at me. Her eyes are a startling white with only the barest hint of irises. Possibly green, but I can’t be sure.
“I thought you might have guessed,” she replies, “since you’ve met one of us before.”
Met one of them?
When my forehead creases, she shrugs and turns back to the flower bush, running her hand from one silver rose to the next. “I imagine the encounter with my darker counterpart was very unpleasant and worthy of being forgotten quickly.”
Her darker counterpart?
My thoughts click together.
She must be one of the keepers of magic.
“You’re the keeper of light magic,” I say, taking a guess, my eyes widening at the possibility.
I take another look around.Did I somehow fall into another oblivion?
“Oh, no, child, I am not a creature of light magic.” Giving a little chuckle, she addresses me as ifI’mthe child, not her. “Although I understand why you might think that to look at me.”
White light flickers around her fingertips as she plucks a flower from the bush. Crimson sap drips from the stem as she steps slowly toward me. “No, dearest. I am the keeper ofoldmagic.”
Right.
I glance back at the cabin, wondering if the old magic within it has somehow created a conduit to this place.
The keeper stops three paces away from me while crimson sap drips from her fingertips. “I think you know why the four keepers of magic exist?”
“To tether the magic that lingers when a supernatural dies,” I say, recalling what I gleaned from the keeper of dark magic.
She nods. “All magic must return to its rightful keeper. Otherwise, it will contaminate the earth, and that’s when the monsters will rise.”
I’m alarmed. “Monsters?”
“Creatures of pure destruction and chaos.” Her silhouette glimmers as she darts closer to me and suddenly, she’s standing a mere pace away. “But they are not my concern right now.” She pauses. “You are here and yet you are not dead. It’s perplexing to me how you keep finding the cracks into our realms, Sophia Dragon.”
My forehead creases. “I didn’tfindanything. The keeper of dark magic said that the magic I was carrying called out to him.”
Just as the magic in this garden must have called me here from the cabin.
Her eyebrows rise. “Yes, that dark ash would have called to him. But I take it you interpreted that to meanhebrought you into his realm?”
“Well… yes.”
She gives a snort. “We do not have power over the living.”
I remember the way the keeper of dark magic roared at me to give him the ash, emphasizing repeatedly that he couldn’t take it by force while I was alive.
“Otherwise,” the old magic keeper continues, her focus shifting to a point past me, “I could simply reach out and call your mate to me. There are strains of old magic in his blood that I would gladly tether.”
She gives me a smile that suddenly chills me.
“It’s been a long time since that cabin has glowed with magic,” she muses. “The angels think they’re protecting it, but they’re keeping the cabin from the beings to whom it belongs. One of which is your mate.”
Scowling at her, I step into her line of sight—turning myself into a visual barrier between her and Micah.
I don’t like the way she’s talking about him, I distrust her cold smile, and I’m anxious about her assertion that I somehow knowinglychoseto enter her space. Lana mentioned throwing herself into oblivion to escape the veil, so it must be possible to actively leap into it the same way I plunged into the river.
