Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,4

that’s just one more weapon. It’s not how you’ve used magic before.”

Jayna stuffed the wand into her satchel. “I’ve used magic to protect. I still will.”

“By creating weapons,” Eva said.

“There are reasons.”

Eva chuckled, leaning back against one of the trees, sweeping her gaze around the forest. She bit her lower lip, and a bit of smoke trailed out, sweeping around her head and neck, then down her shoulders. “Reasons. I seem to remember that you have your own particularly beneficial way of attacking. If only you were willing to do it.”

“I’m not going to use the Toral ring to attack every time I need to.”

Jayna looked down at the ring, twisting it. It had a similarly slick feeling to it as the wand had. Maybe there was some oil used in its creation as well, though she didn’t really know. All she knew was that the bloodstone she had used on it had transformed it.

Eva had recently suggested that her people had some way of creating bloodstone, and though she hadn’t attempted it, Jayna wished she would. With bloodstone, any magic Jayna might create would be augmented and incredibly powerful, especially considering the kind of magic that she was normally able to make.

“I don’t know why you fight it,” Eva said. “You’re the one who accepted it. It granted you whatever powers you want to use it for.”

“It’s not just the power. It’s the pain,” Jayna said softly.

“I understand pain. But it’s not just the pain for you.”

Jayna looked up, holding Eva’s gaze. “What do you want me to say? That I can deal with the pain when I use it?” Even though it was a burning cold that worked through her, she had learned to tolerate it. “That I’m afraid of the darkness when I use the ring? You know that. I’ve told you that before. The more I access the power within the ring, the more I begin to question whether that darkness is going to come for me. The more I begin to worry that if I were to dive into that power, it would change something for me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn’t just changing something for her. It was that she feared it would change her.

Jayna opened her eyes when she felt a strange energy in the air. It had come from nearby, though she wasn’t sure what it was.

“What was that?” she asked, glancing over to Eva. “That’s not a dark creature.”

“I didn’t feel anything. Was it in the city?”

“It came from around here. The forest.”

It was from a different direction than the one they’d followed to chase down the dark creature.

Was there another?

Inside the clearing, Jayna traced a small circle into the ground, then added several different smaller elements to it—triangles, stars, and squares, items that would be able to power any sort of sorcery she would add—then she pushed power out into it, which exploded away from her, washing outward in a wave and over something.

“There is something here,” she whispered.

She twisted the dragon stone ring.

When she did, she could feel energy beginning to build within her, pain shooting through her immediately, almost as if the ring were waiting for her to simply call upon it.

That was new.

When she had drawn upon that power before, when she had felt that magic flowing within the ring, she had been able to access it, but it had never come to her quite like this. It had never been simply there, waiting at the outskirts of her ability to detect it.

“Eva?”

Eva had both hands clenched at her sides. Blood dripped from her palms where the spiked enchantments she held broke the skin. When her blood struck the ground, it immediately turned to smoke and drifted out and away from her, as if alive. It was Eva’s strange use of magic.

Eva pushed, and the smoke flowed.

“Now I can feel something out here,” Eva said softly.

Jayna reacted. If it was somebody coming upon them—and she feared dark sorcerers, including those belonging to the Order of Norej, or one of the Celebrants of Asymorn—she needed to be ready. She drew the painful power out through the Toral ring and reacted, sending it out in the same circle she had used for the sorcery. It washed out from her, creating a powerful band that swept away and struck something.

Jayna glanced back to Eva. “Wait here.”

“I’m not waiting here.”

Jayna ran into the forest, ducking between branches over uneven ground, until she located where she had felt the resistance