Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court)

Lunch is the first break we get and the first time I get to check my phone again. Still nothing. I send a quick text, trying to wipe the chaff off the screen so I can see what I’m typing.

You coming?

I doubt he’ll take the time to respond. If he still intends to join me, he’ll be busy tying up his business in the sídhe right now. Tying up his business...whoever that may be.

I swallow hard and reach for another bottle of water, hoping small sips will combat my sudden nausea. It doesn’t make it go away, but I’ve pulled myself together by the time Dad wipes his hands and checks on me.

“Son, you ready?”

I nod and take a final swig before climbing up into the tractor. And then it starts again.

By the time the combines shut off, the blue light of dusk settles over the fields. Mom stayed up late to cook us a hot meal. She talks while Dad and I swallow the roasted chicken and mashed potatoes mechanically. It tastes amazing, but I’m exhausted. Returning to school will be a vacation.

I shower and lie on my bed, checking my phone while it charges. Nothing.

The house creaks as it settles in the cooling night air. I watch shadows play over the ceiling. They remind me of the dreams I’ve been having and forgetting. The bed is empty. A few days and he’s ruined my ability to sleep peacefully without curling up against his cold back.

Sometime around two, the fight is over. There won’t be any sleep tonight, not with the realities pinging around my head like shot from a spent shell, ricocheting and destroying what few things I thought I knew. I won’t wait for a man I can’t trust. I get up and get dressed again. I don’t bother to turn on my phone’s flashlight as I head downstairs. I know exactly where to step to avoid the creaks, how many stairs there are until I hit the landing, how many paces until there’s that tiny bump in the floor leading into the mudroom.

The air outside is cool. The dew darkens the leather of my boots and the bottom of my jeans, but I’m not worried about getting cold from the damp. Thanks to the ley line, I always run warm. I trudge my way back to the fields.

The acres we harvested are awkwardly bare, the residue spread evenly over the ground like the earth was too lazy to shave and decided to go with scruff. I walk beyond them to one of the untouched stretches. I don’t have siblings, but these fields are as close as I’ll ever get. I’ve walked every inch of them with my father, talking about crops and rotations and sowing practices. Years of harvests and laughter and swearing when machines break down. Recent years of whispered conversations in the kitchen between my parents when they think I can’t hear them.

They’ve been saying goodbye for a while now, and I was too naïve to realize that.

I gulp for air, forcing the tightness in my throat back.

This is hom

e. Generations of Smiths growing up here, living here, dying, and passing this place on to their children. There’s a comfort to that history. And a responsibility to it as well.

I sit in the quiet darkness, trying to untangle the web in my head. Eventually, the lightening of the sky warns that I don’t have any time left.

A final check of my phone. Nothing.

He should be here. The absence is an unexpected pain.

I close my eyes, letting the dirt crumble between my fingers. Something inside me is breaking, too, crumbling as a poisonous truth takes root.

Roark isn’t coming.

It doesn’t matter now. I have to focus on this moment. Empty my mind.

I stretch down for the ley line, but it shies from me. Please, I beg. Please help me.

Since he won’t.

The ley line doesn’t want to obey. We dance around each other as the sun creeps closer to the horizon, illuminating the clouds on its way.

It finally surfaces shallow enough that I can grab it. It squirms in my grasp and lashes out, clawing down my spine with a horrific, vibrating intensity it’s never had before. This isn’t control; this is a battle and I’m losing. The ley line continues to struggle with animalistic fury with every truth I force myself to accept. Dawn is on its way and I’m out of time. Roark’s not here even though he promised he would be. Roark said we were making a mistake and I knew he was right, even if I pushed forward in a haze of adoration.

I focus on the harvest spell I studied. It comes in fits and starts. The focus it requires keeps wandering away, replaced with breathless fears that I’m not enough, not smart enough or confident enough or capable of handling the ley line’s magickal backlash on my own.

That fear silences the ley line’s struggles, and I manage to hold on to enough power to try the spell one last time.

More, I whisper as I throw the magick toward the fields. Give us more.

A shiver. The magick dissipates over the crops like clouds of pollen. Bound together through that energy, the vastness of the land fills me. Every pod touched, every stalk infused. A silent promise waiting for the barest nudge to begin its work.