Magic's Promise Read online

  Magic's Promise

  Sela Carsen

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Magic's Promise (Nocturne Falls Universe)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Runaway bride Katya Dostoyevna escaped to Nocturne Falls ten years ago. She’s lived a quiet life since then, establishing a much-needed animal sanctuary. It’s good work for a shy witch who prefers to talk to animals, both supernatural and mundane.

  Scorned groom Danil Leonov has finally tracked down the girl who fled from their arranged marriage. He doesn’t want to marry her any more now than he did then, but she left with something he desperately needs. The fate of the fae world depends on it.

  But he’s not the only one after the microchip he developed. And after he and Katya connect, Danil starts to wonder if it’s the tech he really wants, or the woman he didn’t realize he loved.

  Dear Reader,

  Nocturne Falls has become a magical place for so many people, myself included. Over and over I’ve heard from you that it’s a town you’d love to visit and even live in! I can tell you that writing the books is just as much fun for me.

  With your enthusiasm for the series in mind – and your many requests for more books – the Nocturne Falls Universe was born. It’s a project near and dear to my heart, and one I am very excited about.

  I hope these new, guest-authored books will entertain and delight you. And best of all, I hope they allow you to discover some great new authors! (And if you like this book, be sure to check out the rest of the Nocturne Falls Universe offerings.)

  For more information about the Nocturne Falls Universe, visit http://kristenpainter.com/sugar-skull-books/

  In the meantime, happy reading!

  Kristen Painter

  MAGIC'S PROMISE:

  A Nocturne Falls Universe Story

  Copyright © 2017 by Sela Carsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and was made possible by a special agreement with Sugar Skull Books, but hasn’t been reviewed or edited by Kristen Painter. All characters, events, scenes, plots and associated elements appearing in the original Nocturne Falls series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kristen Painter, Sugar Skull Books and their affiliates or licensors.

  Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or Sugar Skull Books.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Want to know when Sela's next book is coming out?

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  Chapter One

  If you die in the South, you get a layover in Atlanta on your way to Hell.

  Danil Leonov hadn’t thought the joke was that funny the first time he’d heard it. Now, after fighting his way through the Atlanta airport to get to his connecting flight, he found it grimly truthful.

  He’d wanted to use the family jet to fly up from Volshev, Texas, that morning, but brother had needed it for business, so he’d been forced to fly out of Houston to Atlanta.

  Given that there was little in this world more miserable than Houston traffic, he hadn’t realized that changing planes in Atlanta would open his eyes to a new level of torment. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport could have had its own chapter in Dante’s Inferno. Finally, Danil’s sentence in purgatory ended when he switched to a puddle jumper that landed at a blessedly small and quiet airfield outside Nocturne Falls, Georgia.

  Driving into town in his rented car, he raised a brow at the welcome sign that promised “Where Every Day is Halloween!” Everywhere he looked, there was hokey holiday schtick. Some guy was actually parading around in a puffy shirt and cape, pretending he was a vampire.

  Danil stopped for dinner at a place appropriately named “Mummy’s Diner” for something to eat. Even though he rolled his eyes at their tag line – Our Food is To Die For! – the Blue Plate Special of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy was almost worth the trip.

  His hunger appeased and the sun sinking, he got back into the car and followed his GPS out to the edge of town. All around him, he saw perfectly normal houses. Some sleekly modern, some grand Victorians, most utterly ordinary. The street went from blacktop to gravel to dusty red clay before the road finally ended in front of a large house modeled on every Russian’s dream of a noble country summer estate.

  But, just like the old empire, this impressive dacha was in serious disrepair. The creamy plaster facade was chipping off, exposing the old brick underneath. The short fence around the front was missing planks, and the sagging gate rocked and squeaked in the breeze. The solid wooden door had faded with age and exposure to the elements.

  In the few moments he watched, the sky faded from twilight into darkness, and the old house went from sad to sinister. Tickling fingers of dread trailed up his spine, but he shook them off as he got out of the car and approached the gate. He was afraid it would fall apart under his fingers, but it was sturdier than it appeared. It was also stuck.

  Danil pushed harder. The gate refused to budge, which was ridiculous. It was so filled with wood rot it was more rot than wood, but it stood stubbornly in place.

  A sound drew his attention. The low growl seemed to roll out from the porch in nearly visible waves, and when he peered into the darkness, he found two glowing red eyes looking back at him.

  He pulled a firestone out of his pocket and brushed it with his thumb. The glow revealed nothing but black... until the shadow moved. A massive hound rose to its feet. The thing topped a yardstick at the shoulders with a ruff that spread out from its neck in a warning display only a fool would ignore. Fangs as long as his finger gleamed white in the darkness, and its claws sparked green flame as it walked across the porch.

  Great. She had a hellhound.

  “Nice doggy.”

  His goal, already difficult, got that much harder.

  The day’s frustrations caught up with him. The wards hiding her had finally crashed down early that morning with a force that jolted him from his favorite dream of a woman with long, dark hair and beautiful curves. The magical shock had made him forget her abruptly, leaving behind the panic that danger was coming for her and she was unprepared. He was consumed with an overwhelming need to make sure that she was all right.

  After he shook off that first hazy fear, he began to consider the real implications of those shields falling after they’d been in place for ten years. His irrational worry turned to legitimate concern. If he could find her, so could the Brotherhood. And they wouldn’t balk at hurting her to get to the chip, just like they’d been hunting down and hurting everyone else who had a copy of it. Including his own brother.

  So Danil traveled all the way to Nocturne Falls to do the right thing and reassure himself that she was safe, and he was blocked at every turn.

  He took a deep breath and tried to find his usual calm.

  Since the gate was resisting him, Danil
decided he’d go around the fence, which was merely decorative anyway. It spread across the front of the house, then ended at two slightly bedraggled cherry trees, one on either side. He walked around the scruffy things, but with every step he took thorns reached out to snag his clothing no matter how far from them he moved. Interesting. Cherry trees were not native to Georgia, and they didn’t have thorns.

  After walking about a quarter mile trying to get around that tiny fence and those two little trees, he finally gave up. He was begrudgingly impressed. It was subtle magic, but effective. The property was warded to defend itself by not letting anyone in. He stalked back to the gate to glare at the door – and the dog.

  The house stood passively, although he swore he detected a hint of smugness in the set of the windows.

  The hound lifted one lip in a silent snarl.

  He snarled back.

  Danil had left his coat carefully hanging in the back seat of the car, and now he rolled up the sleeves of his fine dress shirt, keeping the lines straight for each of the three, precise folds.

  Each roll revealed more and more of the sharp-edged tattoos that covered the inside of his forearms. The ink was bespelled and blended with alchemical elements. The shapes were intricate, some even delicate, and each was linked to the charey, the magic in his blood. Every stab of the needle had filled him with agony, but he had withstood the pain to become one of the Brotherhood of Mysteries.

  Though he regretted being associated with them now, the power he’d gained through the tribulations might make the difference in keeping both Katya and his creation safe from them.

  Putting that magic to work, he brought his forearms together until the symbols on his skin touched and sparked, coming to life on his body. Reaching out, he pushed his hands through the air in front of him, toward the house.

  Danil didn’t want to hurt anything, but he wouldn’t let these little wards from a little witch stand in his way. Best to get this over with in one blow.

  “Otkryto! Open!” The charey from his tattoos glowed, then shoved outward toward the gate. The last thing he saw was all that power bouncing off an invisible shield and rushing right back toward him.

  This was going to hurt.

  Chapter Two

  Katya Dostoyevna clapped the dust off her hands before planting them on her hips.

  And that, she thought, is that. The end of an era.

  Yesterday, it had been a year since her aunt, her Tetya Irina, had passed on to whatever reward the gods saw fit to give her.

  In the nine years they had lived together at Charey Dom, which the locals called Cherry House, the woman had never once shown a shred of affection toward her. She had provided food, a room in a crumbling, cramped Russian style mansion to sleep in, all the books Katya could possibly read – as long as she liked history of magic – and all the acreage to explore and use any way she wanted. Put that way, it sounded like a lot. Her aunt’s hoarding had made things difficult, but the freedom to learn and do things on her own and protection from an arranged marriage she had never wanted were true gifts.

  Scratching an itch on her eyebrow with her wrist because her fingers were coated in grime, she looked around the attic, which now held only a few boxes of her aunt’s “collectibles.”

  They were mostly her keepsakes of a career as a professional ballerina, cut short due to injury. Her aunt had never gotten over the disappointment of having to stop dancing, and it had changed her. Becoming a recluse in Nocturne Falls, so far from the family that had emigrated to Volshev, Irina had hoarded all sorts of things that caught her eye, and it had been everything Katya could do to keep a handle on it all.

  If it hadn’t been for the help of the domovoi, or house spirit, Cherry House would have caved in on them years ago. Their hard work had made sure the house survived. Now that Irina was gone, it was not only surviving, it was thriving.

  For the last year, if she hadn’t been working at her animal sanctuary, she’d been with Goga, cleaning and sorting through decades of accumulated miscellanea, most of which was trash. She had donated hundreds of pounds of clothing to charity shops, recycled a mountain of papers, shredded another mountain of it, sent dozens of valuable books out to be restored, and become an eBay whiz.

  Today, she was done. The boxes she had stored up here were either family heirlooms too ugly to display, the more worn and tattered of the memories from her aunt’s dancing career, or the last few pieces of worthwhile junk that hadn’t sold yet. Katya looked around the well-organized and dust-free attic and smiled. Her home was beautiful. And clean.

  She couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering to the pretty little square hatbox that was hers, stashed under the newly gleaming window. One more look couldn’t hurt, she decided before she removed the lid and sat down to read.

  As the scent of old paper wafted up to her, she recalled the first letter she’d ever written to Danil Leonov.

  Dear Danil,

  My name is Ekaterina Ludmilla Dostoyevna Easton. I am called Katya. My babushka Olga told me I had to start writing to you at Christmas, Easter, and on your birthday. She told me we’re going to get married when I turn eighteen. My mother cried, my father yelled, and Baba Olga told me to be good or the nocnitsa would get me.

  I have a dog named Kolya. He is a good dog, but Baba says he is getting old. Do you have a dog?

  Until Easter,

  Katya.

  She hadn’t received a reply, but dutifully – and afraid of the nocnitsa – she had written again and again. She had asked if he’d gotten what he wanted at Christmas and whether his family made pysanky at Easter.

  For two years, she wrote to him without any response. After the first few letters, she started using the letters as a sort of journal, telling this boy she’d never met, and to whom she was promised, the things she dreamed, the things she feared, and most of all, about the animals she loved.

  One day, soon after the letter she’d sent for his birthday, she finally got something in the mail.

  Katya,

  You don’t have to keep writing to me. We’re not going to get married. I’m in high school. I have a girlfriend.

  Happy Easter,

  Danil

  PS. I’m sorry your dog died.

  It was as magical to her as if the letter had arrived through the leylines. He was a real person! She immediately responded.

  Danil,

  Is your girlfriend pretty? Do you like high school? I don’t like school. I like learning, but I don’t have many friends. I read a lot. I’m reading The Hobbit right now. I like it.

  You don’t have to write back. Do you think you’ll marry your girlfriend? I hope you do and live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales. I don’t think I want to get married. I’ll just have books and pets.

  Happy birthday,

  Katya

  PS. Thank you. Kolya was a good dog.

  PPS. I have to keep writing, or the nocnitsa will get me.

  KATYA,

  There’s no such thing as a nocnitsa.

  Danil

  DANIL,

  Yes, there is. She’s one of my Baba Olga’s friends, and she comes for tea and cakes every Thursday morning.

  Katya

  So began a correspondence that lasted for years. She never met him in person. He was eight years older, and the Leonov’s circle of wealthy friends was far outside her family’s comfortably happy, middle-class, public-school life. Even more than that, it sometimes seemed to Katya as if their families deliberately kept them apart. Volshev wasn’t that big a town. Surely, at some point, they would have been bound to be in the same place at the same time. It never happened, and he graduated from high school and moved away.

  When he got to college, he sent her a postcard from Yale. The letters slowed down then, but they always arrived on Christmas, Easter, and their birthdays. He graduated with degrees in Chemistry and Computer Science before moving to England. She wrote more often than he did, telling him about her first days of high school w
hile he began working on his Master’s in Inorganic Chemistry. She pinned the postcards from Oxford to her wall and sighed in wonder and a little bit of envy.

  When he began his PhD studies at MIV – the Metaphysical Institute of Vladivostok –they began using the leyline postal service. His advanced alchemical education could only be conducted over the border into the Rus fae world, so normal mail routes didn’t exist. Nonetheless, the letters continued.

  He told her about his topic, Alchemical Diffusion of Trace Metaphysical Elements on Integrated Circuits in Order to Facilitate Connections Across Fae/Mundane Borders, and even though it made no sense to her, she celebrated when he finished. He even sent her one of his early prototypes of the chip he was developing in a pretty silk bag, tucked inside a matryoshka doll painted like a firebird.

  Katya took the doll out of the box where it was stored with the letters and ran her finger over the delicate design. It was the last thing she received from him for a long time, because the next letter she wrote changed everything.

  Danil,

  I hope you’re having a wonderful time in Vladivostok finishing your degree. Do you have a girlfriend there, or are you too busy being brilliant? I’m very proud of you for what you’ve accomplished.

  Your mother came to see us to begin the wedding preparations. She said the ceremony would take place the day after my birthday, which unfortunately is during finals week. When I mentioned it, she just... looked at me. As if I was not too bright. As if graduating from high school was not important. And when I said that I was interested in going to veterinary school, she got very angry. She told me that I was going to marry you, have your babies, and host social functions, and that you weren’t going to tolerate any filthy animals around you.

  Danil, I’m sorry. It never seemed real until now, but I can’t marry you. I can’t do all those things. I have dreams of my own. So I’m leaving. I’m not even going to get to graduate from high school with my friends, but I have to go somewhere you won’t be able to find me. I know this isn’t you doing this – it’s your family – but the Leonovs are powerful and we can’t fight them.