Beside me to my right, two young women hung on the arms of a very tall blonde-haired man with a scar running down his face where his left eye should have been. He had a fur cloak wrapped around his shoulders with a pattern I’d never seen. His hands were large and meaty.
The giant grinned vilely at me. “Would you like to join us?”
“Piss off,” I muttered, turning back to pit. I knew better than to stare but I couldn’t seem to help it down here. The man let out a boisterous laugh and leaned over to whisper something in one of the girl’s ear. She giggled like a bimbo and I was all but forgotten.
Turning my attention to my cousin below, I toed the edge of the pit uneasily. A guard came through a hidden door escorting a red-eyed Vampire. The Made leered at Blair with pointed, pearly white teeth and a vulpine grin. His skin was unearthly pale, and even under the moonlight I could see the tell-tale black veins of starvation that pulsed when he looked at her. She met his stare unafraid, with death in her eyes and his funeral march in her heart.
“Let the games begin,” I whispered while a charismatic Shifter with a booming voice listed off Blair’s alias and then that of the criminal they put down there with her. The crowd didn’t seem to give a shit that one of the people before us was rapist and a murderer. If anything, it excited them more to see tiny little Blair. It made the betting more fun, they said. Unaware that this was not a true fight, but a staged execution that Tam used for monetary profit and we were using for far more nefarious purposes.
I kept my mouth shut, my eyes glued to the larger guard that was unlocking the creature’s shackles. He stepped away, releasing the Vampire, and disappeared through the door from which he came.
Silence and tension wrapped together in a combustible ammunition that exploded the moment the Made attempted to move. I wasn’t sure what I should focus on more, the crowd around me that was shifting uneasily, the cousin below me that moved twenty feet between one heartbeat and the next, or the sudden sense that I was being watched.
Across from me, Alexandra stood at the exact opposite end, while Aaron and Jo found spots in between us. We surrounded Blair on every side. It was as much for her protection as our own, and Tori acted as a guard.
So why do I suddenly feel like I’ve walked into a trap?
“Hello, Selena,” an old woman’s voice whispered across the back of my neck, making my hairs stand on end. I spun around to find…nothing.
“Wha—”
“Looking for me?” she cackled, choking on her own spit. Her laughing turned hoarse as she trailed off in a fit of coughs. I followed the sound to my right, and lo and behold, there she was.
“The Crone with the third eye,” I muttered to myself. “Come to tell my ‘fortune’ again?”
She tipped back her hood and smiled a row of yellow teeth. Her umber skin was aged and cracked, combined with the gleam in her eyes made her look like she was constantly grinning. Then again, maybe she was.
“I could, but your fate has not changed, only your focus,” she said, her voice coarse and dry. I eyed her warily.
“My focus?”
“You passed your first test and are no longer on the path to revenge, but instead, healing. You are growing into a young woman that would have made Valda proud,” she rasped. Her deep purple cloak swayed in a gentle breeze. “And that’s why it’s time.”
“Time? Time for what?” I asked, more than a little dismayed. I took a step back, bumping into someone. I turned, halfway expecting a jeer or to be punched on the spot, but neither happened. The person stood silent as a statue, still watching the fight.
The fight that I was also supposed to be watching.
I ran to the edge of the ring and froze.
Not a single person was moving. Not my cousin. Not the Made. Not Aaron, or Johanna, or Alexandra who were also watching them. No one, but me and the Crone.
Somehow, some way, she had stopped time.
“How is this possible?” I asked in a shaky breath, looking back over my shoulder to the ancient Witch. She smiled knowingly and pointed a single crooked finger at me, bending it to beckon me forward.
“Let us take a walk, you and I,” she said.
I suppose it was a given that I would follow her because she didn’t wait for my reply. We stepped through the crowd, weaving between the catatonic paranormals that had no idea what had happened, and probably never would.
When we reached the edge of the street where the clumps of people thinned and we could walk side by side without jostling anyone, the old woman finally spoke.
“I am going to tell you a story about two young women whose bad decisions changed the fate of the world for over a thousand years,” she started. My skin broke out in goosebumps, a combination of the chilled air and the mystery in her words.
“Valda?” I asked, hardly a whisper. She nodded, her silver hair reflecting in the moonlight.
“And me,” she said.
I shuddered. A thousand years? The old Witch smiled, her kaleidoscope eyes changing from a deep purple to a wistful blue.
“A thousand years is only a blink in the life of our ancients, but it is longer than either of us were meant to stay.” It was only then that I realized she was talking about her—Valda—in the present. A sickly sharp feeling pressed against my mind, but I didn’t let myself think anything of it. Not until I heard what the Witch had to say.
“I have gone by many names across my time. Back then, I was known as Livina—it meant friend. Beloved. As Valda’s personal servant, I was named by my mistress herself because I was also her friend, and in many ways, her only one.” She paused, her eyes changing color again—to a rosy pink hue.
“Valda was a Konig, and heir to the strongest Supernatural house of the age. Their power was unrivaled by any because they were Nyx’s Blessed. The matter manipulators that your world now considers legend—apart from you.” My heart pattered on the precipice of a knowledge that would redefine me once again, should I believe this old Witch’s tale.
“I’ve never heard of her house,” I said and the Witch chuckled.
“History is written by the winners, or have you already forgotten what the current Fortescue has done in your name?” I bristled but didn’t reply. She was right, and while it grated me, it served as a reminder that I had a lot more to learn.
I ducked my head and motioned with my hand for her to keep talking.
“She was just like you, you know?” the Witch continued. “Headstrong, opinionated, and loyal to a fault. She loved her people and wanted to rule, but her spirit was wild. Untamed. It shouldn’t surprise you then that she was madly in love with a servant boy, but betrothed to a Fortescue, unbeknownst to her.” Her face soured at the very mention of the current ruling family. People always said they’d been ruling for a thousand years, like that meant they’d always been ruling and would continue to.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so cut in stone.
“I can’t imagine that went over well.”
“It didn’t,” she said. Her eyes darkened to a crimson red with flecks of yellow and orange. “The day she went to tell her parents the truth, they told her she was betrothed—and executed her lover on the stairs beneath their thrones as a lesson to her.” The Witch’s face went grim, her purple clock stirring in the breeze.
“That seems a bit harsh,” I commented. The Crone shrugged.
“It was the times we lived in. As the Konig heir, Valda knew the risks and she chose to take them anyway, just as she chose to put her people first and go through with her parents arranged marriage—until she met him.” She paused, her steps falling still as she looked to sky. “Cirian Fortescue was everything Valda would have loved in a life partner, had her parents not killed the one she loved. That alone wasn’t enough to make her hate him. Cirian was Valda’s signasti animam. Her soul-bonded partner. His mere existence made her love for the servant seem inconsequential, but the bond wasn’t so consuming that it made her love him either. Instead, it took away her only love
and made her feel hopelessly lonely—and desperate.”
“Valda came to me the very night she met him and asked me to break the bond. She said that she would marry him, but only if I could break the bond. She needed to know that the choice was hers.” The Crone paused, shaking her head in…regret? “Signasti bonds were considered sacred. It was banned for Witches to try to tamper with them, but Valda was my friend and I couldn’t say no.”
“I was only fifteen when I devised the spell that was meant to break Valda’s bond. It was old magic that I had no business messing with, but I did, and it cost us everything.” She blinked away any emotion from her face and replaced it with an impassive mask. “When I cast the spell, Valda and Cirian’s bond changed. It didn’t break, but weakened so much it drove them both mad. Valda already struggled with her sanity, and being the strongest matter manipulator ever born, she ended up trying to take her own life, but her body healed so fast she couldn’t. I had to do something.”
A slow creeping sensation ran through me at the eerie similarities between Valda and I. Was it coincidence? Maybe a younger version of me would have assumed so, but I didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.
“I created a spell that was supposed to fill the void left by what I did to their bond. Something that would replace what was lost and make her whole, but something in the spell went wrong, and when she opened her eyes I realized what I’d done. I made her and Cirian demons, the first to ever be created—and the last.
“Not all demons are evil, but after suffering like they had, Valda and Cirian were ruthless. Without their humanity—and only memories of the darkness I’d put them in—Cirian became obsessed with Valda and wanting to claim her.” She sighed, and it was a sound that was leaden by a thousand years’ worth of grief and sorrow. “But Valda, without her emotions, she was not herself. She laid destruction on the world like it had never seen and hasn’t since. Cities were decimated. Earthquakes followed wherever she went. She killed her own parents in a rage, and when Cirian came for her, she killed him too. The world was plunged into a dark age.”
I could see it so clearly—the shadows that haunted her—the visions of destruction that ravaged the world. This was the reason that matter manipulators were feared beyond measure.
Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Wind storms. A single matter manipulator can change the world, but not for the better. Our gift was destruction.
“I prayed to the Three-faced Goddess for guidance and the ancients responded. Angered by my actions, they gave a single way out that would right the balance. A spell to bind her immortal soul to mine, so that when I sacrificed myself, we would both die. That was how it was supposed to be, but I was young…and a coward.”
The Witch fell quiet for a moment, but I was at a loss for words. What exactly do you say to this? Clearly, she didn’t sacrifice herself because she was standing before me. So, what happened?
“I thought that I could outwit the ancients. That I could still have everything. That Valda and I could both live, but the balance always has a way of righting itself.” Still looking at the moon, she paused and turned her gaze to my face, and I could have sworn it wasn’t me she was looking at, but someone that should be long gone. “I went to her kill her, and instead found her in childbirth. As it turned out, she was pregnant from the lover her parents had killed months prior. I helped her deliver the baby, and while she was recovering in those minutes after, I stabbed her in the heart. I killed her hoping to kill the demon, but not myself, and in those moments after her death, I knew Valda was still there. She died in my arms while the baby slept not ten feet from us, and then I bound her soul in the way the Three-faced Goddess had taught me. For the third time, I defied the natural order of things. In attempting to bind her soul, I brought her back from the dead—and the ancients punished us for it. Valda’s soul came back, but it did not bind to me. Instead, her soul clung to the only thing that still had meaning. Her child.”
An unsettling calm fell over me as the sound of my heart beat heavily. Blood pumped through my veins, rushing to my head. I swallowed hard, trying to make sense of everything she was saying. To remember every word, because there was only one place this could be headed.
“And because Valda was soul-bonded, Cirian also came back. Unlike her, he did not have a child, but he had a younger brother he had once adored. Cirian’s soul attached itself to his brother and Valda attached herself to the babe in my arms. I knew the moment it happened, and the consequences that ensued because of it.”
My skin prickled as an unknown energy washed over me, but it was somehow familiar—exotic and powerful. It reminded me of damp woods and compact earth. Running through forests late at night. A nightmare I used to dream.
It reminded me of—
“Cirian, influencing his brother, persecuted the remaining Konigs. He laid waste to Valda’s family and then removed every trace of them from history. After a hundred years, the name was no more than a legend, and after a thousand, the world has all but forgotten the matter manipulators that once ruled it.”
“And Valda?” I asked. “What happened to her?”
Was I ready for this? To know this?
“Why don’t you ask her,” the Witch replied.
If I could have, I would have fractured on the spot.
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“Valda’s soul has traveled from mother to daughter for the last thousand years. It was her curse. The price she paid to Nyx for deaths she caused.”
Suddenly, that familiar but strange energy inside of me was easy to pinpoint.
“Valda?” I asked, both fearing and already knowing who would answer.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name. I must say, I do prefer Violet.”
I shuddered, nearly falling to my knees in the dirt at the truth that now weighed on me. A thousand years. She watched her daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, and so on and so forth— die—for a thousand years. I couldn’t comprehend it.
There had to be more.
“And you? What price did you pay?” I asked, already fearing the answer.
“To bring two souls back, two had to die. I was the Maiden once, like your friend Milla is now. But in trying to save Valda, I killed the women who were then known as the Mother and the Crone—the two that embodied the Three-faced Goddess the most—and broke the cycle. I disobeyed the ancients. The Three-faced Goddess punished me by seeing to it that I would live as long as Valda and Cirian were bound to this earth, and because I was elevated to Crone—that is what I have remained. Just as Valda”—she paused and pointed a crooked finger at me—“became the Mother. The Witches know the cycle is broken, and they still tell their children of it, but the truth of what happened was lost in time.” I frowned, thinking back. There were clues all along, but not enough that I had any hope of seeing them until now.
“This doesn’t make sense. You said that everything has a balance. Cirian slaughtered the Konigs. What happened to him? What price did he pay?” I asked, outraged as much with myself for never asking as I was with them for what they’d done. The Crone smiled, but it was not a kind smile. It was strained.
“Just as Nyx cursed Valda, she cursed him. His soul has traveled from firstborn to firstborn down the Fortescue line and wrought unspeakable things in their name.”
Without realizing it, we’d walked all the way to the end of the line and back. In front of me was the same crimson tent from earlier, where Tam conducted business. To the right of it, several yards off the beaten path, was the pit where Blair was fighting.
“For a thousand years, the Fortescues have held the rest of the world under their thumb, and you mean to tell me it is because of Cirian—because you couldn’t accept the consequences of your actions?” My head felt hot and my body feverish as the anger made me sizzle with rage.
Still, all the Crone had to say was, “Yes.”
“Why couldn’t Valda tell me any of this?” I asked, throwing my hand out, wind follow
ed its command blowing into the crowd of people and knocking them over.
Easy. Reign it in.
“Valda wasn’t permitted to tell anyone who she was unless they already knew. The same as Cirian,” she replied. She snapped her fingers once and a staff with a large glowing blue orb appeared in her hand.
“And you? You’re the one that caused all of this,” I said to her in a harsh voice. Angry on both Valda and Cirian’s behalf. “Why haven’t you found a way to end it? What’s your excuse?”
The older woman didn’t get angry. She didn’t scream or yell. She didn’t narrow her eyes. The Witch, the Crone, Livina, took a very deep breath and whispered hoarsely, “We’ve known since the beginning how to end our punishment. I’m staring at it.”
My mouth fell open, but in between the tremble that took me and the questions that rattled in my mind—no words came out. I stumbled back.
When she had first appeared, there was a mischievous glint in her eye, but after her tale that glint was long gone. Only a bitter resentment, weary resignation, and staunch resolution remained. And perhaps, more than a little guilt.
But tears didn’t glisten in her eyes when she said, “I’m sorry.”
And before I could respond, she lifted her staff and brought it down onto the cold, hard dirt.
A bright blue light flared from the orb, blinding me temporarily. I blinked once, and she was gone. Every person in the paranormal market was a witness to the power this old woman yielded, but as I looked around—befuddled, pissed off, and without the answers I needed—I realized I was the only one who knew it.
Chapter 128
Deeds that should have never been done weighed on my chest like an anchor did a ship.
Secrets that were now my burden to bear.
Lies that were now mine to tell.
I came back to this world swearing that things would be different. That I would be different. But stepping into the elevator after their fights that night, I didn’t know how I was going to tell them the truth.
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