by Emma Dean
Mika cleared her throat and looked up from the scribbles on the page to study the witch who’d once been her best and only friend. They were repairing what they once had, but they were both older now with crazy responsibilities and shitty pasts to get over.
They had a lot in common.
Telling Selene about this…it was something she had to do. Mika had promised herself no more lies between them, but what would the other witch think about it all?
“Corbin told me that before witches were neutral, they hadn’t shunned the so-called ‘dark’ magics. And blood witches, well the Morrigan created us.” Mika slid her thumb along the edge of the pages, trying to find the right words. “The goddess gave us a piece of her power that made us into…something else. Morgana was a blood witch. I assume that’s why there are so many conflicting tales about her – the stories that paint her as a dark sorceress and the villain who tried to take down King Arthur.”
“But she was already a queen, not trying to steal a crown from him,” Selene murmured, putting it all together. “And so, a witch queen ruled over the witches, but why did that stop?”
Mika bit her lip, hoping that this wouldn’t cause more problems. “The Morrigan stated only a blood witch could be queen – a warrior with a well of untapped power on top of our regular magic.”
“A daughter of a goddess…” Selene trailed off as she stared up at Kenzie on the top floor, bent over a book with Hunter practically pressed into her side. “That makes sense, though there’s more than one witch goddess.”
Artemis, Hecate, and the Fates if the stories were to be believed.
“I assume if one of those daughters challenged a morrigan and won they could be crowned just like any other position in the witch world.”
“‘The strongest must lead us, to protect us from the evils of man.’” Selene smiled slightly at that.
Once it used to mean humanity, but Mika wondered if it didn’t have a double meaning.
“One day I might have to call you queen,” Selene mused, nudging Mika with her shoulder.
“I don’t know why everyone assumes that. There’s nothing that says we need a queen.” Mika hated the idea of it. It was just so…pretentious. “An accident of birth allows me to rule over all of witch-kind? Seems stupid.”
“Well, that’s the entire idea of royalty,” Selene told her with a laugh. “Same with our clans and high society. Only power or money can get a low-born to rise in the ranks. As queen, you could change all that.”
It was a tempting thought. “No thanks.” Mika flipped the page in the book on the Council. “But I do want to know why things changed. Why witches started marrying as humans do, and how blood witches disappeared.”
“Anything there?” Selene asked, leaning over to check the book.
Mika slid over another on paranormal laws. “Check the chapters on witches. There are about three hundred books here and Lucien is about to bring us more.”
There was nothing else of interest in the book about the Council of Paranormals. Nothing that Kenzie hadn’t already told her. Mika sped read through it and started a stack of finished books. Grabbing the closest book, she opened it, and paused when she saw it was about the life and death of Morgana Le Fay.
It was titled The Last Witch Queen.
Which meant someone other than a witch had written it.
Flipping through the pages too fast for any normal person to absorb, Mika devoured the information. The book wasn’t long, but it was chock full of information.
1,236 years ago, Morgana was murdered on her island, and repainted as a saint. The book didn’t sugarcoat anything and was clearly biased by the tone of the chosen words. She’d been murdered during the First Blood-Witch Purge.
Mika had to stop for a second when she saw those words capitalized like they were important, like this was a well-known historical event – as common as World War II or something.
She kept reading, fingers trembling with every page turn.
Everything about Morgana had been watered down since the book said, and it seemed as though a spell had been performed to wipe the real memory of her from the paranormal world but didn’t affect anyone in one of the eyries or fox dens. There was a note about possible other paranormals who might have been spared such as the night witches, but those were suspiciously rare as well.
Mika supposed that those witches would be protected from a memory spell with all the mental training they had to do to walk through dreams without losing themselves in the darkness.
Then the book went on to say that the sanctuary on Morgana Island suddenly became a university and it seemed as though the history of the island was forgotten. The ruins and the enchanted forest nothing more than a mystery no one seemed to want to look into.
The book mused at what could be hidden on Morgana Island, right under the noses of everyone who lived there.
To the average history books, Morgana became a powerful witch and nothing more, one who’d created the sanctuary from the witch hunts and later turned the school into an official university with branches all over the world.
She checked the front of the book for the author and then went to the back to read the bio. The date the book was written unsettled her nerves: 1886 and written by a fox.
The bibliography listed a variety of books, most of which Mika had on the table in front of her currently. But there was an item listed that made her blood run cold.
Personal letters from Elizabeth Marshall to the author of the book, a fox by the name of James Martin. The librarian came back with another stack and Mika frantically looked through everything until she found what she was looking for.
Elizabeth Marshall’s personal letters. It was its own book, with the actual letters painstakingly preserved in the pages. Well, the copies were. A note was made in the front explaining that the originals were in one of the preservation rooms.
“What did you find?” Selene asked. She’d set her own book aside when Mika started scrambling.
“Where are the books on the Marshall clan?” she asked, trying to sift through everything. “Is there anything else about the Hellfire Society? Everything is so disjointed.”
She flipped through the last of James Martin’s book and froze.
“What?” Selene demanded.
“‘Right after sending me the last letter, Elizabeth Marshall ceased all contact with me,” Mika read aloud. “Every time I tried to reason with her, she insisted she did not know me, and that she would never associate with a lesser shifter. On my last visit she insisted she would not perform blood magic and never would – that it was taboo.’”
Lucien stayed to listen while the librarian went off to grab the rest of Mika’s requested books. “This was written by a fox?”
“I have a sneaking suspicion he was supposed to be hers,” Mika murmured, flipping the page. “‘On further investigation I have discovered that there is no memory of blood-witches to be found anywhere outside the den. They do not even recall what Morgana Le Fay is or was.’”
Selene shivered. “Is that it?”
“No, there’s a few more pages.” Mika tried not to rush through them, but her entire body was shaking. She wasn’t sure if it was fear, or something else entirely, but whatever it was she didn’t like it at all.
“‘Elizabeth does not recall the contents of the letters she sent me, or that she had written them at all. She is now betrothed to a witch. In honor of her true memory I decided to finish her work.’”
Corbin suddenly appeared and his eyes were glowing red. Even the ravens hadn’t known about this, and why would they? This was a book written by a fox from this pack, and unless a raven knew exactly what to look for…
“What else?” he asked. “Go on, dove.”
“In her last letter Elizabeth wrote how much she loved James and missed him, and that she couldn’t wait to see him again.” Mika’s heart clenched and she couldn’t help but think of her relationship with Lucien, how if they found out what she was�
��would they take him away from her in the same way?
To not even remember that she loved him…
Memory spells didn’t always work perfectly either. And if they’d hired a raven to take away her memories…it wouldn’t matter. Elizabeth would have always known something was missing even if she had no idea what it was. Her life would have always felt ‘off.’
Whoever had done the spell had more power than a blood witch. Elizabeth had access to the blood crystals and had never once used them after being made to forget.
She’d never looked further into Morgana or why there were no more witch queens.
“Elizabeth says, ‘I’ve finally arrived on Morgana Island, and I wish you were here. The university is lovely in the autumn.’”
Mika flipped the page of Elizabeth’s book of letters, trying to fully grasp what she was reading.
“‘I have always been curious about Morgana Le Fay, the infamous Marshall ancestor. And here I am! I’ve found her resting place.’”
So, Morgana had been planted somewhere on her island.
Witches weren’t buried, but rather cremated which meant there should be a plaque, or gravestone in front of a tree that had to be at least 1,236 years old based on the rough time of Morgana’s death.
With her witch lifespan she could easily have lived two or three hundred years and based on – Mika checked the time of King Arthur’s supposed death on her phone – she could have lived until 700 or 800 A.D., but per James’s biography she’d died during the First Purge.
She went back to his book and tried to line up the events. He had a copy of Elizabeth’s letter in the biography as well.
“Elizabeth found where Morgana had been buried and even drew a detailed sketch of the marker on the tree.” Mika studied the drawing of a great big ash tree with a stone engraving set in the ground, but roots had wrapped around it, cracking the stone in places as if Morgana herself was furious with what it said.
The gravestone had the moon phases across the top and the words were in an old language that morphed into something readable thanks to Mika’s charm.
“‘Here lie the ashes of the last Witch Queen, Morgana Le Fay.’”
Goosebumps skittered over her skin as she took in the full meaning of those words.
Today they meant nothing, but for someone to confidently engrave in stone ‘the last Witch Queen’ meant they knew there were no other blood witches to take her place.
That they knew of, anyway.
“Morgana died in the First Purge,” Mika told them. “Right when the Morrigan was locked away.” Mika scanned the rest of Elizabeth’s letter and gritted her teeth as she went on to describe something odd she’d found wrapped up in one of the tree’s roots.
On the next page was a sketch of the coin that had been so embedded in the tree Elizabeth had needed a spell to coax it out. “This coin, she’d said, was stamped with the crest of the Hellfire Society, and could James please send her anything he could find on them.”
Lucien cursed when he saw the crest drawn in perfect detail on the mangled coin. It was a symbol that had burned itself into Mika’s memory. She vividly recalled the glinting gold pins on their lapels as she ran for her life through the forest.
The Hellfire Society had killed the last witch queen.
25
“That is the Hellfire’s pitchfork,” Lucien confirmed. “Although it’s odd they went with that symbology.”
It was odd, considering Mika knew the devil personally and he never carried around a pitchfork. But that wasn’t the only symbology. There were skulls and skeletons of horses on either side…
“I don’t think that’s a pitchfork,” Corbin said, leaning over to peer closer. “That looks like a lyre to me.”
A lyre…
What did that have to do with hellfire?
“What does the rest of it say?” Selene asked, studying the sketches in Elizabeth’s letter. “Hurry up, I’m dying from the suspense.”
“‘The Hellfire Society murdered Morgana and all the blood witches during the Purge,’ Elizabeth writes. ‘And this confirms it. They are not the innocuous collection of witches dabbling in demonic magic we were led to believe. James, it is so much bigger than we imagined. I will be home soon where we can safely speak on the details. Love always, Elizabeth Marshall.’ There’s a few more chapters here that take place after their correspondence,” Mika explained. “But James goes on about Morgana. There’s nothing more about Elizabeth. Just that he confirmed the Hellfire Society was responsible for Morgana’s death.”
“How did he confirm that?” Corbin asked, pulling the book from her. “How did he find that out without getting himself killed?”
“It seems he had a friend who worked for the Council at the time,” Mika said, pulling another book toward her. “Here, this one is about the Marshall clan, written by the same author, James Martin.”
Mika wished he was still alive so she could ask him a thousand questions, but he was long dead.
“Here’s James’s autobiography,” Lucien said, picking up another old book. He flipped through it slowly. “He mentions Elizabeth. ‘Elizabeth Marshall was my blood mate. When she married, and forgot that I even existed, I dedicated my life to completing the work she’d started.’ He never mated after her.”
“A blood mate?” Selene’s eyebrows rose at that. “What is that?”
“Fuck if I know,” Lucien said, gritting his teeth. “You’d think someone would have mentioned it to me when I told the pack about Mika.”
“What seems weird to me is that Elizabeth knew about blood witches,” Selene said, picking up the Marshall clan book.
“She was one,” Mika told her. “So was her grandmother Victoria. Every witch in my clan before her knew what they were, and they were taught in secret. Not all blood witches died in the Purge.”
“This book calls it the First Purge,” Lucien muttered. “That’s reassuring.”
Corbin was flipping through yet another book now. “This book on blood witches says there was a second purge. The Purge of Memory.”
Mika yanked that book out of his hands and sped read through the whole thing.
When she was finished, she slumped back and tossed the book onto the table, earning a glare from one of the librarians.
“Elizabeth’s mother, Eliza Marshall, was the one to sign the dotted line on that first marriage contract to gain the Marshall clan a bit more power within the witch community.” She’d sold her daughter out, and for what. “It looks like Cassandra Jadis presented the proposition, and to gain favor Eliza agreed. Eleanor, Elizabeth’s aunt and Eliza’s sister, wrote a letter to this pack regarding the situation. She informed James of what had happened and that since she was not matriarch there was nothing she could do.”
Mika looked up at Selene, Lucien, and Corbin. She wished she could scrub the information from her brain, but at least she finally had answers. “Cassandra was the second purge. She started murdering blood witches per the letter James received. Eleanor decided it wasn’t safe for us anymore and she cast a spell that wiped the memory of blood witches from our world. It kept my clan safe, but she paid for that safety with her life.”
A blood magic spell so powerful it had required the sacrifice of a powerful witch. Eleanor had sacrificed herself to save them all and Mika didn’t know how to feel about that.
Had it really saved them, or just put off the inevitable? Why was Cassandra hunting blood witches in the first place? What was her end game? Was she in league with the Hellfire Society or did she have her own agenda?
“What does that have to do with the marriage contract?” Corbin asked.
The sun shone in, making the dust motes glitter and twinkle as they danced. Mika sighed, suddenly so exhausted. “The marriage contract came before the spell. I don’t know what the end game was, or what it has to do with the blood magic spell. But the book does mention blood mates.”
Even though she had the answers she’d spent the last six months sear
ching for, Mika felt like it had only given her a million more questions.
“And?” Lucien prompted, sounding impatient and maybe a little panicked.
Eisheth suddenly appeared and slipped his hands in his pockets, a trace of hellfire in his eyes still and Mika wondered how long he’d been listening in. “A blood mate is someone who chooses to be blood bonded rather than mated. Any shifter can do it, but it binds you to that other person and permanently overrides any other mate bond that might exist.”
Blood magic was powerful enough to undo what the universe had done?
“It’s dangerous,” Eisheth told them. “And didn’t always end well, but on the upside, it can’t be done with unwilling participants. Only those with free will who consent to such a bond can be bound. Did you find your answers, daughter?”
Selene shot Mika a questioning look, and honestly, she didn’t have the energy to explain. Not after everything.
“I don’t know why a second purge even started in the first place.” Mika rubbed her eyes, trying to process all the information she’d just absorbed.
A headache was starting, one that promised to be a doozy of a migraine. It was one of the very few downsides to the speed-reading charm.
“I don’t either,” Eisheth admitted. “But I plan to find out.”
“Come on.” Corbin pulled her from the chair. “Let’s get you out of your head a bit and train.”
“I’ll keep reading,” Selene promised. “Maybe I can find something else to shed a bit more light on the situation.”
Mika nodded numbly as Corbin pulled her through the library, Lucien pressed against her side.
After all the shit she’d read, all Mika’s brain wanted to focus on though was the lyre. Why a lyre? It made no sense, but it was less painful to think about than Eleanor taking her own life to save her clan and all the blood witches around the world.
“No, like this,” Corbin told her, grabbing her arms and putting them in the right place. Then he stepped back. “Now attack her Lucien.”
The fox smirked and did just that at full speed.