Origin: an Adult Paranormal Witch Romance: Othala Witch Collection (Sector 1)

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “The regent said tonight.”

  “Good. It’s been long enough.”

  The male voices sounded familiar. Guards. But Alec couldn’t place them. If they were his friends, they might help him…but that would mean getting their attention first—also impossible. If they weren’t his friends, he could only hope they would go away by time he got out of this cell. If that ever happened.

  The first guard spoke again. “He thinks it’s the same girl who ran at the marketplace.”

  “I knew it,” the second guard said. “Thieves always run, but that girl practically flew out of the marketplace.”

  Alec straightened, his ears straining to hear more as the voices started to fade down the hall and beneath the clatter of footsteps.

  “…worse, I think. I heard he’s going to make her face two ravagers.”

  “That’ll be the least of her worries. Don’t forget what he did to the last queen who ran…”

  Distant laughter. A few more mumbled words. Alec stopped trying to listen. He didn’t want to remember the last queen who ran. The electric shock lashing. He’d left halfway through it. He couldn’t stomach the cries. He’d told himself it was for the greater good. The law said it was that or exile. At least, that was what he thought the law said. That was what the regent had claimed the law said.

  But now he knew the regent had created his own laws. Laws that he would expect Adira to follow.

  Alec needed to get to her. He needed to reach her before Dvorak found out where she was staying.

  He glanced around again, this time in more of a panic.

  There had to be a way out.

  And yet, there wasn’t.

  Chapter 19

  So the regent had come for her.

  There was a time Adira would have cowered or run when faced with the regent, especially under these circumstances. But things were different now. There were people worth fighting for, and Adira was strong enough to be the one to fight for them.

  But that didn’t mean she ought to be foolish. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go down, which meant Adira needed to get a better feel for the situation before she decided on any course of action.

  Miss Balek didn’t waver as she addressed the company at the door. “Hello, Regent. To what do we owe the honor?”

  Regent Dvorak’s face was a stony mask. “Routine visit,” he said simply. “Please advise your…family…to cooperate.”

  “Of course.” Miss Balek stepped away from the door, allowing their entry, and turned away to face Adira and the others who had gathered around her. “Everyone, please form a line. There’s no need to make this harder than it has to be. We’ve nothing to hide.”

  All the witches from dinner, children and adult alike, formed side-by-side lines in two neat rows, except for one. Adira whispered to Kveta, “Where’s Anastazie?”

  Kveta nodded toward the kitchen, but she didn’t move from her place in line.

  “Excuse me,” Adira said to Miss Balek, “but the fan in the kitchen can be quite loud. I should check to see if someone didn’t hear.”

  Miss Balek nodded, but as Adira turned to head toward the kitchen, a guard grabbed her by the arm.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ll help.”

  Adira cringed, but she bit her tongue to stop from arguing. “Right this way,” she said, though he was more dragging her along than she was leading him.

  When they reached the kitchen, Anastazie was curled up in a ball under the dinner table. Adira yanked free of the guard. “She’s probably confused. Let me get her.”

  The guard pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at the boarded window over the sink. “I have my eye on you.”

  Right.

  Adira climbed under the table and crawled over to Anastazie. “You have to come out there.”

  “Why?” Anastazie whispered. “You should have just left me here!”

  Adira shook her head. “I understand what it’s like to be scared. To want to run. But I promise you, they aren’t here for you. It will be better if you are out there then for them to think you are trying to run away.”

  Anastazie hugged her knees tighter to her chest. “Who do they want, then?”

  Adira leaned really close to the little girl’s ear so no one else would hear them. “Me.” She reached out her hand. “Now come on. Let’s show these jerks that nothing scares Miss Balek’s brood.”

  Anastazie’s eyes brimmed with tears, but she followed Adira out from under the table. Adira kept the girl close to her side as she resumed her spot in line. There. That accounted for everyone in the house.

  Dvorak looked down his nose at all the witches. The room fell pin-drop silent, until all that could be heard was the exhaust fan whirring in the kitchen. How much did the regent know? Was this really just a routine visit? If so, why hadn’t Alec warned her? He would have known, unless the regent had known not to trust him.

  Surely, Alec hadn’t sent him, and if Dvorak was here without his lead witch hunter, that meant Alec was in danger. And Adira couldn’t do anything about it—at least not until she dealt with whatever was going on here.

  “Bring him in,” the regent said, raising his hand and waving on the guards with two fingers.

  Moments later, the guards escorted Erik into the room. Until that moment, Miss Balek had kept her resolve. But in that very instance, her expression fell.

  Dvorak pulled Erik to his side and placed his hand on his far shoulder. “You said the woman from the marketplace was here?”

  Fury in his gaze, he lifted a steady hand and pointed at Adira.

  The betrayal stabbed into her like a thousand swords. Yet, she couldn’t say she was surprised. Perhaps that was how he’d felt when she turned him down. He wanted to make her feel that same pain. Well, he’d succeeded.

  Dvorak strolled over to Adira until he stood so close his breath crawled like spiders over her face. “Not going to run this time?”

  Adira stood firm. “I have nothing to run from.”

  The regent’s lifted a strand of hair from her shoulder and twisted it in his fingers. “But do you have something to hide?”

  His last word came out in a whispered hiss, and Adira shuddered.

  “I suppose there’s only one way to tell,” Adira said, hoping he didn’t notice the slight tremble in her voice.

  Dvorak tipped up his chin. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. He held out his hand, and one of the guards stepped forward to deposit the witch-tester device into his palm. He pointed it toward Adira but did not activate it. “And what do you think this will tell me?”

  Considering what she was considering, she truly didn’t know.

  Adira had a choice right now, and one of those choices might not even work. First, she had to decide if she was ready to out herself as a witch right now, without having Alec to talk to first, or if she wanted to conceal herself a little longer. She was ready. But this was wrong. This wasn’t what they had planned. And that had Adira doubting herself.

  Ultimately, she couldn’t give herself up without first knowing Alec was okay. If he could be saved, she needed to save him before she turned herself in.

  She fingered the spinning top in her pocket, repeating the words in her mind over and over again—blok, maska, skrývat…

  Since she’d never been able to test this enchantment, she didn’t know which word—if any—to focus her energy on. Still, her energy focused on three different words surely gave her better odds than focusing all of her energy on one word.

  She chanted in her thoughts anyway. Blok, maska, skrývat.

  The witch-tester device activated.

  Blok, maska, skrývat.

  If she was going to be taken as a witch, it was going to be on her terms. Not because she was marked by some device.

  The needle on the device wavered, pointing more toward her than away from her, but not truly set in her direction—just to the side. No matter how hard she thought, though, she couldn’t get it to redirect completely.
The block was only partial.

  “It’s not you,” he whispered, turning slowly to where the needle pointed. “It’s her.”

  The needle pointed toward Anastazie.

  No.

  Adira’s emotions skyrocketed, and all of her training went out the window.

  Smrt.

  The needle on the testing device’s compass zoomed away and then spun wildly in all direction.

  “I think it’s just broken,” Adira said, holding back a grin.

  The regent narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, then, I suppose we’ll just have to test the blood of everyone in this room. Care to wager what we’ll find?”

  Chapter 20

  Alec had sacrificed his sister for this?

  He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the invisible wall. Where had he gone wrong? He had put his whole life into serving the regent, thinking that was the best way to serve the sector. But was it? Had it ever been?

  If he’d been wrong all this time, then his sister had died for no reason.

  That day still haunted Alec. Sometimes when he slept at night, he would feel the strange, disquieting vibration from that day, and he would shoot awake in his bed.

  That was how it’d all started: Alec, a small boy, working out in the field of his family’s farm. Back when the enchantments were first starting to fail, they’d called forth those who were able-bodied to do the work without the help of the machines.

  Alec was raking the fields when the earth hummed beneath his feet, almost to the point of a low rumble. The fine hair on his neck and arms stood on edge, and he turned, surveying the area, trying to follow the source of the vibration with one testing step at a time.

  It led him to the back of the field, to the sector limits, to a runestone that had cracked in half. A ravager turned its head toward him, pausing. Then another, farther in the woods, did the same. As they started to approach, more ravagers changed their trajectory to head toward him and the broken rune.

  Everything happened so fast, Alec didn’t have time to run for help. He needed to do something—and fast—because the ravagers were just steps away from stalking onto family land.

  Young Alec dove to his knees and grabbed the two halves of the runestone from the platform it rested on and held the pieces together. He swallowed hard. Would that even work?

  He trembled as the ravagers skirted closer. They knew the wall had come back down. But would they know if it went back up? They weren’t acting as if it was back up. Did that mean it wasn’t?

  Sweat beaded on Alec’s forehead and dripped down the side of his face. He told himself it had worked. Holding them worked. That was why the vibration had stopped. Right?

  He tried to still his tremors. He needed to hold the stone pieces perfectly together. When the ravager stepped up to him, Alec squeezed his eyes shut. Minutes passed, and he was still alive. Slowly, he peeked again; the ravagers had backed off, but were cautiously watching him. Waiting for him to fail.

  Alec turned his head toward the field. “Father! Mother,” he called. “Somebody, please!”

  The field was empty. No one came. He shouted louder. He screamed until his voice went raw. Then he waited, his face wet with tears and his fingers burning with the strain of holding the stone halves together.

  Whenever his voice could bear it, he screamed for his parents and neighbors again, his words hoarse and still unheard. Everything out here was so far apart. He could barely see his house from here, and none of the neighbors’ homes was in sight.

  He spent the night this way, his fingers aching and stiffening more with each passing hour. The sun went down, and those ravagers watched him as if at any moment his body or eyes would tire, forcing him to give up the broken runestone shards.

  Young Alec had been trained from an early age to never acquiesce to pain. But sleep? Everyone needed sleep. His eyelids started to sag, but he bit down into his lip hard, giving himself a jolt of pain.

  Stay strong.

  If he failed, he would lose his life. His parents would be murdered. The regent would be massacred. Letting go was not an option.

  The boy stayed that way until dawn, his clothes damp from the early morning dewdrops, his arms and legs bitten with itchy mosquito welts he couldn’t scratch. Bleary eyed, he glanced around again and finally spotted his mother in the distance.

  “Mother,” he rasped.

  Her head turned toward him and she took a few slow steps, but then she started looking around again.

  “Mother,” he tried, louder this time, the word like razors on his throat. “Over here!”

  Finally, her gaze pinned on him, and she ran over as fast as her heavily pregnant body would allow. “Where have you been?” she asked, slowing as she reached him. Her mouth fell open, and her face twisted. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Alec. What are you doing?”

  He stared down at the runes in his hands. “It broke,” he whispered. “I have to hold it together.”

  She kneeled beside him and held the stones together so he could free his hands. He flexed his fingers, wincing at the cramp.

  “Ring for the regent,” she commanded. “I’ll hold this until he gets here.”

  Alec looked from her to the tower where the bell was kept to ring for the regent. He hated to leave her there, but he had to do it. She would never make it up those steps.

  He darted off toward the tower that stood halfway between the border and his home. Halfway up the steps, he noticed his little sister dangling over the edge of the well by the house. Mother should be with her, but instead, she’d been looking for Alec and was now preventing a hoard of ravagers from infiltrating the sector.

  “Sissy! Get down,” Alec called, his voice not as loud or as strong as he would like.

  The girl didn’t listen. Probably didn’t even understand him. She was too young for words yet.

  Damn it!

  “Father,” Alec tried next.

  No response. Father might not even be there. He could be at the marketplace, fetching supplies.

  Alec started back down the steps toward his sister, but when he glanced at his mom, he noticed the electrical force field sparking in and out.

  His mother called, “Hurry! It’s crumbling!”

  It was…crumbling?

  She meant the runestone.

  The runestone was crumbling.

  His mother screeched as a ravager swiped in at her, and even from this distance, Alec was certain it’d made contact. He glanced again at his sister, who was teetering on the edge of the well. She would definitely die if the ravagers broke past the border. Right after their mother was killed.

  Please, just stay still a little longer.

  Alec sprinted up the stairs, rang the bell, barrelled back down, and then grabbed the emergency sword from the side of the tower. He raced across the field toward his mother, reaching her just in time to arc the metal blade toward the monster stepping into the sector and advancing on his mother.

  “Get Sissy and run,” he ordered his mother.

  His mother scrambled back, blood on her face and arms. Her swollen belly rose and fell with panting breaths, her eyes wide. Alec turned back to the beasts, swinging again and slicing deep into another ravager’s skin. This seemed to slow them down, but they weren’t dying.

  He turned to make sure his mom was on the way to get his sister. She was on her hands and knees, trying to get to her feet. Sissy was on the edge. She was there.

  And then, she wasn’t.

  Mother made it to her feet, gasping and sobbing as she ran for the well. Alec attacked another ravager, and then another, fending them off just long enough to take on the next one.

  It was all happening too fast. Until Mother screamed.

  Her cry was more soul shattering than anything Alec had ever heard before. She crumbled into herself, and life crashed to a standstill. Alec wanted to run to her, wanted to run so fast he could go back in time, but he was still fending off the ravagers.

  Alec stood du
tifully at the hold in the border, fending off the ravagers and fighting them back toward the forest as best he could until the regent finally arrived.

  Dvorak made quick work repairing the fence by connecting the two adjacent stones to each other, thereby cutting off the need for the crumbled runestone. Then the regent grabbed the boy by the arm.

  “Run,” he said.

  Alec didn’t ask any questions. He just ran after the regent, faster than he’d ever run before, but still not fast enough to go back in time and somehow save his sister. As they passed his mother, the regent tried to pull her up, but she would not let go of the well.

  “We have to go,” he ordered.

  She shook her head. “I’m not leaving her.”

  “She’s dead,” the regent yelled. “Run!”

  Ravagers were quickly closing in. But why? Hadn’t the regent repaired the fence?

  Then it dawned on him. The runestones. If the regent connected the two adjacent to the one that had broken, given how far apart they were spaced, it cut off a segment of the sector. They weren’t in Sector One anymore. They were in ravager land.

  “Mother, please, listen to him,” Alec begged, grabbing at her arm.

  She yanked away. “Go.”

  Alec looked back at the ravagers, again at his mother, and then to the regent.

  “You must go, son,” Dvorak said. “Your death will not save your mother.”

  Tears in his eyes, Alec allowed Dvorak to pull him along until they were safely inside Sector One’s new territory mapping.

  Alec stared back out into the distance, tears blurring his vision. The ravagers had clustered around the well. He couldn’t even see his mother anymore. His heart panged so hard it stole the breath from his lungs, and he fell to his knees.

  “I have to find my father,” he whispered.

  Dvorak crouched in front of Alec. “I’m afraid he didn’t make it. He was running for your mother as we were leaving.”

  Alec hadn’t seen. He hadn’t looked back until now. What kind of son did that make him?