“I can’t handle thinking about her with that bastard regent.” John pounded a fist on the table and the plates and silverware rattled. His red-rimmed eyes burned holes in his white face. “I can’t.”
“I don’t know what you think we can do about it,” I said, washing more color from his already pale complexion. “Just march up to Moody Mansion and demand he turn her over?”
“You’ve got immense, unimaginable power, and you’ve saved the island. The witches and I have hidden away your families so he has nothing he can hold over you. You could do this, Demetria.”
“I could make a tree fall on him or something,” I said, my gut churning. “And then the whole army would turn out against me and all witches. Seawall South would become a slaughterhouse.”
“Witches have magic!”
“And soldiers have swords. Plus tactical training. Some of them have fanaticism to spur them on. Then there’s Seawall North. The non-magicals already look down on witches. It wouldn’t take much to fan that dislike into hatred and fear, and then I’d have to use my magic against people. Lots of people.” I leaned across the table to touch his sleeve again and make him look at me. “Logan says the witches protect. They’re supposed to protect. That’s why the Sectors were formed. Not just to keep the witches safe, but everyone. Non-magicals too. Maybe especially them because they have no defense against the ravagers. You really want to start a war over one woman?”
John glared at me, his teeth pulled back in a feral snarl, exposing his teeth. “I love that woman. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“So your whole life you’ve been championing witches because you loved my mother?” I asked without bothering to keep the skepticism from my tone.
“Of course not,” he snarled, then grimaced. “At least not entirely.” He glared at me. “And if my love for her does influence what I do, what does that make you think of me?”
The bristling hostility radiating from him clashed with the abject plea for understanding in his eyes. Here was a man on the edge, and with one flick I could push him over.
“It makes me think I’m proud you’re my father,” I admitted, my throat raw.
Tears sprang to his eyes, and he blinked them away furiously before they could fall.
“Can I ask you a question?” I gulped down what was left in my mug. Cold coffee was still coffee.
John nodded.
“How did you know you could find us out here? We were supposed to die casting the spell of Reutterance. Everyone knows that, why didn’t you?”
“I told you before that was just a rumor,” he said, stabbing his fork into a fried egg, which spurted yellow yolk across the plate.
“How did you know it was a rumor?” I rose to my feet and brought my mug to the carafe on the counter for a refill. “Come up on deck. Logan should hear this too.”
Seemingly glad for the reprieve, John climbed up into wheelhouse while I doctored my coffee before following him.
The sails billowed, linen crackling, in the stiff breeze. I stared up at them for a moment as the wind blew back my hair. Shivering, I made my way to the stern where Logan sat and John paced.
Three months from when I thought it was would make it mid-autumn. I wished I had a sweater, but instead I curled up close to Logan who put his arm around me to share his warmth.
I held out my mug so Logan could take a sip. “I was asking John how he knew he would find us out here. How he convinced a ship full of witches to sail with him. Everyone knows the witches marked by Othala die during the Reutterance.”
“Do they? Is that why every witch assigned to the Sea Cursed made sure she was equipped magically for a lifetime of sailing?” Logan, ever the devil’s advocate, murmured.
“That was blind hope and you know it,” I said.
A small smile curled the corners of Logan’s mouth. I wanted to kiss him, but John was watching, so I didn’t.
“I knew it wasn’t rumor because Regina told me the truth about the witches marked by Othala.” John stopped pacing long enough to stare at us, his mouth a grim slash above his beard.
“And what’s that truth?” Logan asked, handing me back the mug of coffee and straightening against the back of the bench.
“That you’re supposed to be the new witch co-regents of Galveteen,” John said baldly. “Just as every pair of witches marked by Othala has been destined to become since the first spell of Reutterance.”
Chapter 23
“How exactly did Regina find out that the witches marked by Othala are supposed to become co-regents of Galveteen?” Logan sounded reasonable enough, only a flat sheen of anger glowed from his eyes. He busied himself pouring us coffee that he liberally dosed with brandy.
After John’s bombshell, all Logan had said was, “I need coffee.” He’d bolted for the galley. John followed immediately. I’d drifted after them both, dazed, as I tried to reconcile the idea that ever since non-magicals had stormed Moody Mansion and taken over the regency by force, witches marked by Othala had not only suffered punishment and humiliation at the hands of the current regent, but had also been denied their destiny. No wonder non-magicals called them sea cursed.
“It’s covered extensively in former regents’ journals.” John blew across the surface of his coffee to cool it before taking a sip.
“Journals?” My daze evaporated in a split second. “Like in archives?”
John set down his mug and stared at me. “Yes. Just like that.” A hungry light glowed in his green eyes. “Did Regina tell you about the journals in the archives? Did she speak to you about the things she discovered?”
“She was trying to say something when she died,” I said, wincing at the memory of Regina’s horrific wounds and her struggle to tell me something important through her agony. “But it was all fragmented. And I didn’t make much sense out of it.”
John sucked in his breath. “You must tell me exactly what she said. Part of the reason she came with us that day was to tell me about her latest discoveries in the archives. She’d been searching for Thirteen’s journals, unsuccessfully, for a long time. She suspected they had been destroyed, but I’m hoping they weren’t. Please. Tell me everything she said. What may seem disjointed to you, could mean something to me.”
I pressed the palms of my hands into my shut eyes as if I could massage the memory out of my head and into words. The problem was Regina had not finished any of her sentences. At least, not that I could remember.
“Try, Demetria,” John urged.
“Let her alone,” Logan snapped. “She told me about this too, and Regina didn’t say anything except something about the archives and the regents’ journals.”
“And that I was supposed to read the original,” I added.
John frowned. “Original what?”
“Exactly.” Logan gulped at his coffee before setting aside the empty mug. “Spell, perhaps? We only received a copy. Was there anything left out? Things pertaining to us becoming co-regents?”
“Regina saw the original spell as written by Thirteen.” John heaved a great sigh. “That’s where it says the witches marked by Othala are to become co-regents, but it doesn’t say why. The regency has been held in the Trumbull family ever since non-magicals took it over. Why wouldn’t the witches have done the same? Presumably keeping the regency within Thirteen’s bloodline would have made the most sense. She came from The Sixteen, and they were the most powerful witches on Othala. The records say she had four daughters. Three of them were born in the Before Times and one after. Any one of them could have taken over when she passed away.”
“Maybe they didn’t inherit her power? Perhaps they were weak,” Logan said. “Witches have the power to keep Galveteen going, but only when we band together. Except for Dem and me, no one has power enough to cast the spell of Reutterance. We would even have it if not for the extra magic we received when we were marked by Othala. Perhaps she knew she couldn’t leave the regency to one of her daughters because none of them were strong
enough.”
“She could have Othala-marked one of them.” I said.
“No.” Logan shook his head. “The mark of Othala is given to the most powerful sea and earth witches on Galveteen at the time of Reutterance. There very well may have been more powerful witches than her daughters.”
“Did she know when she cast her original spell to move Galveteen into the gulf that even her magic wouldn’t be enough to keep the island from drifting back within reach of the ravagers?” I had no idea what Thirteen had truly looked like, but I pictured someone who looked like Regina, only much older, realizing with horror that her magic protecting Galveteen was failing, and she was not immortal.
“She could have recast her original spell, but what happened when she was dead and no witch on Galveteen had the power to move the island out of harm’s way? She figured out a way to give power enough to two witches through the mark of Othala. But why two? Why not just one?”
“Because there’s earth and sea magic involved in actually moving Galveteen.” Logan rose to pour himself more coffee and lots more brandy.
“So why didn’t she have help from another witch when she cast the spell that first moved the island? I was taught it was just Thirteen. Was she an earth witch and a sea witch? Can someone be both?”
Logan frowned. “I’ve never heard of that. Have you?” He turned to John, who shook his head.
“There’s nothing in the archives about that?” Logan sat beside me so our legs brushed. He put one hand on my thigh beneath the table and rested it there, flooding me with a profound happiness at odds with the serious nature of our conversation. Othala, I loved him.
“This is why we were looking for Thirteen’s journals.” John groaned. “There’s so much we don’t understand. The spell of reutterance was written by her when she was in her seventies, but it doesn’t seem likely that she actually performed it herself. So how were the first two witches marked by Othala? Did she do it herself through another spell?”
“In her seventies?” I mused. “I was taught in school Thirteen was in her twenties when she took control of Sector Thirteen. That would mean it was fifty years later when she wrote the spell of Reutterance.”
I gazed out the porthole, which was just above the waterline. The ocean stretched out into infinity, a barrier against ravagers. “Do you think she expected Galveteen to drift back?” I asked. “What if it was a surprise? A terrible one. And she had to figure out a way to make sure every time Galveteen drifted, witches could save it again.”
Logan grimaced as if he were nauseated then pushed away his coffee mug. “But why not simply repeat the spell she used herself? Has that one been found? Could that be what Regina meant by original? Not the original spell of Reutterance, but the actual, original spell Thirteen used?”
“So which was she? If she couldn’t be both, was she a sea witch or an earth witch?” I asked.
Logan slowly shook his head. “I have no idea. I’ve never even wondered before. I suppose if I had to guess, I’d say earth. She moved the island. All the things the sea witch does in the spell of Reutterance has more to do with manipulating weather in the future than anything else. The earth witch has the heavy lifting. Including tapping into the extra magic to charge the lightning bolts.”
A growing anger churned in my gut. “You once called it a pool of power. I wanted to syphon into it and give the witches back home more power. Enough to intimidate the Regent into abdicating the regency. Or take it by magical force. You scared me when you asked what if that pool isn’t infinite, and what if there’s not enough left for the next generation of Othala-marked witches if we use it for the other witches on Galveteen. Maybe if we could find Thirteen’s journals, they would explain why she needed to write the spell of Reutterance the way she did. Why it takes an earth witch and a sea witch, and where that pool of power is sourced.”
I clenched my fists. “Why can’t we go back and find them? Figure out answers to these questions?”
“And then what?” Logan’s jaw jutted and a muscle under one eye twitched. “You can’t just waltz into the Moody Mansion, kick out the Regent, and think his army would stand for it. Or the non-magicals. You kill him and he’s a martyr. You leave him alive, he’s the catalyst around which more than half the island would rally. Witches make up a little more than one quarter of the population of Galveteen. Maybe as much as one third if you count elderly, children, and babies. And they can’t fight. But they can die, Dem. Is that what you want? So you can be regent?”
“Co-regent, and no, I don’t want anyone to die,” I snapped.
“People died when the Trumbulls took over,” John said with an iron grimness that terrified me. “David Trumbull’s ancestor slaughtered the last witch regent on the front porch of Moody Mansion. With a sword. He stabbed her in the heart and cut off her head. He paraded that head, and the head of her husband, the co-regent, from the spikes of the iron gate he erected when he walled off Regents Row. The gate went up first, the wall was built after. The entire time those two heads rotted in full view of anyone who cared to take a look.”
He took a great, angry breath. “And you won’t even consider killing that bastard? His family has had almost two hundred and fifty years ruling Galveteen. Every non-magical regent has blood on his hands. Witch blood. Not only from the coup, but every fifty years two witches are either exiled or murdered – the thanks they get for saving the island and everyone on it.
“Did you know that Trumbull’s grandfather promised the sea-cursed witches in his time a celebration when they returned? A dinner party at the mansion with all their loved ones invited. They walked into the dining room expecting to attend a party, and instead they were run through with bayonets by the ranking members of Regiment Thirteen. Their loved ones were told they were lost at sea and never returned after the Reutterance.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the horror of imaging that scene, but I still saw it in my head. Maybe they’d been in love, those two sea-cursed witches, and they’d walked in the room, hand in hand, ready to share their love with their families. Had they tried to protect each other when they knew what was happening? Had they had time to realize they were dying?
“The only reason you two didn’t get a similar fate was because of Regina. She convinced him to exile you, and only because you cried, Demetria, and told him you were sorry you didn’t save her, made him stick to that plan. In her honor. But there was a moment when he considered murdering you since Regina was gone and couldn’t object.”
Tears squeezed beneath my screwed-up lids. Logan squeezed my thigh reassuringly, but his short, labored breaths attested to his own furious grief.
“The Regent’s father was a small boy when his father executed those witches. He hid behind a curtain and saw it all. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did, and that is the only reason the witches marked by Othala in his time were exiled. He couldn’t stomach the blood. But he handled banishing them without much effort. He perpetuated the rumor that sea-cursed witches died during Reutterance in order to help obliterate any remaining idea that they were supposed to return and become co-regents. Everyone, including the witches themselves, have long since forgotten those marked by Othala were supposed to rule. But the Trumbull regents know. Have always known and done their level best to keep that knowledge from the rest of Galveteen.” John pushed off the bench and paced the galley/sitting room, his hands clasped tightly behind his back as if he hid them out of sight to keep from throttling or beating something.
“I was honored to be a member of Regiment Thirteen. Privileged to serve my regent, even if I disagreed with some of the laws regarding witches. Like the one forbidding marriage between a witch and a non-magical. I thought perhaps I could champion change in the way non-magicals treated witches. I never realized how the Trumbull regency had worked for centuries fanning dislike and distrust. I knew witches were sometimes thrown in jail unjustly, but not murdered. Being stripped of my commission was one of the proudest moments of my life equal
ed only by the moment when Helena told me I had a daughter, and she was marked by Othala.”
John choked up, but regained control of his emotions with visible effort. More tears trickled down my cheeks, and I didn’t bother to wipe them away when John said, “I regret I can’t be a force for change within the army any longer. However, now I can be open about it and work with the witches and other non-magicals. I still have contacts within the Regent’s army.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you’re too open about it,” Logan remarked, staring down at the table, his jaw working. “I certainly hope the Regent has no idea you took the Selkie on a journey to find us. Have you doomed every witch aboard with your fanaticism?”
“What’s happened to you?” John gaped at Logan, pausing his steady march around the galley. “When you were brought to Moody Mansion, you were as insubordinate and rebellious as I’d ever seen any witch dare to act. You should be leaping at the opportunity to take the regency back, yet you’re calling me a fanatic for trying to help you do it.”
“I said you might be too open,” Logan retorted, throwing back his head, his cheeks dark with anger. “I never said I wasn’t interested. And if you want to know what happened to the insubordinate, rebellious witch, well, he had a ten-year-old sister incarcerated. And he fell in love. Desperately in love. He realized how stupid he was being, but he never stopped plotting David Trumbull’s downfall. He’s as rebellious as ever, only he’s being careful now. And you should be too!”
I laid my head on Logan’s shoulder, overcome with the fear that I might see him murdered. Dead because John Clark and I wanted to go back and wrest the regency out of David Trumbull’s hands. Desperately in love described well the emotion swelling through me. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and shuddered even as he pulled me close into his embrace.
Ridiculously, I’d thought if we could get rid of the Regent, one way or another, we’d somehow win and be safe. But we wouldn’t. His guards could kill us as easily as he could. Or some angry non-magical from Seawall North. And even if we took control back, wouldn’t we have to constantly watch our backs? As Logan had pointed out, the non-magicals outnumbered us by far. I suspected getting the witches to fight and not protect would mean they’d have to witness loved ones being slaughtered first, and that would further reduce our numbers. And if we couldn’t use the pool to empower them, their magic wouldn’t help much.
Sea Cursed: An Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 13 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 24