by N. D. Jones
She couldn’t go to her, couldn’t offer her mother comfort. Her last decree, the removal of Kalinda from Irongarde Realm and her exclusion from Steelcross, had effectively taken away what mattered most to Kalinda—her family.
Kalinda’s family included Bader, the two no longer as estranged as they’d once been. Her parents’ relationship, no matter the status, wasn’t for Oriana to weigh in on, so she’d turned a blind eye to the renewed affection between the two. Whether their marriage withstood Kalinda’s duplicity depended on Bader.
The penalty hurt. Whether Kalinda understood this or not, her sentence was also Oriana’s punishment. She loved her mother. Oriana always would. But she couldn’t trust her. Not with Earth Rift, and certainly not with Keira.
Grandmother, mother, daughter, three generations of Blood of the Sun witches—a crimson legacy born of fear, misunderstandings, and metal. Witches and werewolves had feasted too long on all three, nearly destroying themselves. It was time to introduce something new into the equation—hope.
Oriana slid from the bed and onto the floor, cradling her weeping mother in her arms. Kalinda clung to Oriana, and she held her just as fiercely.
They stayed intertwined for long minutes, Oriana no more ready to end their bond than Kalinda.
“I love you.”
“I know, and I love you, Mother.”
Kalinda’s hand moved to Oriana’s face, wiping away her tears and kissing her cheeks. “In my final act as Matriarch of Irongarde and as Mother to Matriarch Oriana of Steelcross, I’ll lend you my magic and support during your blood transfusion. I may have lost you, but I will not permit you to die.”
That was good because Oriana didn’t want to die. She had so much she needed to live for and even more she needed to redeem. In time, she would forgive Kalinda, but her mother would have to travel her own path of redemption.
Oriana kissed her mother’s cheek, knowing by month’s end they would never be like this again. She would mourn the loss of Kalinda in her life but not as much as she would grieve for the woman who’d sacrificed her morality to perpetuate a flawed system she’d been tasked with preserving long before she’d taken her first breaths of life.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
But Kalinda could’ve done better. Much, much better.
So could Oriana.
Chapter 17: Hunger of the Hopeful
June 21, 2243
Steelcross Realm
Aphelion Umbra
Kalinda hated to cry. Yet, she’d done little else these past weeks. She thought she would miss Iron Spire, Irongarde, and serving as matriarch. Kalinda did, but not as much as she missed her beloved daughter and granddaughter. Though futile, she’d moved as close to her family as Oriana’s dictate would allow. So, she’d had movers transport her belongings from Irongarde across the planet to a home she’d purchased in Aphelion Umbra.
A bottle of wine in hand, Kalinda maneuvered in her living room around boxes she hadn’t bothered unpacking. Ignoring the glare from her uninvited guest, she sat on the couch, her mouth on the rim of the bottle.
“Getting drunk won’t help.”
Drinking deeply, Kalinda closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the rich citrus flavor of her white wine. It tasted bitter, the way every food and drink had since Oriana walked out of her life.
“I hope you’re planning on sending these files to our daughter.”
Bader snatched the bottle from Kalinda and threw it into the cold fireplace, shattering the bottle and causing her to jump.
“What do you want? Why are you here?”
Bader towered over a seated Kalinda. A month earlier, she wouldn’t have tolerated this physical display of male dominance. She despised Bader’s nonverbal reminder of how low she’d fallen.
“If you answered my phone calls, I wouldn’t have had to come here.” He shook her tablet in her face, as if the device was irrefutable evidence of her crimes. “After all you put Oriana through, she deserves to know the truth. All of it, Kalinda.”
She reached for her tablet, but Bader was faster. He stalked away from her, kicking boxes out of his way.
Again, she should scold him for such rude behavior. The house may not be Iron Spire, but it was still her home, and Bader had no right to treat it with contempt. Not contempt for my new home but contempt for me.
Bader perched his tall frame on the arm of the couch identical to the one she sat on but on the other side of the room. He swiped the tablet’s screen several times before stopping. “I shouldn’t have left you.” Dark eyes lifted to Kalinda’s. “I left you both. I should’ve stayed. Fought harder. Been braver. So should you.”
Kalinda didn’t need to hear her consort’s guilty ramblings. She had her own guilt from which, even in slumber, she couldn’t escape.
“You’ve never let me read Helen’s journals.”
“You never asked.” Kalinda removed her shoes, pulled her stockinged feet onto the couch, and waited for Bader to either finish what he’d come there to say or walk out of her life for good.
“I should’ve stayed,” Bader repeated. “I wished I would have.” His shoulders slumped and gaze drifted away before returning to Kalinda’s. “We were once a team.”
They had been, but those days were so long ago Kalinda could barely remember how it felt to be anything other than an island.
“What are we now?” she asked, despising the tremor that had punctuated her question.
Bader swiped her tablet twice more before stopping and reading.
“It was hiding in plain sight, as humans like to say. I’ve searched for decades to unearth the truth of the war between witches and werewolves. It was here all along—one of the rare bits of pre-matriarchy history Alba didn’t manage to destroy. Admittedly, I understand Alba’s motivations. I can’t imagine what life was like for witches before Alba’s time. Not just the werewolf threat—although that had to have been terrifying—but the lack of control over our witch magic.
I wonder how the witches figured it out. At what point did they realize they could not only insert liquid metal into their bodies to protect themselves and survive but that the metal could be used to manage their magic. I’ve heard humans say that necessity is the mother of invention. I’d say, for my witch ancestors, that adage certainly proved to be true.
The War of Eternal Hunger. If it weren’t so sad, I would laugh. Instead, I’ve shed a fair number of tears. I once asked Mother how witches controlled their magic before the institutionalization of the rite of endometal fusion. She not only had no answer, she also had never contemplated the question. Mother was curious as to why I raised the issue but just as quickly dismissed the subject.
The question remained, though.
The War of Eternal Hunger. I have to write the words again Armed with my new insight, I now know it wasn’t a war title at all, but the name given to the witches’ era of victory over their werewolf oppressors.
I can now lay my question to rest because I’ve discovered the answer. The way witches used to control their magic was to reduce the natural buildup in their bodies through a safe expulsion. They literally fed werewolves their excess magic, which not only helped them to control their magic but quenched werewolves’ hunger for it. But when witches rebelled against werewolves, they cut off access to their magic. Thereby creating an eternal hunger within werewolves, one that witches, thereafter, refused to sate.
We were made for each other, having the ability to fulfill each other’s needs. Yet, we’ve been locked in a battle neither side can ever win. Although I have no evidence to support my contention, I do not believe muracos existed prior to the magic starvation of werewolves. I think muracos were an awful yet unexpected byproduct.
I’ve written all my thoughts down for you, Kalinda, with the hope you’ll never need to read my journals. If I don’t survive tomorrow’s experiment, know that I love you and your father. I ask that you not close your heart and mind to all I’ve done and learned. I ask
that you put aside your grief and finish my life’s work.
Don’t allow your disappointment in me for choosing this fate, over the safety of doing nothing, blind you to our world’s great need for change. Please, Kalinda, do not punish our people for my mistakes. They deserve a matriarch who will work to find the balance between witches and werewolves. It won’t happen during your lifetime, perhaps not even during the next, but I have faith that, with the right leadership the sun and the moon will align in harmony.
Like all great movements. It begins with one mind, one heart, and a single brave step into the unknown. If not you, Kalinda, then who?”
Kalinda had begun weeping halfway through Bader’s flat reading of her mother’s final journal entry. She kept crying minutes after he’d finished.
“We should’ve continued your parents work. Solving the rift between witches and werewolves should’ve never fallen to our daughter and her consort. Now you and Oriana have lost each other, and all I can do is stand by while the two women I love mourn the loss of the other. What am I to do?”
She felt rather than heard him draw nearer. At his touch, a hand to her knee, she opened her eyes to find him kneeling in front of her.
“How can I continue our marriage after the awful crimes you’ve committed and the pain you’ve brought our daughter?”
Kalinda had no response that wouldn’t have her embarrassing herself by begging Bader to forgive her and not to leave her alone with her regrets and guilt. So, she wiped her eyes dry, willed her lower lip to cease quivering, and held her consort’s dark gaze with the tattered remains of her pride.
Bader sighed. “You’re a stubborn witch.”
“Yes.”
“And ruthless.”
Kalinda knew that as well. She needed more wine—preferably a case to dull her pain.
“Send the files to Oriana. The gesture won’t alter her stance toward you but it’s a necessary first step to rebuilding your relationship with our daughter.” Bader rose, grabbed his suit jacket from off the couch where he’d been seated, and pulled it on.
Kalinda didn’t watch him leave, but she did hear the firm shutting of her front door. Whether that closed door would prove a symbolic ending of their marriage, time would tell. For now, all Kalinda had was a big house, decades ahead of her, and not a soul to share either with.
July 3, 2243
Steelcross Realm
Moonvale Forest
“Are you sure you want to do this by yourself?” Alarick placed a small cooler on the ground. “I mean, what if something goes wrong?”
To Alarick’s credit, he didn’t look at Oriana’s arms, covered by a lightweight red jacket she would exchange for a warm hoodie when the sun set and a cool front from Silentdrift Lake rolled in.
“Don’t waste your breath.” Solange shifted closer to Alarick, their arms grazing. “I’ve already asked, and she turned me down. I don’t know why you bothered packing her a cooler with water and sandwiches.” In a gesture unlike the Solange Oriana knew, her best friend stood on tiptoe and kissed Alarick’s cheek. “It was sweet of you, though. Thank you for thinking of her.”
“Ahh, umm … do I still get points if I told you Mom’s the one who made the sandwiches and thought of the care package? I’m still the one who held it while you jumped us here.”
Solange laughed. “Considering no one actually had to carry the cooler for me to include it in the jump, your meager physical effort counts for very little.”
Alarick delivered his whispered response to Solange.
Oriana wandered away from the lovebirds.
She didn’t want to think about the last time she’d been in this very spot, crying, anxious, and afraid. She hadn’t known what to do, or where else to go. She’d promised she would return but had been unsure if she would be able to keep her oath. She wished she could erase that night from existence.
Oriana would rather spend her time remembering their moonless sky ceremony. He’d looked so handsome that night—her black werewolf—majestic, red eyes enchanting, full of love and hope for a happy life together.
They had been happy. But they’d also been oblivious to satellites orbiting their sun, impacted by and responding to the solar system’s shifts.
“Don’t go too far,” Alarick warned her, sounding more amused than worried. “A little witch alone in a forest can be dangerous. What if that red jacket attracts a big, bad wolf?”
Smiling, Oriana walked away from the copse of trees and back to Solange and Alarick in the clearing. “I’m hoping to attract a big, bad wolf. Preferably a black one but a white one will do. At least for now.”
They nodded, still smiling at each other, although no true humor existed in their words. Nor was Oriana’s reason for being in Moonvale a laughing matter. But she’d cried enough, her ducts dry, her heart now full of hope.
Oriana missed Kalinda and Marrok. But she couldn’t move on until she’d fulfilled her promise.
The destruction of Janus Nether and the deaths caused by the escaped muracos had led to an unexpected window of opportunity to address the future of Earth Rift, witches being more amenable to talk of change than in times past.
Marrok had told her his thoughts about being a prisoner. His comment had been made in reference to Steelburgh, but they had reflected the line he’d drawn between being alive and living. “The city is beautiful in a sterile, morbid kind of way. It’s depressing and, if I ever ended up here, I’d want to jump from the Crimson Guard building and kill myself.”
Alive.
Living.
Not at all the same.
Alarick approached Oriana. They’d grown closer, the last couple of months, so it didn’t surprise her when he pulled her into a warm hug. Like Marrok, Alarick carried a woodsy scent, detectable even under the body oil he favored.
“Thank you for having Zev transferred to a prison in Ironmere. Having him close makes it easier for us to visit. He won’t admit it, but he’s grateful. I still can’t believe he turned himself in.” With a kiss to her cheek, Alarick stepped back. “For what he did, he’s lucky he only got a fifteen-year sentence.”
From behind Alarick, Solange shook her head, braids hidden under a white-and-gold head wrap that matched her dress. “Only a person who’s never spent time in prison would refer to fifteen years of incarceration as only.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Of course, I do. So does Oriana. But he’ll have to be moved again, once you, Lita, and Io settle in Bronze Ward. Everything is almost ready. Right, Oriana?”
She’d zoned out, her attention drawn to a spot of color across the lake.
“Hey, Oriana, what are you looking at?”
She ran away from Solange and Alarick, and to the shoreline, eyes tracking the spot of color as it moved.
“What?” Alarick caught up to her first. “What did you see?”
Oriana raised her hand to point where she’d last seen … something, but nothing was there, only rows of tall, green trees.
Alarick’s sight was keener than hers, but his scan of the area was no more successful. He grunted and shook his head. “I don’t see anything. Whatever you saw is gone. If you or Solange jump me over there, I could take a look. I really don’t like the idea of leaving you out here by yourself.”
“Neither do I. I’m giving you three hours.” Solange displayed three fingers, as if Oriana needed the visual to clarify. “Three hours—then we’re coming back.”
“That might not be enough time.”
“It probably won’t, but that’s all the time we’re giving you.”
As promised, Solange and Alarick returned in three hours. While Solange appeared unsurprised to find Oriana alone, Alarick made an admirable attempt to hide his disappointment.
And so it went for three months, Oriana jumping to and from Moonvale Forest, each trip equally uneventful and increasingly disappointing.
“We know you’ve done your best,” Io had told her. “We don’t expect more from y
ou.”
Oriana had believed Io, as well as Lita and Alarick, who’d echoed Io’s sentiment. Despite their words, they were no more ready to abandon hope than Oriana.
She had used the five months since the blood transfusions, Kalinda by her side for every procedure, to learn how to use her magic without aid of a channeling device. Slow progress, for sure. It was difficult to figure out how to rewire her thinking to manipulate her magic.
Thanks to Kalinda, Oriana had finally been able to read Helen’s missing journals. Her grandmother had been ahead of her time. Yet, like all of Earth Rift, also behind the times—the modern world in desperate need of catching up to the past.
Reclined on a blanket, Oriana stared up at the stars and smiled. Occurring once every twenty years, a red moon hung from the sky like a soundless wind chime. The red moon didn’t sparkle or glow. It wasn’t bright or even a unique shade of red. This was Oriana’s first time seeing a red moon. She’d expected more, something stunning. It wasn’t. It was . . . well, an uninspiring red moon.
A rustling of leaves sounded behind Oriana. Her smile grew, but she kept her focus on the sight above her and not on the sound behind her. The red moon, darker than she’d imagined, had an appeal other than visual.
There was more movement behind her.
Oriana didn’t move, but she did speak. “Did you know the red moon is considered a good omen. Anyone born during a red moon will be blessed by both the sun and the moon. I’m thinking ‘born’ could also mean ‘reborn.’ What do you think?”
The sound stopped.
Oriana sat up and turned. No, the red moon wasn’t particularly beautiful, but the sight before her was.
Neither a white werewolf, nor a black one, but a thin, dirty human male with untamed, bushy hair and a full beard. Gorgeous.
He opened his mouth, but only a raspy sound emerged. That was okay. She didn’t need the words. All she needed was him. And he’d finally come to her. Not as the black werewolf he’d been. Nor as the muraco he’d become. But as a confused amalgam of both.