Broken Souls (Book of Shadows)

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Seven

HIM

I storm out of the house not long after Khalid leaves with Vlad to go kill our brother – something I should be doing to please my wife. I know she isn’t an irrational woman, that even though I’ve called her crazy a couple of times when I have been pushed to my limit of frustration, she isn’t the type to risk everything for a moment of revenge.

Which means this is about more than just either of us killing Talon. If I can figure that out, maybe I can soothe the pain I saw in her eyes.

Because, fuck, that damn near crippled me. She looked as if I was torturing her all over again.

As I move away from the house, the screams she made in that chair ring inside my skull. If I thought they were hard to bear then, they’re damn near impossible to handle now. My stomach churns at the sound of her cries. She fucking begged me to stop, to listen to her, to believe that she loved me, and I fucking ignored her every time. I took out my rage on her. My jealousy that she kissed Antonio. My agony that she betrayed me. I looked her in the eye, and I hurt her over and over again.

“You say I’m yours, but you don’t even protect me! What kind of bullshit is that?”

My jaw clenches as my strides lengthen into a run. The need to move has me blitzing through the trees as her voice haunts me.

“What about your duty to me?”

The rawness she screamed that with echoes inside my skull. My feet trip over nothing but guilt, and pain flashes up my ankle as it twists. But I don’t stop running, don’t stop chasing that burn in my muscles and lungs.

Fuck!

No wonder my little monster skinned off my name from her pussy.

I gave her a promise. But it was fucking hollow.

She saw no meaning in it. No meaning in us. And she’s fucking right.

I claimed her in the moments where it was easy. I killed people who didn’t make a difference. Told her words in the dark of the night, in the shadows where no one else could hear. She might have said she didn’t care about me publicly claiming her, but I fucking care. I might not be able to kill Talon for her still, but I can damn well do this.

Storming through the house, I find her in the gym with her new wand. She’s aiming at a target on the other side of the room, her face scrunched up in concentration. Her spine stiffens as I approach, but she doesn’t turn to me. Keeping her focus on her target, she jerks her wand up, then waves it in a quick pattern.

With premade wands, you just point and shoot. They’ve been made to work for anyone. But with custom wands like this, you have to get them finely tuned into you. Magic is not a rigid science with steps to follow to get it to work how you want it. It is a fluid dance with an ever changing beat. The wand needs to learn her movements, and she needs to feel its soul. So she moves without firing it. Her wrist flicks in rhythm to the emotions inside of her, but the movements are clumsy and have too much thought in them.

Until the wand becomes an extension of her, it’ll be too dangerous for her to use. If a premade wand is like a gun, a custom is like a stick of dynamite that’s been left to weep nitroglycerin. It will give you the power to create what you want, to form the magic inside of you into the mold you wish it to take, but it will not control it after it leaves its tip. Custom wands are not meant for witches who don’t know how to use magic. They are merely a more powerful, more capable alternative to the runes we tattoo on our skin. The reason they are not the norm is that they get lost or stolen, and if that happens to a witch who has relied too heavily upon it, then you might as well have broken their hands, leaving them defenseless.

The average person will take five to six weeks to learn a wand enough to not blow their face up while using it, but it takes one to two years to really connect with it, and that connection is ever shifting. With the properties of this wand mimicking the wild, powerful nature of a kezja alicorn… I don’t expect Micha to master it for nearly half a decade, if not more. But when she does, the world will quake at her feet. A kezja alicorn is a master of fire, and Micha’s flames are hot enough to consume the entire world.

Feeling her frustration as I cross over to her, I ignore what I originally came here for and focus instead on what I can do to help her. “Have you ever danced, Micha?”

She ignores me, but I keep talking.

“A high quality wand isn’t like the ones kids get to help them during their ascensions. You can’t just jab it in the air.”

“How would you know?” she snaps. “You’ve never had magic.”

“No, but I practiced for hours every day with one from when I was twelve until I was twenty-two. I thought if I just connected with one strongly enough, it would work. It was a hel of a motivator.”

“But it didn’t work, did it? So what do you know?”

“I know you need to let it talk to you and let it feel you. Wands hold properties from both their creator and the item they were crafted from. What do you know about Suzanne Ledford or a kezja alicorn?”

She jabs the air a few more times before angrily turning towards me. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see the desire to know in her eyes.

“Suzanne Ledford is a romantic and a perfectionist,” I say. “Extremely skilled. Very powerful. If she ever had the motivation to take over the Seven Planes, she could make one hel of a run, but she prefers a quiet life of travel. One that brings her to harmony with the worlds around her.”

I reach for Micha’s wrist and hold it up so the wand lies horizontally between us. I glance at it as I talk. “She did not find the shed horn she used to make this wand. She found an orphaned colt in the Chisiho Desert, only a few days old. Starving, half-dead. His mother had been shot down by poachers, and the last thing she did was give birth to their son. His father lay underneath her, having used himself to cushion her fall.”

She sucks in a breath as her grip on the wand shakes.

“Now, anyone else would’ve stripped the two adult kezjic of all their fur and bones and horns, then either killed the colt for the same or kept it in captivity, but Suzanne Ledford shapeshifted into a kezja alicorn, then raised it as her own. And when it grew old enough to want to mate, she sent it out into the skies above, never trying to take one thing from it. Not the feathers it molted. Not the embers it left. She cleared it all, hiding it beneath the sands.”

I look up at Micha, and she is staring at the wand in captivation.

“So is this hers from when she shapeshifted?” she asks.

“No. That colt she raised found her after mating season and gifted her his first horn.”

Her eyes widen in wonder. I let her stare at it for a bit, the silence between us this time not as heavy as it’s been for the past few days. With my fingers still around her wrist, I stroke my thumb across her skin ever so slowly, trying not to draw attention to my need to touch her. My chest aches as I watch the emotions flit across her face. Gods, she’s so fucking beautiful.

She glances up at me, then sucks in a breath when she catches me staring. Her cheeks heat an adorable pink as she clears her throat and quickly looks away. “You said I need to know about the kezja alicorns too?”

I spin her around by the arm, a quick pull and a sidestep so her back is pressed against my chest and my arms are wrapped around her. She stiffens.

“Kezja alicorns come together every year to find their one true mate. It is a ritual that takes place over a month in the skies of Halzaja, normally over the open ocean and out of sight. But whenever they happen to mate above land, tourists flock from all across the Seven Planes just to watch them, and celebrations are held for the entire time they’re above that city.

“It is the one moment in time when angels and demons work together. The angels police the skies above, and the drazic demons take care of any ruckus on the ground. The sight is said to be one of the most beautiful things to witness in all of the Seven Planes because the kezjic dance to find their mates.”

I drag her wand arm up her body, from the hip it was at to the opposite shoulder, then feather it out further until her arm is nearly outstretched but with her elbow still bent. As I guide her limb through a fluidity of motions, I move my other hand to her stomach and get her to rock her hips in rhythm to mine. “The movement starts in your wrist,” I say.

I can feel her concentration in the stiffness of her limb.

“Relax. Just close your eyes, and let the wind take you.”

“There’s no wind in here.”

“Close your eyes, Micha, and feel it under your wings.”

She blows out a breath, but her eyes drift shut. I guide her wrist up and down, side to side in slow patterns, and her heartbeat starts to slow as she stops fighting me. Her hips sway from side to side as her arm moves in fluid motions I no longer control. My fingers are just on her wrist, holding her to me as she soars in the imagination of her mind, the black feathers of a kezja alicorn ruffled in the breeze, the embers of its soul imprinting on the air behind.

“Good girl,” I murmur. “You’re doing so well.”

She stiffens for a few seconds, then relaxes again, finding that fluidity she needs. She isn’t graceful; her movements aren’t ‘pretty,’ but what they are is free.

And that is what kezjic’s value over everything else. The freedom to be.

The wand starts to glow softly; the sound of a crackling fire hums from it, and Micha opens her eyes with a small gasp. “It feels…” She struggles to find the words, and a jolt of envy hits me. I practiced for ten years, dedicated hours every day to feel the connection with my wand, and yet it never happened. But she spends one hour, and the look on her face is one of utter amazement and joy and wonder.

The longer I stare at her though, the more my envy fades. I might not have ever felt the bond of a wand, and I might not feel the blood bond yet, but I have experienced all she is feeling now. I experience it every time I look at her.

She takes my fucking breath away.

“Marry me,” I blurt.

Her eyes jerk to mine. She knows we are to wed as soon as the baby is believed to make it to full term. Miscarriages are all too common in witches, and it is the last back-out clause in our marriage contract. A Shadow does not divorce.

Just like kezjic mate for life.

“I said I –” she starts, but I cut in.

“No, marry me now. Today.” I spin her around and drop to one knee in front of her. I pull off one of the rings I wear, a black band I thought gave me extra power until Mother told me the truth. I wish I had an actual ring picked out, one that didn’t have so many lies around it, but I don’t want to wait that long to ask her. To beg her to be mine again.

“I know I fucked up, Micha. I hammered that screw into your hands, cut that knife through your fingers, and I broke the promise I made to you. That you were mine to love and protect and fucking worship. And then I raped you, didn’t listen when you told me no. I ignored your boundaries for a second time, and even though I was under the effects of the Craving, I accept responsibility for that, and I am sorry. And I am so fucking sorry for the pain you are carrying and will continue to carry because of what I’ve done.”

I grab her left hand as she stares at me with wetness in her eyes.

“Fuck, baby, I know that pain will never go away. I know that trust will never go back to how it used to be, but if you bless me with a lifetime with you, I swear I’ll dedicate every moment of it forging a new trust, new memories to counter that pain.

“I need you, Micha.” My voice breaks as the words spill out. “These last few days, I have been listening for any whisper of your words, watching for any smiles you give. And when you laughed at what Maddox said at dinner last night, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him for getting to experience what I needed.”

I shake my head, trying to remember everything I have read these past few days about how to express myself, how to turn what I feel into words so I don’t fuck it up. But my chest is squeezing and my lungs are aching and my head is feeling all the pressure of research and midnight attempts at speaking to mirrors.

“I don’t want you to say yes to stop my pain,” I say. “Because I will carry the agony of what I did to you for the rest of my life. Shit, Micha. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did, and I will never forgive myself for that even if you do. But I’m asking you to marry me because I love you.”

I swallow down the pain of that statement, the lie that comes from the curse she doesn’t know about. But I love her as much as I know how, and it’s fucking terrifying.

“I love you, Micha,” I say again as I squeeze her hand. My other hand shakes as I hold up the ring. “So will you please marry me?”

There is a long moment of silence as she stares at me with wet eyes. Her cheeks are dry though. Her lips wobble even as they stay tightly pursed.

My heart hammers in my chest, hitting my lungs hard enough to bruise, to knock the wind out of them so I can’t breathe.

And then...

Without a word, she walks away.

Shattering me into pieces.