Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
I wasn’t wrong. Not completely. But as I levelled my gaze, the air seemed to ripple around the person standing between Arwyn and me.
Salem Tanner. The boy whose parents had died as collateral damage the night Witch Hunters killed mine.
I shouldn’t have allowed the relief to disarm me, but it did. After what he’d done to Jordan and the helpless witch during the Culling, I should’ve been more prepared to face him. I expected the sickening horror to follow just by looking at him. But the relief was strange.
Salem stood there, smiling at me, a sick knowing plastered across his face. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even seem to move a muscle. Instead, he just kept still, smiling down at me, waiting patiently for my next move.
‘Is it true?’ I asked as chaos ensued around us. Arwyn was nowhere to be seen. He could’ve been at the pavilion, fighting over weapons, but I didn’t dare look away from Salem to see.
Salem finally moved, proving he wasn’t some elaborate mind game. He nodded. Three drawn out bows of his head.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Jaz shouted, clearly not sorry at all. I refused to look away from Salem, but the promise of danger was far too alluring. As I did, I watched as Jaz took her time to prepare another arrow, the whites of her eyes a violent red. ‘Games over, Hector. For both of you, actually.’
Romy stood dumfounded, staring towards Salem like she’d seen a ghost. She was mumbling something under her breath, shaking her head, all without blinking. ‘No. No. No .’
It was brief, but I caught a blur of white hair in the distance, far enough away that I knew it was impossible. Because how could Salem have been in two places at once?
There was a rush of air, and by the time I glanced back. Salem was missing. Like he’d never been there at all. Chaos and confusion blurred into one. The Salem in the distance was fighting his way through the remaining witches with fists bathed in his blue lightning. There was no time to discern how he’d moved so quickly. Not as Jaz loosed the arrow.
Pain lanced across the side of my arm. I clapped a hand to it, feeling broken skin and material alongside the kiss of pain.
‘Oh dear,’ Jaz laughed to herself. ‘I suppose I’ll go again.’
‘Hector!’ Arwyn’s call cut through the bedlam. I risked a glance, to find him holding up a dagger in his hand. The blade was short, perhaps six inches and not that thick. But the hilt was decorative, proving it was not made for fighting.
An athame. A witch’s blade. And Arwyn was offering it to me.
‘It isn’t real,’ Romy mumbled, grasping my arms, putting her back towards Jaz. Her nails sunk into the wound at my arm, making me hiss. Seeing her up close only highlighted just how terrible she looked. But it was through her wide eyes that I could see how broken she was inside. And it was as if she had no concept of what was happening, or the danger behind her. But I did.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked, time seeming to slow.
Romy just gazed deep into my soul, tears pooling in frightened eyes. ‘It isn’t real. Nothing is real.’
Jaz released the next arrow. It cut towards us, fast and sure. I spun Romy around so her back was no longer in the line of sight. Mine was instead. Action came before realisation, but by that point I was helpless to do anything else.
Romy seemed to realise what was happening too. Her fearful gaze hardened to one of fury as she settled her eyes on Jaz. ‘ You .’
I pinched my eyes closed, my body tensing as it prepared to feel the arrow pierce my flesh. In the dark of my mind, I was transported to another. Caym stole me into his mind, protecting me from the agony that was to follow. At least that was what I thought.
‘You may be my master, Hector. But even in death, Heather Briar’s commands are far stronger than yours. This is what she asked of me.’
Realisation came thick and fast.
‘Caym ! Don’t! ’ I bellowed my familiar’s name out across our bond. With my back to Jaz, I couldn’t watch as Caym flew before the arrow. But I saw it through his eyes, swooping down from the red-painted sky, a body peeling back from his shadows with the speed he moved at. Then, I felt it. The thud of the wooden shaft piercing feather and flesh. The blinding pain that overwhelmed my familiar. Then the crashing smash of his body falling to the earth, wings broken.
I tore myself from Romy’s iron grip, ready to do something— anything —to help my familiar. But it was too late. I couldn’t even catch him with my power to lessen the impact of his fall.
Caym laid upon the floor, dark blood soaking the grass, his body twitching as the arrow through his little body kept him forged to the ground like a spike. His wings flapped against the ground, one bent at such an angle I could see his fragile skeleton through patches where his feathers shed.
‘Caym?’ I shouted aloud this time, demanding him to answer me. His presence was weakening, bleeding out quickly as his lifeblood left him. I latched onto him in my mind, the last tether to my mother, and felt him slip through my fingers like sand.
‘Hell wept,’ Jaz barked, not realising the damage she’d done. ‘What are the chances! Lucky number four it is…’
I allowed myself a moment to look away from my familiar. I knew, without the need to see my reflection, that my eyes glowed. My Gift bucked like a wild horse, smashing hooves against the cage that was my flesh. No, not my Gift but the viper that lurked beneath it. Hatred, the need to cause agony and destruction, came so fast it made my head rush.
Arwyn was still there, at a distance, offering up the athame as if he knew this outcome was fated. His face was set into a mask of thunderous anger, matching the maelstrom I felt inside. He mouthed two words to me, proving none of this was some made-up hell in my mind.
‘I’m sorry.’
I stretched out my hand towards him, blindly reaching for the weapon Arwyn held. Once I recognised the familiar press of a handle against my power, I clutched onto it and pulled it towards me.
‘Not going to happen.’ Jaz noticed my use of my Gift and called on her own. The pain she conjured in my bones was nothing compared to what I felt already. But it did break my connection to my Gift, just as the athame was inches from my hand.
Helplessly, I couldn’t do anything but watch it fall.
Just like Caym had, the arrow pierced all the way through his small body.
‘She’s mine,’ hissed a voice from behind me. Romy leapt forwards, throwing herself to the ground, catching the athame in an outstretched hand. Jaz was too busy punishing me with her Gift that she didn’t notice as Romy used the momentum, drew back the athame and threw it forwards.
The blade spun before sinking into Jaz’s chest. Immediately, the agony was severed. And then Romy was there, using the distraction to tear into Jaz with nail and tooth.
Arwyn was running towards me as I sank to the ground, hands shaking as I looked over Caym’s body. My mind raced with possibilities. If I could take the arrow out, staunch the bleeding enough to forestall his death. Eleanor’s grimoire warmed in my inner pocket, promising answers.
‘It’s too late.’ Caym’s voice was a light chirp in my mind. ‘ What’s done is done.’
I shook my head, tears pooling in my eyes, made from fury and grief. Two emotions I knew well. ‘I won’t let you die. You won’t leave me, Caym. I need you’
‘You have proven that to be a highly incorrect statement, Hector.’ Caym twitched on the ground, so much blood pooled beneath him it was as if the earth leached the colour from his feathers.
‘I told you to stay away, Caym. Why didn’t you listen!’ I sunk my fingers into the blood-soaked earth, as though I could scoop it all back up and return it to where it belonged. I longed to lift him up and clutch him to my chest. Caym couldn’t die. If he did, a part of me would follow.
‘ Duty .’
I almost couldn’t hear his reply. Caym’s voice was so tired, it was no different to the slow rush of water in a distant river. Since the night my mother brought Caym into my life, we’d never been apart. He’d been my voice of reason, my deepest companion. I’d only just got him back, and Jaz had taken him away from me.
The noise of Jaz and Romy fighting had stilled to silence. Arwyn should’ve reached me by now, but he hadn’t. I looked up from Caym’s dying body, ready to beg for someone to help, but what I saw silenced me.
A wall of greenery—thorns, leaves, and roots. It surrounded me, beside the narrow path at my back.
This was the maze.
I no longer stood in its centre, but within its walls. Alone. My focus had been on Caym and I hadn’t noticed the shift in atmosphere until it was too late.
‘ Please, don’t leave me. I can’t lose you too, Caym.’
I waited for his reply, the silence becoming more torturous than anything I’d experienced. For a moment, I thought death had finally claimed him. But if I focused hard, I could still feel a slither of something other in my soul.
‘ It has been ’ I choked on a sob as Caym’s voice filtered down our bond ‘ a pleasure to…serve you, Hector Briar.’
‘No.’ Guided by panic, I wrapped my fingers around the slick shaft of the arrow and began to tug it free. ‘No. No . Don’t you dare say that. Caym, shut up. Shut up!’
It wasn’t a goodbye in simple terms, but it sounded exactly like one.
‘ Do not fear the shadows ,’ Caym managed, his last bout of strength used for those words. ‘ Rule them . Win…become…Grand High.’
‘Take me home,’ I demanded. ‘Do it, Caym, right now. I command you to take me away from here. I give up, please. I’m sorry, I swear I will never command you again. Just please…take me home…take me away…don’t go.’
No matter how I pleaded with him, agreeing to the very thing he wanted from me only minutes before, Caym didn’t respond. He couldn’t, because he no longer belonged to me anymore. He belonged to death itself.
I felt the moment his soul left me as severely as someone taking a knife and physically cutting Caym’s presence out. I clutched at my chest, agony tearing me in half. The noise I released was a keening scream, splitting the silence apart. No longer able to cause him discomfort, I ripped the arrow free of his chest and pulled the limp body of my crow onto my lap. With my face turned to the sky, I bellowed and shouted. I rocked back and forth on my knees, begging Hekate for help.
‘Save him!’ I bellowed, throat aching. ‘Hekate, do something worthy of my belief and save him!’
Of course, the goddess didn’t listen. She hadn’t listened since long before I was born.
Do not fear the shadows . Caym’s last words pierced me over and over. Rule them.
I shouted until my throat bled and my lungs ached for the need of breath. Even after that I rasped out the little air in my lungs, taking solace in the pain as punishment for this. When I was exhausted, I did the only thing I could. I held the broken, empty vessel of my familiar close to me. If I could’ve stitched Caym’s flesh to mine, I would’ve. But it was no good. He was gone, and I was alone.
Truly alone, for the first time.
Grief claimed me.
In the still quiet, I heard something beside the noises I made. It was a slithering, a shifting of earth. Looking down through blurry eyes, I watched as green stems snaked up from the dark stain Caym’s blood left on the ground. It stopped me, enough to focus on what was happening. Flowers sprung from his blood, covering the entire space the stain had left until I could no longer see it. Thin springs of vine unfurled at their crown to a harsh violet-coloured, five petalled flower. No, not a flower.
A weed.
Thistlebane. It grew from my familiar’s blood, just as it had with the demon I’d killed in the catacomb beneath the castle. The same weed that blossomed outside Eleanor’s boundary around her village when the demon’s foolish enough to attempt entry would explode upon impact.
Refusing to believe what my mind was telling me, I lowered Caym’s body to the ground. The second it touched the earth, the thistlebane shrub overwhelmed him, dragging his corpse beneath its starving roots.
My hands shaking, I pulled Eleanor’s grimoire from my inner pocket. I knew exactly what page I was searching for. Once I found it, I read the sentence in my head twice, then out loud, as if that would make it any easier to believe.
‘…thistlebane blossoms in place of a demon’s demise. If harvested and used, it has the power to harm the creatures and their powers.’
Caym. Death. Thistlebane. Demons.
Four words that should’ve had no connection to one another, and yet they did.
I’d been brought up believing familiars were banned because they gave a witch too much uncontrolled power. But, as I stared down at the answer before me, I knew that reason was a lie.
Familiars were demons. That was why the Coven had banned them.
The proof was stretched out before me and written with ink in the book I held.
My Caym was—had been—a demon.
Rule them. Win. Become Grand High.